I grew up in what was a rural community, and often farming, and lack of physical separation pulled schools and children together. The housing estate I grew up in was very “mixed,” in terms of the Northern Ireland viewpoint. Even in what was a mixed environment I can still remember the first time I left my back garden to go out and play with the children in the street, being asked if I was “protestant,” or “catholic.” I didn’t know or have any association and so I had to ask my mum.
Although my village was mixed the majority of the children in my primary school class where protestant, and the school down the road was catholic. It was a small village and definitely not a place for separatism, although the schools where separate, people lived so close together I never saw a division in people and never judged others as one religion or the other, they were just “people.”
I always tended to do well in primary school, not through effort at the time but perhaps through luck, and as such the choice to go to the local high school was taken away from me by my mum’s desire for me to do well. My father died when I was young, having been electrocuted due to a sheep shearing accident. My mum said my dad wanted to see me achieve academically where he never had, and so I was destined for a Grammar School. There where a few grammar schools locally but only one was viable, my mum was scared to drive over a bridge in the town of “Stroke City,”, so my choice was made up that I would go to Limavady Grammar, a choice I am on reflection truly grateful for, even if at the time I didn’t realise the opportunity.
I struggled to understand many of my peers and their feelings towards what is often seen as Northern Irish culture. I don’t see why I or anyone else couldn’t play both Gaelic Football, Soccer and Rugby, or like the pageantry of marching bands as well as rebel songs at the Fleadh?, or speak Irish in the Gaeltacht? or Ulster Scots at a Burn’s Night?, I feel we are blessed with an ancient diverse and historic culture.
I do acknowledge however my own inability to relate to the reasons behind the “troubles,” the cause of segregated society I grew up in. I fail to be able to hate someone who is different than me for any reason, and I feel proud to acknowledge that this belief is probably down to the open nature of my own integrated education that I feel lucky to have been gifted.
Lots of my peers born in the 1980’s haven’t been so lucky, they have grown up with pre-justices that restrict their minds and the opportunities open to them, whether that is down to institutional hatred of others they neither know or understand or down to fear of a destruction of their own cultures, “our wee country,” has shaped the minds of many in restrictive ways, while it has opened mine and others to the world.
I notice with fondness the international outlook that an integrated Northern Ireland education has provided me personally with. I have pride in my origin being a small part of Ireland with a population of only 1,800,000 we as a small nation have made a massive impact on the world.
When we look at the numbers and isolate people based on sectarian divides, we have at my guess 800,000-900,000 “Unionists,” made up of everything from “Quakers,” “Baptists,”, to “Free Presbyterians,” and “Church of Ireland,” denominations, and some 800,000-900,000 Roman Catholic, so termed “nationalists,” and I have no doubt every individual is completely unique and badly represented by my sweeping generalisation round numbers.
These sectarian outdated catch all terms are already I believe beginning to dissolve and I look forward to a day when politics goes beyond tribalism towards outcome based politics, which I believe will be an occurrence is in the not too distant future.
I have an international perspective as normally comes from a good education, and having travelled the world and saw a true diversity of faiths, ethnicities, practices and cultures, I now struggle to fit back into the box I am given by the equality commission of “protestant,” or “catholic,” and the “other,” box is for me very appealing.
I would like to reinforce that while I want to forget the destructive tribalism of my country, I do not want to forget what makes it culturally unique and exciting to live in. We have produced great poets in Seamus Heaney, great authors being the childhood home of Lewis Carroll, great football players in George Best. We claim historically to be the ancestral home of many US presidents and where in fact home of Chaim Herzog who was born in Belfast and was the sixth president of Israel. Northern Ireland is the home of “Good Craic,” and although I am bias I believe we have a friendliness that everyone who visits misses on leaving. Northern Ireland is a place of historic and of natural beauty, and it’s a place I will always see as home.
It’s up to those of us who become educated to help develop an economy that is sound, with a growing private sector over the coming years to let the best and the brightest of our wee country to be able to stay and work at home.
It’s up to those of us who live on the island to ensure it remains a welcoming place for travellers, and those looking for new homes, the quirky diversity of our wee island home shaped great thinkers who visited us and left with fond memories and new ideas.
We as a group of proud patriots need to stand up and be proud but also be open so that we can learn from the cultures of others, and turn our understanding into innovation, and a new and vital force for positive change in the world, making our “own we impact,” upon the globe.
Andrew Cuthbert
Recent Comments