Opinion

Deaglán de Bréadún: Going forward as equals while retaining our identity

A truck crosses the bridge from Blacklion in the Republic of Ireland, into Belcoo in Northern Ireland. Such is the strange and contradictory history of this island. Now Sinn Féin says that, if the United Kingdom votes itself out of the European Union, the party will demand a border poll on the issue of Irish unity. Picture by Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press
A truck crosses the bridge from Blacklion in the Republic of Ireland, into Belcoo in Northern Ireland. Such is the strange and contradictory history of this island. Now Sinn Féin says that, if the United Kingdom votes itself out of the European Uni A truck crosses the bridge from Blacklion in the Republic of Ireland, into Belcoo in Northern Ireland. Such is the strange and contradictory history of this island. Now Sinn Féin says that, if the United Kingdom votes itself out of the European Union, the party will demand a border poll on the issue of Irish unity. Picture by Shawn Pogatchnik, Associated Press

WE'RE a great little island for anniversaries.

Easter week is, of course, a key period in the republican/nationalist calendar.

During the Troubles, the Rising was played down by the political establishment in Dublin but the centenary has turned into a veritable mardi gras of celebration.

On the other side of the political and community divide, I note that the Orange Order is again hoping to attract tourists to this year's Twelfth of July marches, with Portadown and Kilkeel named as flagship parades of particular interest to visitors.

Having myself covered several Drumcree stand-offs between the Orangemen and the nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road, it is interesting to note how the steam has gone out of that issue.

If this reflects an improvement in community relations in Portadown, that is all to the good.

The late Conor Cruise O'Brien said we were in danger of commemorating ourselves to death.

Thankfully not all the anniversaries recall military events.

One of those is Bloomsday, marked last week as it is on June 16 every year. Inevitably, as the setting for Leopold Bloom's wanderings in James Joyce's "Ulysses", Dublin is the heartland of the celebrations which have now become a five-day festival.

This year's programme included stage performances of his earlier novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, adapted by Tony Chesterman.

Although I had read the original a long time ago, the priest's sermons on Hell, delivered at the school retreat, still pack a powerful punch especially in the intimate surroundings of the New Theatre on Essex Street East.

Searing is the only word for the preacher's description of the torments in the satanic underworld: "Place your finger for a moment in the flame of a candle and you will feel the pain of fire . . . But the sulphurous brimstone which burns in hell is a substance which is specially designed to burn for ever and for ever with unspeakable fury."

It is powerful stuff and the interval in this excellent play comes a relief. I was transported back to a school retreat many years before, where the rhetoric was not much different from what the young Joyce heard and the effect on teenage listeners equally powerful.

I recall how the priest held a crucifix in the air as he urged the boys to repent before it was too late. At that stage even the "hard chaws" who had been holding back formed an orderly and submissive queue to confess their sins.

A foreign visitor at the New Theatre asked me if the Catholic Church was still as powerful today?

I had to tell him Mass attendance was way down, as were vocations to the priesthood.

This was attributable to a range of factors, such as our immersion in a materialistic world economy and of course the damage caused by the child abuse scandals.

In theory, the decline in religious influence ought to be beneficial in terms of cross-border relations.

Freeing itself of Church constraints, the south is turning into a liberal poster-boy with the passage of the constitutional amendment permitting same-sex marriage, which is still forbidden in the north.

Time was when the north was a liberal haven in certain respects, contrasting with the narrow-minded, censorious 26-county state, although at one and the same time, the north was also regarded as a local version of the American "Deep South", a byword for bigotry and discrimination.

One of the key moments in the social and political history of the south was the arrival of the "Contraceptive Train" in Dublin on May 22, 1971 carrying members of the Irish Women's Liberation Movement who were deliberately breaking the law by bringing contraceptives into the state. Where did they buy them? In Belfast, of course.

Such is the strange and contradictory history of this island. Now Sinn Féin says that, if the United Kingdom votes itself out of the European Union, the party will demand a border poll on the issue of Irish unity.

Its MEP for Midlands-North West, Matt Carthy said this might include "transitional arrangements which could perhaps mean continued devolution to Belfast within an all-Ireland structure".

If one may adapt a phrase from the Star Trek series: "It's unity, Jim, but not as we know it."

If Brexit goes through, the Scots may decide to vote themselves out of the United Kingdom, which would be a major psychological blow to Ulster unionism.

In addition, the south might have to reconsider its own EU membership if the UK decides to leave. We live in a time of flux and constitutional uncertainty.

Just as the institution of marriage is changing, perhaps north and south should devise some form of partnership where we go forward together as equals while retaining much of our identity, customs and, of course, commemorations.

We might have more in common than we think.

@ddebreadun