REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT PEACE CONFERENCE, INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR PEACE STUDIES, MESSINES
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT PEACE CONFERENCE, INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL FOR PEACE STUDIES, MESSINES, BELGIUM, TUESDAY, 8 JUNE
Vice-President Landuyt, Burgomaster, Chairman, Fellows of Messines, Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you for your warm welcome.
Dia dhíbh a cháirde. Tá áthas orm bheith libh inniu ar an ócáid speisialta seo.
I am delighted to be back here today to see at first hand the many impressive developments that have taken place since I had the honour, together with Queen Elizabeth and King Albert, to inaugurate the island of Ireland Peace Park. It was a privilege for me on that day six years ago to represent an Ireland that solemnly and sincerely honoured men who bravely came together to fight for a common cause - the freedom of small nations. Many of these soldiers from the 36th Ulster Division and the 16th Irish Division, representative of every tradition that make up the many strands of our shared Irish identity, made the ultimate sacrifice by dying on the battlefield. These men fought shoulder to shoulder and died side by side for the goal of a peaceful Europe which was hailed as the “the war to end all wars”. A young Irish poet, Francis Ledwidge who lost his life here in 1917 movingly captures the comradeship and tragedy of it all in his poem “A Soldier’s Grave” -
“Then in the lull of midnight, gentle arms
Lifted him slowly down the slopes of death,
Lest he should hear again the mad alarms
Of battle, dying moans, and painful breath”
Since my arrival at Messines yesterday, I have had the opportunity to visit the memorial to Francis Ledwidge and, together with representatives of his family, to visit and lay a wreath at the grave of John Condon, whose young life was tragically taken on the battlefield at the tender age of 14 years. While standing at this boy’s graveside, I was reminded of the tragedy that befell so many who lost loved ones during that war, cruelly snatched from them by the hand of conflict. So many lives that never blossomed fully, so many hopes that died in these fields of blood, so much unselfishness offered as a bulwark against the flood tide of human wickedness. What did those young , tragic lives wish for us, the families they never knew, the children they never had ?. From the marrow of their bones they wished us peace and believed that is what they were gifting to us. Our landscape of opportunity sits on their graves and from those graves they will us on to create the peace and prosperity, the stability and the consensus, the friendship and the shared future that allows young men and women the chance to become contented old men and women, with happy memories.
They would surely feel vindicated that not only is their memory honoured in the Peace Park but that their ambition for peace is given voice in this International Centre for Peace Studies whose founding Fellows have pledged themselves to resolving differences and promoting constructive change through peaceful dialogue.
Your Conference theme is ‘Chance for Peace’. We could spend many hours playing with that word “chance” with its motifs of possibility, opportunity, and prospect - even likelihood. We might even venture down the road of “game of chance” with its undercurrent of risk, of winners and losers but I think most of us who have travelled from the island of Ireland know that of all the violent conflicts that beset our world - whether the Middle East or Iraq or the Congo - the one with the best, most compelling and most obvious chance of peaceful resolution, is ours.
When I last stood here in Messines in 1998, the ink was still drying on the Good Friday Agreement. Its formal ratification by the overwhelming majority of people North and South opened up a window on the sheer extent of the popular will for peace. At a glance we could see that whatever the deep differences of political ambition or ethnicity or religion, two vital things were profoundly shared. The first was a passionate desire for peace and the second, a willingness to change and to compromise in order to make that peace a reality. Six years on, the euphoria of that Good Friday has given way as it inevitably had to, to the more muted tones provoked by the painstaking, daily grind of building trust and extracting from each of us the price we are prepared to pay for the noble goal of peace. The Peace Process is a human process with its periods of doubt and disappointment yes, but also its steady tally of big and small advances each of which takes us further from the days of bomb and bullet and closer to a humanly decent neighbourliness. The progress to date has been nothing short of miraculous and little by little even the most reluctant are joining the peace-makers, in fact some of its most radical champions today are to be found among former paramilitaries or their supporters. I want to particularly encourage them to keep giving the leadership that is keeping Northern Ireland’s streets and its marching season quiet. Their efforts are bringing a new dignity and confidence to Northern Ireland and broadening the operating base of peace to a very reassuring degree. The evidence is in that peace is taking root, that the process is working.
The argument over Northern Ireland’s constitutional position has been settled by the acceptance of the principle of the primacy of majority consent. The sharp political rivalries have been channelled into consensus-based government which during its regrettably too brief runs brought great pride to the people of Northern Ireland- why? – because it worked and worked well. North/South partnership is now flourishing and is not limited to links between Governments but includes all kinds of informal networks as a mixture of common sense, pragmatic economics and risk-taking for peace, recalibrates relationships that history skewed out of kilter. The relationship between Ireland and Great Britain, neighbours who were often less than neighbourly, has been utterly transformed. All the old barriers that held us back from each other in distrust, dislike, ignorance and fear are being bridged and we are discovering a friendliness in each other, a likeable humanity in each other which is intriguing in its possibilities. Friendships are developing in once unlikely places among the unlikeliest of people - all of them taking chances for peace. There is great hope in all of this for we cannot build peace on our own. It is a bird with two wings. It hasn’t flown on those two wings for a long time and so we need above all to be patient with each other, to keep faith with each other during times of frustrating slowness; to keep cool when the dialogue gets robust as it must from time to time if it is to be honest and fruitful. We must keep focussed on building a future to be proud of - a future everyone has a stake in, an island North and South where all are participants in life’s banquet and none are mere spectators.
The coming months will see the two Governments, the political parties working hard to complete the transition from conflict to consensus. They will be helped in that work by all the quiet champions of peace who challenge sectarianism in their homes, their communities and their workplaces and who do the hard slog of persuading the hot-headed to think again and to use their energies constructively for peace. I believe that the current difficulties can be overcome, that the devolved institutions can be restored, that the Good Friday Agreement can be honoured in all its aspects and that the best, the happiest destiny of people of Northern Ireland, can be revealed. The seeds of reconciliation are in the air. The ground is being ploughed and made ready to receive them. We are closer to the harvest than any past generation. Do we have a chance for peace? We certainly do. Will we use it well? The choice is ours but let the voice of those we commemorate here today guide us for those voices have surely earned the right to speak even from the grave.
The words are those of Tom Kettle, Irish Nationalist, poet and proud soldier who died at the Somme.
Used with the wisdom which is sown in tears and blood, this tragedy of Europe may be and must be the prologue to the two reconciliations of which all statesmen have dreamed, the reconciliation of Protestant Ulster with Ireland, and the reconciliation of Ireland with Great Britain.
He would surely have been proud to see the flags of twenty-five European states raised in Dublin on May 1st in celebration of Accession Day. Not since the First World War have the Heads of those states stood together and on that Day of Welcomes they wrote another chapter in the history of Europe - bringing to an end the post war division of the twentieth century, claiming the 21st as a century of peace and partnership between the hugely diverse peoples of Europe.
This is a place of many tombstones and memorials, of places where sacrifice is treated with reverence and a sense of the sacred but the European Union is surely the greatest living memorial to that sacrifice for it is a solemn covenant that all our children will live and work together in peace. It is by far the best way to end all wars.
One hundred years ago, millions of Europe’s youngsters from toddlers and schoolboys to wild young men were, unknown to them, being pulled inexorably towards their early deaths by the overwhelming forces of human stupidity. A savage culture of conflict wasted their unlived lives just as it wasted the lives of those who died on Irish soil. To waste their deaths too would be the ultimate disrespect. We are capable of better. The European Union is proof of that. The chance for peace in Northern Ireland, between North and South, between Ireland and Britain is proof of it too. I don’t want my grandchildren to ask the question, “since you had the chance – why didn’t you take it?” Better by far to have them say - look at us now, look at how we are flourishing , look at the transformation unleashed by the harnessing of the creative genius of Protestant, Catholic, Unionist and Nationalist, Irish and British, look at what peace does when it gets a chance.
Thank you. Go raibh maith agaibh.