16 October 1997 Edition
Shake on it
By Mary Nelis
The last time Tony Blair visited Ireland, prior to his election as British Prime Minister, the headlines in the media proclaimed ``No talks with Sinn Féin''.
Things have moved on since then. Sinn Féin is now the third largest party in the North, with two MPs and a TD.
The all-picture, no-sound policy of Blair's previous visit, has been replaced by the intimacy of the handshake, that coming together, that touching of the bodies which signals human communication.
The gesture by Blair produced different reactions. The racist comments on whether a British Prime Minister should shake the hand of a duly elected member of parliament fed into the most extreme elements of the Unionist community and produced a predictable reaction from those whom Paisley calls ``the law abiding Protestant people of Ulster''.
As we witnessed on TV, some of those so called law abiding people gathered at the Connswater Shopping Centre to scream insults and hurl abuse at ``their'' Prime Minister.
One could imagine had they penetrated the security cordon around Blair they would have bitten the hand of the man who is Prime Minister of the country to which they give their allegiance and to which they wish to remain unified. It gave a new meaning to the old proverb ``Never bite the hand that feeds you'', for indeed Blair's government is taking a hard look at what feeds that particular brand of loyalism. As Mo Mowlam commented, the status quo, ``the little England'', which the unionists call Ulster, has to be changed.
While most responsible sections of the media and the people, recognised the historic significance of Blair's handshake with Gerry Adams, there were those who, like John Junor, writing in the Daily Mail some years ago, on the handshake between the British Queen Mother and the Irish film actor Richard Harris, remarked that he ``hoped her majesty was wearing gloves''.
Such racism, as was evident again this week, has always been part of England's attitude to Ireland and to the Irish people in general, including the Unionists, whose siege mentality, no surrender and not an inch has served to disguise the racist attitudes of their English masters.
We heard and saw it last week at the Tory party Conference, when Alan Clark, with his usual megaphone diplomacy, advocated murdering 600 Irish people as a resolution to the conflict. He didn't specify what political allegiances those Irish destined for his ``final solution'' theory should hold.
His subsequent attempts to explain the proposed slaughter of the Irish sent a shudder through the PR people handling the British Royal visit to India, the former colony of Britain whose struggle for independence was inspired by our own struggle in 1916.
Like the Irish, the Indian people paid a high price to rid their country of colonial rule. They too experienced the divide and rule tactics of the coloniser. They too knew torture, murder, hunger, exploitation and demonisation as they struggled to assert their right to national self determination.
But the event which is remembered was, like our own Bloody Sunday but on a more massive scale, the massacre of men, women and children in Amristar.
Small wonder then, that the Sikh and Indian people, the descendants of those who died that day at the hands of another racist British General, also involved in a ``final solution'' scenario, pondered this week on whether they should shake the hand of the British queen.
The sins of the colonial fathers may now be visiting the sons, but the racist attitudes of the sons and those who represent them has not changed.
The same hysterical reaction to the Blair/Adams handshake resurfaced again when it was mooted or leaked, that the British Prime Minister should apologise for Bloody Sunday in Ireland and the Queen should apologise for Amristar in India.
The Daily Mail, that organ of imperialist arrogance, castigated Mowlam for even considering an apology and asked the question, ``Where will this ever end''?
What the Daily Mail and the British government should recognise is that an apology, like a handshake, is not the end of something, it could be the beginning.
It is 200 years since Wolfe Tone outlined an agenda which the Society of the United Irishmen believed had the potential ``to unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman and woman, in place of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter''. Can we shake hands on that?
The last time Tony Blair visited Ireland, prior to his election as British Prime Minister, the headlines in the media proclaimed ``No talks with Sinn Féin''.
Things have moved on since then. Sinn Féin is now the third largest party in the North, with two MPs and a TD.
The all-picture, no-sound policy of Blair's previous visit, has been replaced by the intimacy of the handshake, that coming together, that touching of the bodies which signals human communication.
The gesture by Blair produced different reactions. The racist comments on whether a British Prime Minister should shake the hand of a duly elected member of parliament fed into the most extreme elements of the Unionist community and produced a predictable reaction from those whom Paisley calls ``the law abiding Protestant people of Ulster''.
As we witnessed on TV, some of those so called law abiding people gathered at the Connswater Shopping Centre to scream insults and hurl abuse at ``their'' Prime Minister.
One could imagine had they penetrated the security cordon around Blair they would have bitten the hand of the man who is Prime Minister of the country to which they give their allegiance and to which they wish to remain unified. It gave a new meaning to the old proverb ``Never bite the hand that feeds you'', for indeed Blair's government is taking a hard look at what feeds that particular brand of loyalism. As Mo Mowlam commented, the status quo, ``the little England'', which the unionists call Ulster, has to be changed.
While most responsible sections of the media and the people, recognised the historic significance of Blair's handshake with Gerry Adams, there were those who, like John Junor, writing in the Daily Mail some years ago, on the handshake between the British Queen Mother and the Irish film actor Richard Harris, remarked that he ``hoped her majesty was wearing gloves''.
Such racism, as was evident again this week, has always been part of England's attitude to Ireland and to the Irish people in general, including the Unionists, whose siege mentality, no surrender and not an inch has served to disguise the racist attitudes of their English masters.
We heard and saw it last week at the Tory party Conference, when Alan Clark, with his usual megaphone diplomacy, advocated murdering 600 Irish people as a resolution to the conflict. He didn't specify what political allegiances those Irish destined for his ``final solution'' theory should hold.
His subsequent attempts to explain the proposed slaughter of the Irish sent a shudder through the PR people handling the British Royal visit to India, the former colony of Britain whose struggle for independence was inspired by our own struggle in 1916.
Like the Irish, the Indian people paid a high price to rid their country of colonial rule. They too experienced the divide and rule tactics of the coloniser. They too knew torture, murder, hunger, exploitation and demonisation as they struggled to assert their right to national self determination.
But the event which is remembered was, like our own Bloody Sunday but on a more massive scale, the massacre of men, women and children in Amristar.
Small wonder then, that the Sikh and Indian people, the descendants of those who died that day at the hands of another racist British General, also involved in a ``final solution'' scenario, pondered this week on whether they should shake the hand of the British queen.
The sins of the colonial fathers may now be visiting the sons, but the racist attitudes of the sons and those who represent them has not changed.
The same hysterical reaction to the Blair/Adams handshake resurfaced again when it was mooted or leaked, that the British Prime Minister should apologise for Bloody Sunday in Ireland and the Queen should apologise for Amristar in India.
The Daily Mail, that organ of imperialist arrogance, castigated Mowlam for even considering an apology and asked the question, ``Where will this ever end''?
What the Daily Mail and the British government should recognise is that an apology, like a handshake, is not the end of something, it could be the beginning.
It is 200 years since Wolfe Tone outlined an agenda which the Society of the United Irishmen believed had the potential ``to unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman and woman, in place of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter''. Can we shake hands on that?