The Good News From Ireland
Manila Times
January 10, 2000
DUBLIN, Ireland--Ireland has been a very troubled land. A small island, set on the edge of Europe, for centuries the rebellious foster child of the British Empire. No friendly, neighbor to the West but the cold Atlantic Ocean that pounds its' shores and sweeps its lands with mighty storms. In winter it can be cold and bleak under grey skies but blue skies and a brilliant sunrise heralded the arrival of the first dawn of the millennium over Ireland.
I went to greet that dawn and the warm sun that banished the cold of the night and melted the thin white frost on the cat windshields. I walked to Sandycove, a tiny harbor, just big enough for a few sailboats, overshadowed (but not overwhelmed) bythe famous landmark of James Joyce's tower, Joyce is the great author of Ulysses, The tower is a relic of the Napoleon wars, converted into a study by Joyce and is now a museum. No more than a comma in the historical narrative that traces the troubled times of this small island people from whom I come.
The majority of the Irish people have absorbed centuries of hardship and deprivation, and despite the-lack of universal education until recent years, great writers, poets, actors, and leaders have emerged. Many more fled to America at the turn of the century and peopled that continent with their descendants.
The millennium celebrations have been marked here with historical television
documentaries that trace events from the days of foreign occupation to the
dramatic political events of today. Nothing has changed this country,
transformed, its politics, shaken its people, challenged its conscience as the
violence that ravaged the Northern
Ireland province of Ulster, for the past 30 years. Until now, that is, when a
new exhilarating experience of non-violence and peace has begun to change
people's lives, in ways never thought possible just a short time ago it, is an
experience of life without fear.
The millennium celebrations have been marked here with historical reviews and the dramatic political developments that,have been a result of the peace process. The process brought about gut renching compromises, and hardwon commitments, between bitter rivals' and enemies. It has changed this island fundamentally in the past 12 months. It was only possible because there was such a great desire for peace and political leaders realized that radical political change would have to be accepted. Political power would have to be shared and that negotiation s to this end could only make progress when guns and bombs fell silent. Two years later an agreement was reached on how the province of Northern Ireland would be ruled in the future.
Filipinos visiting Ireland and Irish who have been to the Philippines could see many historical, social, political and geographical similarities between the Philippines and Ireland.
Like the Philippines, Ireland is a fishing and agricultural island. Both have had a long colonial history of invasion, exploitation and poverty. Both have suffered high immigration rates that drained its youth. The Filipinos, like the Irish, rebelled against their oppressors only to be vanquished: Yet they never gave up the struggle to be free.
Only a hundred years ago there was famine in Ireland. Millions died and immigrated when they were unable to pay the rent on the land they tilled and never owned. They were driven off the land, evicted from their cottages by the powerful landlords who were backed up by police and military forces. Millions immigrated to the United States if they had the strength or the price of passage in ships that were frequently mass coffins as the hapless Irish died from disease and appalling conditions crammed into these hulks that packed them in like the slave ships of old.
Ireland achieved freedom partially in 1922 with the establishment of the free
state and broke away from the British Empire after a bloody guerilla war. There
was partition. One province in the North, with a majority of pro-British called
Loyalists remained in power and control; they wrapped themselves in the British
flag and their religion, which happened to be Protestant. They had come to
Ireland in the armies of a conquering Englis monarch and stayed
taking the land from the defeated inhabitants.
The native Irish inhabitants were Catholic and were excluded from public
life, politics and had no say on how they were ruled and how they lived.. That
was usually in poverty and mass unemployment. Discrimination and exclusion was
the practice and it bred anger and resentment. These Irish identified with the
Catholic republic of Ireland. The conflict between loyalist and nationalist was
political in nature not religious, but religion became a dividing line, a mark
of distinction between them.
The buried resentment came to the surfdce in the 1960s when civil unrest, and
peaceful demonstrations demanding civil rights, was met with military firepower
and people died on the streets in a rain of bullets. Not.unlike the protests and
bloody protests at MendioIa and other places in the Philippines where so man
died. This ignited, a violent reaction and the Irish.Republican Army (IRA), and
a new version called 'The Provisionals' emerged to do battle with the bomb and
the bullet. This was a disaster. It ended all hopes and possibilities that
non-violence would have a chance. Violence was met with more violence and
killings and bombings ruled the eadlines. There was talk of peace but no
progress.
But then it finally came like the new dawn of the next thousand years. It is an unbelievable gift. The peace process in Northern Ireland brought together the warring sides, with the help of visionaries and pragmatists and wise negotiator. The Good Friday agreement, the final document that laid down. the rules for political change, despite resistance, the majority of the people in this island, North and South, was approved in a referendum.
It has brought the nationalists into a power sharing government that will rule the North. The British government has developed power from London to a government of Northern Ireland. What was unthinkable just a year ago, is now a reality; the former political activists of the party. Linked to the IRA like a political wing, now held the Cabinet positions as minister of education and health. Other parties, representing other nationalists not linked to the IRA, have members in the Cabinet too. The armed factions agreed to decommission their weapons. That process is still in progress and we pray it will continue.
