Address at the First Derry Presbyterian Church
Derry, Thursday, 6th October, 2011
Thank s to everyone at the First Derry Presbyterian Church and particularly Dr. David Latimer for the invitation to initiate the first “conversation across the walls.” I hope there will be many more conversations across walls of heart and mind, of bricks and mortar so that we can find our way to a future of friendship and leave behind the history of hatred.
This is a good place to be having such a conversation for just before its official reopening David Latimer pledged that it would have a dual role as “a place for sacred worship” and “a shared space” in which friends and neighbours of all political and religious persuasions would be welcome. This building suffered more than its fair share of damage and abuse for it was often caught up in the interminable politico/ sectarian conflict which blighted your lives and mine. Now though it is a powerful statement of intent that new, healthier relationships are being forged, the hard way, person to person, conversation to conversation and First Derry Presbyterian Church is relishing its role as a key influencer, a key architect of a shared and happy future far beyond bitter division.
It has become easier to talk now. The festering wrong that was Bloody Sunday and the Widgery Report that followed it left this city raw for decades and made healing so very difficult. The Saville Report opened up the hard truth of that story and remarkably that truth did indeed set many people free in ways that visibly helped a healing process to take hold. The survivors and the families of those who died were vindicated after a long and dignified struggle and the air we breathed after the British Government’s apology was fresh and energising.
On the day following the publication of the Saville Report the leaders of the protestant churches in this city met with the victims and bereaved of Bloody Sunday. We looked on amazed, our hearts lifting as generosity and compassion began to flow spontaneously in both directions. We watched the basic building blocks of peace and reconciliation shift into place, lifted painfully by the only powers that can create peace - human hands and human hearts, bridging the gap of division and difference with humanity and decency.
That dignified and impressive response to the Saville Report showcased to all of us just how far we have travelled beyond the days of antipathy and enmity. The people of Derry on all sides have given inspiring example and have courageously led the way from mutually enslaving recrimination to mutually empowering reconciliation. Sitting so close to Donegal this city has long since had to mediate the relationship between two jurisdictions. Never content to accept the dysfunction conferred by history, you pioneered cross-border cooperation and showed how it could deliver real practical benefits to everyone. This city is of course the birthplace of Ireland’s most legendary contemporary peace-maker John Hume and it was a proud moment for me when the very first guests I introduced to Queen Elizabeth on her recent State Visit were John and Pat Hume.
That visit, the first in a century by a British monarch to Dublin, was in the words of Her Majesty’s a reminder of “the complexity of our history, its many layers and traditions, but also the importance of forbearance and conciliation, of being able to bow to the past but not be bound by it.” These words capture the essence of the journey we have embarked on and in particular the direction it is leading us, away from a dreadful and difficult past which we are incapable of changing towards a future which we are capable of shaping carefully so that our children and grandchildren can live fuller, safer and better lives as equals in a society underpinned by meaningful and real parity of esteem.
So we are a blessed generation to have emerged from such a vicious conflict which once tore this city to shreds and to have lived to see the magnificent Peace Bridge draw this city into new possibilities for a shared sense of community. Beautiful though Derry is, this is no image-enhanced or computer generated virtual city. This is a lived-in place, where individuals have had to dig deep for the strength, the wisdom and the courage to begin again. It is that extraordinary and testing human journey which undoubtedly made Derry such an intriguing and attractive city to those who chose it to be the first U.K. City of Culture. When celebrations start in 2013, Derry will have an enviable and unprecedented opportunity to showcase the very best of what it can accomplish when its people work together towards a noble, a humanly uplifting common purpose.
Underpinning the new future that Derry’s citizens are crafting is that simple and yet most challenging of things- dialogue - the kind of dialogue that leads to more dialogue and not breakdown, the kind of collegial dialogue that allows people of very different, sincerely held and strong views to listen respectfully to things they profoundly disagree with, to listen out generously for the spaces where consensus could be developed, to try to stand in the others shoes so that his or her perspective is better understood and to agree to explore opportunities for working together rather than finding excuses for ignoring one another.
The people who live in this city are neighbours. Their children are destined to be neighbours. No one needs a degree in social anthropology to know that to live happily among good neighbours who are friends to each other and not strangers is by far the healthiest communal environment for the flourishing of the human person. Just as every child needs the constant and reliable love of family to grow comfortably into adulthood, so every human being needs a loving and welcoming community to grow healthily into responsible citizenship.
That community, like the family if it is to flourish, if it is to be fair, has to let itself be comfortable with diversity and inclusivity. The openness that faces with genuine curiosity the very otherness of others is far from easy to embrace but we have all paid too high a price for insisting on living inside bunkers where only those who agree with us are welcome and where the voices of “the excluded other” are muted or silenced. To limit ourselves to friends, colleagues, acquaintances, partners who reflect only ourselves back to ourselves is to live such a diminished and narrowing life. To open ourselves to stories, narratives, perspectives, talents, genius, insights and friendships which are new to us is to open the doors of our lives to a much more exciting and enriching landscape.
By gathering here today as we do we are sending a clear signal that the momentum and the moral force lies with those who are prepared to build new kinds of relationships throughout the community, those who are prepared to be signs of contradiction, unwilling to drag the toxic attitudes and practises of the past into the present, determined to stop their poison from travelling any further than they already have.
Look at the past. Look at the wasted opportunities, the lives only half-lived, the grief, the fear, the hurt, the mistrust, the litany of adjectives and experiences that broke many a human heart but miraculously never managed to break the spirit of those who believed there was a better way to live and who set about finding it. A lot of good people found each other in the dark and joined the dots of peacemaking, holding lines that at times were stretched to breaking point. They are now legion. They are now the present and the future but of course there are still those who are unconvinced, who seem to prefer that miserable world of contemptuous division where violence is a raw, desperate, inarticulate and unintelligent power.
They have disrupted Derry in ways we had hoped were long past and their continued resistance to the good future we are building confers on us a responsibility not alone to be wary of the sting in the tail of the dying culture of paramilitarism, but to ensure we do our utmost to prove that our way is best in every way - that it is robust, that we are united, that we are not to be turned from the path of peace.
It is important that everyone, especially those in positions of leadership, whether in the home, the workplace or the community makes a genuine and sustained effort to honour the new culture of parity of esteem set out in the Good Friday, St. Andrews and Hillsborough agreements. Between them they have created a durable and overwhelmingly agreed architecture of shared institutions and a shared society underpinned by a raft of legal rights and guarantees. Unionists and nationalists, loyalists and republicans are co-equal citizens. The political philosophies of unionism and nationalism have been accorded equal recognition. Northern Ireland's present status within the United Kingdom is solemnly recognised and the option for a united Ireland is available at any time if that is the wish of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland. No unionist will persuade a nationalist to his point of view or vice versa by coercion or contempt.
The past tells us that emphatically, so what will the future tell? What can we make it tell?
Years ago when we were small most of us loved colouring in books - where the shapes of things were already outlined but we got to add the colour. Well the shape of things is already outlined for us in the big headline agreements. Now we need to fill in the colour, with communication, with community, with connections to one another, with the comfort of each other’s company, with the sheer human heft that is needed to pull up the evil weeds of sectarianism and to plant the seeds of reconciliation.
Already the first harvest from those seeds is quite a wonderful thing to behold. A shared government at Stormont where old enmities are transcended by an executive drawn from the widest spectrum of politics. A cross-border relationship that is now vibrant, dynamic and collaborative at every level - politically, economically, culturally and socially. A relationship between Ireland and Britain that is the best it has been in a millennium. Those who were once wedded to paramilitarism are almost all now converts to the democratic and peaceful resolution of problems. Our populations are the most educated they have ever been, the most resourceful and imaginative in terms of problem-solving. And we are only at the very start of this new future, only in its early opening chapters.
Derry features prominently in these first pages of the new future. It is a place we look to for inspiration and for creativity as we struggle to break old habits and unlearn old redundant ways of looking at the world and at each other. It is a journey of hard won increments but we are no longer at the bottom of the steep hill looking up. Now we are much higher up that hill and the panorama we can see from here is so much more beautiful, so much more expansive than what was visible to us from below. The higher up we trudge, the better the landscape gets and the more confident we become that the summit is a place worth aiming for. A few years ago on a summer climbing holiday in the Alps which proved to be much tougher than I had thought I was signing up for, our guide told us, “Don’t stop, take small steps and deep breaths and you will make the top.” She was right. It could be a set of instructions for peacemakers too.
I hope to live long enough to see this island from that summit that once seemed impossible and now seems achievable. I have been so very privileged to have served as President of Ireland since 1997 when the miracle of peace and prosperity first began to look less outlandish. Today, after a bitter economic retrenchment we know just how fragile our hold on prosperity is. The Troubles had already taught us the fragility of our hold on peace. So with chastened hearts and hands we turn these terrifying lessons into the distilled wisdom that will deliver a sustainable peace and a sustainable prosperity to the coming generations whose fate is right now in our hands. Like every harvest that was ever brought in on this island, it will be easier done with all hands on deck, neighbour helping neighbour and all enjoying the benefits.
But first we need to get to know our neighbours well and I am grateful to David Latimer and to this Church for doing what it can to make sure Derry is not just the first city of culture but the city that cultivates enduring friendships through encouraging conversations across all the barriers, whether real or imagined, where friendships once foundered but now will blossom and lead us who knows where. There is a lovely proverb in the Irish language - ni neart go chur le cheile - we do not know our true strength until we work together. Some generation will be able to write the end of that story.