Stephen Collins: Higgins didn’t follow through on McAleese’s message of hope

The unavoidable absence of Queen Elizabeth from the church ceremony in Armagh to mark the 100th anniversary of partition may have spared the blushes of the deliberately absent President Michael D Higgins, but it has not assuaged the embarrassment felt by all those who believe in a genuine parity of esteem between the two traditions on this island.

What precisely the President found so offensive about the event organised by the four leading Christian denominations in Ireland, billed as a Service for Reflection and Hope, is still not clear but his refusal to attend has raised a number of uncomfortable questions about the commitment of the Irish State to genuine reconciliation.

The two so-called Civil War parties in Dáil Éireann, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, did their best to mitigate the damage by accepting their invitations to attend the service with Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney and Government Chief Whip Jack Chambers travelling to Armagh.

They joined British prime minister Boris Johnson and Northern Ireland First Minister Paul Givan along with leaders of the DUP, UUP, SDLP and Alliance Party at the event, which was boycotted by Sinn Féin. It is notable that the President and Sinn Féin adopted a similar position, in contrast to the approach taken by almost all of the other significant political parties on the island.

Jail Journeyman – On Behan’s lighthouse, the glory of French supermarkets, and confidence-building Christian names

---

Martyn Turner

---

Puttnam’s speech highlights hollow nature of British politics

---

Strengthening democracy

---

It is difficult to see how this theme chimes with his decision not to attend the Armagh event.

Serving Irish presidents have long been regarded as above politics and successive holders of the office have used that status to great effect providing moral leadership unaffected by the short term vagaries of politics and public opinion. President Higgins has made “ethical remembering” a theme of a series of events organised by his office to reflect on the events of the past. It is difficult to see how this theme chimes with his decision not to attend the Armagh event.

His predecessor, Mary McAleese, spoke hopefully in 2007 about how a generous vision of history could heal divisions instead of exacerbating them. “Where previously our history has been characterised by a plundering of the past for things to separate and differentiate us from one another, our future now holds the optimistic possibility that Ireland will become a better place, where we will not only develop new relationships but will more comfortably revisit the past and find there elements of kinship long neglected, of connections deliberately overlooked.”

This was the spirit in which the church leaders planned the Armagh event in a clear effort to promote reconciliation and understanding. They were clear from the start that it should not be misconstrued as a celebration of partition. Incidentally, all of the four main churches on this island have ignored partition in the way they operate and have – for the past 100 years – continued with the all-Ireland structures on which they were historically based.

Writing in The Irish Times earlier in the week about why he joined his fellow Christian leaders in organising the service, the Catholic Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland Eamon Martin said he and his colleagues from the other churches felt it was important for them to do something together this year in a spirit of prayer and friendship to emphasise their common Christian commitment to peace, healing and reconciliation.

“We know that sometimes one has to take risks for peace and that fragile relationships can easily be undermined by hasty or ill-judged comments,” he said

During the ceremony the church leaders reflected on their own lives growing up in a divided society and acknowledged the wounds that all of their churches should have done more to heal. The involvement of so many young people, expressing their hopes for a peaceful and harmonious future characterised by tolerance and diversity, gave real meaning to the event.

The agreement acknowledged diversity of identities of the people of Northern Ireland

Accepting those values was at the heart of the process that led to the Belfast Agreement, the cornerstone of which was commitment of both traditions in the North to mutual respect. The agreement acknowledged diversity of identities of the people of Northern Ireland and recognised their right “to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose”. The new article 3 of the Irish Constitution, which emerged from that agreement, and won the support of more than 90 per cent of voters in the 1998 referendum in the Republic, speaks of the people of Ireland “in all the diversity of their identities and traditions”.

One of the negative consequences of the President’s decision is that it has breathed new life into a narrow nationalism which does not accept the notion of parity of esteem in any future relationship between the different traditions on this island. The controversy has shown that there are many people who simply do not accept that a united Ireland will only become feasible when the British identity of the unionist population is fully accepted.

Hopefully the dignified and moving manner in which the Armagh service was conducted, and the attendance of such a diverse range of politicians from both traditions on the island of Ireland, may in the long run promote the cause of peace reconciliation on the island it was intended to serve.