Opinion

Alex Kane: Gentle conversations can build bridges

Alex Kane

Alex Kane

Alex Kane is an Irish News columnist and political commentator and a former director of communications for the Ulster Unionist Party.

A recent report suggests a decline in the number of people who believe that relations between Protestants and Catholics are improving. Pictured is the Peace Bridge in Derry. Photo: Hugh Russell.
A recent report suggests a decline in the number of people who believe that relations between Protestants and Catholics are improving. Pictured is the Peace Bridge in Derry. Photo: Hugh Russell. A recent report suggests a decline in the number of people who believe that relations between Protestants and Catholics are improving. Pictured is the Peace Bridge in Derry. Photo: Hugh Russell.

The findings from the Northern Ireland Executive’s most recent Good Relations Indicator report suggest a ‘significant decline’ in the number of people who believe that relations between Protestants and Catholics are improving.

Just 39 per cent of adults agreed that relations have changed for the better over the past five years—which is down 20 per cent since 2016. The 59 per cent registered then was, in fact, the high point of optimism, followed by ongoing decline since Brexit.

But isn’t it interesting that the high point—coming 18 years after the Good Friday Agreement and almost a decade after the DUP and Sinn Féin cut their own deal to restore the executive with the Chuckle Brothers Agreement—was just 59 per cent? Or, putting that another way, wasn’t it worrying that around 40 per cent of adults (and the figures for younger people weren’t much more encouraging) still didn’t believe relations were improving?

Regular readers will know that I won’t have been surprised to have read the latest figures indicating 61 per cent believe relations are still not improving. The past five years—with the RHI scandal, Brexit and the three-year collapse of the assembly—have faced us with huge challenges: and when faced with challenges we tend to return to the psychological safety of the old divisions and tribal comfort blankets. Occasionally we will dare to dream of better days and better ways of doing our political business, but confidence is easily shaken.

The key question to be asked—and I’m not sure it is ever asked—is a brutally simple one: Do you believe there will ever be genuine, credible, cooperative power-sharing government in Northern Ireland? Even the Pollyanna optimists would be hard pushed to answer that question. And that’s because it requires making a clear-headed honest choice between your hopes and your experiences of politics here. The fact that the middle ground, after a quarter of a century, is still totalling less than 20 per cent of the vote, is a good indicator that the answer to the question would probable be around 20 per cent opting for optimism.

That’s not to say that Protestants/Catholics and unionists/nationalists don’t get on better than they used to. Something has clearly changed—and in a good way—since 1998 in terms of how we view each other as individuals. Most offices and other workplaces are mixed, so it’s not unusual for Protestants, Catholics, other religions and atheists to rub shoulders on a daily basis. Maybe even socialise and date.

That is a good thing. But it isn’t a good thing that there is still a tendency to avoid political conversations beyond individuals and groups we feel safe with. Over the past few months I have been asking people about how often ‘politics’ pops up in workplace conversations. More often than I would have thought, albeit very little is about local politics. One man told me he’s often had chats about Boris Johnson, the Ukraine war, Putin, the US, the cost-of-living crisis and even the Conservative Party leadership race.

When I pushed him about local stuff: “Oh God, no. I’d never start that sort of conversation unless it was with people I already knew shared my view. Maybe some banter about ‘getting paid to do nothing at the assembly’ but never anything more than that. We didn’t even discuss the last assembly election.” It exactly mirrors the conversations I have had with younger people about what they talk about in ‘mixed’ company at clubs and pubs. In other words, we mostly avoid the cross-community conversations.

Which means that, in small yet crucial ways, we don’t really understand ourselves any more than we did in 1998. To avoid political conversations with our neighbours and colleagues is to avoid the collective problems which dogged my generation and now seem to be dogging that of my children. We need to challenge ourselves. We need to talk about government here without the constant fear of either embarrassing the people around us or being accused of ‘subtle sectarianism’ (a phrase used in a recent chat I had with a teacher of politics in a local grammar school).

Maybe if we refused to pussyfoot around each other in everyday conversations we’d prevent the political debate being dominated by loud, intransigent voices who claim to speak on our behalf—but who rarely do. And maybe, just maybe, in quiet conversations with people we meet and work with every day we’d discover that bridges are capable of being built and then crossed without fear.

Irrespective of our constitutional status the fact remains that Protestants/Catholics/unionists/nationalists/other will have to share space with each other. That’s just a fact of life. So why not allow the process to work from the bottom up by way of gentle conversations and the everyday rubbing of shoulders, rather than allowing a fractious, polarising us-and-them to always dictate the agenda?