Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: It is demoralising to witness raw hatred aimed at the moderates in our society

Former PSNI constable Peadar Heffron who lost his leg in a terrorist attack pictured with with former GAA player and radio presenter Joe Brolly. Photo: Presseye/Stephen Hamilton
Former PSNI constable Peadar Heffron who lost his leg in a terrorist attack pictured with with former GAA player and radio presenter Joe Brolly. Photo: Presseye/Stephen Hamilton Former PSNI constable Peadar Heffron who lost his leg in a terrorist attack pictured with with former GAA player and radio presenter Joe Brolly. Photo: Presseye/Stephen Hamilton

Because politics here is war by other means, across the divide people accuse each other of treachery, betrayal and ‘selling-out’ when they ‘moderate’ their positions, or even suggest it.

‘Moderate’ is a dirty word here. The accusations fly between the camps as well, when the charge is that people are trying to be the hardest voices of their community. So unionists accuse the SDLP of trying to ‘out-green’ Sinn Féin, nationalists lambast Ulster Unionists for competing with the DUP.

But I started this before reading what Peadar Heffron said to Joe Brolly in the Sunday Independent, reprinted at length here yesterday. ‘Betrayal’ was the heart of it. The bitterness of a man still alive but grievously maimed captures almost everything there is to say about a peace belittled, in effect betrayed.

The community that shaped Peadar Heffron, big on local loyalty, GAA to the marrow, turned from him when he signed up and turned away when he was maimed. The PSNI that Heffron believed that as a GAA-loving Irish person he was free to join is not the re-made service it was meant to be.

People who call themselves republican have terrified Catholics, with attacks like the bomb that wrecked Heffron’s life, out of joining the PSNI, or staying in it. Unionists nagged until 50/50 Protestant/Catholic recruitment stopped. Catholic membership is a third, if that. PSNI leadership weakness - fed by unionist ambivalence towards loyalist paramilitaries - leaves paramilitaries to degrade their districts, and nationalists disgusted.

Thanks to investigative journalists, and Ombudsman Michael Maguire building on the fearlessness of Nuala O’Loan, one disclosure after another traces a history from the RUC to their successors of collusion, and incompetence. Inquests delayed leave justice denied. Sinn Féin go through the motions of outrage but hold nobody to account. The SDLP complain and are ignored.

And alongside the lost hopes of policing runs a political culture of advance, retreat and regression. Competing for the hardest line leaves few satisfied, the DUP seemingly frozen, UUs convincing nobody new. Playing moderate in our terms has traditionally meant attempting to reassure the ‘other’ community. It never works for ‘the others’ and has a spotty history with ‘your own.’

The ‘post-nationalism’ of John Hume and Mark Durkan was confused and confusing, like Mike Nesbitt’s blink and you missed it ‘vote Colum and get me’. Nobody bought post-nationalism and nobody, starting with Mike’s own party, voted Colum to get Mike.

So fast have nice, mild Robin Swann and nice, articulate and socially liberal Doug Beattie raced in the other direction that their opposition to an Irish language act may even have stiffened DUP opposition to making a deal. Post post-nationalism, the SDLP is up a creek with neither paddle nor small canoe, stuck on a sand-bank, waiting for a new tide. Provide your own struggling image; the future of the SDLP is a puzzle to us all.

But the most demoralising facet of the internal, communal competition for hearts and minds is the emotion it generates; a raw hatred. We can most of us agree that bigotry and racism are evil. Walled into our tribes as we are, conscience and desperation to be decent makes a large number on both sides at least recite good intentions, at least try to give the young good example. Most - or perhaps just many? - attempt to push away the bad inheritance of mistrusting ‘the others’ at the merest sound of their names. But hatred of people from the same background because they try to moderate the tribe’s loudest voices, and because they step ahead of the crowd?

Sinn Féin on pre-election doorsteps are still calling the SDLP ‘the Stoops’, which is some advance on the days of vandalising their Falls Road offices. The old catcalls are part of what has undermined reform.

Joe Brolly is not a modest man but the exchange he reports between himself and ‘a Provisional’ berating him about the PSNI’s first gaelic match, inspired by Peadar Heffron, is very believable. Brolly says he told his accuser: ‘You handed over your guns to them, we played them in a football match.’

Heffron’s bitter memory of his home club forsaking him and how two of its members only visited while he was in a coma is equally unanswerable. ‘My father Frank played for Creggan, was the club referee and the treasurer. They said to him when they arrived, 'we are not here on behalf of the club, only in a personal capacity'.

No wonder Creggan Kickhams had no comment for the Irish News.