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22 May 2015

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The two significant Sinn Féin and royal meetings will promote reconciliation and healing

THE GUARDIAN newspaper editorial strapline aptly characterised the handshake between Gerry Adams and Prince Charles as a “brave act of reconciliation”. Its editorial comment went on to describe the engagement as “both brave and constructive”.

Other objective assessments of this engagement at the beginning of Prince Charles’s visit to Ireland have properly identified its historic and political symbolism.

The Sinn Féin leadership positively agreed with the potential contribution that a meeting between the President of Sinn Féin and the future king and British head of state could make in moving the Peace Process towards reconciliation and healing. This was not least in the context of Prince Charles’s very personal visit to Mullaghmore to remember his uncle, Lord Mountbatten, killed by the IRA in 1979.

Making peace after any war situation or intense political conflict with the resultant suffering and loss is hugely challenging, as the Irish Peace Process has shown. The absence of war is not in itself enough.

For that reason, promoting reconciliation and healing are essential to the consolidation of any peace process going forward, otherwise society and politics remain trapped in the pain and resentment of the past.

In Ireland, both North and South, some believe that dealing with the legacy of our past is a new battlefield. Some seek to undermine the potential for reconciliation with endless recrimination by refusing to accept that it should be set above political agendas and allegiances in order that acknowledgement, reconciliation and healing can be advanced for the greater good, and in the national interest.

That is why symbolic initiatives and political leadership which embrace this bigger vision remain so important, even at this stage of the Peace Process.

Given the shared history of conflict between Ireland and Britain, such gestures are not easy. They cannot be taken for granted. There is pain on all sides. But, when undertaken in a spirit of mutual respect and equality, gestures and initiatives can have a hugely positive effect and set an example for wider society.

Some commentators have also perceptively identified the importance of the private meeting that followed the Gerry Adams and Prince Charles public encounter (and attracted less media attention).

Yet there was a huge significance attaching to this engagement between the two most central republican leaders of the last 45 years (Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams) and the British royal figure most synonymous with the British military forces (Prince Charles as Colonel-in-Chief of the Parachute Regiment) and the imperial and military tradition of the British state, coming as it did during this very particular royal visit.

That meeting powerfully underscored the irreversibility of the Peace Process and our collective responsibility to now open up a new phase based upon reconciliation. It also symbolically reflected the multiple narratives about the past and gave expression to some (but not all) of the incidents which moulded the experience of our most recent conflict.

The killings at Ballymurphy, Derry, Dublin/Monaghan, La Mon, Mullaghmore, Narrow Water, Loughgall, Shankill Road, Warrington and Louginisland; the assassinations of Edgar Graham, Pat Finucane and John Davey (and much more) were and remain tragedies which make the need for reconciliation and healing inescapable for us all.

No government or state system is monolithic. There are always competing positions.

These latest initiatives happened not just because of the Sinn Féin leadership’s total commitment to reconciliation and healing but also because the British royal family and key sections of the British state had the independent foresight to recognise another very important opportunity to make positive, forward momentum.

QE Graden of Remembrance 2011

Queen Elizabeth lays a wreath at the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin in 2011

Queen Elizabeth has already made her own very influential contribution. The decision of Prince Charles to meet with Sinn Féin, repeat her words from 2011 – and, importantly, offer his own words on regrets, resentment and the attribution of blame – indicate the British royals are committed to assisting the development of an authentic reconciliation and healing process.

That sends a clear message to those who are hostile against the need for acknowledgement of all loss, promoting reconciliation between all sides, and the need for a healing process to benefit all sections of this community, and further afield.

There is a bigger picture.

Notwithstanding the very real, immediate and deep difficulties besetting the political process, reconciliation and healing have to be embraced as the only way forward. Sectional state and political interests should not be allowed to stop that happening.

Progressive voices must be heard and more initiatives are required at all levels of society.

Substantive and historic events have occurred this week to assist us all in moving forward. They should not be squandered – they should be built upon.

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Contributions from key figures in the churches, academia and wider civic society as well as senior republican figures

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