Opinion

Fionnuala O Connor: Brexit has at least sparked some valuable public conversations

Effigies of British politicians from right, Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Give are driven on a truck by anti-Brexit, remain in the European Union supporters outside the House of Parliament in London last week
Effigies of British politicians from right, Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Give are driven on a truck by anti-Brexit, remain in the European Union supporters outside the House of Parliament in London last week Effigies of British politicians from right, Prime Minister Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Give are driven on a truck by anti-Brexit, remain in the European Union supporters outside the House of Parliament in London last week

One Brexit saving grace is that it has primed a flush of discussion, open to all with the nerve to at least walk into a crowded hall or classroom and listen, if not to offer their own thoughts.

In this society, where communities have shouted angrily at each other for too long between sullen silences, public conversation may be vital. Better engaging with other citizens face to face than shouting at the television; much better than shouting on air.

At one recent event the least popular suggestion, at least to judge by muted cries of ‘no, no’, was that Stephen Nolan should have been there. His fan was on the panel, an ex-journalist, not in the audience. This was a fortnight ago (apologies for delay but life intervened) when people packed out a room in Queen’s Law Department for a morning and afternoon on 'Post-Brexit Citizenship Status: Divided by the Rules?'

Queen’s Law looks outwards these days, as an onlooker noted when weighing up the rip-snorting turn by Professor Colin Harvey insisting on a border poll, at that ‘Beyond Brexit’ Waterfront gathering. The Waterfront’s prime mover, solicitor Niall Murphy, was forceful again at the Queen’s event but the lawyers were outshone with ease by non-academics. Emma de Souza is the Murphy client, now an immigration and citizen rights campaigner after the years she and her husband Jake Gannon have spent insisting that she can identify herself solely as Irish, not Irish and British. Telling her own story, she is unbeatable. Some contributions from the floor were almost as good.

A young woman who only gave her first name described how the Brexit vote had isolated her from family, then partner, them strongly pro-Brexit, her pro-Remain and moving towards an Irish passport. ‘Do I have different rights from my husband and two children?’

An older man, with the timing of a comedian, followed that with his own run-in with the Home Office. He wanted to be sure that his partner and children did not need to apply for ‘settled status.’ Oh yes, they did. He dug in, asked to speak to a manager. Ten minutes later the original respondent came back to him, repeated her advice then changed instantly when he persisted but asked him: ‘So you’re an Irish citizen. You have an Irish passport? Is it a Northern Irish passport?’

The last similar flurry of public discussion, it seems to this writer, was before and during negotiations for what became the Good Friday Agreement, 20-plus years ago. The best thing republicanism did was to call off its war. Second-best, in parallel with their secret conclaves, was the outreach constructed before the ceasefires in open sessions, where people came to argue for exclusively political involvement, much more rarely against it.

Peak-conference season 1996 was perhaps as much out of the north as in, across Ireland, other parts of Europe, the USA invitation-only, aids to negotiation, pilot-runs for ideas; more homely efforts had perhaps more value.

A few moments probably stand out for many. One early Patten Commission ‘hearing’ attracted a big crowd in Whiterock, among them the then rarely-sighted Price sisters. Marian Price, listened to respectfully, spoke against the processing of peace. Alex Attwood had less support when he answered someone who said the RUC must be completely replaced, could not be reformed. To boos and hisses Attwood said a police service could not be built in a vacuum, and Ronnie Flanagan was a decent cop. Flanagan, last RUC chief constable, duly headed up the ‘new’ PSNI.

Today’s models are more diverse, with more women on panels, more varied speakers billed, chairpeople with a bit of wit and sensitivity. Yet not enough people may know they can often just turn up and speak. The stately red-brick of Queen’s has airy glass hallways now, and more families from less posh bits of the city know at least someone who has studied there. It can still scare the under-confident, whose formal-education stopped at 16 but who lost interest and self-belief years earlier.

Some teachers keep trying to make good the deficits of others. As well as alternating his On This Day column between 1919 and 1969, by the time you read this Eamon Phoenix may well have been on or off another train to or from Newry, or on his feet in a hall somewhere else to untangle the years between 1916 and the War of Independence. All welcome, say his modest advertisements. He should be ferried around at public expense in a limousine.