When I read Tom Collins’s article about our forthcoming centenary, the words that came to mind were, “Northern Ireland exists, get over it and get on with it.”
After all, we share a beautiful place, the people are generally regarded as warm and friendly and we’re rightly renowned for our generosity.
One hundred years ago, its formation was a compromise that prevented a much more violent civil war from engulfing the island. The recent conflict reminds us of the need to treat it as a shared home place which belongs to all of us, and that the people who built relationships rather than destroy them ultimately won through, with the 1998 agreement.
We’ve been marking a decade of failures in that all sides failed in their initial objectives. We should recognise and understand that and perhaps appreciate that the ‘original sin’ of those times was failing to promote our respective constitutional preferences peacefully by building and maintaining constructive relationships rather than through hatred and exclusion.
On June 10 1913, Sir Edward Carson told parliament that the best way to achieve an all-Ireland state outside the UK was by persuasion rather than the threat of violence. That remains good advice to this day.
So, rather than engaging in bitterness, during Northern Ireland’s centenary, we should examine how we all got relationships so wrong on this island, across these islands and in these six counties specifically and focus more on the many positive examples where we got relationships right.
Northern Ireland has allowed me and others like me to live on the island and be comfortable in both our Irish and British identities. Unlike Tom, I really like the place and its people and I feel fortunate to live here.
It’s had its problems, but the truth is that everywhere does.
With our history, Northern Ireland was perhaps the best solution to what is described as the ‘Irish Question’. A place where we can live together as equals and in charge of most aspects of our lives and an identity that reflects us all.
We also should be careful not to burden our children with the mistakes of the past. They were not there, it was not them and it was not their fault.
The attitude of too many in political nationalism/Republicanism and others do not seem to want to unite with a million people which tends to suggest they want the place but not the people. Hardly an attractive option to those of a British-Irish/Northern Irish perspective.
Since the British- Irish/Northern Irish do exist on this Island, I suggest we commit to a future where we value each other’s children as if they are our own and work to build interdependent relationships in a genuinely shared Northern Ireland, across this island and islands and create a successful society and economy. As a minimum outcome we unite the people!
The future I talk about is already happening amongst many of our young people who appreciate that friendship is better than hatred in shaping the place we share.
TREVOR RINGLAND
Holywood, Co Down
Is my child walking into a war zone?
Over the past few months our nine-year-old has missed his birthday party, his grandparents over summer and any sort of proper social interaction with his friends. A constant reminder to keep his hands off his face, to keep washing his hands with soap and to keep a 2m distance with his friends because we were advised that there is a virus which has no cure and no clear evidence of who survives it.
Schools are reopening. Even though he deserves that social interaction instead of being shut inside there is a feeling of letting our child walk into a war zone. The school has sent us all the details of their Covid-19 safety measures and we are confident about their genuine sincerity to protect our child and the community at large. But we are not confident that our child will not catch the virus in that crowded setup. It is not reassuring to get him back into a room full of children from 30 different families. There is a fear that he might carry the virus home. Even though there is a huge percentage of people who may think that more people die each year due to flu and road accidents, there are many of us who think that we had a choice to protect ourselves from all of that and we did. We are the same people who ensured that our children had been properly vaccinated before joining school because everyone’s primary goal is to protect their own. We have also watched and read that Covid-19 survivors have had trouble getting back to normality and we do not want that happening to our loved ones. I feel we have not been given the right to decide what is safe for our child. Why are we placed in a helpless and non-democratic situation by the government?
There are countries who have resorted to remote learning because the emphasis is on education which is safe and without stress. The plan here though is a gamble. It won’t be the same school environment when schools open up. We protected our family with so much care but are we now going to open our gates for the virus to enter our homes?
PREETHIS VIJAYAKUMAR
Ashtown, Dublin 15
Legal status of animals has to change
“I read in the papers there are robbers with flashlights that shine in the dark” is a line from the novelty song How much is that Doggie in the
Window? But canine robbers are not just nocturnal prowlers. They go about their
work on a 24-hour setting stealing a person’s dog so that it can be converted into cash or used as an animal baiting participant.
Never mind the intrusion into the family as one member is stolen fate unknown. The heartbreak and sense of loss is a real raw emotion.
Dog stealing pivots on a legal definition. Those who have a ‘wet nose’ are deemed property. Akin to household items the family dogs find a place on the home owner’s items inventory.
So, a dog stealer can steal
the house toaster or the dog, safe in the knowledge that should they darken a courtroom the wrist will be slapped via a judicial tut-tutting. The legal status of any companion animal has to change to a position of sentient protections.
The issue of dog stealing will be solved if the legal framework allows those who lift the dog to be classified on the spectrum where human kidnappers resides.
JOHN TIERNEY
Co Waterford
It’s unionists who should be apologising
How can unionism have the audacity to attack Sinn Féin’s Martina Anderson over the Victims Pension Scheme? Sixty years or more of discrimination and Orange triumphalism and the only justification – hatred.
Nationalists/republicans were very tolerant and finally, they take to the streets in their thousands in the Civil Rights marches, to bring about peaceful political change and unionists set the agenda and method of change by introducing political violence by attacking the peaceful Civil Rights marches. The first policeman killed was shot on the Shankill Road by loyalists and the UVF bombed water and electricity installations. Unionists set the stage for the method of political change, violent revolution. Nationalists/republicans could not defend their areas from attack, there was not weapons. So, if unionists had said yes to the demands of the peaceful Civil Rights marchers, the Troubles would not have happened, because there would have been no political will. Unionists caused the Troubles. Who should be doing the apologising, unionists or Martina Anderson?
LIAM ARCHIBALD
Draperstown, Co Derry
