In the absence of an agreed narrative about how and why we reached our present position, the big two community blocs will continue to rely on and promote their own competing and contradicting narratives.
So, when Michelle O’Neill told Mark Carruthers in an interview last August that there was ‘no alternative’ to the IRA’s terrorism, she was answering in accordance with a view of history that continues to be shared across republicanism.
Indeed, an opinion poll shortly afterwards indicated 69 per cent of nationalists/republicans agreed with O’Neill that there was no alternative to ‘violent resistance to British rule’ at that time.
Now, while it is true that John Hume argued in favour of non-violence and promoted peace (and in my opinion the SDLP’s approach did far more to achieve political/societal change in Northern Ireland than anything done by SF/IRA), it is also true that SF’s post-1981 armalite and ballot box strategy laid the foundations for its present dominance of the nationalist/republican vote. Even people who had voted for the SDLP from its beginnings in 1970 began shifting to SF as early as the 1982 assembly election.
A common question in loyalist/unionist circles is this: How could people who voted SDLP for so long start giving their first preferences to SF, even before the IRA had begun a process of decommissioning its arsenals? Or, as a former RUC officer – who voted for the GFA – put it to me a few years ago: “Why did SDLP voters decide to reward a party which was linked to an organisation up to its neck in the very terrorism which John Hume had condemned for his entire political career?”
There will have been a variety of reasons, not least the possibility that many hoped electoral success would give Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness (who knew that republicanism had to move onto potentially uncomfortable political/strategic territory) a stronger hand in terms of persuading the army council and ‘volunteers’ to agree a permanent ceasefire and decommissioning.
That said, I still think the shift from SDLP to SF was, almost certainly, made easier by the fact that the broader nationalist/republican narrative was never far removed from O’Neill’s ‘no alternative’ opinion.
Given the narrative which underpins the republican/nationalist worldview, I wasn’t surprised by O’Neill’s comments – even though I utterly reject her logic. But even if there was ‘no alternative’ to the IRA campaign from 1969 to July 19 1997 (the second ceasefire) there is, surely, an alternative to the sort of commemoration which John Finucane will be addressing on Sunday afternoon at Mullaghbawn Community Centre in south Armagh.
If she wants to be a First Minister for everyone in Northern Ireland then she must take into account the feelings of everyone in Northern Ireland. And glorifying ‘no alternative’ terrorism doesn’t strike me as a sensible way of doing that.
Whether it be in Northern Ireland, or even in a united Ireland at some point down the line, unionism and nationalism is going to have to find a way of co-existence which avoids public events which are guaranteed to anger one side or the other.
Reaching out the hand of friendship by welcoming King Charles here and then attending his coronation, followed by yet another commemoration for IRA members, is, when you think about it, the most mixed of mixed messaging. Again, given the narrative I understand the need for an act of commemoration: but isn’t it possible to commemorate in a quieter, less public manner?
And before some of you take to your keypads and decide to go to my Twitter timeline it’s worth reminding you that I would say exactly the same thing to unionism and loyalism.
We, too, have our own narrative. We see things differently. Many believe that every problem can be laid upon your doorstep. Which will continue to be the case while we have our narrative and you have yours and while loyalist paramilitaries remember their fallen the same way the IRA remembers theirs: although I sometimes think the remembrances are actually a continuation of the older animosities by other means.
Are we serious about creating a new post-1998 narrative which we can take collective ownership of? If we are, then that requires an examination of our presently separate and separating narratives: to the extent, perhaps, of acknowledging that we may be jointly responsible for where we are.
I’ve said before that the past is always in front of us. The younger generation chanting ‘Up the Ra!’ are tethered to that past. Another younger generation, claiming that ‘republicans get everything they want', are tethered to that past. Even the progressives on both sides tend to have one foot tethered to that past.
The present is always the doorway between the past and the future. But if we insist – and I think it has been part and parcel of our joint psyche for countless generations – on dragging the past along with us then it will always be a reminder of previous failures as well as a long shadow over potential hope and progress.
We have to learn to let go. We have to acknowledge that the future depends on moving forward after learning from the past. A future (and time always moves on, even if nothing else does) in which we retain a polarity nurtured by self-serving narratives is no more than a process of passing on our overstuffed baggage to our children and grandchildren.
There may not, by the logic of their own narratives, have been alternatives for either side at key moments in the past. But there is an alternative available right now: start doing things differently, better and together.
One way or another we are stuck with each other, so maybe start thinking in a kindlier way about learning to live with each other.