Northern Irish talks break down: who is to blame?

We awoke this morning to the news that, despite the apparent best efforts of the players involved, no agreement could be reached over the issues of flags and parades in Northern Ireland. I wonder whose fault it was? It should come as no surprise to learn that the two holdouts came from the unionist side of the divide. Why? Because it has usually been those people who have stood resolutely in the way of equality and justice in the Six Counties. I use the term "six counties" because that is how everyone in the South sees the situation.

In 1922, the Irish finally shook off the yolk of being an occupied territory of the British Empire. But the British hung on to the six counties of the north, claiming that the majority of the population there were British and wished to remain so. Of course they did. Britain had been carefully populating the region with its own even before Cromwell introduced his "plantation policy" 350 years ago. And from that time they grabbed all the best arable land and pushed the indigenous Catholics into the margins, denying them the same human rights the British immigrants enjoyed, modifying electoral boundaries (a process known as "gerrymandering") to ensure the natives were never able to win political  power. And when they rose up in defiance, they were crushed by military might, as happened at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. This is the battle still commemorated today in parades and marches across the North, reminding the Catholics who is really in charge. And they insisted, as they still do today, that they march where they please. And where they please means right through the heart of Catholic communities, rubbing their noses in it, braying their hatred in the faces of the locals who have no option other than to take it.

Not everyone took it though. Protest began to grow among the republican people; fights broke out, heads were broken, people died. Still the prods demanded to march wherever they liked and wave their Union Flags wherever and whenever they felt like it. We may have had the Good Friday Agreement, they said, but we're still the majority and if the Papists don't like it they can go and live down south can't they? This is our land, and if necessary we'll die to keep it that way.

But there's a little problem the protestants have to face: They're dangerously close to not being the majority any more, and, OMG, they must be saying to themselves, what's going to happen when we are the minority?

There's a phrase very much in the vogue at the moment: "Moving forward". Normally I hate it, and have contempt for the people who use it. I feel that way because more often than not it is used to cover up the mistakes of the past, to divert attention from their culpability in any given issue. "Moving forward" has come to be synonymous with "Stop talking about the past and move on will you? What's wrong with you that you're obsessed with what's already dead and gone? " (besides which, the past embarrasses me and makes me uncomfortable, so leave it out). Hence we are constantly seeing officials using the phrase to shield their responsibilities from exposure.
However, despite all this I believe there is one place where they really should be "moving forward", and that's Northern Ireland. What they need there is some sort of Peace and Reconciliation Commission along the lines of the one introduced by Nelson Mandela in South Africa. If they ever decide to do that though, they'll find they have their work cut out.

I visited Northern Ireland three years ago and was horrified by the level of hostility and paranoia which seemed to pervade the very air of the place. I stayed in County Antrim, where there are very few Catholics, and the people there seem very anxious to keep it that way. One woman said to me:
 "Protestants from Scotland  have been coming here to live for 500 years, well before  Cromwell's plantations, so..."
And she really did trail off after this pronouncement, as if that was all it was necessary to say. But there's a lot more to say. Like, hey, I'm sure you're right and all, but isn't it time to move on now? Because you may have been here for 500 years, but you pushed the locals aside and rode roughshod over their rights. So isn't it time you lived together in peace and harmony, and throw off the shackles of the past?

So I wish a happy New Year to you all, Catholics and protestants, Jews and Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists, tree huggers and Jedi knights. Next year let's try a bit harder to just get along, huh?