Seán Moran: GAA opts for cautious policy as North’s entrenched positions remain firmly fixed

Twenty-five years ago, the dates fell in such a way that the GAA congress in 1998 came exactly a week after Good Friday.

There was a giddy sense of optimism about the Belfast Agreement in the possibilities it offered everyone on the island but more profound was the relief that this offered a way out of the awfulness of 30 years of death and destruction.

Rule 21 had been on the books of the GAA since the foundation of the association in 1884, apart from a five-year spell at the turn of the 20th century. It was a simple prohibition on members of the British security forces playing Gaelic games.

There had been few attempts to repeal it. One came in 1971 when the prohibition on ‘foreign sports’ was struck down and an attempt to get rid of the other ban was tabled but never taken.

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With the deterioration of the Troubles, circumstances were never deemed sufficiently propitious to revisit the issue and attempts to do so were defused with boilerplate assurances that the GAA “would not be found wanting when the time was right”.

The signing of the agreement the previous week refocused attention on the rule. There had been rumours that president, Joe McDonagh, might move on the matter but nothing was announced on the Friday of congress and expectations dipped.

Rule 21 wasn’t a big deal in the greater scheme of things but it was an obstacle to better relations between the communities in Northern Ireland – or, at least between the GAA and the unionist community. Repealing it would be a contribution at a time when everyone appeared to want to do something to facilitate a new departure.

McDonagh’s move came suddenly on the Saturday when he proposed the lifting of standing orders to debate the ban with a view to deleting it from the Official Guide.

Ulster delegates put on the brakes, some complaining of “feeling bounced” into this and unwilling to make a move before the policing issue had been addressed by the Patten Commission.

In the end, after a Central Council meeting that lunchtime it was announced that there would be a special congress at the end of May. It was presented as a major initiative but was in reality was something of a damp squib.

McDonagh was privately criticised by some GAA officials for not consulting properly with those in the Ulster GAA and laying the groundwork a little better. This was, however, unfair in that the president was seizing the moment after the agreement and trying to position the association at the forefront of the peace process.

At the time no one was sure whether the referendums would be passed. It was considered likely but a refusal by unionists, which would sink the project, was also a possibility.

In the event, the agreement was comprehensively endorsed so that by the time the special congress happened, the opportunity to influence the vote had gone and any sense of historic ground being broken fizzled out.

There was no clear decision to drop the contentious rule but further declarations of the association “not being found wanting when the time was right”.

It was not the GAA’s finest hour and the rule didn’t go for a further 3½ years, by which stage McDonagh’s successor Seán McCague, acutely conscious that with the recommendations of the Patten report about to take effect with moves to establish the PSNI, the GAA could not become a major obstacle to the foundation of a new police service by effectively blocking a huge number of young nationalists from joining the force.

By that stage “not being found wanting” had acquired comical connotations but at an ‘in camera’ special congress the rule was repealed.

In the 25 years since, optimism within the GAA has waned.

Like the rest of northern society the association has adapted to the reality that the absence of violence has not entirely equated to peace. It is an immeasurable improvement but original hopes that the community would be a quarter of a century down the road to harmony have been disappointed.

The GAA has done admirable work in terms of outreach but there are few signs that entrenched positions have shifted.

An initiative by East Belfast GAA to run introductory sessions in Strandtown Primary School resulted in such intimidation – direct by email and indirect through social media – that the school had no option but to withdraw.

These projects, privately described by one Ulster GAA source as “worthy but not transformative”, do their best to position the association as open to everyone but the legacy of the past is not easily renounced.

The civic atmosphere is unsurprisingly grounded in the political landscape and that has been darkened by the knock-on effects of Brexit – and the cheerleading of Britain’s colossal act of self-harm from the largest unionist party.

The consequent re-emergence of the Border as an issue has been destabilising and now comes the growing drumroll of dissident republicans and their febrile view that there haven’t been enough murders in the past 25 years.

Even the original pinch point of policing has problems. The missionary zeal with which new recruits established a GAA club within the PSNI has been challenged.

“You rely on recruitment and new players coming through,” a member told Denis Walsh on these pages last November.

“We probably wouldn’t have had as many new players in the last five years as we would have had previously. There’s always that fear that everyone is getting old together. You need new blood, and that depends on recruitment.

“We’ve a couple of lads in their 20s who joined recently, but a lot of the lads now are in their early to mid-30s. We want to keep it going, that’s the idea of the whole thing.”

After 25 years, keeping it going appears for the moment to be the best the GAA can hope for.

sean.moran@irishtimes.com