HUNDREDS of unionists of different hues heard that this coming weekend will indicate if we are ready in Northern Ireland to commemorate a significant watershed during a special Evensong service at St Anne’s Cathedral yesterday.
Belfast’s Lord Lieutenant Dame Mary Peters was one of the high-profile participants at the service as well as First Minister Peter Robinson, Junior Minister Jonathan Bell, Lord Mayor Gavin Robinson, Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt, Regional Development Minister Danny Kennedy, MEPs Diane Dodds and Jim Nicholson, peers Lord Trimble, Lord Empey and Lord Rogan, independent North Down MP Lady Sylvia Hermon and PUP councillor John Kyle.
Of the main unionist parties, only the Traditional Unionist Voice was not officially represented.
There was a pause at the start of the service to remember the Spence family, which lost three of its members in a tragic farm accident last week, and the two female police officers who were murdered in Manchester last week.
The Dean of Belfast, the Very Rev John Mann, told the congregation that then Dean of Belfast in 1912, Charles Grierson, was one of almost half-a-million people who signed the Ulster Covenant, but that other high profile Church of Ireland ministers such as Fredrick MacNeice – father of poet Louis MacNeice – and the immediate successor of the Rev Grierson as Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore decided not to sign it.
“For all, it was a plea for, as they saw it, political, economic and religious freedom. What it meant to them and to us may vary from person to person, but the fact of that signing and its immediate effect in Ulster is not in dispute,” he said. “It formalised an aspiration, it confirmed deeply held desires, it expressed a determination that would not be ignored and could not be denied.
“We are, of course, in 2012, not 1912. Everyone in this land lives with our history; some cannot go a day, or even an hour, without being emotionally involved in what these past 100 years have meant. Every day I walk past Edward Carson’s tomb – a few have claimed to see him here. It is that kind of notion of presence that contains an element of reality and a degree of folklore that is what complicates the marking of this centenary – and many another anniversary that lies beyond the memory of those still alive.”
The Dean said he saw the challenge as being able to commemorate this and other centenaries with the objective cast of history and the emotional charge of living in the present.
“We have a chance to treat 2012 as a significant watershed. Next weekend will illustrate whether or not we are ready to do so,” he said.
“Whether we are on the path, which will be long and yet could be hope-filled every step rather than wearisome, which will lead us to find ourselves naturally describing our neighbours collectively as part of one community, rather than continue forever the segregation that has established, in significant places, the tinderbox of the past.”
Participants in the service universally praised the sermon given by the Dean, saying it hit exactly the right tone for the occasion.
Lord Mayor Gavin Robinson said: “It was an appropriate opportunity not only to reflect on what happened 100 years ago but to celebrate the achievements – and I think appropriate consideration was given to some of the more difficult items of the past.
“It appropriately and poignantly reflected the feelings of 100 years ago.
“I am looking forward to continued appropriate celebrations and commemorations over the next week.”
See Morning View, page 14
