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In this episode of Northern Peacebuilders, we meet David Mitchell, Assistant Professor in Reconciliation and Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast, discussing his personal interest in peacebuilding, academic research, challenges in peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and globally, and the relevance of peace education. David emphasises the need for continuous research and education in peace studies to support practitioners in the field.

This episode was produced from an interview by Dr David McCann, televised by community-based Northern Visions (NVTV) and which received funding from the Community Relations Council. We are grateful to David and both organisations.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

David McCANN: Hello and welcome to NVTV. This interview is part of the Northern Peacebuilders project, hosted by Shared Future News. And to go through some of the fascinating insights about peacebuilding, where it is at the minute, where it needs to go in the future, we have David Mitchell. David is the Assistant Professor in Reconciliation and Peace Studies at Trinity College Dublin at Belfast.

David, you’re very welcome to NVTV. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m always intrigued about people who research peacebuilding and work in peacebuilding. What was your personal interest? What was it? Because obviously, anyone who’s done a PhD knows that you’ve got a plethora of topics in front of you. You’ve got a plethora of research interests in front of you. What made you get into this?

David MITCHELL: Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s something I think about a lot, actually, when you look back over your life. Some of it’s a bit of luck, what you applied for, what came up. But others are maybe you can see kind of a logic to the whole thing.

Maybe the main thing is, I coordinate a master’s in Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation. And I actually did a master’s in a similar topic at Ulster University about 20 years ago, the master’s in Peace and Conflict Studies. And I think that’s where I really fell in love with the subject, really got engaged with it. I thought the idea of using your research skills of reading and writing, but to do it on the topic of peace, which is obviously one of the most important topics you could possibly be interested in, was fantastic. And then, subsequently, I did a PhD and then ended up now coordinating a similar master’s, which is great.

There’s probably deeper currents, maybe, in my background. I mean, I had a very religious upbringing, actually. My father was a Presbyterian minister. That was quite a conservative scene, I have to say, back in the day, that I grew up in. But then through that, you actually encounter potentially quite radical ideas in religious traditions. I mean, I was sort of interested in Christian socialism, the peacemaking tradition, the Quakers, the Christian anarchists, the nonviolent types, all those kinds of activist, religious types, which sort of resonated with me, I have to say. That has a link with peace and conflict studies as well, because peace studies, a lot of the founding people were coming from the Quakers, or were inspired by the nonviolent campaigns of Martin Luther King and Gandhi in the middle of the 20th century. So, there was a bit of that going on.

And then another thing that I experienced, which probably had a big influence was moving south from the North. So when I was six, we moved from Lisburn to Sligo because of my dad’s work. And I think that jolt, like even as a six-year-old, I really was aware of going to a very different place from going to, from the Northeast to the West. Sligo was very different. And I think that experience, and then coming back up north later on in life, and feeling another culture shock coming back to a northern kind of world , I was a foreigner for the second time in a sense. I think that’s where it got me interested in Ireland — the sort of political traditions, the cultural traditions, the whole history, the peace process. And then we’re all at how it looked today and where it was all going. So that sense of experiencing difference. And a lot of our students, for example, as well, would have had similar experiences, wherever they’re from. Whenever you’re a kind of cultural outsider, I think they then get interested in studying cultural difference, conflict, peace and conflict studies.

So those are the couple of currents going on that got me into this subject.

David McCANN: It’s just interesting because obviously Shared Future News was hosting an event at the Imagine! Festival based on this, and they’re actually talking to some of the practitioners about it. I was interested in listening to people like Gerard Deane, Dympna McGlade, talking about their own family backgrounds and how that helped them get involved in it.

You mentioned something really interesting there about, obviously, there was a religious emphasis to this, and obviously the Christian socialist part of it. In terms of the practical application, because you’re right to point out that many connotations of our peace process come from religious orders. Is that still with you today? I mean, is that something that you’re still finding today in your approach and how you’re actually applying that in academia?

David MITCHELL: I think so. I mean, I think we often tend to say there are religious ideas and there are secular ideas, but when you study ideas, it’s hard to actually separate them out like that.

For example, a lot of the key ideas in secular political philosophy were outworked by people who would have had a religious belief. So, in a sense, there’s only so many different ideas out there. Yeah, it’s, it’s endlessly fascinating. And I think peace studies is kind of related to, people have written about this, the kind of utopian vision. You need a kind of utopian vision to want to sort of pursue any kind of social change because you have to imagine it before you actually go there. So, a religious culture in that kind of language does give you a bit of that, but I mean, I was a big fan of Star Trek back in the day as well and I wonder if that got me into peace and conflict because there’s a lot of insight in science fiction, which is also a utopian kind of fiction, in terms of a way of exploring the issues of the world through a kind of sideways lens.

David McCANN: So are you drawn to probably, it feels a bit like a therapy session, but do you feel like you’re drawn toward, because you mentioned there about utopian and quite often, obviously we run, Slugger O’Toole, and if you put anything up there regarding kind of peacebuilding, you’ll get the usual comments below going, “Ah, that’s all pie in the sky, utopian, happy, clappy stuff, you should all be up at Corrymeela for the weekend.”

But in terms of, and we’ll get in some more practical applications in a minute, but, but that utopian thing, there is a bit of a draw towards, “This can be a lot better. We can be a lot more reconciled.”

David MITCHELL: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, feminists, trade unionists, environmental activists, they all have some kind of utopian sense that’s come from somewhere.

I mean, one of the things I’m obsessed with is cycling infrastructure. I really believe that and it’s linked to peacebuilding as well, that if you want a peaceful society, then we need to use less cars. We need to have ways for people to get around, for children to be safe, for people with disabilities, for people who are poor and can’t afford cars. It’s all about social inclusion. And if you go somewhere like the Netherlands, or you go to Copenhagen, you actually come back with a kind of utopian sense. And you end up idealising these places because they’re not as good as sometimes we think they are. But nevertheless, you need that kind of image from elsewhere that’s going to give you some kind of motivation. So whether that’s utopian or whatever, it’s just following a model. The kind of sense of where you want to go, I think, is key.

David McCANN: Yeah, you’re right about that. I remember in 2020 putting up this thing about being in Amsterdam and putting up the glories of how kind of the cycling infrastructure was, but the political hard yards to get to there was something that’s quite optimistic. And that leads me actually nicely into my kind of next question.

Is peacebuilding, in your opinion, do you think that it’s a recognised profession? And what is the role of kind of academic research? So what you’re doing and kind of qualifications in establishing benchmarks for people who are working in this area?

David MITCHELL: Yeah, I think that’s a good question. It’s maybe a better question for the practitioners, actually, to ask peacebuilding organisations what they think about academic qualifications. Obviously, I think what I do is very important and very useful. But in any field, I suppose there’s a kind of tension between the scholars and the practitioners, with both thinking that they do the most important work.

I mean, I teach on a master’s course, so it’s very much an academic qualification. It’s not tied to practice in the way that learning to be a dentist or a bricklayer or anything like that is. You don’t just become a peacebuilder when you graduate. You get more generic skills about how to think about conflict, how conflict manifests itself around the world, some skills around mediation, and so on, but it’s not the direct link. But I think it would be attractive to a lot of employers to see that somebody’s got a master’s in peace and conflict studies because it shows that they’re aware of more than just one place, they’ve considered all kinds of differences, and so on.

So, yeah, it’s important. But I think peace and conflict studies is for everybody, not just people who want to practice it.

David McCANN: I suppose one of the things that academia can do for anyone coming in is they can take you to those different places. Places that you may not be aware of: places like Cyprus, like Sri Lanka, and places like that, and see what’s worked and what hasn’t worked.

David MITCHELL: Yeah. And we try to be as practical as reasonably possible here. So we’re in Belfast for a reason. I mean, our course was created by the Irish School of Ecumenics about 20 years ago deliberately as a kind of contribution to the peace process here and to try and disseminate some of that international knowledge for local peacebuilders. And this was sort of at the high point of the peace process here. So there definitely was a practical goal to the master’s.

We try to engage with civil society as much as we can. We go out and we meet peace groups, we bring people into the classroom to talk, we have student placements, I’ll sometimes do research alongside a civil society organisation. So there are ways for academics to be engaged. And I think in general, nearly all academics are engaged with the real world. I think it’s unfair to think of academics as being in the ivory tower or whatever. It’s expected nowadays that we actually will make a public impact through media work, or through working with civil society groups.

David McCANN: In terms of the cohorts you get through… obviously, look, I appreciate every academic year is different from the last, but are there any specific types of people you typically get in front of you? Are they people from certain backgrounds or certain interests or things like that?

David MITCHELL: I think so. Like I said earlier, I think you get a certain amount of people who have had an experience of cultural dislocation of some kind, and that gets them interested in conflict resolution. Most of our students are international, which is something that I’m a little bit disappointed with. I’d love to get more local students and have a mix of local and international students, but maybe it’s just the international student market that most of our students will come from other countries. A lot from the US, but we have students from every continent really.

There’ll be people who are interested in peace: they’ll have the utopian visions of one kind or the other. They might be left-leaning, probably that type, although not everybody. We’ll get a range of people. People from more conservative backgrounds, people of different experiences, people who are more skeptical. We’ve had a few people who are involved in security forces of one kind or the other over the years. And most people will go on probably to work with NGOs of one kind, maybe local community organisations or international NGOs. Some people will go on to diplomacy, or try and work with the UN. And quite a few every year will go on and do PhDs because they see the course as a good stepping stone into learning how to do peace research.

So that would be the type of students, you know, we get.

David McCANN: So what academic theories or kind of comparative case studies have you found relevant for Northern Ireland? Because quite often, people in Northern Ireland think that we’re the only place that’s really had any kind of difficulties or any issues around peacebuilding. But, looking at the big world out there, we are not alone.

David MITCHELL: No, that’s the thing that always amazes me, surprises me, doesn’t really surprise me. But when I look around the world, I mean, there’s literally nothing about the conflict here that is unique. I mean, not a single thing, really.

Now how it manifested itself is unique, of course, because we have a certain geography, history, certain different groups involved, but most conflicts are about pretty similar things. They’re about a contested state, probably as a result of decolonisation of one type or another. So the empire has collapsed, and then there’s contestation around the state that comes after it. So all our issues around borders, dealing with the past, symbolic conflict, are all very generic. You can go to the most far-flung country that you’ve barely heard of on the map, and you suddenly find that they’ve got pretty similar issues.

I mean, one of the things I’ve done recently, in the last five or six years, I’ve worked with a Korean colleague, Dong Jin Kim, on trying to explore this comparison between Ireland and Korea. And people tease us — you know, ” It’s a ridiculous comparison,” but it’s remarkable. When you dig down, actually the similarities appear and the differences as well. So comparison isn’t just about pretending that things are the same. It’s also about showing what’s different. But at a human level, that’s where I find that the connection is made. We brought a lot of Koreans to Ireland, and they see the differences, but they also get the concept of difference. They grew up with an “other” out there, a kind of dehumanised “other”. They’re fascinated by our border transformation, actually. Obviously, Korea has the hardest border, maybe in the world. We’ve transformed our border. Now, it’s a different situation, I know, but it’s still fascinating for them to see that visually, like right in front of them.

So, there are so many parallels with so many places. I think it’s quite mind-bending, actually, when you realise you’re not unique, and you’ve got this shared experience with all these people around the world. I think it’s extraordinary, and I think it would really benefit people in Northern Ireland to have a better sense of that. How we’re not different, and also how great Northern Ireland is in many ways compared to so many places. Our peace process is a success by any reasonable measure. And Northern Ireland is still for all our problems, economic problems, a relatively developed place where you can have a safe and pleasant life for most people. And that’s just not the case for much of the world. So it’s really quite amazing to realise that.

David McCANN: Yeah. I remember being an early career researcher going out to Korea to extol the virtues of our border. My PhD was in North-South relations, so I was telling them about our experience, but sadly we had the flag protest going on at the same time, so that was across the screens on CNN. It had just erupted.

David MITCHELL: I would understand that — the contest over symbols, really minute things, what places are named as well, so yeah.

David McCANN: They got it. They got it, but it was, it was an interesting thing about, head in my hands, thinking about the trouble going on here, the flag protest that literally just started. And actually, yeah, you’re right. Going somewhere else and realising symbolism is such a big deal.

In terms of how academics, you’ve answered a wee bit of this, but, because you were talking there about, there is the thing about the ivory tower, right, and that can be sometimes fairly or unfairly done. But how do academics engage, in your experience, how do they engage with kind of peacebuilding? Is there any really great examples? You referenced one there about Korea, but did you have any others?

David MITCHELL: Where do you start? I suppose there’s a trend now that research councils and governments will want you to be engaged with civil society. And I suppose the idea is that we don’t just research communities and stuff, we do research with them that should have some kind of social benefit.

The way I think about it is, one of the things an academic can do is tell a positive story. So they can go out there and find good work that’s happening, best practice, and write it up, explain this to the world. I mean, I’ve done this a few times myself A few modest things.

So I mean, I worked with a student to write an article about the Turas project, which you’ll know, people will know with Linda Ervine. So, I came across that project, teaching Irish to mostly Protestants on the Lower Newtownards Road. It blew my mind for all kinds of reasons. And I thought this was fascinating and really got into it. And, well, I’m not much of an activist. What can I contribute? So, well, I like writing academic articles. So that’s what we did. Just to give them a little bit of a platform, tell the story. And, my sense was that it was relevant, not just for us, but actually might be interesting internationally because of all these generic cultural conflicts that happen all around the world.

So there’s little things like that. We’ve tried to support a youth project in North Belfast, the RCITY project, which brings young people together from the Ardoyne and Shankill. And we take our students up there, we’ve had students on placement, we’ve had the facilitators come and talk to us and everything. And they’ve supported some of our students’ research as well, and some of mine, actually. Jin, my Korean colleague, he set up a connection between young people in North Belfast and young people in Korea, actually, and they have these regular Zoom meetings. They talk about their lives, and, you know they can barely understand each other, but it’s got better and better, and it’s fascinating, and they’ve had staff exchanges between Belfast and Korea as well. They’re hoping to build on that. So yeah, you just have to be on the lookout for ways.

I think the media is another one that academics do quite well. I mean, as you’ll know, we have a lot of good academics here who do a public service by putting themselves out there, going on the media, giving us evidence and clear commentary, which sometimes is a bit different to the kind of politicised discourses that we have. And not just in politics, but across a range of disciplines, academics are doing that public service, I think. And it’s not always easy because academics naturally like to stay in their office, hide away from people. They’re not always kind of front-of-house people. But I think that’s another way that academia can engage, with the world outside.

David McCANN: So you’ve talked there. I mean, what are the main, in your opinion, challenges for peacebuilding in Northern Ireland and elsewhere? So you’ve talked about some of the successes, but there are still, I mean, obviously last year with the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. Great to do the George Mitchell piece and laud the successes of which there are many, but we do also have some challenges as well. So, where do you think we are with that piece?

David MITCHELL: I mean, I sometimes wonder: are we still in the peace process, or are we now somewhere else? You know, it feels, since Brexit, this Irish unity debate has got underway. It’s not that we don’t need to do peacebuilding anymore, but it almost feels like we’re in a new world. And we’re more conscious now of other divisions in society, whether it’s racial, sexual orientation, gender, and so on and so on. As the Orange-Green divide has receded somewhat, we’re more aware of these other issues of social inclusion, I guess. So I think most of us probably see peace, and most peace practitioners will see peace, in a bigger framework now, maybe to even 20 or 30 years ago, when it was just about the Orange-Green issue.

Now, we’re more interested in all aspects of inclusion and sort of understanding, and social justice as well. Going forward, when you look around the world, I guess the big challenge is this rise of populism, the kind of illiberal democracy that we’re seeing all over the world, unfortunately. I think that’s probably peace studies’ big challenge generally. I mean, I think the democratic peak globally was something around 2006, and since then, democracy has actually been in retreat around the world, which is, you know, quite depressing. And trying to deal with that, I think, is really the big problem. And how do you solve that? I mean, I think we need peace education. That’s what I think we need.

David McCANN: Well, where would peace education be? And because that was what I was just thinking about. You’re obviously outlining the problem there. But where would that be? Would that be in primary school, secondary school?

David MITCHELL: Well, peace education can happen anywhere. And often it happens in communities rather than schools because schools have a formal agenda, which are often quite tied to employability and so on. But, when you think about the big forces that have shaped the world, whether it’s racism, colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy, you can actually go through school and university and not really understand any of them properly, you know? They have a tendency to sort of hide in plain sight. And this is something that I learned. This is why I believe in peace education, because I think I was changed by my own education. So that’s why I believe it’s effective. And I think what you learn about where all those things came from and the kind of subtle impacts they have, often not subtle impacts as well, then you can’t unsee that kind of thing. You then can understand the problems.

I mean especially nationalism. I mean, the academic literature on nationalism and the history of where nationalism came from as a general phenomenon, not Irish nationalism, but generally, is absolutely fascinating. And again, it’s quite mind-blowing to think that we’re born into nations, and we think this is a kind of natural state of things, and we have our own state because we’re all a happy nation together. But you learn, as is well established in scholarship on nationalism, that nations are these invented things, that essentially big power units called states made up nationalism as a way to get people to obey the state and go out and fight for it. That’s how states evolved.

Now, states are good at providing public services and so on. They’re quite useful and efficient and that’s why they’re still around. But when you really dig into the kind of socially constructed nature of our world, you realise it’s got a crazy origin, and there’s so much awful stuff in history, but also that, you know, if we made the world this way, then we can make the world in a different way. I think that’s what education is really about: that we don’t just take the world for granted, that we are empowered. That’s what peace education is all about, to empower people to try and change it if they can.

David McCANN: Is there a danger? Because we’re now in 26 years from the Good Friday Agreement. There is a sense that the big piece, if we pardon the pun, is solved. That is solved. We often hear that phrase, “We’re not going back.” I hear that. It’s one thing that unites the leaders of the main communal blocs. “We’re not going to go back to that. Stormont may fall, it may rise, no matter what, but we’re not going to go back to 1969 to 1998.”

You’ve raised the danger of complacency there. I mean, what do your sense of? Because if it is, if we if we’ve kind of got the big kind of peace process issue solved, then that falls into the background. The work that you’re kind of doing falls down the rungs of prominence for funding, for attention, for these different things. And I’m not saying this in a rent-seeking way, but I mean this in a in a way because quite often we forget.

I would often have teased my grandmother for moving back here in 1968 from London, and she would have always said to me, “You know, David, none of us knew that the Troubles were going to happen. You’re looking back 25 years after the fact, none of us knew that that was going to happen. We kind of slept-walked into it.” So what would be your sense of that?

David MITCHELL: I’m quite optimistic about Northern Ireland, partly because of what I’ve been saying about, when you compare it to other places, our problems are relatively minor. And I think the achievements here are amazing. And another reason I’m optimistic is because I’ve met so many people who have changed themselves and do amazing work. The sense of human transformation, I think, is quite clear here. But the idea that peace and reconciliation are not relevant is nonsense.

I mean, it is true that we’ve made big achievements here, but we’re in a global world. That’s a tautology, but we’re in a big interconnected world. I mean, just turn on the news. Ukraine, Europe has re-militarised before our very eyes. Production of weapons in East Belfast, near me, is soaring because of the Ukraine war, I’ve just read today. And then what you’ve got going on in Gaza where, Israel and its Western allies, which purport to be the most advanced countries in the world, are managing to oversee the slaughter of people. And it’s happening on the news and we can’t really do anything about it. So that suggests again, to me, that we do need to educate ourselves and pay a lot closer attention to what’s going on.

And certainly in an Irish context, let’s not be complacent either because we know people are talking now about the next thing, possible Irish unity. And I think there’s an interesting debate about the reconciliation versus Irish unity, which I saw on TV the other night.

David McCANN: What did you make as someone who’s involved in kind of this debate? And obviously, I’m not asking you to state any views on the constitutional preference, but for you, in terms of that debate, because often it was interesting, and I actually have read columns from it, the divergence between how unionists reacted to that, how Irish nationalists reacted to that, people in the Alliance Party reacted to it. What did you make of it?

David MITCHELL: Yeah, it’s quite a complex and subtle debate, I think. You sort of have to really think about it. I mean, I suppose I can see both sides. I mean, my instincts would be: yeah, let’s reconcile first and then have Irish unity, if that’s what people want. But again, the counter-argument is also true, that we can’t necessarily say when we’ve reached reconciliation.

And arguably, that’s then a disincentive for unionists to reconcile if they don’t want constitutional change. But this is all part of the debate, and we have to have these really interesting conversations. And maybe that’s one of the challenges for us here in the North going forward, which is to try and have both of these conversations in a sensible way at the same time. I think the Irish unity debate is fascinating, even just because it’s an opportunity to think about politics more, to think about the type of country we want. I think it’s also useful in the sense that it may show up some of the deep differences and problems that we still have between the North and the South.

So I think, because of my experience of crossing the border a lot throughout my life, I’m very aware of these differences. And again, the North being different to the South doesn’t mean we can’t have Irish unity because there are lots of states in the world that have profound regional differences and they function okay. But nevertheless, I mean, it’s amazing to think about the degree of difference between the North and the South. And it may be that we have the debate and we conclude we don’t want Irish unity. I mean, I think it’s the preordained nature of the debate that annoys unionists. That’s the way Sinn Féin talk about it. But it could well be, especially Southerners may have the debate and they might not like the look of what it might mean. But I think it can coexist alongside the reconciliation work. They don’t have to be at loggerheads.

David McCANN: Yeah, and we saw, obviously, Cyprus is a famous example where the North voted one way for unification. The South went another way and just emphasised the differences about what unity meant to the two. And when that rubber hit the road, it was that two states went a different way.

What further research is being done that can assist people who are practitioners in this field?

David MITCHELL: Academics can only do so much, and I’m not sure that practitioners are sitting around waiting for some kind of academic to come along with the sort of the Holy Grail of the answer to conflict.

I think we just need to keep studying and keep educating really, and that will support the practitioners. I mean, something I’d love to do is to get peace studies out there more. The course I teach is a master’s at a good university. It’s behind, the firewall of fees and so on. And it’s not really accessible to ordinary people, especially those in communities who might benefit from it. It’s not accessible to practitioners, particularly, either, who can’t pay the fees or don’t have the time and so on. So, I’d love to find ways of bringing peace studies out there more and more and more and get ways to engage the public just with the concept of peace and have those debates. Because, like we’re saying about Ukraine and Gaza and so many other places, it’s just such a relevant, important topic.

I mean, if we can’t live together, then humanity doesn’t have a future. So I think that’s what I would say, again. That education element.

David McCANN: Brilliant. Okay, David, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. Thank you. It was so multifaceted and in a time when nuance is in short supply, it’s been really refreshing to have such a nuanced conversation.

So thank you very much for your time today.

You have been listening and watching David Mitchell talking to me, David McCann. This has been part of the Northern Peacebuilders project. If you’ve been interested in any aspect of this conversation, you can visit Shared Future News for other episodes and podcasts.

This episode is part of our series on Northern Peacebuilders — interviews with individuals whose work and efforts contribute to better community relations in Northern Ireland.

The theme song, The Trouble’s Never Over, is used by license from Scott Anderson.

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, other platforms and by RSS.

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In this episode of Northern Peacebuilders, we meet Gerard Deane, who discusses his background in peacebuilding and community development, influenced by his father’s work at Holywell Trust. He reflects on his university experience and the disconnect between theoretical peace studies and real-world conflict. Gerard emphasizes the importance of values-based practice, building relationships, and the need for systemic change. He acknowledges the challenges in engaging the public, particularly younger people, and the impact of a divided society on their identities and opportunities.

INTERVIEW POSTSCRIPT

Your favourite book on conflict resolution/community relations/peacebuilding?

I don’t have a favourite. But there’s one that sticks out, and it’s to me the most impactful. It’s Freya McClements and Joe Duffy’s book, Children of the Troubles.

Peace is…

hard won. I think it’s fair to say.

Peace can only be brought about by…

committing to each other and being honest in what we’re doing.

I was inspired by…

those around me, parents and beyond.

The Northern Ireland conflict could be transformed if…

we got the structures right, and people were more generous with each other.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Allan: Thank you very much, Gerard, for joining us in our podcast, Northern Peacebuilders. You’re very welcome and thanks for agreeing to speak with us.

Gerard: No bother. Thanks for thinking of me for it, honoured.

Allan: So, Gerard, let’s start with the beginning. We’d like to know where your personal interest in peacebuilding or community development work came from.

Gerard: I suppose there’s a couple of sides to this. The first is really obvious. If anybody knows me and knows the family connection, I was born on it.

Let’s call it what it is. My father’s Eamon Deane. Eamon Deane did many things, worked in the Bogside Community Association and Youth Ways for many years, but one of the other things he did was set up Holywell Trust. So, in many ways, I’ve been steeped in this work for a long time. We were always dragged along as children to whatever events that Holywell were running. And had the good fortune to be able to build relationships across those traditional lines, if you like, long before others.

Allan: How old were you when you were getting dragged along to some of these events?

Gerard: Ah, you’re talking teenage years, you know what I mean?

Allan: Were there any of those events that really stuck with you?

Gerard: No, it was always more the relationships or the people that you met. Because of the type of work that Eamon was doing, it was always the people and the connections that he made were that bit different than just going to school and meeting people from your own community background. So, that was really important.

I think there was always a sense of the work and the sense of the importance of the work that he was doing. It had dragged us along to the odd protest march and that type of thing back in the day as well. There was always that values-based approach to building relationships that came from the home and Eamon and my mother Sally as well.

But I suppose for me, it wasn’t just seeing Eamon working and seeing the work that he was doing and the change that he was trying to bring around. It was also me looking around me going, I have a commitment to this place. The only people that are going, it sounds really big-headed, but the only people that are going to change here are the people from here, and I’m making a commitment to stay here. And this is at a time in the late ’80s, early ’90s, when it’s like, I’m at a school where 85 per cent of the people left to go to university, like left this island to go to university. And I made a commitment that I wouldn’t do that, that I’d stay here.

I wanted to do peace and conflict studies and I had two options. One was Bradford, and one was [Ulster University] Magee [campus], and I chose Magee. Because it was partly me embedding myself here, valuing the local institution that we have, but also saying, I have something to contribute to this conversation. I am committed to making a change in this place.

I want to tackle whatever issues that there are, be they peacebuilding, deprivation, or community development. However, we need to do that. I am making that personal statement that I’m not going anywhere, and I’m here for the long term, and I haven’t gone anywhere since.

Allan: Can you tell me a little bit about your university experience then?

Gerard: So, I went the Magee, as I said, and done peace and conflict studies. [I did] that for four years. It was an interesting experience because, at the time, this was pre-ceasefire, so the conflict’s still going on. It was a really frustrating experience. One of the reasons that I chose not to go to Bradford and went to Magee was that you’re studying peace and conflict studies in an active conflict zone, and the opportunities that that would present in my mind was, let’s really get in-depth, let’s meet the people who are trying to build the peace. Let’s look at the practitioners, let’s just move beyond theory. That’s what I assumed would happen, and it didn’t, which was really frustrating. It’s like we studied the Northern Ireland conflict until 1968 and then stopped.

There was the odd passing reference when we were looking at Sri Lanka and Tamil Tigers and that type of thing — you know, it’s like Tamil Tigers are kind of like the IRA. No, you know, you can’t just make flippant remarks like that.

That was the biggest frustration that I had was it was, I think, a huge missed opportunity. And talking to the people that I was on the course with, they came here for exactly the same reason. These are people from all over who came here to go, if you’re going to look at this issue, you have to look at it, take the opportunity to look at an issue where it’s live. The course was dead on, you get all the theoretical background, and here’s what’s happening in other parts of the world, here’s what the UN does, all that type of stuff.

But I think there was a real missed opportunity to embed both the university and its practice and students into the local community. It’s like the ultimate frustration I had was part of the course was a six-month placement. I ended up coming to the Holywell Trust to do it, and I organised a visit of Israeli Jews and Palestinians to come to Ireland, and that was an intense program.

Allan: About when was this?

Gerard: It’s 1994. Okay. So, ’93 ’94. So, they’re going through difficulties, and they were coming here whenever we hadn’t resolved things just yet either, and that was an intense enough program. But I didn’t hear from anybody in the university for the whole time I was in placement. I could have been washing dishes, somewhere; it wouldn’t have mattered. So long as I wasn’t near them, they were grand. And when I shared that with them after my placement, I wasn’t the most popular student in the class. But that’s okay. There was a few home truths that they needed to hear. There was no vetting of, “What are you going to do when you’re there? Is this aligning with the principles and the themes of the course?” And all that. It was just, go along and enjoy yourself for six months.

Allan: But you demonstrated that you were keen to actually try to put some of the theory into practice or at least learn from elsewhere.

Gerard: Aye, I think part of the challenge was, doing the course is so theoretical and you’re doing everything from psychology and philosophy and everything else alongside it. Making it a reality is often very different. And making it the reality is about building relationships with the people that are in the room. And whatever theory that you’re building it on, it’s like if your values-based practice is simply I’m doing this because it’s the right thing to do, we’re doing this based on a set of principles where nobody’s going to be harmed, and our ultimate goal here is to build relationships for longer-term peace, then I think that’s the way you have to do it. You know, you can get into [Johan] Galtung’s theory or whatever it is. But in practice, I think it’s about building relationships with people.

Allan: Can you remark about whether you think the theory-practice relationship’s gotten any better since your days at the university? Or are you learning more from other practitioners who are applying [a values-based approach]?

Gerard: I think there’s a balance. The peace programme showed up where you get that crossover between the academic theory and practice.

It’s like the Hamber-Kelly model of reconciliation, the five strands. I think it’s very strong and very good, and it wouldn’t have been developed if it hadn’t have been through the academic institute. So, I think that was something that’s really, really important. I do think that academics are in the space, and it’s like if you take the work of CAIN, for example, the archiving work that they do, and the collecting of all the information is essential and invaluable.

But when it comes to peace theories, I think in practice, when you’re talking to practitioners on the ground, there’s that gap between how you actually do things and your theoretical background.

One really obvious exception would be The Junction, who are our partner organisation. They developed the ethical and shared remembering principles about how you remember the decade of centenaries that was developed well in advance of the decade. That’s about remembering the context and doing no further damage and all that type of thing. That was an example of practitioner-led theory development, and that’s been rolled out everywhere. It ended up with Johnston McMaster, he helped develop it, sitting on [Ireland] President Higgins’ council and that type of thing. So, it did have an impact. I think most councils and most public bodies looked at it.

Allan: I need to declare that at Shared Future News we applied those principles for our podcast, What Northern Ireland Means to Me, which is part of marking the centenary of Northern Ireland.

Gerard: Because they made it accessible, but it was also based on practice. And they based it on, here’s how we do our work, here’s the principles behind it. And when you think about it, they’re logical and they make sense. But they have worked it through, and they’ve developed it to a stage where it’s easy for people to get their head around, which, I think, some academic theories or practices are a bit removed.

Allan: Harder to maybe translate into the actual work on the ground?

Gerard: Yeah.

Allan: So, in building these relationships, can you describe how hard it is? What are some of the challenges? Or what are some of your methods in ensuring that relationships are constructively built?

Gerard: Okay, well, the first thing they say, it takes a long time and a lot of effort to build up, because what we found was that you have to be that trusted broker, if you like, to be able to have those conversations first.

Because, like, we all know how this place works. It’s on what side is your organisation generally leaning. And Holywell Trust, the organisation I work for, takes a really strong stance to go what’s really… we have no set outcome of where we want to go. The only outcome that we’re working towards is that we want a peaceful society where everybody’s prospering, everybody’s safe.

And the way that we get there is through doing a range of programmes and activities and whatever else. We put a lot of time and effort into making sure that we are perceived as non-aligned. And that takes a lot of time, and it’s also quite difficult at times.

The best example being this building that we’re sitting in. So, we’re sitting in the shared building that we own and manage, along with a number of other organisations, right in the heart of the city. Whenever it first opened nearly ten years ago, we had a lot of calls from politicians going, “Now that you’re open, can I come up and have my photograph taken with you and congratulate you and stuff?” And I was like, “Eh, no, you can’t, you can’t.”

And you can’t because as soon as you do, that’s us aligned. But what we would welcome is if you want to come up and have a conversation, along with all the other politicians, about how this works when we move forward. And we made sure they hold that — I don’t want to say neutral — but hold that non-aligned stance where we can be in a position to hold the difficult conversations with anybody.

So, in all our work we do that. One example is our Future Relationship Conversations project. That project is basically engaging with the, for want of a better term, Protestant/Unionist/Loyalist community to talk about the constitutional question. The rationale behind it is, if we ever end up in a border poll position, what we would like people to do is make an informed choice based on fact, rather than perhaps mistruths that we have experienced through the Brexit process, for example.

We’ve said to people, look, if you can park the identity question — because that’s yours, that’s private, I’m not trying to change your identity, your flag, or your, whatever that is. What you need to know about this conversation that’ll help you make a better choice, or make a choice, an informed choice.

And we had to prepare a whole position paper to say, here’s the principles behind what we’re doing, here’s our position on this, and our position was really clear. It’s the conversation that’s important. We have no set outcome. If there’s going to be a united Ireland, there’s going to be a united Ireland. If there’s not, there’s not.

We were seen as that trusted facilitator. And we were able to get into the communities and have the open and honest conversations. And whenever you are able to, to an extent, park the identity question, because you never fully park it, you realise that people are really concerned about their children, their health, education, jobs, and how that would look in any future. We did research based on what people were telling us, and we launched that and stuff.

I think it’s really important, it’s like we set out our stall at the start, and it was why Holywell Trust was doing this work, why we’re doing it with you, what we’re asking of participants, how we will be with you.

And key it all is, like, really dead simple things. Building up the ability in people to listen. We always say, listening isn’t just waiting for your opportunity to speak. Listening is actively engaging with the person that’s speaking, questioning what it is that they’re saying, if you have a query about it. And then you can start to hear what the person’s saying, rather than just listening to their voice. And when you start hearing what they’re saying and where they’re coming from, then you can start to maybe understand where they’re coming from and what they’re saying.

Allan: So, you say you set out your stall, but how do you know that anyone’s going to attend and those who you’d like to engage, are going to engage?

Gerard: Well, I think part of the process is that we’ve built up a reputation of doing this work since 1988. Okay. So, it hasn’t been an overnight thing. You build up the relationships.

Allan: Can you describe some of that lead-in work?

Gerard: So, I’ve been here in Holywell since 2004, working full-time. I worked on a number of other projects with Holywell before that. But since 1988, they’ve been having the difficult conversations. A lot of quiet conversations that I can’t even tell you about, because it’s supporting processes and supporting people who are going through processes.

Allan: Was that within Holywell or beyond Holywell?

Gerard: Oh no, beyond. We’re a really small team. What we see our role as, is we try to amplify the work that we are doing and the work of others. So, key to that is building key partnerships. We can’t do this work in isolation. You know, it’s not a bunch of do-gooders sitting up on Bishop Street trying to have a conversation with themselves. That’s pointless. So, we try and engage with the people that have been most affected by the conflict, but also those that will have some influence [on the] future direction of where we might be going.

Allan: Is this where the Northwest Community Network might have had a role? What was the role of that network?

Gerard: Holywell Trust was one of the founding organisations on the Northwest Community Network, but that’s slightly different in that it’s a community development network primarily, so it’s about supporting all the member organisations, and I think there’s about a hundred active members of the network at the minute. That’s a more practical thing, around how can we support you with your governance and getting your funding and that type of thing. Yes, part of the bigger conversations as well. As a sector we need to be stronger on what the sector says, or representing the sector at key places. It’s more a community development type thing.

Holywell’s always tried to hold a role, when it comes to community relations… at times we would describe ourselves as a thought leader, where we, along with the people that we’re working with, identify what the issues are. It’s not rocket science to identify what the issues are here.

And then we try, through our very small team, and our influence with whoever we need to influence, to try to make the change. To try to help the citizen voice amplified with those that need to hear it. So that’s when it comes to, if you like, policy change, but also just to build our relationships within this community.

And we’re not the only ones doing it and we’re not claiming this is all down to us. But we do see the likes of this building that we’re sitting in as a key venue for that type of work. It’s like, there’s another organisation in here today running a Theatre of Witness workshop. And that’s amazing.

Theatre of Witness is one of the projects that we did in partnership with The Playhouse. And it’s now got a life of its own and it’s rolling on. And that’s the type of thing we love to see. But it’s also a place where we will bring politicians and policymakers and others and challenge them and go, “How are you doing this? How are you going to serve people better than you currently are?” Because how we are at the moment isn’t great.

Allan: Beyond identifying the issues, how would you address some of the challenges of actually getting the desired policy changes into place? Not just on politicians but also what can be done even just locally and within the sector itself?

Gerard: I think there’s a number of challenges that we’re facing, especially when it comes to change. Firstly, is the [Northern Ireland] Executive. Any change that’s going to come about is going to be slow, if at all. I think there’s a real challenge when it comes to some of our civil service. We can have a risk-adverse civil service. Our civil service is too large. It’s really slow to react. I think, unless we can find a way to make it easier for us as a sector to go, “Here’s how we can help you do your job,” then we’re not going to make real change.

It’s like, we’re core funded, and have programme money through the Together: Building the United Community strategy. And if anybody was to sit down now and write a good relations strategy, for want of a better word or description, you wouldn’t write it like that. I don’t think it’s fantastic.

I think it’s something that I know the executive are currently looking at it, the executive officer looking at it. It needs refreshed, it needs updated, it needs to be made more relevant to the people that are actually either delivering the programmes or taking part in the programmes that are funded under it.

I don’t think it’s ambitious enough and it doesn’t create a clear way forward.

Part of our challenge in this whole society, and I’ll give you a bit of an example. We do a future leaders programme. We are taking a group of 20 people through a yearlong program to become the next generation of community leaders. Just last week we brought them down to Dublin. We did a whole range of visits, everything from community organisations right up to President Higgins and ministers and the whole bit. And it was really, really good and really insightful. The thing that struck me, nearly above all else, was everybody that we met had a clear vision of what it was that they were working on. Because they were all quite happy that Ireland is an independent country, that they’re working to programmes of government, that they have certain strategic directions that they want to achieve, and they’re all working together towards it. Our problem here, one of our problems, is that we have political parties, some of whom are actively trying to change the constitutional position of this place, and when that’s your position, you’re not gonna work to make this place work better in the longer term.

And I think that’s a challenge. And we need people who are going to commit to, at least in the short to medium term to go, “Whatever border poll might come or whatever processes we may put on the place, this place needs to work better until then.”

And we’re not there yet. I don’t think we’re in a position where we’re like, right, everybody needs served by our public offices, whatever they are. And let’s find a way of doing it so that in 5/10/15/20 years’ time, deprivation is lower, educational achievement is higher, the health service has been sorted, relationships on a cross-community basis are better.

We nearly need that statement to go, “We’re parking this for a while.” Whatever this is — be it strengthening relations with London or trying to get a 32-county Ireland — whatever that is, that’s not changing for the short term. So, let’s make a decision to make here work. And making here work means working together.

But it also means going, “We’re committed to this place and the people that are here,” and I don’t get that sense.

Allan: I think that can be observed by many others as well, the contrast about when there’s a consensual vision, it’s easier for people to collaborate. But what about at the local level and the role, let’s say here, Derry [City] and Strabane District Council and the powers that they have within good relations and community development? Are there pros and cons of that as well in regards to the powers they have? They have more powers than they had before, but they’re still bound by T:BUC in some sense. So, can you maybe describe the relationship you’ve had with the council?

Gerard: Well, look, we’re delighted to be funded and core funded by council for the last few years to do good relations work. And it’s a really welcome support. I think council in general are really committed to building relationships here. Their officers and the councillors…

One of the things about our council that they realise and they get really clearly is, unless we work together, unless we work collectively, no matter what your background — in fact, unless we work together with Donegal County Council and others as well — this area of this island isn’t going to be well served.

There is a collective vision to try and address the poverty, the deprivation, all those underlying statistics. And I think council are really committed to doing that. They’re hamstrung at times when it comes to the good relations work because of the policy that they’re working under and all the forms we have to fill out and all that type of stuff. But that’s practical delivery. And that’s the type of thing that can be changed.

But when it comes to the commitment, and if you like the drive of the organisation or the people involved in it, I think they really are committed and we’re happy to help them, as are others. You know, they do give out the grants, they do approach us, they do work together, and we’re quite happy to do that.

As I said, I’m involved in the peace partnership as well, with the council, and you can see the commitment. They go, “Right, we need to serve people better here, and we need to just raise all our aspirations for this place and when we’re working together, we’re better.”

Allan: I want to ask you about the “we” then, in regards to what the rest of us can do — what you would like to see or any suggestions, to encourage the rest of us to get engaged and get involved in this work.

Gerard: Well, the work, it’s, it’s mad and it’s nearly unfair the way this work works out, okay? In that we are asking and expecting the people that have been most affected by the conflict to do the biggest shift, right? And that’s entirely unrealistic. You’re talking about people who’ve been traumatised, who’ve lost loved ones, who’ve gone through the worst times, and they’re the ones that we’re expecting to reconcile.

I think that’s unrealistic and unfair. I think that generally, the silent majority piece, we need to get a lot better at. We need to be encouraging everyone — everyone — to think in terms of what can we be doing better together. But that requires structural change and systemic change.

And, let’s be realistic, we’ve just come out of a conflict. That doesn’t happen overnight. It’s really unrealistic to expect that to happen. Your systems and your structures reflect the society that you’re from and that you live in. Yes, they can help change, but it’s not an overnight thing. It’s also, I think, a period after conflict is when people need to feel safe for a while, and we need to build normality and find a new normality, because for 40-odd years we were at war with one another.

So, to put it back on the people, I think is nearly unfair. I think what’s needed here is leadership, and leadership at all levels, be that community level and people speaking out and representing and saying, “Look, here’s how we should be doing things.” And we try and lead by example in that regard. But I think we need generosity and leadership, particularly from our political leaders, to go, “We need a step change here.”

The assumption that in 1998 that was us done, I think was naive. I think that was us starting. But by the time we got to ’98, everybody was knackered and just let it sit for a while and trusted people to get on with things.

We need to learn to be generous with one another in the sense of, this can’t be a you-get-this-so-I-need-that. Sometimes we need to give stuff away or to give stuff up in order for everybody to benefit. That is one of the things that’s key. That, and if you’re really all about changing systemic problems or attitudes, it’s a huge problem. It’s a huge issue.

You know, we need to be talking about anti-poverty strategies. We need to be talking about infrastructure. We need to be talking about connectivity about how we serve everyone in this place. And until we do such, it’s really difficult.

But the general populace, I don’t think we should be forcing our work upon them. This should be something that comes naturally, and will change over time.

We do work with some of the people who have been directly impacted by the conflict, and it’s really important that we do. But we also try and work with the public, or civic society, or however you want to describe that. Because their voice is really important, but it’s been really silent. And they’ve also been silenced, because there’s no mechanism that exists for them to have their say on key things.

Allan: My anecdotal experience — but there’s also data to back some of this up — I definitely noticed among the 20 and 30-year-olds their expectations of a good life are so different than when I was their age here. Gives me a little bit of hope, but I’m also cognizant of not burdening them with our biases and the things that troubled us at an age. And yet you mentioned identities earlier. When I listened to these young people, they all have a variety of identities — ethno-national and ordinary — and they don’t seem to be losing much sleep over this, you see, which is refreshing for me. My question is if you can describe to us any of your work with younger people, where they’re coming from, and what you’ve learned from them.

Gerard: Well, the majority of our work is with adults, okay? So, that’s the first thing to say. I think my knowledge of youth work and young people is anecdotal as much as anybody else’s because I don’t have the energy to work with them! It takes a certain level of commitment and drive that left me years ago.

Allan: But the issues that they raise whether it’s about LGBT identities or reproductive rights or any of these things — those issues that really exercise them, the environment, for example. Maybe they’re pushing those issues up on us older people?

Gerard: Well, I hope they are because they’re issues that really need [to be] addressed. I look at my own children and those are the issues that concern them and their friends. But at the same time, they’re also living in a divided society where there’s limited opportunity to meet people from the other background, whatever that may be. And that’s not natural.

That’s okay for a while. But what happens is you do reinforce division and you do reinforce that sense of separation and the otherness that is addressed to a certain point through whatever youth programmes or school, shared schools, shared education stuff they do. But when you’re getting it at home, still, you know, when certain levels of sectarianism still exist in the house, you’re going to learn that, you’re going to, it’s nearly through osmosis that it comes into you, and you know what your cultural identity is as opposed to someone else’s.

And I think that’s most keenly felt in working-class areas, where division is harshest and nearly designed in that way. I don’t think educating people together is the lightning bolt solution that we’re going to have. But until we change our systems where it’s okay to live in certain areas, or it’s okay to do whatever, that things become more natural together, [then] I think we’re going to be struggling. It’s like we’re still, I think, glorifying some of the conflict, as well as transferring some of the trauma to some of the young people. And we can’t normalise that.

I think that’s part of the challenge is: yes, this work is really important; let’s meet the young people where they are. We can’t hammer the stuff that we’ve gone through, but there’s lessons to be learned.

Allan: Gerard, thanks very much for your insights.

This episode is part of our series on Northern Peacebuilders — interviews with individuals whose work and efforts contribute to better community relations in Northern Ireland.

The theme song, The Trouble’s Never Over, is used by license from Scott Anderson.

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, other platforms and by RSS.

View Details

In this episode of Northern Peacebuilders, we meet David Robinson, who discusses his journey into peacebuilding and community relations. He shares personal experiences from his childhood, involvement in Corrymeela, and later work at Belfast City Council, particularly in the Decade of Centenaries. David emphasises the importance of genuine reconciliation and building positive relationships to create a peaceful and safe society.

INTERVIEW POSTSCRIPT

What is your favourite book or resource on conflict resolution/community relations/peacebuilding?

Common Sense — a pamphlet that was produced by loyalists.

Peace is…

challenging.

Peace can only be brought about by…

me changing myself and my attitudes.

I was inspired by…

Bertie Ahern.

The Northern Ireland conflict could be transformed if…

we look at how we can change personally.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Allan: Today, I’m here with David Robinson, who works at Belfast City Council in community relations, and he is here to share with us his personal story of his work. So, you’re very welcome, David.

David: Thank you, Allan. Lovely to be here.

Allan: So what we would like to find out is where it all began. How did your journey into peacebuilding and community relations come about?

David: Gosh, right. I suppose when I look back on it all, I sort of wonder myself how it came about. And it really stems back to, I suppose, even thinking about when I was small growing up in Bray in County Wicklow in the south of Dublin.

I’m 49. So, whenever I was watching TV and watching the news as a child, I was seeing stuff that was happening on this island. It intrigued me because I thought I lived in the best place in the world. I thought Ireland was a great place to live. It was lovely. The weather was a bit questionable on occasion, but it was a, just a nice, peaceful place to live.

I grew up in a working-class estate called Old Court, where Katie Taylor, our famous Bray resident also grew up. And I think my first political experience, I would say, was whenever people in the estate put out black flags at the time of the hunger strikes.

And I remember there was graffiti on the wall out the back of where we lived, which said, “Free Nicky Kelly”. Do you remember Nicky Kelly from the train robbery?

I remember thinking graffiti and flags and I remember our local bin man, the guy who, who kept the streets clean around our estate — he was wearing a black armband around the time of the hunger strikes — and I remember asking myself, “What’s this all about?” And I was only seven at the time. That stuck with me.

I remember my grandfather — we used to go there every Saturday to my granny and grandad. They lived in Stillorgan in South Dublin. I remember talking to him and listening to him, I suppose, more than talking. He had some stories. He was born in 1911. So, he was a young boy, very young boy at the time of the 1916 Easter Rising. He had some memories of it, but he was evacuated out of Dublin city centre during the Easter Rising and went to Galloping Green, which is south side of Dublin. He just had some fantastic stories. he says he, and I don’t believe him, but he says he remembers Cathal Brugha being shot in Dublin and stuff like that. But he was able to paint pictures of stories. And so Irish history and the politics of the island became embedded into me at a very early stage.

Also as well, whenever he, you know, if Margaret Thatcher or Ian Paisley came onto the TV, he would turn it off, he would just turn the TV off. He wouldn’t be interested in listening. And that intrigued me as well. I said, “What’s wrong? What’s he doing that for?”

Whenever I progressed through school, I just became very interested in history and particularly Irish history. The teaching of Irish history in the south obviously is a lot different than it would be up here in terms of the curriculum. I became interested in people and their stories, and particularly, the whole Gaelic revival stuff that we were being taught around Padraig Pearce. And then the story of Joseph Mary Plunkett marrying Grace Gifford, and James Connolly intrigued me as well, coming over from Edinburgh to sort of try and get the workers, you know, and do all that. I might come back to that later on, because that sort of came full circle when I became a shop steward for SIPTU [trade union] a couple of years ago during the pandemic.

So, studying history in school, I was very interested in it.

My mum was a great example. She was involved in a lot of work in the community through — not church work, but through the church. So, the fundraising for the local community hall, the summer schemes that were ran, she became involved in that. She was always involved in the community and got us involved when we were sort of like 16, 17, as junior leaders in the local summer schemes and all that. I became very interested in the local community. And then one day a friend of the family… he’s a councillor in Wicklow County Council — an independent councillor, but at the time he was a Fianna Fáil councillor.

He knocked on the door and was canvassing for Brian Lenihan in the 1990 presidential election. I said, “I can’t vote Joe. I’m too young.” And he says, “Oh, right. Stick your coat on, sure, and come out with me and you can tell people why they should vote.” So, I got involved with Fianna Fáil. But it was really from the point of view of Joe being, and my mother was going, “Oh my God, what’s he doing now?”

Allan: It sounds like you got collared into it.

David: Got collared into it, literally collared into it. I had this sort of idea of a sense of Irishness, definitely. But also a sense of what’s wrong with this place. So, I had this vocational sort of thing going on, whereby I was interested in trying to be involved in finding out what’s wrong, what’s going on, and trying to do something about it.

Allan: It’s interesting you say you want to find out what’s going wrong because so far, this could be a story of someone who gets involved in southern politics, in southern society, in southern community groups. So, I’m intrigued to know what was nagging at you about the rest of this island.

David: That became clearer after a while. When I was deciding what I wanted to do with my life I, became interested in this notion of the priesthood. Because I thought, well, I can do something useful through that.

And then I thought, “But I don’t particularly want to do that. So what could I do instead?” So, I sort of made a deal with the man above and I said, “Right, when I leave school, I will apply to become a religion teacher.

So, I applied to become a religion teacher. Got accepted into a course in the Mater Dei Institute in Dublin, which trains teachers for secondary school. And I thought that would be good because I think my school experience was very positive. Our teachers in St. Kilian’s Community School in Bray were very enabling, very empowering. if we were interested in something, they really directed us that way.

But the priest thing never went away. So, I applied to become a priest as well. Then I had both of those offers sitting on the table. And I thought, if I do the teacher thing, that’ll be me, and I’ll always wonder what would’ve happened if I had of been a priest.

So, I sort of went and said, well, I’ll do the priest thing first, and if that doesn’t work out… So, I went into seminary in 1992. And I spent four years in the seminary.

But what happened during that time really just changed my whole direction. Because every year, each class in the seminary gets a class weekend away.

And in our fourth year our class priest was a man, Father Gareth Byrne. Gareth was a classmate of a guy called Alan Hilliard, who was a priest in Dublin. And Alan Hilliard’s sister-in-law was a lady called Paula Hevey, who was from Belfast, and Paula was involved in an organisation called Corrymeela.

For our class weekend away Gareth said, “Let’s go up the north,” because the ceasefires had been called at that stage, none of us had never been, most of us were probably very frightened of going across the border as southerners. We said, “Okay, let’s do it.”

We drove up cause there was only five of us — we were a very small class. We drove up and we went and we stayed in Portaferry for a night. Apparently loads of people who dive — divers — go to Portaferry. So, we were pretending we were divers for the weekend. We weren’t a bunch of trainee priests in the bars and stuff like that, and having the crack.

I just loved the fact that I was frightened about coming north, but I enjoyed it. But on our second day, we drove into Belfast up the Ards Peninsula. And I remember, and I remember it well because I ended up using this place, this garage, hundreds of times subsequently. We drove in, up from Portaferry, in through Dundonald, and down the Newtownards Road into East Belfast.

I remember seeing the flags and I remember going, Jeanie Mac! In your body, you could start to feel the tension. So, this was like 1994. Ceasefires were called, but the flags were there and the tension was there or whatever.

Paula had set up for us to visit the Shankill Road as part of our trip to Belfast. Paula had set up with a lady called Alison Morrow, who is related to obviously Duncan and the family, and John Morrow, who had been involved in Corrymeela. Alison met us in a coffee shop on the Shankill Road. I am literally cacking it sitting there looking around me as nervous as hell going, people are going to recognise the number plate on the car. People are going to hear our accents. We’re gone. We are done for here. Alison spoke to us about Northern Ireland, the issues and the situation and all that.

Listening to that story on the Shankill Road really just had a huge impact on me. She also spoke about Corrymeela, and that became something that just went into my soul and my brain and hasn’t left me since, to be honest with you.

We went back, and I kept thinking about it and kept thinking about it, and after you do four years in the seminary — in years 5, 6, and 7, it starts getting serious, you start taking vows of various descriptions.

I spoke to Gareth, and I said, “Gareth, I really loved Corrymeela. I just found it fascinating, and can I take a year out?” Gareth said, “Yes, let’s work on that, then take a year out.” Then Alison Morrow connected me up with Reverend David Godfrey, who was in Bray at the time, him and his wife. I went down to meet them, and they told me all about Corrymeela, and David had a slideshow. And it just looked amazing, but the Ballycastle site. I applied for the year out, and then at the same time, David Godfrey said to me, “Just to let you know, if you’re interested, the long-term volunteer programme in Corrymeela are looking for a southern male, preferably a Catholic, but in order to get the balance in the volunteer team for the coming year.”

So, I applied for it, and I remember meeting the volunteer coordinator in the city centre in Dublin. She came down. On that day, there was a bomb scare in Dublin, there was a bomb put in a skip in Dublin, and she had walked by it and said I’ve just come all the way down from Belfast here for the day, and you’re bringing me into this place where people are…

The irony of it all just made it all meant to be.

I went to Corrymeela in 1996 to do a volunteer year, and I ended up staying there for four years.

What attracted me to it was, and this is this is no criticism of anything. But going from an all-male institution into a community of men and women from different backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, the ecumenical aspect of Corrymeela, and also then the work that we were doing.

It was fascinating. We did a lot of work with youth groups, community groups, women’s groups, family groups.

Allan: Can you explain the framework of the work that you did at Corrymeela? What it’s founded on, how it’s exercised, who you work with?

David: That is the most fascinating thing about Corrymeela. You cannot learn through a book how to engage with what goes on in Corrymeela. You just literally simply have to just be there and be open. Just be open in yourself and being open to possibilities of what might happen and the changes.

And so that, to me, was the whole area where reconciliation for me became a really important thing. Because through everyday human interaction with people from a different background to you, you can learn so much. Primarily about yourself. And that’s where it shifted for me. This is not about me.

One of the things I wanted to come up was to find out what the problem was with these unionists, why they hated us so much and why a united Ireland would be such a bad thing. Very naive, hadn’t a clue, and I was going up to sort of just, ” I will just charm them into a united Ireland.”

Primarily, it’s about learning about yourself. So, immediately for me, I was learning about myself all the time — where my attitudes come from, what they mean to me, how they influence how I carry on in my day-to-day life.

It is a journey.

I remember one guy saying to me one day he says, “God, this is the only place I’ve ever been where I can mess up, but it’s okay.

Allan: Non-judgemental.

David: Non-judgemental. It’s fantastic. After my volunteer year working with the director at the time, Colin Craig, we applied for some funding to run a youth development program for 18 to 25-year-olds, and I got the job to be in charge of that. I was essentially a youth development worker. But I, I had no,

Allan: I was just about to ask, “With what training?”

David: The only training I had was my experience. Interestingly at that time, so you’re talking about ’96, ’97 at that time. I was interested in the politics.

One of the things I was able to do was organise a conference one weekend for young members of the Ulster Unionist Party and young members of Fianna Fáil. And it was a fascinating, fascinating wee weekend. People talking to each other and I’m thinking, “This is what it’s all about.” And this is where this can all happen, in Corrymeela.

We had people like Gary McMichael come up to speak to the group. Really, for me, that’s when I started to try and push myself, to find out more about unionism and loyalism, because I felt that that was the bit that I wasn’t aware of, and that I didn’t know much about.

Sometimes it was very hard to find people who would tell that story. And I’m sure people were telling that story, but for someone like me, I didn’t know many people who were able to tell that story.

I was in Corrymeela at the signing of the Good Friday Agreement at the time. And I remember watching it on a small little TV, watching it all unfold with a couple of American volunteers. We were all just fascinated that this could actually happen.

One of the best experiences that probably shaped the work that I’ve been doing since was whenever I was asked if I would work with a group of former UDA prisoners who were coming to Corrymeela after the prisoner release scheme. I spent a weekend with people who had just been released from prison, men and women. And that experience totally turned on its head the reasons why I was wanting to come up here in the first place.

They were the ones changing me rather than me trying to change them. By that I mean , I thought, you know, well, what’s the problem? But actually, if you ask people, so what is it, what’s it about, what’s your story about, what’s your politics about, your community about, and you actually listen. For me it was a great sense of, wow, this is a serious political, cultural identity that shouldn’t be just dismissed. Or it shouldn’t be just, “Ah, they’ll come round at some stage.” You know, that’s the sort of, the sense of the out-there conversation. But that sort of sense of confidence and pride and security was something that I felt I wanted to explore more about.

Allan: Perhaps that’s a segue into some of the work you’ve done since then. I mean, it sounds through your journey that you’ve put respect into action. You have this curiosity and your curiosity sounds like it’s led you to grow. I’m curious to learn how you’ve been able to apply that to other work.

David: The journey in Corrymeela, after four years working in a place like that, which is very intense, there was quite a bit of burnout, and I got a bit ill. The local GP actually came up and just said, “Pack your bag. You’re coming down to stay with me.” And I ended up staying with him for a number of weeks. The burnout thing, and that’s been probably something that’s been a reoccurring thing. So, you immerse yourself and you throw yourself into this and you’re trying to find out and it’s all a bit manic and it’s all a bit, “I need to know this now.”

I finished with Corrymeela just before Christmas in 2000. And I just took a bit of time out. Then I stayed in Ballycastle. I said to myself, I may as well be on the dole in Ballycastle as anywhere else. So, I stayed in Ballycastle and got involved in the local community. But also did a little bit of youth work, got a job as a part time youth worker.

Then I went and worked in the probation service for a year. They had a residential centre in Ballycastle called Ramoan. Again, met a totally different side of life in Northern Ireland that I hadn’t encountered much at all. Some people that I had met through the probation service who had been, victims of paramilitaries and all of that. So, you’re getting a number of different areas.

Then a job came up in Cooperation Ireland. So, I went and worked for them for a few years, for three years. Which was a fantastic experience. It was the cross-border stuff that was, and again, using my experience of the people and the contacts that I met at Corrymeela to try and get people from the loyalist community involved in cross-border activities and cross-border projects.

Allan: Were there some, successes and challenges with that?

David: There were. Some of the successes were that people did get involved from different parts of Belfast. Some of the challenges were for me going into places that I had never thought I would ever go into and estates and areas and social clubs and bars that I… When I tell people some of the places, “Are you serious? Are you mad?” Everywhere I went, I always was treated with the utmost courtesy and respect. And people making sure that I felt safe and comfortable. There was occasions where people were asking, “Who is he and what’s he doing here?” Partly, a bit of naivety on my part probably got me through that, but also as well I think the prior fear of going to meet people in their space and just going and doing it was something that… I can tell you some very funny stories. But working for Cooperation Ireland was good in that sense.

Then an opportunity came up to work for Belfast City Council, and that was in 2006. I applied for the job. I wasn’t sure I would get it. It was just one of those things. But I think for me, I felt that that would be a great place where I could really try and engage people from unionist/loyalist background in the work that was going on there at that sort of civic level.

In 2006–2007, the political environment transformed with Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness becoming First Minister and deputy First Minister. I came into the job in the council at a really good time, when the political environment but also the community environment… There was something about those years that were really, you know, the golden years for community relations work in some senses.

Allan: It reminds me, that was about the time the A Shared Future policy in community relations had been developed.

David: I think you had a nice sense of where the top and the bottom were all working in tandem, and there was a golden thread going through it.

Allan: That’s a nice way of putting it.

David: And it made people like me able to do a good job. And it was easy enough. And again, I got involved in all that sort of work, particularly around unionist/loyalist cultural expression, through my work in the council. The people that I met and the contacts that I had again through a number of years now of this sort of work was really, really helpful and beneficial to try and just draw people into what you were doing. That was very good.

Then the work progressed into the whole work around the commemorations. That really started back in 2011. But again, trying to use our history as something that could be shared, as something that we could all get involved with.

I think this has happened over the course of the Decade of Centenaries work. Something that we can all learn something about each other from. One of the benefits of the whole Decade of Centenaries work was the fact that it was out of current living memory. So, what happened, happened a hundred years ago. And when you look back on it and engage people in the conversations around it, you can find ways of commemorating it in a really positive way.

Allan: David, what were some of the dimensions behind the Decade of Centenaries, some of the policies and some of the stakeholders that were involved?

David: It was a very, very interesting program and the approach. Because I think at that time, back around 2010, 2011, people were, people were saying that this is coming down the line. And I think, and particularly the Irish government as well, were onto it. I think I remember Brian Cowan, at one stage, gave a speech where he outlined what an approach from the Irish government could be. Then the Community Relations Council and the Heritage Lottery established a group, a round table group, to put together a set of underpinning principles that would inform how commemorative activity could work.

And those principles were quite simple. It was around being factual, so looking at the facts. It was around not doing anything that would be triumphalist in nature. It was about adding of different perspectives. So, it was really about saying that, look, there’s lots of different ways we can do this, so let’s do it together. In our place, councillors adapted those principles, and agreed back in 2011 that anything that would be done under the Decade of Centenaries would be done under these series of principles.

That was really the beauty of how the whole process worked. Commemoration in general and in today’s world commemoration is generally can be seen as contested, can be seen as potentially disputed. We don’t agree on the narrative around the commemorative activity and event and all of that.

But for the decade of centenaries, we did. And it was a fantastic example of how if there’s goodwill there and if people are willing to find ways to say, well, let’s, if we want to do this, let’s find a way of doing it as best we can for all of our benefit. And that’s what happened.

So, the whole work around the Decades of Centenaries, which I was privileged to be involved in, did contain those multiple narratives, those multiple perspectives, and gathering all that into one place was a really fantastic experience, but also a fantastic example of how commemoration can work in a divided society, but a way in which you can promote sharedness.

You’re talking about particularly contentious things. I mean, when you’re talking back to the decade of centenaries, it started really with the Balmoral Review, the Ulster Covenant, ending with the partition of the island and how to create activity and events, exhibitions, multimedia, because COVID put us all into the multimedia world of how to have these conversations online.

It was it was a great experience. And if I can acknowledge, God rest him, but Éamon Phoenix, who was my sort of Belfast daddy teacher. Working with him was an absolute privilege. We were in the Linen Hall Library one day discussing an idea for a conference type event, and we were hushed twice in the library by people who were sitting reading books. And we just burst out laughing, the two of us, because we were so excited about what we were talking about. That academic expertise and input into the whole area of the Decade of Centenaries was fantastic.

But key to it all was the work of community organisations, and particularly within the unionist community, a lot of the Somme societies, and a lot of the groups who have commemorative organisations for aspects around things like the First World War. To be able to work with them in such a positive way was again, another part of my whole journey around me finding out what it is that is important to people from unionist, loyalist communities.

Allan: I’m glad you pay tribute to the late Éamon Phoenix. You’ve highlighted the role of good local history, working with local communities to bring stories to wider audiences. Can you share with us some aspirations about other work, whether it’s here or abroad that chimes with you, that you recognise as good practice?

David: I think one of the things that I struggle with is that we have differing cultural identities within our society. And I think while most people and particularly young people… I have an 18-year-old son who’s interested in politics and is doing it in school. But his politics and his experience of what he was seeing on the news compared to mine, which I talked about earlier on, is totally different.

His worldview is much broader, I think, than mine. The issues that are of importance to him centre around things like poverty, cost of living, the environment, mental health, and he’s not really interested in getting a deposit to buy a house. He’s not really interested in amassing material things.

He’s interested in the world in a very different way than I was. Even though my interest brought me to live 140 miles away from where I was brought up.

We have that part of our society now, but we still have those competing cultural identities which are bound up in political identity, religious identity, and that still causes issues for our society.

What I’m interested in is a genuine reconciliation process that isn’t about political outcomes or cultural outcomes — that it’s about people. that’s what I felt I experienced in Corrymeela. But I struggle to see where those in positions of power today are engaging in a genuine reconciliation process.

That’s why this, this conversation was meant to be today, because as I was walking down the street, I walked past Lord Robin Eames and we exchanged a couple of brief pleasantries. I’ve never met the man before, but it was one of those things where I’m sort of going… I met people in Corrymeela who were really genuine and open about self-reflection, which enabled them to be able to then talk about reconciliation. The self-reflection thing, I think, is where it all starts.

I know we talk about big issues around legacy and stuff, but I had experiences, human experiences in Corrymeela around things like forgiveness, around things like reconciliation, but on basic day-to-day stuff, you know, not big huge things, and I couldn’t put myself in anybody else’s shoes who has suffered loss and grief here, because I didn’t grow up here. I’ve met people who have suffered grief and loss and I think they are amazing. But I would love to see some sort of societal reconciliation without precondition process, because I think that will be what transforms this place, I think, for once and for all.

We have a cohort of young people, people under the age of 25. You could maybe add five years to that, people under the age of 30, who have no experience of the violence. When I came up for the first time in ’94, I still remember the armoured cars on the streets and the guys out the top with the guns pointing at you and being afraid to put a tin of Coke into a bin in case the guy thought I was doing something. So, I’m walking for half a mile with an empty tin of Coke.

This place has changed hugely. But I think… I think we’re trying to preserve what we have, politically and culturally, rather than trying to maybe reconcile so that the future, politically and culturally, will be something that we’re all content with. That may be very simplistic and very naive. But if I’m friends with my neighbours and I want the best for my neighbours and I am at peace with my neighbours in a truly genuine sense — not just an absence of violence, but I am in tune with my neighbours — well then, the future really will be what it will be, but we will be okay.

I remember one time, one experience I had working with a couple of communities at a particular interface area in Belfast. I remember one guy saying to me, and this was an Eureka moment, one guy saying to me, “I need to go over there and meet those people. And I need to build a relationship with those guys over there on the other side of the interface.” And I said, “Oh, that’s great, yeah.” “No, but the reason is,” he says, ” I need to support that leader, the leadership in that community and make sure that they’re strong so that the people here, these pensioners here, won’t have their windows smashed. So, I need to make sure they’re strong in order for me to be able to do my job over here.” That was an Eureka moment. Now that’s a long time ago when that was said to me, but that was somebody saying, “Do you know what? We are interdependent. The wellbeing of my community is dependent on the wellbeing of that community, and we need to build relationships.”

Look, we still have 97 physical barriers that separate communities across Belfast. There has been some progress in terms of some parts of Belfast, where they have been either transformed or removed, or adjusted. But until we have genuine reconciliation where people feel at peace in the broadest sense, but also that they feel safe, people probably won’t feel safe until they feel at peace. And the only way to be at peace is to have positive relations. I think that’s the thing that the Corrymeela experience taught me — that by doing day-to-day things, you can build relationships with people and transform your attitudes through self-reflection. You can actually then become reconciled with those from a different background to you.

And that’s not just a Belfast thing. That’s about social class. It’s about race. It’s about LGBT. It’s about all of those areas that we are defining difference within in order to generally exclude people or make ourselves feel better.

Allan: Thank you very much.

This episode is part of our series on Northern Peacebuilders — interviews with individuals whose work and efforts contribute to better community relations in Northern Ireland.

The theme song, The Trouble’s Never Over, is used by license from Scott Anderson.

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, other platforms and by RSS.

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In this episode of Northern Peacebuilders, we meet Michael Doherty, a practitioner of peacebuilding and mediation in Northern Ireland. Michael shares his personal journey, from working in a barbershop to becoming a community relations worker. He discusses the complexity of the conflict, his experiences as a mediator, and the challenges in achieving lasting peace. He emphasizes the need for trust, dialogue, and understanding between divided communities, and expresses concern about the incomplete reconciliation process and the potential for a return to violence.

INTERVIEW POSTSCRIPT

What is your favourite book on conflict resolution/community relations/peacebuilding?

Mary Fitzduff’s Conflict Skills.

Peace is…

whenever people start stop threatening one another.

Peace can only be brought about by…

dialogue and humanising the other.

I was inspired by…

John Hume.

The Northern Ireland conflict could be transformed if…

people would agree to sit down and work together in a fashion where they’re not going to kill each other.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Allan: Today I am with Michael Doherty who has been a practitioner of peace building and mediation in Northern Ireland and beyond for quite

Michael: some time, quite some time, a long time.

Allan: And we are going to explore your history, Michael of your practice of peace building and mediation and lessons learned and that can be shared with others. So, Michael, if we can begin just by you starting, at the very beginning, what was your personal interest in your work, where did it all start from?

Michael: It started from working in a barbershop, Spencer Road, in the Waterside.

Allan: How old were you at that time?

Michael: I was thirteen, and I was fourteen whenever I started full-time work.

On the day that I was 14, I left school. I come from a nationalist, Catholic background, and I’d met a lot of Protestant people. At that stage, I didn’t know I was ever going to be involved in community relations work, but one thing I did know at that time was that I didn’t want to be a barber.

I was brought into it through family. I mean, if you’re the second eldest in a family of seven, there’s money to be made, and it was a job in Derry, 1960s. Nobody would have had a job coming from the Catholic community, or very few anyhow. And I was fortunate in that sense, because when you’re that age and you have money, you have a wage, you’re great.

And I didn’t have to worry about the Christian Brothers beating me up, because I went to a Christian Brothers school that I wish I had never went to, but that’s another life that I had. So I ended up being free of the Christian Brothers and free of the school and a full-time job in a city that had no work.

So I had a very comfortable introduction into my working life.

I was also a youth worker and a musician. I would have taught the guitar to a lot of young people about the city here, within the different youth clubs. And I felt that I had created a career that I would like to have been involved in full time as a youth worker.

I did all the part-time courses that was ever involved with group work and whatever was going for youth workers. Part-time at that particular point in time. In 1985, it was called a year of the youth. I was a part-time field officer for the Association of Youth Clubs. And I decided to start a youth orchestra in 1985. It was a cross-community programme that I intentionally set up to encourage young people from the different communities. That all came about through my own daughter being involved with one of the youth orchestras. I wanted her to get a place on the Northwest Youth Orchestra through the Northwest Education Authority, but she didn’t get her place. I decided, eh, I’ll start my own orchestra and get her into it. The only way you could get into this orchestra was to be enthusiastic. So, I started the Enthusiastic Youth Orchestra. I knew a youth worker who worked from one of the, it was a state school. It was called the Templemore School, and she gave me the rooms on a Monday night. So, we started off on a Monday night. We ended up with a full orchestra. And by 1988, we took the Youth Orchestra on a trip of Europe. We went all around Europe.

But what happened was, in 1986, I had made a decision that I didn’t want to be a barber. I wanted to go back to school and I didn’t know what was happening to me, so on a part-time basis, in 1979, I took up the challenge of going on to do a full-time foundation course at McGee College as a mature student. Eventually I did a degree in 1980, ’83 period.

Allan: What was the degree?

Michael: The degree was in social administration. Eventually I ended up with a master’s degree in public administration and legal studies. But what happened was, my father took ill and he gave me the barber shop. So I had a decision to make whether to go on to the barber shop or go on to full-time work.

In 1986, I decided to go into full-time work. I kept the barbershop going full-time. So I had two strands to my bow. I was working full-time as a community relations worker for the Northern Ireland Association Youth Clubs, that later became Youth Action. And at the same time, I was working part-time in the barbershop with five people employed.

So, whenever 1986 was coming about and I was applying for the full-time job. I already had experience of doing cross-community work through the youth clubs and through the youth orchestra. When I went for the interview, I did that as a back up, and I got offered a job as a community relations project officer, based up in the northwest here.

Because I was getting busy doing the full-time work, I had no time for the Youth Orchestra, so I had to give up part of the community relations work that I was good at.

But if someone has to ask me why I actually became so heavily involved in it. In 1976, we were blown up in a barber shop in the Waterside, which is the other part of my story. Because we were cutting the hair of off-duty police officers and soldiers in the barbershop, and it seemed as if we became a target for those people who were totally against the British Army and against the police. I remember standing outside the barbershop on the day it was blown up saying to myself, what is really going on with our community that we’re making these efforts to kill one another?

So if you were to ask me why did I become involved in community relations work, my answer is quite simply to stop our community from killing each other.

In 1986, whenever we were beginning to develop community relations work, I realised we didn’t know what we were doing. We hadn’t a clue what we were doing. We knew a lot of good words. Tolerance. Intolerant. Reconciliation. We didn’t really know what it meant. Sectarianism. What was it all about? We didn’t know.

I remember, I had a meeting with a lady called Mari Fitzduff, who eventually became the director of the Community Relations Council and I got a copy of her book, Community Skills. Myself and one of my colleagues in the Youth Action called Chuck Richardson and a lady called Ann Dixon who was the community relations officer for the Corrymeela community — getting together with the four of them and designing the first ever training program in community relations work.

Allan: And when was that?

Michael: 1988. We ran a community relations training program and in 1990 the Community Relations Council appointed a training officer and it was a guy called Fergus Comiskey. I teamed up with him, and we developed a more sophisticated community relations training program in 1990. In that we had an action learning programme. What we did was we got twelve people, we divided them up into what we would call sets, say four or five in a group. Over the period of a year, we broke them up and sent them out to do some of the training that we were training them to do, to deliver in the community.

Allan: Was it kind of like a train-the-trainer?

Michael: Train-the-trainer programme. In actual fact they ended up writing a train-the-trainer booklet after that. But it was a train-the-trainer, yeah, that’s a good title for it, because that’s what we were doing.

Then we were coming back into the main group and everybody was feeding back as to how we were getting on. From that we were able to develop more sophisticated training programs. Some of the people who have been involved, now in present day, were beneficiaries of our first training program. Now I’m not going to mention any names because I don’t want to embarrass anybody, but they know who they are. Some of them will be on television quite regularly. And some are key people on top of some of the main community relations programmes.

One of the things that I realised in the earlier days, and I said it earlier on there, was that around sectarianism, nobody would take up the challenge of tackling sectarianism. And as I’m sitting here today, I said the same thing that I said in 1986. We need to tackle sectarianism. We need to be educating our people about what it actually is.

I remember being on a radio interview in a talkback program way back with David Dunseath. And somebody asked, what is sectarianism anyway, and I remember the answer I gave. I said it’s somebody that treats somebody more worse than they would treat one of their own. And that’s, for me, still to this very day, is what sectarianism is. We really don’t look at it. We try to do other things without tackling the issues that are dividing us.

Allan: Can you comment maybe elsewhere you’ve been where as a divided society has had to do with a deep division, whether it’s sectarianism or other ethnic division, where they have attempted, at least, to address that deep division.

Michael: I think one of the most difficult areas in the world that I’ve been in, where they’ve attempted in the earlier stages, and we’ve looked at it here as well, is in Israel, with the Israelis and the Palestinians. And I think that’s the worst conflict in the world that’s going on down at this particular point in time. And the world is choosing to ignore it, even though we know the history, and everybody knows what’s going on there. We haven’t really looked at it, but they have attempted, at one stage they were attempting, I think it was around about 1992, I can introduce the whole notion of coexistence. And that’s another example of what we would needed to have been doing here, about coexistence with each other.

Allan: What’s the difference between, say, conflict management versus a conflict transformation? Because you can possibly agree on a coexistence, but then is a resolution too much, or if both parties aren’t sincerely interested in a resolution, they just learn to live with each other in a less violent way?

Michael: At this present point in time, people talk about a post-conflict situation here. I hark back to what I said years ago, and I mean this with sincerity. I talk about a conflict that’s been transformed to be less violent. We’re still in a conflict. We’re still living in our conflict. It’s being played out every day. In many ways at the minute, we’re quietly coexisting because it’s just less violent.

But coexistence to be true means that you stay in the political place that you are, and you’re not trying to change the other party. Or it looks like, if we’re living here, republicans want us to think like republicans, and loyalists want us to think like loyalists, and we’re trying to change each other’s positions. Whereas for a coexistence, you don’t do that. You live with each other side by side, peacefully. That’s in my view the true sense of coexistence.

Allan: I’d like to get to a specific example locally in regards to the dispute between the bands and local communities.

Michael: I wasn’t involved totally with the bands, I was involved with the loyal orders more than the bands.

What happened was, quietly behind the scenes, there were other people who were very out front about what they were doing. I worked more behind the scenes about what was happening. And what had happened was, I had been a member of the Parades Commission’s mediation team. And because of that, I was able to make contact with some of the loyal orders who had refused to speak to anybody from the Parades Commission. But one of the loyal order groupings, The Apprentice Boys, did not take up the same position as the Orange Order and they agreed to get into talks. Now the talks weren’t face-to-face. It was done behind the scenes, quietly, over a full weekend, until we eventually got an agreement. Then when it went public, other people have now been credited with getting in the agreements.

But the main context of that agreement that came back between the Apprentice Boys and the Bogside Residence Group is a signed up agreement that I have copies of. But I’ve never went public with any of that stuff because of the confidential nature. You will never hear from me who was involved in those meetings. I will never tell.

Allan: And there’s no need to. You’re demonstrating a role and responsibility of a mediator. You described in a way that you were part of the mediation team at the Parades Commission. It sounds like a good and interesting example in a professional capacity of what professional mediators can do, a role that they can serve.

Michael: Yeah, the mediator working behind the scenes should never be known, because the whole thing has to be kept totally confidential. Now there’s another mediator who worked with me on it, and I will never divulge who he was, unless he gives me permission to do so. It’s to protect the parties that were involved in it as well, because at that time, it was difficult for people coming from the loyal orders to be engaged in any sort of communication with our residents group.

All of that was difficult. Now not only in the city, but I’ve worked in other parts as well, of the North, using the same type of model. And it was, the development of how shuttle mediation works, where the mediator’s trusted to take communication between the two parties. And whenever we began to realise that that can be applied at different places, some people took it up.

So people could say there was no direct communication and say it quite openly and freely and be comfortable saying it, there was no direct communication, and there wasn’t, but there was communication.

One of the things that I have always insisted on when I was doing that type of work, that the communication is written down, because I did not want to be seen to be a negotiator on behalf of the other party. I’m a peace negotiator.

Now, when it comes down to the armed groupings, they know where I’m coming from. I’m totally against what they’re doing. Totally against it. But they know that. And if they want anything to happen, they’ve got to make up their mind how communication is going to be taken across either way.

So manys a night, I had sleepless nights worrying about where I was going to end up next, because we had to have secret meetings in different places, going from place to place.

I remember one night in particular getting a phone call as I was coming out of a meeting in Belfast, going to another part of Northern Ireland, where there had been a murder. The whole issue had been that the other party were not responsible for the murder and they wanted the other party to know that. They asked me to deliver it back because they didn’t want it to escalate. It was a row that happened in a particular area. I got caught up in the middle of that. I remember going into this particular area. Nobody knowing where I was going. I didn’t know where I was going. I got a mobile phone call to tell me, “My God, you’ve just taken a wrong turn.” What I didn’t realise was I was being monitored coming into this estate. When I eventually got to the house, I had to go through a steel door, and there were four boys sitting in a small room. The guy that I was there to meet, sitting across the table from me, saying, ” We’re glad you came, because we want you to deliver a message.” I delivered a message. Now I can safely say that the conflict did not escalate and nobody died after that, in that particular area, because of the work that I did behind the scenes then.

Allan: That raises, to me, an issue of mutual trust. That they trusted you, and that you trusted them in the sense that you felt you weren’t being played, or that they would abuse your position and likewise that they knew who you were.

Michael: Well, let’s be clear about this. There are times when you’re involved in this work, you have got to make a conscious decision, are you taking a risk or not? In those times I knew the risk I was taking. If you’re gonna save a life, is it better for me to try to save that life? It was better for me to try to save that life.

Now, not everywhere was I trusted. Because there are some areas where I don’t work. Some areas where I pull out.

I’ll give you an example of what happened. There was a serious issue that happened in a part of Northern Ireland, and I was asked to go to it. There were two paramilitary people involved in it. I got them to meet up with two police officers in a police station to try to get this whole issue resolved.

I made a comment during that meeting that was carried outside that meeting to somebody else, and it came back to me what I had said. When the guy told me what I had said, I knew somebody from that meeting told what had happened, and I pulled out of it. I remember writing to the people that involved me saying that my position has been compromised, I will not be back.

So sometimes you’ve got to, for your own integrity and your own safety, you know when to pull back.

Allan: That reminds me of another anecdote you’ve told me in the past about you were in a situation where you were attempting mediation and you realised it had gone to a level of security. And you felt, my own physical security is at risk here.

Michael: I know exactly what you’re talking about. We got the situation sorted out in the city here. In regards to? The Apprentice Boys Parade. There was going to be a protest of the parade coming back, a return parade of the loyal orders coming back through this part of a city, and what had happened was, the guy who was in charge of the residence group said to me, that if we stand in a no man’s land between the police landowners and the protestors, the dangerous part will be whenever the police are pulling out. That’s the time when the guys were more likely to want to stone the police. He says, if me and you stand in that no man’s land, they’ll not stone it, because then that’s when they stone us. I remember standing in that no man’s land, saying to myself, what am I doing here? remember when I got into the car, saying to myself, I’ll never be caught in that situation again.

Allan: So, there are moments, even as a professional mediator, where you have to be cognizant of your own personal safety.

Michael: One other time, in another area, there was a protest, and there was going to be a parade coming down, and the Parades Commission had restricted any music to be played, coming down a particular street.

So I was standing this time, there’s police Land Rovers, and there’s army Land Rovers. The band and the lodge come down the street, and they were to turn in the car park and go back up again. I was requested by the police, could I ask the people who were protesting, could they move across the road to the other side of the road. Got that done, they moved. I went back over to stand in front of the police Land Rovers. The band came down the street, they went to turn in the car park, and the band started playing the sash, which is like a red flag to a bull, on the other side of the road. What happened was the guys on the other side started throwing golf balls, attacking the band and the police and the army. And I remember I dived between a police landover and an army jeep. And a policeman shouted at me, “That’s all your fault, you caused all this.” I went, “Aye, but you’re well, wearing tbe steel, but I’m not.” I remember, I’ve actually got two golf balls in the house somewhere that I lifted that night. So those are some of the…

Allan: Interesting souvenir. Unexpected souvenir.

Michael: One I could have done without. But those are some of the risks you’ve got to take it, and you do it at the time. Now I wouldn’t do it now in hindsight. I’ve been more careful ever since. So those are some of the escapades that I got to do.

Allan: How much of any kind of peacebuilder’s life like yours is acquired through what you study and read and earn in degrees and versus then what you learn on the ground?

Michael: Well, [in] 1996, I went to Fordham Law School in New York. I’d already been training as a mediator here through Mediation Northern Ireland at the time with different American tutors and other people. We spent three weeks at Fordham Law School doing an intense course with some of the top mediators. It was great, fantastic learning. I remember one guy called Leonard Riskin talking about the difference between evaluative mediation and facilitative mediation. It always struck me, it was a fascinating lecture. I really got hooked into it. I started looking at it.

But what happened was in 1997, whenever the Parades Commission got set up, we started doing work as mediators. I began to realise that the mediators sometimes were getting blamed for some of the stuff that was going down. I began to realise what was happening. We were applying what we were learning in America to a local context here and a conflict that wasn’t suitable for evaluative mediation.

Because evaluative mediation suggests that you can evaluate what’s going on with the disputing parties and you can offer advice.

A proviso is that they realise they’ve got to make the final decision. But what was happening was the mediators were possibly giving advice and the advice was going belly up, and the mediators were getting blamed. I began to realise, this is what is happening. I need to change my thinking in all that was going down.

I changed my way of doing work into a more facilitative model. I learned the skill of not giving advice.

Allan: So how does a facilitative model of mediation differ from the evaluative form?

Michael: The mediator at no stage at any time tells the parties what they could or should do. And that’s a skill in its own right. Telling people, ” Sure, all you have to do is not go down that street, and sure it’ll be grand.” That’s not what you do.

You use the language of, ” Well, how do you think this should be worked out? What’s the best way forward for you? How does that affect you if he does this, how do you do that? How do you respond to that?” You don’t tell them what to do. That’s the way that I have worked in those issues that I’ve been involved in down through the years.

Allan: And you have found that in a local context we’re talking about?

Michael: Well, I’ll put it like this. I haven’t ever been blamed for anything in relation to the parading issues that I’ve been involved in. I remember one person saying to me that I tried to stop a parade one time. I said, “If you repeat that in public, I’ll take you to court.” Because you will find nobody in this part of the world that said that I said I try to stop a parade, because I never did, and I never will. That has to come from the community, in the context of the conflict that’s going on at that particular point in time.

Allan: Can you take that knowledge and then going back globally just make some analysis about where you see other areas. You’ve been involved in programs in Tripoli, for example, I know your work with the Forum for Cities in Transition. So, some comments about this form of mediation and where you think it has been applied elsewhere successfully or has the potential to change approaches.

Michael: The other form of mediation that I alluded to earlier on was shuttle mediation. That is when the mediator is trusted to take communication back and forward.

This can work in any part of the world if the parties are willing to get an accommodation or an agreement. It can work anywhere. The parties have to be willing to do it. Now if you have a situation whereby, say we take the situation here from way back in the 1986/87/90 period, where you had a government that said there’ll be no talk.

The government knew they had to talk. What did the government end up doing? Talking. It was done in such a way that people could freely say, ” But there was no face to face communication, nothing took place, and everything had to be done.” that’s the way this stuff works. It only can work whenever people decide that they want to make it work.

Now if you look at the Ukraine and Russia at the minute, if Putin doesn’t want this to work, it’s not going to work. He’ll keep doing what he’s doing until he decides that it’s going to stop. Or you can decide that they’re going to give in and let Russia take over. Now, the dogs on the street and everybody else knows it. That’s not going to happen. So it’s allowed to continue. And while the rest of the world are participants as observers, and everybody afraid goes into World War III, everybody’s hands are tied until somebody makes a move.

And the same thing is happening here at the moment, where people are afraid, on principle, to change a position, because they’re locked in a fixed position and not prepared to move. And at this point in time, I would say what has happened is we have underestimated the strength of each other’s positions. Because we seem to have learned a lesson of not listening to the other side.

Allan: From a professional point of view in regards to mediation, or let’s just say peacebuilding, we know peacebuilding can be frustrating. It’s because, as you’ve indicated you can only apply proven methods if both parties are willing, you can’t force anyone to be willing.

Michael: No, no.

Allan: So it’s almost a riddle, but it’s the way it works, as I understand it.

Michael: It is the way it works, that’s the reality of it.

Allan: Often those in peacebuilding will cite the lack of political will towards the development of communities and reconciliation. What can people and communities do in that situation, in which politics takes a precedence over what many people would rather see?

Michael: I think what happens is every community needs leaders. Every community needs leaders at different parts of the community.

Some people need leaders at the government level. Some people need leaders, say the likes of me, mediating in the middle. Then there’s the leaders that are on the ground. And sometimes when those leaders are on the ground are not in communication with people from the other community, it creates its own narrative.

And if that’s not getting through to the people who are the leaders at the top, it creates its own narrative at the top as well as to what is actually happening on the ground and what’s happening at the top, and then it gets all mixed up.

So, if you get a situation whereby on the ground, and you’ve got republican groups who are split into six or seven different categories of republicanism, and somebody gets shot on, say, the nationalist, Catholic side, and the republicans are being blamed. And it’s one strand of republicanism. But the view is, which strand of republicanism do you talk to? Who do you believe? If you go to the other community, and say the other community is the loyalist community, there’s so many strands of the community groups in the paramilitary side in there as well.

Who do you actually talk to? So, there’s a mismash of who’s responsible and taking the blame for what. And if the people in the middle, like me, who are trying to make sense of what’s going on in the ground, we’re finding it difficult. Who is it you actually talk to? So you have got Continuity IRA, the new IRA, Republican Sinn Fein, Republican this, Republican that. On the other side it’s UDA, UVF, Red Hand of Ulster. All the different splits in the community groups. So all that’s going on, and it’s like a mismash of what’s actually happening.

But for the most part, we all want to live in peace. But we don’t know what peace looks like, because we’ve never had it. We blame the politicians. Those on the ground blame the politicians. The politicians are saying they’re blaming the people on the ground. But who votes the politicians in?

We’re all striving to get peace. But it’s peace in our terms, whatever that may mean, whoever you’re coming from. So, if you get a situation whereby the politicians aren’t talking to one another, what sort of example is the leadership at the top giving the people at the bottom?

Allan: Is it issue of visioning? We’ve had a variety of community relations policies. Our current one is Together: Building a United Community (T:BUC). The Belfast/ Good Friday Agreement talks about striving towards reconciliation. They are laudable ambitions, but arguably not fleshed out in what it would actually mean in regards to a policy that would help us realise any of this.

Michael: I remember T:BUC coming out I remember saying to myself, how? That was the first question that came into my head, was how?

I remember at that time, the ambition that the peace walls would be down by 2023. Ten years later, we have had a measure of success. We can’t deny we have had some success. There has been a couple of peace walls changed. But if I was to take this city here, that wall that divides Bishop Street and the Fountain area in this city, will not be down for my lifetime.

We’re not there yet. We’re still afraid of each other. We’re still a threat to each other. The one on Tullyally/ Currnierin, the fence that’s there will not be taken away in my lifetime. And there’s a large gap between the Top of the Hill and Irish Street and the Waterside. The amazing part about that is that there’s a new building there, a shared future building. It’s absolutely tremendous. And it’s been left alone. Now that’s a step forward in this city.

The main parts of T:BUC, of bringing people together in summer camps, it’s great. Get young people away, it’s great. But if you’re going to take them away to have fun, and not have the hard end discussions that need to take place, the kids go back into their own camps.

We talk about shared future, and we talk about integrated education. But all we do, we have a subject, kids go to one school, they take that subject, but they don’t talk about the stuff that’s dividing us.

Allan: Is there not a difference between the shared education programme versus integrated education, which does attempt to look at multiple narratives?

Michael: Yeah, that’s the whole idea, yeah. But shared education seemed to be an excuse for not doing the integrated stuff, as far as I was concerned.

My granddaughter goes to a secondary school, a high school in Limavady.

They’re going to be one of the first shared campuses. But she woudn’t be more interested in what’s going on in our political sense. She’s just not interested. She just wants to live her life. She wants to go to dancing and music and sport. Not interested in the politics of it all. But they’re not taught about it in school either.

I just scratch my head saying sometimes we need to look at the whole education system and look at where do we start teaching our young people about sectarianism, about consciousness, and unconscious stuff [biases] that goes on all the time. That we don’t really realise how hurtful we can be to people.

Allan: What is it that we could do ourselves in regards to becoming more engaged, or putting pressure on those who make policy for us? Does there need to be those who become peace activists, are there those who need to lead by example?

Michael: Tell you what you could do. Don’t stop trying. Don’t give up. I am at the grey end of all of this work now, I’m 75. So I’m beginning to get a sense of, I don’t have much more life left on me to do this work, and they keep bringing me back. It could come quicker!

That aside, I will never give up talking to people or doing what I can do to stop our people, and I mean this most sincerely, from where I started, to stop our community from killing each other. Because we run the risk, we can go back to doing that. There are people out there, quite capable and willing to go back into what they would call their war.

And I’ll never forget that.

Allan: You hear frequently that people don’t have an appetite to go back to the way it was before the ceasefires. But are you inferring that we’ve transformed our conflict to be less violent, but there’s no guarantee that it could transfer back into being more violent, perhaps not as violent as it was in the past?

Michael: There’s no guarantees of anything. Absolutely not. I would not say here, now, at this particular point in time, we will never go back to where we were. I’ll never say that. I do say it’s less violent, and at this present point in time, I say for many, many people there’s no appetite for it. But all it would take would be a spark that can light the flame.

Now, if you look at this particular point in time, the way that the politics is going, if you look at the inquests and the legacy issues, if you look at the rationality of why there’s an amnesty, And we all know this is coming forward to save British soldiers. People are even afraid to say that as well.

I’m not. Because I know. I was there on Bloody Sunday. I knew what happened in this city. And other people know the answers. People are holding back and using the security issue as a way of redacting names and not having proper inquests. All of that’s bubbling in the background.

The legacy issue has been one of the issues that I have always argued that needed to be… I remember I think it was 1990. I was in St. Columb’s Park House and I remember the conversation. I remember somebody, one of the British politicians, I’m not going to name who it was, talking to me about it, and I said, I remember saying very clearly, “See, until the policing issue is sorted out, we’ll never have peace.”

The policing issue still isn’t sorted out, holding inquests back by holding up documents from going forward. While the government are not admitting their role in what happened here. All that’s still going on in the background.

The Orange Order are in a position of being a sectarian issue in relation to not allowing Catholics to join, and still parading, and wishing to parade all the time in areas where they’re not welcome. That’s a big issue. It’s still going on to this very day, while Catholics are not understanding why Protestants, or Unionists, or Orangemen want to parade.

Sectarianism is underneath it all. It’s there.

But I’m coming from a nationalist, Catholic background, and I see it with my eyes, the way that I see it. But there are times when you have got to call out what it is, is actually going on. And I have said it clearly, while the British Government have allowed this to develop here, the ball rests in their court. They know what they needed to do to get this place sorted out. They’re still not prepared to do it.

Allan: If in the future majority here freely and democratically vote to form some type of union with the rest of Ireland, and without these issues having been addressed, then whose responsibility? Does it to still remain with the British government or is this something that the new Irish government would inherit?

Michael: I think it’s something that we need to be very clear about how we actually go forward with this, because if it’s not planned out properly, there’ll be a total reaction from the unionist community. I think we should not underestimate the strength of their position around the view of moving into a united Ireland.

It cannot be done overnight. It needs to be addressed and worked at over years to make sure that we are going to be accommodating to everybody. It won’t happen any other way. It’s in the gift of the people of this whole island to get a peaceful outcome on this. But we need to nurture, train, acknowledge, and respect the other parties, and give each, each person their position. And allow the people from the unionist community, if they want to remain British, to do so within a united Ireland, if that’s the way it’s going to work out.

But also if it’s going to stay the way it’s going, then the British government need to understand that they need to respect the nationalist position of what happened to them down through the years at the hands of the unionist community. And why it ended up… I think the comment was made by Michele O’Neill when she made the statement that violence was inevitable. According to her, and the way that she’s thinking, and people who think like her, it was inevitable for them. But people had choices. I had a choice. I chose not to go down that violent road. So, we have all had choices. We cannot deny our responsibilities for all the actions that we took. But we need to admit.

South Africa had a truth and reconciliation commission. I’ve said there’ll never be a truth and reconciliation commission here, as long as people decide that they’re not going to tell the truth anyway. So, we’re bluffing one another if we think we’re ever going to have a truth and reconciliation commission as far as I’m concerned, because I don’t think Britain will tell the truth. I don’t think the IRA will tell the truth. And I don’t think a loyalist will tell the truth.

The better option at the minute, as far as the British government are concerned, is to give an amnesty. But they’re giving an amnesty, they give it for the wrong reasons, the way I look at it. They’re giving it to save the British soldiers, which is wrong.

So, it’s a puzzle.

This episode is part of our series on Northern Peacebuilders — interviews with individuals whose work and efforts contribute to better community relations in Northern Ireland.

The theme song, The Trouble’s Never Over, is used by license from Scott Anderson.

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, other platforms and by RSS.

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In this episode of Northern Peacebuilders, we meet Dympna McGlade, a peacebuilder based in Northern Ireland, and learn about her journey into peacebuilding and her thoughts on the state of peacebuilding in society. Dympna discusses her personal background, her community development work in Belfast, the role of research in peacebuilding, the need for a new peace plan, and the importance of political will and community involvement in creating sustainable peace.

INTERVIEW POSTSCRIPT

What is your favourite book on conflict resolution/community relations/peacebuilding?

My go-to publication is Towards a Shared Society, which we produced as the Community Relations Council’s response to the Northern Ireland Executive’s Cohesion, Sharing and Integration Strategy (2011). It contains proposals for practical steps in building a shared future which are still applicable today.

“I’m inspired by…”

…the genuine peacebuilding heroes who put their passion for peace first when it wasn’t fashionable, often dangerous, and certainly not lucrative.

“Peace is…”

…a human right.

“The Northern Ireland conflict could be transformed if…”

…we had a people’s vision, the political will, and power to the right people to make it happen.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Allan: Today, I’m with Dympna McGlade, who is a peacebuilder based in Northern Ireland and has been practising peacebuilding for some decades now. And we’ll explore how Dympna got involved in peacebuilding and what keeps her going. You’re very welcome Dympna.

Dympna: Thank you.

Allan: So, let’s just start by going into your personal interest in your work, kind of what really started your journey into peacebuilding.

Dympna: Well, from birth. I was born into a family who were staunch republicans. And in 1963, the republicans called a ceasefire. And my parents decided that the violent route wasn’t the way to go.

And for me, that was the beginning of the first original peace process. At the same time, lots of things were happening around the world in terms of civil rights and social justice. So, the republican movement moved forward in a more intellectual way and political way to look at how they might work towards a united Ireland through peaceful means.

Likewise, the Communist Party were looking at it. Trade unions, the residence groups, there were lots of other different groups and individuals who came together. People who wouldn’t necessarily agree with each other, but they came together in the interest of social justice and trying to achieve it through peaceful means.

So, when I was born, my father was on the run. And I didn’t see him until I was three years old. Then whenever I started primary school, the conflict was starting to come into play. And by the time I got to secondary school, we were in full swing. And I left school in 1974, when things were really at an all-time bad place.

Allan: Where were you living at the time?

Dympna: Well, I lived in an area called the Marrowbone, The Bone, just beside Ardoyne. But not Ardoyne. There’s a difference of a street as you have in Belfast…

Allan: Can you just describe the physical political geography of Marrowbone?

Dympna: The Marabone was five streets of a predominantly Catholic community. It was a little bit of a mix, not much, and our neighbouring area was from Louisa Street onwards, Lower Old Park, and it was predominantly Protestant, and that was way before the conflict started. It was an area in north Belfast and old mill houses, so it was two up, two down, an outside toilet, no heating, just a cold fire.

So, it was poverty, you know, we were brought up in poverty, which we didn’t know everyone was in the same boat. That’s the way life was for us. And I think that’s one of the things that inspired my parents to fight for all, because we weren’t the only ones in poverty. Our Protestant neighbours were in exactly the same boat.

It further drove the family to fight for social justice for all. It wasn’t just the Catholic community. Many people think the Civil Rights Movement was just about the Catholic population. It wasn’t.

I was brought along to demonstrations. It was much more than just marches, you know. It was demonstrations about bread-and-butter issues around bus fares. There was the Thatcher the milk snatcher when Margaret Thatcher stopped the milk for schools.

Allan: But how old were you at the time?

Dympna: Well, I’d have been 11.

Allan: This obviously made an impression upon you, going to these demonstrations.

Dympna: Well, it wasn’t just that. I mean, we were in the Civil Rights Movement, and it meant that meetings were held in different houses. So, when it was held in our house, we had everyone coming to us. I was listening to conversations from across all — Catholic, Protestant, dissenter, Communist Party, trade unions. Without realising it, it was kind of sinking into my young brain, thankfully. And it was being taught by good, decent people that were fighting for a better life for all. So yeah, demonstrating and being involved in community work and community relations work was inbuilt, you know, it was part of my upbringing. So anywhere I went, I always got involved with voluntary work and worked in England and studied in England for a while and became involved in voluntary work there. So, it was part and parcel of my DNA.

Allan: And you came back from England after your studies?

Dympna: Yes, yeah.

Allan: And then what did you do professionally? How did you develop these skills and put them into practice as a professional?

Dympna: Well, Allan, it was a little bit of a baptism of fire.

My first job when I came back… I’d been away for a couple of years and I thought, you know, things were bad. It was the early ‘80s. I’ll just do a bit of voluntary work and get the lay of the land and familiarise myself with how things are now. But a job came up in Divis Flats, which was really bad at the time, it was before redevelopment. It was through Belfast City Council. I thought, well, they offered it to me on a part-time or a temporary basis, and I thought I’ll take that on for a little while. And when I went to work in Divis, it was complete and utter mayhem. But I worked there for five years with a wonderful mentor called Gerry Downs, who was a senior community worker and I was the assistant community worker.

And, well, it was, I mean, there was murder going on, there were feuds going on. It was really bad. It was lockdown; the army was on the roof of the tower, you know, helicopters coming in and out, leaving in supplies, it was just complete mayhem.

I worked there for five years, and then I got [to be a] community worker in charge in Ardoyne. And I thought that’s fine. I went to Ardoyne and I realised, this is easy. Divis was the hardest place you could have been at that time. So, I appreciated it actually. I learned so much under such pressure. And working with such good people and a good community.

You know, once they learn to trust you in Divis, you were one of the community, and you were protected and looked after, and we did some great work. But again, I mean, I worked on the ground then for several years in different communities. I worked in Ardyone and then Rathenraw in Antrim and Bawnmore in Newtownabbey. All the easy areas.

And then I worked for the Northern Health Trust at the time in Rathenraw in Antrim. And then for Barnardo’s in Bawnmore. So, I worked there and always did the cross-community work as well, you know, with, it would have been Rathcoole and Ballyduff and other areas.

But, knowing that you needed to work across the divide, I realised at a very early stage that unless you work across the divide, people are not united to come together to address poverty. Sectarianism creates poverty. In order to influence that you must become involved in policy. The job with the Community Relations Council came up as I came to the end of my contract with Barnardo’s and it was for the Policy Director with the Community Relations Council and I’d been working on the ground for, oh, must have been 10 or 12 years, but all was across community and interagency.

I was able to look at all three kinds of angles and thought, I can put my skills to use by working in a policy setting because I understand how policy works. I understand what’s happening on the ground and can bring the reality and the evidence to policy and to the policy makers and make that connection and bring people along with me.

I’d been doing community development work and always worked on the basis that I was a community development worker and people in the area were the community workers, because I would be gone and they would be left and they needed to develop their skills to be able to enhance their skills to make the place a better place to live.

So I knew I could bring people along and influence policy, and I took the opportunity working with CRC, and that’s what I did there. I created lots of different ways of engaging government with community.

Allan: Let’s discuss what you think a peacebuilder is. With this podcast, we’re exploring different dimensions of peacebuilding. Do you think peacebuilding is recognised as a profession or what do you think about the vocation of peacebuilding from your experience and what you’ve observed from other people you would recognise as peacebuilders?

Dympna: I think it’s one of the most thankless tasks you can do, and at times soul destroying. I think the innovative work and the advances forward have been mostly achieved at ground level. And they’ve been able to advance so far, but again I’m back to policy. Because policy is either not implemented to support their work, or the policy that sits, it’s just undermined. And it has been by both government and sometimes the gatekeepers on the ground as well.

But for me, being a peacebuilder has been different at different stages in my life. Working in communities, peacebuilding when I was in the ’80s at the local level, to get people the confidence and the knowledge and the proper information and understanding to be able to engage fully and to be able to learn about others.

In policy, it was slightly different again, because you were working with government and bringing people on board and trying to get the two to listen to each other and actually to follow through and implement policy to make that change happen. And then it’s funders as well. And then, now that I’ve taken early retirement, voluntary redundancy, I’m in a different place and I have a responsibility to speak freely as an independent person who’s not tied by an employer or a political party or a religious organisation.

I have a responsibility to speak up and speak out and speak the truth which I find isn’t happening nowadays. I think for others, for me, with peacebuilding there are three, kind of, stages, if you like, or three areas, where you have me, and people like me who are independent and can be vocal, and I hope the work we’re doing now is leading towards getting those people together in some kind of organised way, so we can speak out because, at the moment, nothing’s being said, nothing’s being challenged.

You had the protocol riots and no one came out and said that’s an abuse of children. They’re on the streets, they’re at risk of being imprisoned or hurt. And it’s damaging those communities. No one’s challenging that we’re now 25 years into the Good Friday Agreement and we have paramilitary groups. We’re still talking about transformation.

I think those days have gone. And unless it’s challenged, it will continue on to be transformation. And no one’s challenging that we’re into the year where government had said all interfaces would be down, and none of them are. In fact, we have more. And no one’s challenging the human rights and equality abuse in areas, interface areas, or young people are having our history imposed on them and their life skills cut short. They are writing on the wall as to who they are and where they can go and where they can’t go. And controlling their areas.

Then you have a middle group where I think there’s kind of two. There’s a group that’s older and has been around a long time still working on the ground. But there’s a missing group of people I think tend to overlook who are critically important for me. Who are the older young people if you like. The Youth Service, say, 25-year-olds, that’s the cut-off point apparently, that’s when our body stops growing and you start ageing. So, those between 25 to 45, 55 maybe even Allan.

But there’s that age group that are critical. We always talk about young people that are our next generation. We have a current generation and you were asking about the prospects. What prospects are there for them? You know, three-year funding, one-year funding being undermined on the ground where maybe they aren’t respected, perhaps the work they’re doing on the ground, and others are getting funded where they’re not.

I’m thinking of control groups on the ground, we keep hearing the same voices and other people the silently silenced as they’re referred to often, haven’t the safety to speak up and speak out and do the work on the ground in those areas that need it most, you know, the single identity areas.

We’re in danger there if you don’t have support for that group in the middle. We’re still going to go round and round in circles and it’s less and less attractive. I mean, why would you go for a job in the voluntary and community sector that’s a fixed term, maybe you haven’t got the pension, isn’t well paid, when you could be going into the private sector or in the government. You know, it’s not attractive, which is disappointing because we were deemed as a world-class peace process, and I think we should have world-class peace builders out there saying, we’re doing well here; this is what we’ve done; we can share this with you.

We bring people like that in from other countries. We do have them here. But you don’t hear from them. You hear from the same people. And usually people with a past. And that had its place. But I think it’s gone. And I think that group that’s working now will be the group that’s going to be helping what we refer to as young people, you know, the 25 and below. And if they don’t, we’ll not have peacebuilders. We were constantly told that the conflict lasted a long time and it’s going to take a long time to get the peace. But if we don’t have people there to see it through to the end, and the end isn’t in sight yet.

Allan: Listening to you made me think about your parents and others at that time who just did it. They just organised meetings and sessions and protested and agitated. And now in contemporary times, it feels there’s a professionalisation of some of this work and with all of the pitfalls of funding, sustainability, training, and retention. And so in regards to this middle cohort of potential peacebuilders, I’m wondering if there’s a way to break the cycle, shall I say, of the kind of funding and retention. If there are other imaginative ways of engaging with that cohort.

To be more specific, I’m mindful of some of the public responses to the murder of Lyra McKee and others, the deaths that we’ve had post-ceasefire, and the political violence post-ceasefire, but haven’t quite figured out how to galvanise and bring more pressure on the politicians.

Dympna: The answer to that for me is people my age, you know, that are retired. I don’t have a mortgage. I’ve nothing to lose. I’m prepared to speak out and I think it’s time to actually say the hard things that people who are employed or working for government can’t. I think the politicians, it’s, we’ve gone down the road of sectarianism and a sense of voting, you know, whilst you keep communities separate, you’ll get the two main leading parties getting their vote.

Whenever you start to have them integrated and you start dismantling the legacy of division, then people start thinking differently and that’s evidenced in private sector housing, for example, where young people are moving to, young Catholics to East Belfast, you would never have thought of that before.

And there’s a movement around where they’re buying, it’s cheaper, and they want something different. So, who’s going to speak on their behalf, and who’s going to speak on everyone else’s behalf? If you’re at risk of being silently silenced, if you live in a single identity community, if you are at risk of losing your funding, if you’re at risk of being rubbished, I think there’s enough people here like me who can come together with evidence, knowledge, research, and have a standing in their past work, who can speak up and out, and who are prepared to.

That’s my next goal, is to have a body of people who can, who can come out, whenever something happens, like Lyra McKee, to actually say, what are the politicians actually doing about paramilitarism? I’ve read the last report on the disbandment of paramilitary groups, and some of it was very good, but it’s still talking about transformation, so who’s going to challenge that?

Politicians aren’t. They’re letting it take its course. The governments aren’t. They’re still trying to keep everyone on board. So it’s going to take a different body of people. Personally, I think older people and students should be the revolutionaries because they’re both not dependent on anyone at this current time.

Allan: You mentioned research, and that’s something I’d like to explore is the relationship between practitioners and academics and the research because I know you do cite research. And so, what are your thoughts about the role that independent research can have not only in providing evidence but also then in trying to have evidence-led decisions and actions by politicians and other decision-makers? What are your thoughts about that relationship?

Dympna: Well, I mean, there’s shelves full of research. Excellent, really good quality, well evidenced and research with brilliant recommendations. Most of which say the same. The same research is constantly done, you know, on interfaces, on shared space, on housing. And they say the same thing.

Research is brilliant, and it’s great for those like me to be able to quote it; you know, 91 per cent of our schools are still segregated, et cetera, et cetera. So, you look and you think, well, why did we fund it if we’re not going to act on it? I remember looking at the amount of research that was done on shared space; the European Union was very keen at one stage on looking at shared space. And Queen’s did it. Ulster University did it. Independents did it. They were all saying the same thing. Millions were spent on this research. And it was great. And the bottom line was it came down to say what people want is something they need.

They want security if it was an area where they were at risk. They would need to be engaged. They need, etc. This is how it all works. And we went and we explored all over the world. Canada was one of them. And Holland. Brilliant examples came from there: how it worked, why it worked, the success, and what you need to do.

But it was just shelved. Research is brilliant and it gives you something to argue about, but unless it actually goes somewhere and that somewhere is into policy. But it hasn’t, this is what the problem has been.

Allan: So you would argue that there is sufficient research to provide enough material to confidently go forward as best as one can with any plan? That we’re not creating something from scratch? If we wanted to actually develop into any of these areas like housing, equality, et cetera, that there’s enough research that’s been done here using best cases elsewhere to allow politicians, decision-makers to actually proceed.

Dympna: Well, yes and no. Yes, there’s loads of information, good quality that can be built upon. And the no is that 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, we are a different society. We’re a multicultural society. We’re a region of minorities. The LGBT community, disability, everyone else, marginalised groups, want their say as well, and are entitled to their say. So, we can build on, and it’s a great opportunity, I think, Allan, to bring people together, to re-energise the peace process to say what sort of society are we looking for now? We are different from 25 years ago.

So the research that’s been done to date has been very much focused on the two main communities, which is fine, and it was necessary. But we look different now, and we need to not set aside the two main communities. — we still have to address legacy issues — but we need now to look at it through the lens of a changed society. And also, I don’t think we’ve listened enough to young people, who want different. And like I said before, I don’t think young people should have to live with our legacy, you know? If they want the walls down and they want to live and be educated wherever they want, we have a responsibility to provide that. So yes, it’s excellent research, and we can build upon it, but I’d love to see it brought into today’s society and just build upon it, but not to be used as a tool to do nothing.

Allan: I’m going to let you elaborate a little bit about your proposed peace plan that you’ve mentioned in your current role at the Hume Foundation. You had said about making a peace plan that can be put in everyday language to motivate and excite the more general population. What do you think it might look like? And how could it possibly happen?

Dympna: Well, I think what, what we’re missing at the moment, the key thing for a new peace plan is a vision.

We need a new vision for the new society. We need a peace plan that actually means something to people, that will inspire them to want to go in and make that change, that will recognise the work they do, and show the world, I think we need to be more international, show the world what we’re doing, and learn from other countries, emerging from conflict, that have lessons for us to learn from.

So that, that’s one part of it, I think the other part of it is, we need for funders… I don’t think the funding that has been available in the past, it’s never going to be available again. But the funding that has been put in cannot be lost, cannot be undermined. And I think the funders need to come back and the governments, America, the European Union, the Republic of Ireland, the British, need to come back and say we’ve invested here.

It’s not all about money, but it’s making sure that investment was worth it. And they do have a responsibility to come back and ensure that the peace process is pushed forward. It isn’t all about money. So that’s part of the peace plan. So I think they need to bring pressure to bear on the local politicians here to actually come up with the goods.

I mean, the goalposts are set back further and further every time with all the different agreements since the Good Friday Agreement. And peace has never actually been that big a focus. You know, we’ve had a variety of different names for it. Something as ludicrous as CSI, um, The Shared Future Together, we have Together: Building a United Community.

Why was it never just called a peace plan? I mean, it’s all softening and fudging.

Allan: You made the comment that so much, so far, it seems to come across more as community and economic development rather than peace and reconciliation.

Dympna: Yeah, well it has. When you listen to youth workers, for example, they talk about the brilliant work they do with young people. And young people do want something different and they’re inspired by it and they want change. And then, many of them go back to single-identity areas and single-identity schools. It needs to change. Is that community relations work? I don’t think so. I think the days of single identity are over, to be honest, in most areas.

Allan: The argument is made about single identity work that some communities are less confident or still need more work to transform, and you’ve yourself said transform into what? And perhaps what hasn’t been articulated well enough by political and civic leadership. And so, my question about your peace plan was then what could be the language and who would deliver the language of a peace plan to change the landscape, so people feel less about going back and having their vision only within their immediate community, but not actually in their minds thinking about how this is serving wider society.

Dympna: See, I have worked with people here for a lifetime, and I’m convinced the majority of people here want peace. And all the research shows when you ask people, Would you like integrated education? Yes, the majority. Would you like shared housing? Yes. Would you like flags down? Yes. And so on. And the caveat is in the right conditions.

And part of the right conditions that is side-lined quite a bit is safety. And if you look, we talk about sectarianism, I look at segregation because if you go into an area like Rathcoole or Ardoyne, there isn’t sectarianism at the local level; it’s paramilitarism. So what’s all that about? It’s nothing to do with the border issues or anything else.

If you take Rathcoole, the people are more concerned about the UVF being on one end of Rathcoole and UDA being on the other, than they are about the people in Bawnmore. Because there’s no sectarian incidents anymore. Very rare. I don’t know when the last one was. But there’s lots of incidents and drug dealing and everything else going on in that area. And it’s oppressing their own people. So, the majority of people there want change. But they don’t have a voice. And I think that’s a human rights violation. That people can’t have a voice. And back to the research, it shows people want change, when they’re asked anonymously. So I don’t think it’s a huge issue for local people.

I think what needs to be done is that they’re given the conditions where they can speak. They’re given the encouragement to look for a vision for the future. And they’re given the resources to make change. And I think you would see it in a very short space of time, but the will needs to be there and the threat needs to be taken away, and the opportunities need to be opened up.

Allan: Dympna, what do you think needs to happen in order to change the system that perpetuates some of this violence in some neighbourhoods, in order for those residents to be able to speak up and make change? The onus not only on them but on the rest of us?

Dympna: Well, first and foremost, I think there needs to be the political will. Secondly, I think there needs to be pressure applied to that political will. And it needs to be carefully monitored, encouraged, supported, and challenged when it needs to be. And I say that because the current T:BUC strategy is undermined constantly by the very people who put it together.

I’ve known of incidents where there’s been flags put up outside shared neighbourhoods. and a political party hasn’t supported the residents and made them feel safe by saying it was wrong. They’ve made excuses: “Oh well, you live near a certain area, you can expect that.”

There have been other incidents in shared housing where a local politician, for the sake of their party, turns up with a golden key with the T:BUC Shared Neighbourhood sign above them saying Housing for Nationalist Community, because that’s their votes. There’s lots of examples where they’re undermining their own policy.

So, there needs to be a challenge there, from lots of different quarters. I think people on the ground, if walked up to them on the street and said, “Well, what do you think of the peace process and how has it impacted on you?” They wouldn’t know and they don’t get information. I’m going through a process working with Holywell Trust who’s doing this democrative or deliberative polling kind of process, it’s a pilot. And when people get the information, you know, you bring the people into your room and you say, “Here’s the reality. These are the facts. If you stay where you are, this might happen. If you move ahead, here’s opportunities.” And you often find when people listen to each other, get the proper facts, give them the opportunity to speak and give their point of view, they’re very pragmatic and they come up with the right answers. So more of that in the areas, but the key is in a safe environment. If I were living in somewhere that was controlled by the boys, I wouldn’t be speaking out. Who’s there to protect me?

I think also there needs to be another refocus on policing. I come from North Belfast, from a nationalist area. I know when I go into it, there isn’t the policing you would expect, for the reform that went through, and 25 years after the Good Friday Agreement, and where there’s political agreement and support for it.

I mean, the police come in tentatively, they’re not welcome, they’re not understood, the bridges haven’t been built. And I think people have a right to expect a policing service like any other region. And I think that the understanding between the police and the community, there hasn’t been attention to build that properly.

People have been told, first of all, don’t trust the police. And then secondly, the police are in, trust them. But that building of relationships hasn’t actually happened. And if it’s not addressed, we’ll continue on as we are. With that lack of trust, the police, it has changed, but people don’t have that information.

They’re not given the opportunity. So they depend on the kind of local policing that has to stop. And I think the peacebuilders on the ground, they also need to be there to help make it happen. We need to refocus to say it isn’t all about funding, but you do need resourced, professional people and people that actually do the job.

And we need to be realistic about who’s getting funding, what impact they’ve made. Should they continue to be funded? And where are the gaps? Who hasn’t had the peace dividend? And it’s very evident who hasn’t had it. And if we’re pouring money into the same things, we’ll get the same results.

So, lots of different approaches to it , but it’s all achievable. It’s all achievable. But the bottom line is, it takes political will. And the political will here is hard to get. And it also then takes the encouragement and the challenge from outside. And I think we particularly rely on our international supporters for the peace to help us with that.

And the grey hairs as well. And the students.

Allan: Well, thank you very much, Dympna, for providing some very concrete and specific proposals to how peacebuilders can continue to contribute to transforming our society, but ultimately the need for politicians to collectively do their part as well.

Dympna: I would like to add just where I talked about human rights and equality. In the ‘80s, myself and four colleagues took a religious discrimination case against Belfast City Council and won. Now, the reason I’m particularly proud of that is that it followed in the footsteps of civil rights. It was something civil rights achieved, to address discrimination in the workplace. But it was also at a time when violence was still rife, and we chose to go a legal route, and it changed things, whereas violence continued on and changed nothing, well, it changed for the worse for some people.

But it changed things legally. Five of us changed the whole approach to fair employment and discrimination. And that’s the way to go, you know, the legal route, the peaceful route.

Allan: So it’s another avenue to change the system.

Dympna: It is, and it should be used. People fought long and hard for human rights and equality. And it goes across the board for all. And we now have a mixed community in terms of multiculturalism. So we need to keep continuing on down that road to make sure everyone’s protected.

Allan: Thank you very much.

This episode is part of our series on Northern Peacebuilders — interviews with individuals whose work and efforts contribute to better community relations in Northern Ireland.

The theme song, The Trouble’s Never Over, is used by license from Scott Anderson.

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube Music, other platforms and by RSS.

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to me, we meet Nandi Jola, who is a poet,…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet John Kyle from east Belfast, who…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Charmain Jones, who is a community…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Martin Magill, who is a priest…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Denis Stewart, who was a research…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Emma Must, who is a poet…

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Rob Fairmichael, who is a long-time peace activist and coordinator of INNATE, a non-violence network in Ireland.

TRANSCRIPT

I have a great grandfather buried in the (Belfast) City Cemetery, Leonard McCaughey. He was originally from Armoy and opened a vegetarian restaurant in Belfast’s Cornmarket around the turn of the 20th century. It had what could be a modern trendy name — the letters “XL”. My mother’s father was born in the building in Botanic Avenue, which has the chemist near the railway bridge. But as a young child, Northern Ireland was a strange place we visited once a year to see relations.

From a Southern Protestant background, my great-grandfather on that side was busy founding Orange lodges in County Offaly in the 1880s. Being in the north for my secondary education, it was the surrealism of a British army training film on hand-to-hand combat in 1969, when I was 16 and a member of an army cadet force at the school, which convinced me of the futility of violence and set me on a lifetime of attempting to be a peacemaker. The Troubles were just beginning.

Belfast was still a strange place for me when I came to work in 1975 for an ecumenical student group after finishing college in Dublin. There weren’t too many people coming to live here at that time with the Troubles, which are never too far away, often just up or down the street. Gradually we put down roots and it became home. It was a personal relief that the ceasefires of 1994 happened when our children were starting to hit the teenage years and be wanting to go out to by themselves.

Although it has almost never been my paid employment, I’ve been involved with many different peace initiatives over the years, and don’t consider Northern Ireland to be “at peace” for two reasons: unresolved sectarian and Troubles issues, and involvement with militarism on the arms trade, including missiles, drones, and laser weapons being made in Belfast. People were killing each other in Northern Ireland; now people are expanding their involvement in making weapons to kill people elsewhere. Incidentally, the Republic is also trying to develop its arms industry.

As to the constitutional future, well, the Good Friday Agreement says 50% plus one determines a United Kingdom or united Ireland. For me a united people is most important, but if it did come to a 50% plus one vote for a united Ireland, I feel that should be the start of a process of engagement, not a decision to be implemented the next day.

Belfast and Northern Ireland have been quite good to me, with fascinating work and voluntary involvements, and I have no regrets about coming here as a young man. However, it’s sad and undermining to see the brain drain of young people continuing to leave, and that has most to do with the continuing sectarian division, but also the undersupply of educational opportunities at third level.

If we halt climate change, a more peaceful world in a hundred years may be possible. I think part of achieving that aim is redefining democracy in a more inclusive way; the insights and mechanisms provided by the de Borda Institute provide some help here.

I also think the incoming of migrants to Ireland, both north and south, has been a great assistance in building a positive and inclusive culture, helping us to think wider. In Colum Sands’ words, “It’s time that we were learning to count higher up than two.” We still have a huge amount of work to do.

What Northern Ireland Means to Me is presented by Julia Paul and produced by Shared Future News, to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland, with funding from the Heritage Fund on behalf of the Northern Ireland Office.

If you would like to suggest someone for a future episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, please email us at editor@sharedfuture.news

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In this episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, we meet Gladys Ganiel, who is a reader and writer of sociology of religion, and has represented Northern Ireland in the marathon at the Commonwealth Games.

TRANSCRIPT

I have very much chosen to live in Northern Ireland. I was born in Maine, in the United States, and quite often I am asked why I would want to live in Northern Ireland.

To answer that, I need to explain how I got here. In 1998, I was an undergraduate student at Providence College in Rhode Island. I was on the athletics team, running cross country and 10,000 meters on the track. My coach was Irish, so a number of Irish and English athletes had come to Providence to run on the team. One evening at dinner, an English athlete was slagging the Irish runners (in a good-natured way, I must add), saying that the world cross country championships would be held in Belfast the next year and he was looking forward to it being on “home soil”. Another English athlete piped up to say that the problems in Northern Ireland were “all about religion”.

I had been raised in an evangelical Protestant culture, and for me, religion had been a positive part of my life. So, I was intrigued by the view that religion had been “the problem” in Northern Ireland. I had also started to become interested in Northern Ireland because the peace talks mediator, Senator George Mitchell, was from my home state. Later, when I had an opportunity to pursue graduate research in Ireland, it was an easy decision.

I now lecture in sociology at Queens University. For more than two decades, I’ve studied the relationship between religion, conflict, and reconciliation. I sought to understand how religion has contributed to division and violence, as well as the processes that lead people to critique their own religious traditions and in doing so, change their ways and work for peace. I’ve been inspired by people I’ve met through my research who have done just that.

Since moving to Northern Ireland, I’ve also gotten tremendous support from people involved in athletics. In 2014, I ran the marathon for Northern Ireland at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. I wouldn’t have made it to the Games without the efforts of my coach, my training partners, physio, and my club — mostly people who were born and bred in Northern Ireland (from all political and religious backgrounds) and who decided to invest their time and effort in me.

Academic research and marathon training has something in common — both require vast reserves of energy and motivation. You need meaningful reasons to carry on, or else you won’t be able to do the work that’s required. The people I’ve met in Northern Ireland have convinced me that my effort is worth it, whether that has been pursuing an academic or an athletic vocation. They’ve inspired me and made me feel at home. Our people are the reasons that this place has a future, a future with hope.

If you would like to suggest someone for a future episode of What Northern Ireland Means to Me, please email us at editor@sharedfuture.news

You can subscribe to the Shared Future News podcast at Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, other platforms and by RSS.

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