Fear and Loathing in Northern Ireland

In reading Ahmed's description of the climate of fear created by William Hague and David Blunkett, I reflected that the United Kingdom, and especially Northern Ireland, hardly need immigrants or indeed their political leaders to create an environment of hate and fear: They've been inflicting it on each other for generations.

The Catholic/Protestant divide in Britain, while diminished from the riots in the 80s, still exists. When I lived in Scotland, I marveled that people who will only see the inside of any church three times in life-- at christening, marriage, and their funeral-- still allow the religion they are born into to dictate the rest of their life. In Glasgow, the name on the church you are christened in determines where you go to school, which soccer team you support, and which cemetery you will be buried in. In Northern Ireland, they tell me, it also determines what neighborhood you live in-- in Glasgow, Catholics and Protestants live next door to one another, but apparently in N. Ireland they keep separate-- or at least, they have done in past generations. When marching season comes, cities have to determine separate parade routes so that sectarian violence doesn't break out from one group catching sight of the other group's colors. I remember seeing on the news (in 1999) that Catholic groups were undermining Protestant parades by sitting across the preplanned Protestant parade route. Or perhaps it was the other way around? In either case, the offenders had to be bodily removed and hauled off to jail so the parade could continue without any fighting breaking out.

Not long before I moved home from Scotland, a boy in my neighborhood was killed after a soccer game. It seems that a brash Celtic (Catholic) supporter ran across some drunken Rangers (Protestant) fans. Words were exchanged, then blows, and at the end, two parents had to bury their teenage son. The tragedy was all the more heartbreaking because it was so avoidable-- a soccer team isn't worth giving your life over, after all-- and because it was so senseless. On the day of the funeral, I happend to be standing near the church waiting for a bus. I was impressed: Long lines of students came walking into the church from the Catholic and the Protestant schools, with no incident. In the face of tragedy, the teens in the neighborhood came together, set aside their differences, and mourned as one.

A culture of hate is so ingrained after centuries of conflict that it's silly to think this one incident will fix sectarian relations in Glasgow. But it's a step in the right direction for students of both sides to see the stupidity of killing over teams and names.