Editorial - The Sound of Silence

THIS was supposed to be another summer of discontent in Northern Ireland, thousands rioting, pitched battles in interface areas and the like.

Indeed, there had been dire predictions when the latest phase of the peace process failed to deliver that it would be the hottest summer in memory in the Northern state.

What do we find instead? An almost eerie calm has settled over the North these past few months. 

Yes, there have been incidents. A gang of Nationalist youths attacked a severely hearing-impaired young man because he was wearing a Rangers soccer club jersey, but nothing of any huge note.

The sound of silence is a tribute to the community workers on both sides, whose hard work over the years to try and ameliorate tensions between Protestant and Catholic working class areas seems to have come to fruition.

The calm is a result of the peace process, too. The violence would always inflame tensions, which would lead to more violence in a never-ending spiral downwards.

The facts are that there have been no deaths from sectarian violence in a very long time. The peace process has begun to work in the most profound way possible, among grassroots people on both sides who retain a healthy dislike for their neighbors, but do not feel compelled to act on it. There have been some pathetic attempts by dissidents on both sides to exploit the peace but they have almost always failed.

In fact it has been so quiet that The New York Times recently reported that attacks on ambulances which go into Loyalist areas have been one of the major police concerns. Ordinary decent vandalism is now headlines for the first time in a generation.

The only ones spoiling for a fight these days, it seems, are the politicians, still bemoaning the lack of an election. The constant stream of insults passing between all the parties reminds us of just how contentious a bunch they can be.

Yet, as Brian Feeney wrote recently in the Irish News in Belfast, there has been no huge groundswell for elections which were postponed by British Prime Minister Tony Blair. A day of action to show the grassroots commitment to those elections was a complete failure. 

Frankly, the ordinary people have become tired of political clichés passing for real action in Northern Ireland. Finding new and wonderful ways to insult your opponents no longer can pass for political dialogue.

The lack of tension has manifested itself most notably in the absence of violence during the marching season. There have been almost no incidents of note during a long hot summer, an extraordinary experience for a society that dons its fighting colors every marching season without fail. 

Instead, marches have passed off peacefully. In Derry the annual Apprentice Boys parade around the city’s walls went so smoothly that politicians on both sides were lavish in their praise of the other for the restraint shown. When was the last time we saw that?

Though some of the politicians would be loathe to admit it what we are seeing is the outworking of a peace process which, despite those same politicians, is actually starting to take root.

It is now almost nine years to the date since the IRA ceasefire of August 31, 1994. That act transformed Northern Ireland forever. As John Hume has stated, there are thousands of people alive today because of that brave decisions and the peace process that followed.

Someday when violence in Northern Ireland is a distant memory and younger generations demand to know what it was like in the bad old days, veterans of the Troubles will tell them just how awful it was to live through a period of bloodshed and utter political uncertainty.

Then they will talk about how out of that fiery cauldron came hope and the first inklings of peace. They will say with some pride that it proves that even on the most fallow ground a hope for peace can grow.