The Forward Together Conversations Contents Introduction 2 The Interviews Eames-Bradley 3 Robin Eames 3 Denis Bradley 8 The Victims Campaigner 13 Alan McBride 13 The Professionals 17 Professor Jim Dornan 17 Sophie Long 20 Aideen McGinley 27 Avila Kilmurray 33 Peter Sheridan 38 John McKinney 42 Andrew McCracken 46 Peter Osborne 50 The Civic Voice 57 Maureen Hetherington 57 Alexandra De La Torre 63 Conal McFeely 68 Linda Ervine 72 Philip Gilliland 77 Tina Merron 81 Maeve McLaughlin 86 Anthony Russell 92 The Religious Voice 98 Bishop Ken Good 98 Father Martin Magill 104 The Politicians 111 Mike Nesbitt MLA 111 Senator Frances Black 116 Claire Sugden MLA 120 Clare Bailey MLA 126 Fergus O’Dowd TD 132 Simon Hamilton 137 Máirtín Ó Muilleoir MLA 145 Cllr John Kyle 152 Naomi Long MEP 158 Senator Mark Daly 168 Mark Durkan 175 The Writers 181 Julieann Campbell 181 Jo Egan 189 Freya McClements 195 Conclusion 201 1 Introduction Northern Ireland and the border counties are mired in a swamp of multi-party distrust that has prevented progress for several years. That distrust is based on constant blame passing, with the history of the Troubles replayed as control of history as well as contemporary political power. It is almost as if the absence of conflict is sufficient, rather than enabling the peace process to continue in order to embrace and promote reconciliation and mutual respect. Does it need to be like this? Clearly no. Other societies have moved beyond conflict into what is hopefully permanent peace. So can we. There are many options facing society in Northern Ireland and the borders, that will determine how we move forward and how we learn to live together in a more harmonious, integrated and shared way. The first step, of course, is wanting to move in that direction. It is not always obvious that this is a shared objective. But for the health of society as a whole - not to mention the effective and efficient use of public resources - the setting of that direction is essential. The Holywell Trust - a charity that focuses on peace and reconciliation - took the brave and ambitious step of asking leading opinion-formers across the society in Northern Ireland to ask how best we can make progress. Not only that, but we also took views from important sections of society within the Republic. Those conversations became the Forward Together podcasts - which are available on the Holywell Trust website. These conversations were based on asking four questions: ‘how do we strengthen civil society?’; ‘how do we achieve a shared and integrated society?’; ‘how do we deal with the legacy of the Troubles in ways that reconcile society and avoid re-running the conflict?’; and ‘how do we have the necessary conversation about the constitutional arrangements for Northern Ireland?’. We asked opinions across the community sector, talked with key professionals, authors who have written about the horrors of the Troubles and some of the best known politicians in Northern Ireland. We expected the usual responses - well meaning statements of commitment to integrated education and housing, plus urgings that we should all do better in living together, What we actually heard were carefully considered suggestions of practical steps that could be taken to embed peace and strengthen society. These are important proposals that could fundamentally improve the way Northern Ireland works, as well as strengthen the social bonds. The ideas are not a party political manifesto, nor do they represent the views of one narrow part of society. Northern Ireland is traditionally perceived through the prism of it containing two communities. That is no longer true - and was always a misleading narrative. Northern Ireland is an increasingly complex and diverse society. We have embraced many migrants, including those of no faith, or other faiths beyond Protestantism and Catholicism. Many people born into those two dominant religions now identify beyond those core identities, some choosing to regard themselves as agnostic or atheist, while others are more committed to inter-faith dialogue or a non- denominational outlook than to an allegiance to the religion of their parents. We are an evolving society. That creates its own problems. The workings of the Good Friday Agreement have enabled us to move forward and it is a framework for mutual respect and also for possible constitutional change. It is based on an assumption of a two religion society that provides 2 an inadequate view of where Northern Ireland is today. So our conversations have not been restricted to voices from Catholicism and Protestantism, but go beyond that. Even more important than that, understanding the past needs to comprehend the similarity of experiences – what happened to people from whatever background was in many ways the same. It featured loss, mourning, injury, fear, loss of earnings, loss of homes, loss of dignity, loss of hope. The 35 conversations are reproduced here. We thank all the interviewees for generously giving us their time and their dedication to treating the questions with great seriousness and thought. The nature of the conversations was such that our interviewees were thinking while they were talking - so we have ‘tidied up’ the transcripts to reduce the number of ‘I thinks’ and ‘alsos’ and ‘sos’, but in doing so we have tried to assist the views of the interviewees to come through more clearly. We have tried very hard not to misrepresent views, but in case of doubt the reader should listen to the original conversations via our podcasts. As far as possible, the interviews are reproduced verbatim. In the reproduced interviews that follow, the questions (and interviewer interjections) are in italics. A number of organisations and individuals have been involved in enabling this work to reach publication. These include the Community Relations Council for Northern Ireland, the Irish government’s Department of Foreign Affairs, as well as other funders of Holywell Trust, which include the Community Foundation Northern Ireland, The Ireland Funds, Northern Ireland’s Executive Office (through T:BUC – Together Building a United Community) and Department for Communities and the European Union’s Peace IV programme. This project was managed by Gerard Deane of Holywell Trust and enabled by the work of Audrey Magowan in doing the detailed transcriptions of interviews. Above all, of course, we thank the interviewees. The original podcasts are available on the Holywell Trust website. Paul Gosling / November, 2019 3 The interviews Eames-Bradley Lord Robin Eames (Interviewed 9th July, 2019) Robin Eames was co-chair (with Denis Bradley) of the Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland1. From 1986 to 2006 he was the Church of Ireland’s Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland from 1986 to 2006. “We're at a very delicate stage where society is beginning to learn that the party political regime doesn't necessarily reflect their deepest concerns. I'm talking about health and education and social issues. And what I think is appearing in Northern Ireland is a gulf between the way in which elected politicians are trying to represent views in which they're not really in touch with the vast majority of society. And they're falling back all the time on party political issues. The Brexit pressure is bringing this to the surface. Added to that there is a vast wave of people in normal ordinary everyday society who are turning their backs on the party political input and beginning to say “You're playing your own games, but you're not either representing us, or reflecting what really concerns us at the ground level”. We need to do a lot more research into the ‘People's Assembly’ concept. We need to do a lot more in how the media reflects what people on the ground are saying. The people that talk to me have a tremendous degree of frustration for the lack of representation and understanding in the media of what really concerns them in everyday life. When you talk about a ‘People's Assembly’ how would that be different from either the Civic Forum or the Citizens’ Assembly in the south? It's very similar. That happens to be just the title that I find comfortable. And the structure is probably more important even than those who take part in it. But there is clearly a tension here which is both of the two major parties, by my understanding, have concerns about the legitimacy or the challenge that a different citizen's organisation, the Citizens’ Assembly, People's Assembly would represent to themselves. That's really an indication of feeling threatened. Threat is a wonderful motivation to push people on. Party politics feels threatened. Presumably the objective, or one of the key objectives, is to achieve a more shared and integrated society. I'm not playing with words, but it depends what we mean by 'shared'. Party politics after the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement had a wonderful opportunity of indicating what a shared responsibility was. The fact that it hasn't happened in the years since is an indication of how they have responded to that degree of threat. Time and again you get the old recourse to orange and green. Time and again you get questions of who was a victim? How do you define a victim of the Troubles? And immediately party politics slips into 'us and them'. A person who was an innocent bystander was blown to pieces, as opposed to the person who went out to bomb, to shoot, or again the person who wore a uniform and to a unionist point of view represented ‘the right side’. 1 The Consultative Group on the Past in Northern Ireland reviewed how to deal with the legacy of the Troubles 4 So, recognising the difficulties of dealing with the past, how do we look forward in ways that create a more integrated society? We tried to bite the bullet on who was a victim.