IT is not the fact that our Taoiseach, the man charged to remain cool when the heat is on, failed to do so after the Drumcree debacle which disturbs me. It is not the fact that the British Prime Minister John Major, in a careful and repulsive move, shakes she hand which once cut the life out of Senator Paddy Wilson and his friend Irene Andrews which worries me.
No, what troubles me is the re creation of a tribal memory which is short term, selective, prone to exaggeration and to falsehood, and which exults in tribal superiority. Together they could bring us again to the point of all out conflict.
I doubt whether there has been a time since Bloody Sunday when Irish people and British people have been so attuned to their own ancestral voices uttering the sickly predictions such oracles offer those foolish enough to consult them.
Utmost Sincerity
So we hear, in tones of utmost sincerity, of how the British yet again backed down before Orange violence; how the nationalists yet again tried to force unacceptable humiliations upon the Protestants of Ulster; of how the Dublin Government yet again interfered in the matter of policing in a part of the United Kingdom. The most journalistically disgraceful outburst in Dublin came from the pages of the Sunday Tribune.
We should be grateful for these little symptoms, these warnings and premonitions of what is to come. They might serve to head us off calamity, rather than let us cruise so idly towards it as we did in June towards the reefs of Drumcree. There were warnings too a month ago, when Ulster policemen felt themselves forced to behave towards nationalists which many would find unacceptable.
Then, in a curiously under emphasised incident, Northern policemen drew their batons and clubbed scores of young nationalists who were (no doubt rightly, in their eyes) protesting about unionist interlopers intruding into their area and insulting their national anthem Amhrain na bhFiann. The police protected the invaders while clubbing the locals.
RUC brutality? No. This happened in Donegal town a month ago, when a number of Northerners declined to stand for the National Anthem when it was being played in a local disco. The "Northerners" - who were presumably Protestants bent on sampling the failte - were attacked band badly beaten by local heroes. More fighting - erupted a week later with clashes between - some local nationalists and "Northerners", concluding in the Gardai baton charging the nationalists.
The National Anthem
We might pass lightly over this enduring practice of playing the National Anthem in a hall at the end of an evening of head banging, booze consumption and attempted sexual intercourse with complete strangers. Nationalism of any kind is such a peculiar force that it is probably as appropriate at an alcoholic and sexual rite as it is on state occasions.
But if we insist on people, regardless of who they are, standing up for Amhrain na bhFiann after a failed evening of heavy petting and heavier pinting, is it worse for Northern unionists to expect the equivalent in their clubs? Should not taigs stand quiveringly to attention as loyalists bawl God Save the Queen?
The erring path of the peace process has taken us away from trying to identify where we fail in common and where we have been mirror mimicking one another's distrust. Instead, it seems everywhere, we have been aligning ourselves with our pack leaders.
Have nationalists even begun to analyse the forces of insecurity and doubt which caused the Orange insurrection after the Drumcree stand off? Have they tried to imagine the position in which the RUC men found themselves after three days of that siege?
Have unionists for one second contemplated the sense of betrayal and deja vu nationalists tell over Drumcree and the Ormeau Road? Has the British Government the least idea of the well tide of nationalist fervour sweeping Ireland over the issue of marches (Manchester, Osnabruck, Canary Wharf now forgotten)? Has the Irish Government the least sympathy for Sir Hugh Annesley, having to making impossible decisions in impossible circumstances?
I am grateful to John Waters for expressing the nationalist point of view so trenchantly. The British were duplicitous, the unionists were bigots and the nationalists were udder siege, he said recently. Bigotry and hypocrisy represent the essence of unionism and British support for it, he continued. "Just as bigotry is central to unionism, hypocrisy is central to the British perception that its (sic) role in Ireland is as a neutral peacekeeper."
He later added: "What is required is for republicans and the Irish Republic to act in concert," and that sooner or later, "we will have to begin a process of reunification as the only way of permanently resolving the issue."
Recipe for War
And the heart sinks and the spirit dies to hear these words. Are they, and their promise yet again of a nationalist consensus, not the very recipe for war which will bring the unionists to their barricades, to unleash once again their leering bloodied killers, like the fine fellow who shook John Major's hand the other day?
Will the unionists walk meekly into a united Ireland because they are called bigots? Will the British hand over the people of the North because they are called hypocrites? Oh, I doubt it. The tribes involved cannot be reduced to mere cyphers, of virtuous victims "under siege", or baddies called "bigots" and "hypocrites".
No mere hypocritical impulse causes the British to have squandered the lives of hundreds of their soldiers, a treasury of billions, and to risk the future of their cities; more than mere bigotry lies at the heart of unionism, difficult though it is for the outsider to understand that Orange heart; Irish nationalism is not mere papist supremacism but calls upon an ancient identity, traditions of kindness and generosity, and a vast culture.
We peoples on these islands must ensure that the sword is sheathed again; and most of all, we should learn not to call one another names.