Mal Fletcher comments

Mal Fletcher

Never give up on a worthy and just cause - the future might surprise you.

That is surely the message we should carry from the launch of the new political administration in Northern Ireland.

Power is being shared by two formerly implacable enemies; representatives of constituencies vehemently opposed to one another during the region's long and infamous Troubles.

Rev Ian Paisley, chairman of the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party, is First Minister in the new administration. His assistant is Martin McGuinness.

The former is something of a neo-Calvinist reformer who made his name as the fieriest denouncer of the Irish republican cause. McGuinness, on the other hand, was once an active officer with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and hardly the man anyone expected to see joking with Paisley.

There are doubtless many people in Northern Ireland who, growing up through the 70s, 80s and 90s, thought they would never see this day.

No one can doubt the weariness of the public of Northern Ireland when it comes to internecine violence. No one can doubt their hunger to see politics replace the gun as a means of settling disputes.

During a six-week mission to Belfast in 1994, my second visit to the region, my wife and I saw first-hand the pain which the Troubles had brought the provinces. We met and worked among people on both sides of the divide, at a time when things were decidedly tense.

There was talk of a new initiative for peace, but such attempts had failed before and nobody was expecting too much.

We found among both the nationalist and pro-British communities a sense of resignation. This was not surprising when you consider that an entire generation had grown up knowing nothing other than what was, in effect, civil war.

What was especially disturbing for us at the time was the feeling of apathy among young people.

One eleven year-old Catholic girl recounted for me how she had lost both her father and her uncle to the fighting. I asked her how she felt about it, how it had affected her.

Fired up at first, she replied: 'It makes me so angry.' Then, with a sigh, added: 'But that's just the way life is here. There's nothing anyone can do about it.'

I recall addressing a group of girls on the other side of the divide, in an upper-class private school. History, I told them, is only ever changed by those who refuse to accept the status quo.