REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION LONDON ANNUAL DINNER
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT MCALEESE AT THE QUEEN’S UNIVERSITY ASSOCIATION LONDON ANNUAL DINNER THURSDAY, 20 NOVEMBER, 2008
Thank you very much for your warm welcome in Middle Temple here to speak at the Queen’s University Association dinner for a second time. For the invitation to be here, I thank President of the Association, June Coppel, a friend from my own far-off student days. And, of course, every success to Terry Bates who takes over the Presidential mantle following tonight’s dinner.
Since I was last at this gathering the good news is that Queen’s has joined the elite Russell Group and this year our alma mater celebrates the centenary of its achievement of university status. The bad news is that what was to my generation the wonderful, innovative new student’s union that made us feel so smugly sophisticated and avant garde and so much cooler than the denizens of the old union, has now given way to yes, a wonderfully innovative new student’s union, botoxed and face-lifted for a new generation which has yet to figure out that sometime down the road they will be described as distinguished alumni which generally means, they have at least grown old if not exactly grown up.
This has been a year of celebration for our alma mater, a year of looking back at the tides and times that it has prevailed through and changed through. Back in 1908, the passing of the Universities Act which created the two universities, the national University of Ireland and the Queen’s University of Belfast, followed a long and protracted and often bitter debate. In the end, the solution was an all too familiar one which in the diplomatic language of one of today’s scholars “reflected political and religious divisions in Ireland”[1] It was a fateful year in many ways, the plans for the Titanic were finalised and James Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers Union. Sectarianism was rife and gathered momentum with the debate on Home Rule. Then came the Great War with its 200,000 volunteers and fifty thousand dead from an island of 4 million, the Easter Rising and the War of Independence, Partition and yet another World War. Oh and some good news - women were conceded the vote!
Convulsive times, when narratives got twisted and relationships skewed until the fizzling out of a brief and optimistic lull in the early sixties, gave way to the period we call the Troubles and through which many of us here experienced our time as Queen’s students. No surprise then that Queen’s celebrated its centenary and the 10th Anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, back in May with a conference on how to move beyond conflict.
We know what a pivotal role Queen’s Chancellor, George Mitchell played in the construction of the Peace Process and we also know that Queen’s, as the elder statesman of the North’s two fine universities, is looked to as a source of leadership and confidence in building a thriving, peaceful and reconciled society.
The backdrop in which Queen’s operates today is undoubtedly the best it has been since the day of publication of the Universities Acts. Then it offered the chance for third level education virtually exclusively to a privileged and well-to-do elite. Today, that opportunity is offered to the most extensive audience ever, bringing not only huge benefits to the individual but to the wider society. Back then, three key but twisted relationships kept getting in the way of harnessing all that talent to the project of making Northern Ireland the best it could be: the internal sectarian relationships within Northern Ireland; the distrustful cross-border relationships; and the fraught Dublin-Westminster relationships.
Today, each one of those relationships has visibly improved, none more so than the Dublin –Westminster axis where a culture of warm collegiality has grown over the past two decades, a culture which was a hugely significant factor in the success of the peace process. We have had iconic days of hope as then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, and honorary graduate of QUB, met then First Minister Dr. Paisley at the Battle of the Boyne for the exchange, not of fire, but of pleasantries and gifts. The declaration by Dr Paisley that Bertie Ahern was his friend probably did more to promote reconciliation and good neighbourliness than a library of PhD theses on how to end conflict.
In the same vein, the spirit of partnership clearly underpinning the breakthrough this week in Belfast on the thorny issue of the devolution of policing and justice was deeply encouraging. The announcement by First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness that a way forward had been found – which in turn unblocks the impasse around tackling other issues on the table of the Northern Ireland Executive also – augurs well for the future of the new dispensation and for the hope that its nature will be based on mutual interests and indeed mutual respect. We wish all concerned very well.
But, of course, while much depends on the leadership of politicians, the role of civic society is also critical. On the healing of internal divisions and tensions between the two communities in Northern Ireland and creating a culture of equality of citizenship, Queen’s has given the most outstanding and courageous leadership, the beneficial impact of which can never be overstated.
One fascinating indicator of the extent of change lies in the more accurate and honest telling of Ireland’s contribution to the First World War, a narrative straightened out with the help of many Queen’s scholars. This is the 10th anniversary almost to the day of the opening of the Island of Ireland Peace Park in Messines, Belgium by Queen Elizabeth, King Albert of Belgium and myself. Not far from there in June 1917, the men from the 16th (Irish) Division from the South and 36th (Ulster) Divisions fought side by side, Catholic, Protestant, Unionist, Nationalist. They were part of a 200,000 strong, mostly volunteer force from Ireland that fought in British uniform, almost 50,000 of whom sacrificed their lives.
The subsequent narratives of neither the Unionist nor Nationalist traditions wanted to admit that the majority of those who served were Southerners and Catholics and so, not only were many heroic memories consigned to the ignominy of shoeboxes in attics but the remnants of memory served to fuel ongoing sectarian division. What should have been a powerful and humbling shared memory was deliberately consigned to oblivion.
In this generation though that memory has been retrieved. The elegant Lutyens war memorial garden at Dublin’s Islandbridge has been beautifully restored, in Mayo a few weeks ago a new monument was erected to the memory of Mayo men who died in that war to end all wars, in Dublin in 2006 for the very first time an official commemoration of the Battle of the Somme took place and poignantly it happened within weeks of the commemoration of the 90th Anniversary of the Easter Rising. In each of these things we see a new spirit of generosity and outreach from one community to another, a desire to be neighbours and friends, not to obliterate difference but rather to transcend its capacity to so wastefully estrange. In the words of Ulster poet John Hewitt we “build to fill the centuries’ arrears.”
A new administration in Northern Ireland will need all hands to the wheel for those arrears have overwhelmed almost every preceding generation. But this is the most educated and egalitarian of generations. It is the one with the best chance to truly, finally move beyond conflict. In doing that it will need the huge intellectual resource that is Queen’s. It is Queen’s scholars and researchers who have succeeded in accrediting the university as part of the elite research-driven Russell Group. Queen’s staff and students are to be found contributing to the strengthening and deepening of Northern Ireland’s political, economic and civic life. As the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern T.D., said in his address to the Joint Houses of Parliament here in 2007, the current generation ‘is leaving the past behind, building friendship and laying the foundation for a lasting partnership of common interests …’.
Today, those common interests span our fragile planet and our fragile international economic outlook, problems that the power of two can tackle much better than the power of one. And yet the empowerment of one is the basic building block of the power of two, and it is in its vocation to the education of the individual human person that Queen’s greatest power is revealed. In the end its best ambassadors are its people, like those gathered here in its name. Often, below the radar and out of the spotlight, their lived lives shine in their families, their workplaces, their communities and their countries. I truly hope the graduates of the next one hundred years will be freed from the convulsive conflicts that blighted so many lives in the past century. I know that Queen’s, under the leadership of the remarkable Peter Gregson and Queen’s graduates today as careful and insightful custodians of that future, are doing everything in their power to make sure peace stays and prosperity follows. They should know we are all very proud of them.
May I thank everyone associated with making this event such a success. It is good to be in the company of friends.
Thank you.
[1] Senia Paseta “The Catholic Hierarchy and the Irish University Question,1880–1908” History Volume 85 Issue 278, Pages 268 - 284