David Ervine Memorial Talk

6 May 2010

 

It is a great privilege for me to be here tonight at the 'Oh Yeah' centre, to celebrate the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival with you.

 

And it is a special honour to have been invited here to give the Third Annual David Ervine Memorial Talk - thank you to Jeanette and to the David Ervine Foundation for the invitation and the opportunity.

 

Looking around on my way here tonight, and in particular this vibrant area, it's clear why a couple of years ago the Lonely Planet guide put Belfast on its blue list of cities on the rise.  It is because Belfast has become comfortable with itself: it is now possible to properly celebrate the rich culture, the diversity, the industrial heritage and the complex tapestries of human relationships which give this great city its unique character and which for too long lay hidden under the division and fear of the Troubles.

 

There are many people who have contributed to building this new sense of Belfast.

 

Some have a cultural vision: the 'Oh Yeah' centre, where we are gathered tonight, is the result of the drive of Stuart Ballie and others: they saw the need for a place where young musicians can come together, to build on the legacy of such greats as Van Morrison and Them, Ruby Murray, Stiff Little Fingers and Terry Hooley.  No longer can a Belfast band complain, as did Stiff Little Fingers, that there are "No shows in town, no place to go".  In developing this impressive centre, the support of successful groups such as Snow Patrol and Ash is to be congratulated.

 

The 'Oh Yeah' centre, and the revitalisation of the Cathedral Quarter, remind us that every city needs its visionaries.

 

As I looked at the cranes on my way here, I was reminded that one vision of new Belfast is built in traditional bricks, mortar and glass.  The fantastic Victoria Square development is a world class example of urban renewal, while the Titanic Quarter is a statement of optimism in the future of the city.

 

Others look to re-imaging Belfast with paint and pictures.

 

There are those who have a vision of a new, more vibrant economy.

 

There are those who have dreamt of a shared future, the architects of today's peace.

 

David Ervine was one of those visionaries.  He saw that to move forward society had a choice, 'antagonism or integration.'  He came to the view, through lived life and learned experience, that good relations and not violence was the way forward.

 

He was not always so minded.

 

David Ervine was a man of his time and place.  He, like so many, experienced the divisions and fears of the late-60s and early-70s, that sense of their community being in difficulty: he joined the UVF, just as many thousands of others, republican and loyalist, joined paramilitary organisations.

 

We are all too aware of the death, the damage, the destruction and the human cost of the troubled years.  Years when the depth and complexities of relationships on this island of Ireland, and between this island and Great Britain, were reduced by the horrible simplicities of conflict.  Years which reduced us all.

 

In the book 'Voices From the Grave', David Ervine talks of the cycle of violence as "a hamster wheel to hell."

 

Those were dark times.

 

But there were lights in the darkness.  Those prepared to take risks for change, including voices within loyalism and within republicanism.  Those who stood true to constitutional politics.  And those in Dublin and London who took chances by engaging with those who demanded to be heard.  People, like David Ervine, prepared to say enough, and to act within their communities as persuaders for peace.

 

In a very eloquent address at David's funeral, his brother Brian accurately described David Ervine as someone who could

 

"translate the bloodstained tragic prose of violence and hatred to the poetry of peaceful co-existence....  He had the guts and the courage to climb out of the traditional trenches, meet the enemy in no-man's land and play ball with him."

 

All of us who were involved in the early days of the first moves to peace will never forget how hard and how trying that period was for everyone involved.  There was a lot of tension and a lot of risk.  It was never going to be peace at any price.  Looking back now at the tense discussions moving from the Downing Street Declaration and then through the busy ceasefire years to the Castle Building negotiations which, on Good Friday 1998, gave us the Agreement, there seems to be an inevitability.  Let me assure you that at the time there was no such sense.

 

However, we managed, together with the help of Senator Mitchell and other international friends, to reach Agreement.  Arriving at the Agreement required vision, persistence, goodwill, luck, bloody-mindedness, and many other qualities to make inevitable where we are today.  In so doing, we have redefined what were once seen as old and irreconcilable differences.

 

We did so on the principle of consent, a principle very dear to David Ervine.  It is appropriate on this election day to remind ourselves that this most democratic of principles is the beating heart of the Agreement.

 

Overwhelming consent which the people of Ireland, North and South, gave to the Agreement when they endorsed it in referendums, for once and for all rejecting violence as a way to solve differences.

 

Consent to devolved power-sharing government here in the North, capable of protecting the rights and interests of all sides of the community.  Government with safeguards to ensure that all sides of the community can participate and work together successfully.

 

Consent to North South institutions, so that matters of mutual interest to the two administrations on this island which we share can be discussed and acted upon.

 

I remember the difficulties there were in securing agreement to a North-South element in Castle Buildings.  David Ervine and I had some frank exchanges before we could close this chapter of the negotiations - he elsewhere described Strand Two as a "nightmare for us."  But today those fears have been put to rest:  Dublin and Belfast work together by consensus to release the economic potential of the island, free from the fear of political agendas.

 

And, of course, there was consent to new structures for East -West cooperation.

 

Consent, most of all, to a place where one can chose to be Irish, or British, or both, and, regardless of which of those choices you make, one where principles of equality, respect for diversity, and religious liberty for all are at the centre.

 

Of course it has not all been plain sailing since the Agreement.  Change is difficult, and it has been slow, sometimes too slow.  We have had the establishment, collapse and restoration of the devolved Institutions.  There have been new horrors, to add to the litany - who can forget the shock of the Omagh bomb, to mention but one atrocity.  And there are the many thousands who continue to carry physical pain and personal grief with them every day.

 

It is clear that there is much yet to be achieved for the full potential of the Agreement to be unlocked for the benefit of all the people of Northern Ireland.

 

But there is also so much that has been delivered.  Relationships between the islands of Britain and Ireland have been transformed.  In May 2007 I was privileged as Taoiseach to address the joint Houses of Lords and Commons in Westminster.  That day I said, in the context of the restoration of the devolved institutions, that we have "definitive evidence that we are indeed moving with the tide of a lasting change.  That change is the unprecedented strength and range of the consensus on the way forward."

 

As David Ervine said in January 2007, anticipating the restoration of the devolved Institutions, "the next phase of the peace process is parliamentary democracy."  The Assembly has now been up and running again for three years.  I believe that the Hillsborough negotiations last January, and the resultant agreement, underline the sense of shared ownership which Nationalists and Unionists, Protestants and Catholics, increasingly feel for the democratic institutions established more than 10 years ago.

 

The devolution of justice and policing powers to Belfast was completed last month.  That is no small achievement and one which significantly was "made in Ulster."  Despite differences, despite dislikes, progress is being made on the basis of shared principles, those of liberty and equality, democracy and peace, respect and tolerance.

 

Earlier this year we saw final acts of decommissioning by a range of groups, from the UVF and UDA to the INLA and others.  The gun is being excised from Irish politics.

 

There remain big challenges.

 

There is a need to make manifest the benefits of peace, to bring the peace dividend home to all.

 

Significant work still needs to be done at a societal level.  It will not be fast: indeed, it may be the work of several generations to successfully tackle sectarianism and build lasting reconciliation, but we need to make progress now and build on it every day.

 

David Ervine was heavily influenced by his great friend Gusty Spence.  David once proudly told Spence's biographer, Roy Garland, that the type of forward-looking, progressive Unionism Gusty espoused was "a Unionism that was not anti-Irish and not anti Catholic."

 

And equally, it is important to say being a real republican in the truest sense of the world should not be and cannot be about being anti-British or anti-Protestant.  Those who cling to such simmering ancient hatreds offer nothing and will never bring progress to families and the community.

 

There is responsibility at the political level to set an example and for political leaders to challenge attitudes and prejudices within their own communities.

 

Work also needs to be done at community level, in particular if hard to reach communities are to be empowered and enabled to play the fullest role in society.  This includes engagement with the education system and improved opportunities for employment.  We have to help all communities, to break the cycle of long-term unemployment where ever it exists.

 

This is a challenge to communities, to engage with agencies and politics and help the better delivery of this important agenda.  This is also a challenge to politicians and public servants, to civil society and funding agencies, to work with communities to create a society in which no children will be left behind.  This is a challenge to loyalism, to make sure that its communities are enabled to catch-up, to no longer be told that they are hard to reach.

 

It is a challenge to all of us on this island, as we experience difficult economic times like so many other parts of the world.  But let us remember the gift of peace and stability which can help us attract foreign investment and jobs.  With peace, we have the talents and the abilities on this island to make the most of the opportunities which will come our way.

 

Since the Good Friday Agreement, the challenge for all of the people in Northern Ireland and indeed across this island is not now defined in terms of old disputes about territory but rather the new opportunities we can make for ourselves.  The question is how can we collectively do best by all the people on this island - better healthcare, better paid jobs, better innovation, better schools for our children and a better, shared, future.

 

As we seek to move to that better future we cannot leave behind those who have suffered most in the past.  There is an obligation to those who suffered most as a result of the conflict.  How this might be discharged does not lend itself to simple solutions, and much deep thinking is ongoing on how this might be achieved.  However, consolidating the peace is part of our duty to those who suffered and still suffer.  We owe them that better future which is the promise of the Agreement.

 

There is responsibility for leaders to ensure that reconciliation happens on an all-island basis.  That is why two years ago today, on 6 May 2008, my last day as Taoiseach, I was delighted to invite Dr. Paisley to assist me in a Joint Official Opening of the Battle of the Boyne site, a place of importance for people of all traditions on this island.  I said, on that occasion, that all of us this island should respect our shared history and that it is time to be friends.

 

Those friendships are being built.  Southern cars are now seen all over the North - and not just for shopping!  And Northern cars are welcome visitors in the South.  Northern business invests South.  Southern business invests North.  Together, on the rugby pitch, in recent times we have beaten the best the world can offer.  Together we sell our island as a tourist destination to the world.  Together we invite foreign investment.  Old divisions are no more.  I am proud to call many Unionists and loyalists my friends.

 

There are a small few, however, who strive to undo the hard work of the past decade and more, to bring us back to the dark days of the past, who want to us to run again on that "hamster wheel to hell."

 

I reject all those who hold that violence is the way to achieve change.  To those who continue to seek a thirty-two county Republic through violent action, I say not in my name.  Not now, not ever, never.

 

The people of Ireland, North and South, have said clearly that the only viable road to unity on this island lies through peace, tolerance, persuasion and agreement.   As an Irish Republican, it is my earnest hope that the island of Ireland and its people will again be united.  But I will oppose with all my strength any effort to impose unity through violence, or the threat of it.

 

The way forward is through the Good Friday Agreement, the bedrock of our peace: or, as David Ervine said, the mechanism which "creates the space within which one can explore the possibility of ending the hurt and the bitterness."

 

That Agreement addresses all of the essential relationships and elements required, not only to bring the conflict to an end, but also to build sustainable, permanent peace and reconciliation on this island.

 

David Ervine once said "Our divided society can be a better place to live. No one said it would be easy to make the necessary changes, and few thought it would take so long. I am a stayer and will not be deflected from offering the opportunity for new generations to live differently in the future. There are great opportunities for Northern Ireland, we just have to grasp them"

 

That is our goal and our challenge.  These are difficult times, but we have come through difficult times already.  We have a new set of understandings to take us forward.  With hard work, sweat and toil, creativity and optimism, tolerance and forbearance, and that sense of humour for which this city is renowned, we will build a better future for our children and grandchildren, neighbours and friends, British, or Irish, or both.

 

Thank you.

 

 

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