THE DUP’s junior minister Jonathan Bell – usually a very safe pair of hands – rarely tolls, let alone strikes a wrong note. So it’s no surprise that his recent comments about prejudice – made at a Community Relations Week conference, no less – stirred up some excitement.
This is the key part of what he said: “Many communities may not paint their kerbstones or put out flags, but scratch the surface and you find the prejudice and the hate whispered behind closed doors or joked about in golf clubs or over dinner parties.”
His first mistake was in making it sound as though golf clubs were a particular source for the prejudice of which he was talking; not the wisest of things to do a few weeks before the arrival of the Irish Open in Portrush!
His second, and bigger mistake, was the hastily issued blanket apology. Yes, as he admitted, he was guilty of a “clumsy use of language”, but he was, I believe, broadly correct in what he was trying to say.
What he should have done – and what his critics should have honed in on rather than going for the easy opportunity of some holier-than-thou point-scoring – was to follow up the clumsy language admission with an expansion of his general point: that point being that sectarianism, prejudice and division remain at just about every level of society and interaction across Northern Ireland.
Come on; let’s be brutally honest about this. The reason we still don’t have a credible, rolling-out “shared future” strategy is that the political parties (for all their honeyed words about a “new” Northern Ireland) are well aware that there are few votes to be picked up in a rush towards social integration.
The vast majority of unionists/nationalists, Protestants/Roman Catholics still live in their own areas and still send their children to schools that are still perceived as being one side or the other.
The vast majority of us –irrespective of class, educational or professional background – still socialise with people we look upon as “one of us”. And while it may be true that Roman Catholics and Protestants (and let’s not forget the atheists and agnostics, either) can happily rub along in golf clubs and some workplaces, how many of us actually spend much time at dinner parties or even in our own homes with people from the “other side”? For any of you who are now saying “I do” to that question, let me ask you two further questions: When arranging a dinner party involving guests from the “other side” do you make any calculations about whether any of your other potential guests would feel uncomfortable and do you make an effort to avoid certain topics of conversation?
It struck me as a tad ironic that Jonathan Bell was criticised – directly and indirectly – by both Peter Robinson and Mike Nesbitt.
My only reason for making that point is that neither the UUP nor the DUP has any MLAs, MPs or MEPs who are Roman Catholic and I’m pretty sure (although I’m happy to be corrected) that none of the 300 or so local councillors they have between them is Roman Catholic. And I’m also pretty sure that there aren’t many Roman Catholic members of either party, either. Of course, these comments apply equally to the SDLP and Sinn Fein when it comes to Protestants within their parties.
If you’re looking for evidence of the “prejudice and the hatred whispered behind closed doors” you could begin with most of our political parties. While it is certainly not true that every individual member of the UUP, DUP, SDLP or Sinn Fein is a bigot, with a deep-seated prejudice against political opponents, I have seen enough evidence (much of it behind closed doors) to suggest that most of them are. And I have also been involved in politics – as an activist, columnist, commentator and guest speaker – long enough to know that political parties are broadly reflective of their voters.
Alliance, the one party in Northern Ireland that can claim to be properly non-sectarian, has never been able to shrug off its small party status. It has shown some modest progress in the past three elections (mostly at the expense of the UUP), yet its average performance since the 1998 Assembly election remains at less than six per cent.
Again, I would argue that that indicates that there is no particular electoral demand for the breaking down of barriers or prioritising of a “shared future” agenda.
Some will contend – and it is a fair point – that the collapsing electoral turnout in Northern Ireland may be an indication that increasing numbers are dissatisfied with the very narrow outlook offered by the existing parties.
But the only way that theory can be tested is by the emergence of a post-conflict party (or parties) offering a “shared future” as a primary objective.
The very fact, 14 years after the Good Friday Agreement, that such a party hasn’t emerged, has to tell you something. Also, don’t discount the possibility (and I am shifting towards this view myself) that the falling turnout is actually a very clear rejection of the slightly peculiar political/institutional status quo to have emerged since 1998.
In other words, maybe most of us don’t really want a closer relationship with our political opponents. That certainly fits in with my previous arguments in this column that “something resembling genuine reconciliation may never, in fact, be possible” here.
Anyway, back to Jonathan Bell. Forget the clumsiness of his language (and we have all been guilty of that!) and forget the kneejerk reaction of people who should have known better (and we have all been guilty of that, too!).
Focus, instead, upon that crucially important line about “the prejudice and the hate whispered behind closed doors”.
Jonathan is absolutely right about that. I have heard it, sometimes in the most unexpected of places. And I suspect that most of you reading this have heard it: in the pub, or with close friends, or across the dining table, or across the garden hedge, or overheard in the bus queue or workplace – or even in a golf club.
Forcing him to apologise or backtrack; or attacking him for daring to suggest that golf club members are not free from prejudice, is to miss the importance of what he was actually hinting at.
If we remain afraid to have that debate it’s probably because we are afraid of what we might uncover. Mind you, avoidance of difficult debates is par for the course at the moment!