We need magnanimity that values diversity

by Roy Garland, Irish News

Last week I was in Boston, Massachusetts at the invitation of the
Irish American Unity Conference (IAUC) accompanied by other unionists,
nationalists and republicans.

The IAUC was set up in the 1980s to promote peace and justice
in Northern Ireland. It is a traditional Irish American organisation
committed to Irish unity and opposition to religious discrimination and
so on.

However, I also gained a strong impression that a radical
change is taking place which explains why IAUC had, for the first time,
invited speakers from the unionist tradition.

The IAUC are determined to increase understanding of both traditions and are strongly committed to the peace process here.

I was also impressed by the honesty, frankness and openness of
republican ex-prisoners who had gone to the United States from Northern
Ireland.

On Sunday morning as I sat with others around the breakfast table, there was a sense of beginning a new journey together.

Starting with two Irish Americans, the company swelled to include former prisoners from Northern Ireland and others.

One republican ex-prisoner recalled liaising with loyalist Billy
Mitchell when in Long Kesh. I detected a real sense of hope but also of
regret for the trauma we had to endure over the years of the Troubles.

There was also anger that so many had suffered so much and a feeling that we had been manipulated during the conflict.

Today the main difficulty facing ex-prisoners in the US is the approach taken by the American government in the wake of 9/11.

Some are not free to return to Belfast because if they do they
may never be able to go back to the US where relatives and friends
reside.

One ex-prisoner lives with the threat of deportation hanging
over his head because of some seemingly obscure happenings in the past.
He has been in the US for nine years but retains a strong Belfast
accent.

Boston is named after a town in Lincolnshire in England and seemed an appropriate setting for such a conference.

The first settlers were Puritans fleeing persecution in 17th
century England. The persecuted soon became the persecutors and
citizenship was initially confined to church members. The infamous
Salem Witch trials took place not far away, reminding us that in times
of uncertainty we human beings often seek scapegoats upon whom to vent
our frustrations.

We followed the Freedom Trail, which is a broad red line
through the town following sites associated with the American
Revolution.

We climbed the 221ft Bunker Hill obelisk – the first large
commemorative monument built in the US to mark the site of a major
battle between the colonists and the English.

The first non-English immigrants to arrive in Boston were the
often destitute Irish who fled the Great Famine of the 1840s. It has
been estimated that more than half of Irish children born in Boston at
that time did not reach their sixth birthday, while the average adult
Irish life after arrival was approximately six years.

The Irish poor also became rivals with working-class Bostonians and life was difficult.A famine memorial in the centre of the town depicts the starving
people arriving from Ireland and portrays the sturdy citizens they
became after they began to prosper.

At the conference I was struck by the growing sense of common
purpose that seems to characterise a new and growing relationship
between many Irish Americans, nationalists and unionists.

This contrasts with some of us in Northern Ireland who seem
entangled with each other but as yet unfree. I was also struck on my
return with the way certain politicians here speak of our traditions as
if they were inflexible straightjackets threatening our ability to
think creatively or to relate freely to each other.

If our traditions are so unyielding they surely would choke all enterprise and fail us completely.

We have been saved from greater catastrophe and need to reflect seriously on how we are to proceed.

A deeply divided Northern Ireland where the spoils of office are
shared between the winners is hardly a satisfactory way forward.

Politicians must stop serving their own communities exclusively
and develop a magnanimity that values diversity, seeks the common good,
cares for strangers and also for a world environment threatened by
global forces.