COMMUNITY RELATIONS:MORE THAN £3 billion has been spent in creating and cementing the peace process in Northern Ireland but there has never been a proper focus on building a shared future in the North, the SDLP annual conference heard on Saturday.
Duncan Morrow, head of the North’s Community Relations Council, warned that unless the opportunity was seized to radically improve community relations, the chance would be lost for another generation.
Mr Morrow, during a panel discussion on a shared future, said the cohesion, sharing and integration strategy advanced by First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness was “not serious” about tackling sectarianism.
There was a possible “historic opportunity” to properly address sectarianism, he said. “And we have to take it because it won’t come around again, certainly not for another generation.”
He drew distinctions between nationalist and unionist views of the divisive problems afflicting the North. He said the nationalist experience was that they faced discrimination and exclusion and that Britain “was the enemy”, while the Protestant fear was that the nationalist project was one of “cultural if not personal annihilation” of unionism and Protestantism.
What was required from unionism was an “unambiguous commitment to equality” and from nationalism an answer to the question: “Do you have space in your culture for people who want to call themselves British?”
Presbyterian moderator Rev Norman Hamilton said the concept of separate but equal only reinforced fear. In terms of a shared future, each side wanted to “hear from the other side that who I am matters”.
He wanted to hear clearly from nationalists and republicans that the culture so important to loyalism, unionism and Protestantism, mattered – while nationalists wanted to hear from unionism that the expression of nationalist culture mattered.
Referring to integrated denomination-free education, Mr Hamilton said education does “not happen in some value-free, neutral environment”. He did not want “value-free” secular education.
Conall McDevitt, SDLP Assembly member for South Belfast, who chaired the discussion, said there could be “no equality without good relations and no good relations without equality”. He said sectarianism and the failure of the DUP and Sinn Féin to present a workable strategy for a shared future was feeding into the “blinkered” agenda of dissident republicans.
Tom Daly, former president of the Ulster GAA, said the organisation’s experience was that reaching out to unionism was triggering a positive response, and the onus on the GAA was to be consistent and focused in maintaining that outreach.
Prof Colin Harvey, head of Queen’s University Belfast law school, called for a shared future plan based on rights, respect and responsibilities.
