Loyalists and republicans are swelling, like repulsive toads, with the disaffection of their communities, and the centre is not holding. They are now harbouring a shiny new set of grudges and grievances
"NOWHERE," proclaims a booklet recently published by Derry City Council, for the benefit of potential visitors, "are you likely to find a community more keen to celebrate its diversity."
After a weekend when a Sinn Fein/IRA-controlled community group frightened the Northern Ireland Office into effectively banning a parade by the Protestant Apprentice Boys along the public walls of Ulster's second city, the council's boast looks like a sick joke. Nowhere were you less likely to find a community celebrating its diversity than in Derry over the weekend; nowhere was a community more determined to preserve the homogeneity of its tribal territory against all incursions, even imagined ones.
The humiliating collapse of the council's fantasy would not matter if its optimism reflected nothing but the usual cheery civic blandness. But this is the language in which nationalist Ireland now speaks to itself. This is the voice of John Hume's SDLP; the voice of the Irish government; the voice which the republican movement has, albeit temporarily and conditionally, adopted. The voice, too, of much of the Irish media. This is, you might almost say, the voice of the "peace process" itself, and if that voice has been stripped of whatever vestiges of authority it was deemed to possess, then what is left of Nationalist Ireland's Big Idea?
Derry was held up throughout Ireland as the place which proved the pluralistic credentials of nationalism. Politically and culturally, it may have been green to its core, but it was supposed to show that Unionists had nothing to fear from a united Ireland, that the nationalists, if they were ever in a majority, would put the past behind them and show the Protestants nothing but benevolent respect.
Far from celebrating diversity, however, nationalists in Derry last week acted like a Catholic version of the old Stormont parliament, demanding that Protestants ask permission to express their identity, simply because they were a local minority. Free Derry, as it is known by Republican sympathisers, was extended out from the Bogside estate to encompass the whole town. The barricades went up, and, whatever the cost, the old enemy was to be kept out in the name of the old enmity. Catholics simply did not want the Apprentice Boys in their town because they acted as a reminder of another Derry, another Northern Ireland, whose existence they would rather forget, and which in Derry they mostly have forgotten.
Nationalists in Derry may allow the odd Unionist to become Lord Mayor, but it seems now they do so only because a Unionist mayor is an essentially powerless figurehead in a nationalist-dominated area; and in that respect, it is interesting that the same city council booklet does not once mention the Apprentice Boys, despite their centrality to the history of the town, while finding room to trumpet the annual Gaelic Festival.
The campaign by republicans to stop the Apprentice Boys marching on the walls also puts paid to the lie that they are non-sectarian. Hard as it is to believe, many Catholics still like to imagine that today's republicans are the moral and intellectual heirs of the United Irishmen of 1798, who dreamt of uniting Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter under the one flag. Republicans in Derry in particular have prided themselves on the inclusiveness of their political philosophy. But the lesson of the past week is surely that Protestants and Dissenters are not welcome in Derry any more. The republicans, quite literally, cannot stand the sight of them, not even a passing glimpse, which is all the Bogside would have had of the Apprentice Boys had they just let them proceed.
Arguably, though, the most damaging outcome of the weekend's events - at least from the nationalist viewpoint - is that it scuppers the conviction that contact with John Hume can civilise the republicans. In many ways this has been the foundation stone of the entire "peace process". Like Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, constitutional nationalism was meant to take the hand of an uncouth Sinn Fein/IRA, put some political table manners on it, and then introduce it into polite society. It was for this vision that the SDLP effectively gave up its attempts to forge common ground with moderate unionism, and moved so close to the republicans that Unionists can now barely spot the difference.
But not only did Republicans show no respect for Unionists last week; they showed none for constitutional nationalists either, flatly rejecting all proposals put forward by Hume himself to break the deadlock. Unionists may well ask, if Hume cannot influence Republicans on the side issue of parades, how could he possibly rein them in when they think the constitutional position of Ulster is up for grabs?
The republican movement, having made spectacular gains in the recent Forum elections, obviously does not feel the need for the SDLP's helping hand any more, and it needs the Dublin government even less. Northern Ireland's Catholics are in one of their periodic, dangerous orgies of self-pity, and Sinn Fein/IRA is reaping the rewards, making massive inroads into the Catholic vote without having to offer anything by way of compromise in return. Having got the Unionists on the run, as they see it, they will not stop chasing until they have run them out of town, and nationalists who said it would be otherwise have been revealed to be either liars or dupes.
Equally, the absurdity of believing that a negotiated settlement in Northern Ireland is still possible has been crushingly exposed. Public opinion has been pushed out to the sectarian extremes. Loyalists and republicans are swelling, like repulsive toads, with the disaffection of their communities, and the centre is not holding. The two communities are now harbouring a shiny new set of grudges and grievances, and they are going to drag these along behind them into the negotiating chamber.
In the quest for their own internal and fraternal accord, Irish nationalists have torched the ground where they previously sought accommodation with the Protestant community, and who knows how long it will be before that ground is habitable again.
Eilis O'Hanlon is a columnist with Ireland's Sunday Independent.
