Some
remain aloof from the spirit of compromise; Steven King questions the need
for the proposed civic forum in Northern Ireland
From IRISH TIMES October 12th, 1998
All the blood on the streets of Omagh was the same colour. Likewise, the
refusal to lift the ban on serving members of the security services from
playing Gaelic games until the RUC has been reformed and the barracks in
Crossmaglen dismantled while denying the GAA is a political body produces
only mirth in non-republican company. The GAA is unwittingly giving aid
and comfort to those who - wrongly - view the GAA as "the IRA at play" and
believe club officials are legitimate targets. How can the RUC more accurately
reflect the community it serves when the primary social organisation in
the Catholic community ostracises those Catholics who think that a police
career is a noble pursuit? Unthinking intransigence and bigotry are not
confined to Catholics, of course. Most decent Orangemen and unionists have
been left speechless by the comment of the Portadown Orange Order's spokesman
on the murder of a Catholic policeman by loyalists in the town that "the cost of civil liberties can be very high". Until the cancerous Spirit of
Drumcree group is cut out of the Order, the whole institution will continue
to feel the consequences in terms of low public esteem and not just in republican
ghettos. The Rev William Bingham's honourable way out of the Drumcree impasse
after the murder of the Quinn children has not been followed up, nor has
Grand Master Robert Saulters's suggestion of a conference with nationalist
residents' groups to find a comprehensive solution to the marching problem.
Nor has the Apprentice Boys' success at disarming the Bogside residents'
group by engaging in dialogue via the Shared City Forum in Londonderry been
adopted. Deliverance is not going to see Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road.
Mass civil society in Northern Ireland lacks civility. But then, after all,
perhaps the civic forum was only meant to be a plaything of Belfast 9, Northern
Ireland's equivalent of Dublin 4. |
