Eamonn Mallie started a conversation on FaceBook. I’ve been commenting liberally.
It’s uplifting to hear people from opposite parts of the community say this because it’s too easy to characterise some as being only PUL or CNR. I want change because despite voting for peace, we haven’t moved one millimetre further than the GFA. Instead of an important milestone, it’s become the inscription on the tombstone of our broken society.
We are a common people, divided by our politicians. When I was a child (raised as a Catholic in Lisburn), going out to a bonfire and seeing the bands was normal. Thirty years later and sixteen years after a peace process, I would never go a bonfire celebration despite shedding my catholic identity years ago. It’s been tainted; extremists on both sides whose agenda is not my interest have stolen from me everything I hold dear. They have stolen the Irish language (that I never bothered to learn in school), they have stolen the bands and bonfires with their pomp and celebration, they have stolen any identity I had as a cultural Catholic Unionist and left me disenfranchised, disappointed and angry.
I was at an event in Belfast a couple of months ago and the speaker was Sir Richard Needham. Whatever you think of the man, he said some hard hitting truths. He said we have forgotten that our grandfathers were gods of industry. And he said that Northern Ireland is full of shit but laced with diamonds; and that we have to start finding the diamonds.