There is No Future in Green and Orange.

Ireland. An island located to the very west of Europe and locked in a past of conflict with little idea of how to get out. Where people react to others with a glance, hear the accent, ask a question or two, their school, where they live. Bingo, that’s the basis of the relationship set, just there, now. Green or Orange.

In the Republic it’s a dormant methodology, to be brought out when an accent from the Northern half of the island is heard. It is not needed as most of the people have a similar background. But in the North it is so finely tuned that it is almost totally instinctive, and has a few other elements. Names being a dead giveaway. I meet people and I cannot help myself, and others meet me and they are doing the same thing, assessing. In Dublin I get asked questions on the presumption that I was brought up Catholic because my wife is from Dublin. No Prods marry Catholics, no Northern Prods marry Southerners and so I get looks of some incredulity when it is discovered that there is normality to be found.

We are trapped in a cycle of differences that are infused in all of us to have meaning way beyond any sense in the modern world. A country where history and looking back is so much more important than the potential that could be unleashed by looking forward. And there is huge potential, completely disproportionate to the size of the island. In business terms we have goodwill that far outweighs the actual financial performance of the economy of both parts, if only we could tap into it. But we prefer to use history to poke the other side, to prick the calm and flag up differences. We have anniversaries of victories, and celebrations of superiority that wrench our heads around to look backwards. I have a sense that for Unionists looking forward they see only disaster with changing demographics more dangerous that any nationalist campaigns. I also have a sense that a United Ireland is an anachronism in 21st Century Europe.

A situation like Northern Ireland and the constant sectarianism is described well in the book “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee, an American expert in economic ands social policy, as “zero sum politics”. If one side is benefiting, it has to be to the cost of the other. We see it here all the time, politicians and people looking over real or invisible walls to see that the other community is getting more, is being treated better, and as a result “our community” is being mistreated. The goal is to move past this and to get things that are better for everyone. Without plagiarising too much of Ms McGhee’s brilliant book, she talks about false histories, that allow communities to deny any responsibility. We see this here as the Orange and Green re-write the facts to suit their own agenda, from the Troubles being provoked by Republican violence, to the highlighting of the violence of the British State over that if the IRA.

When in reality there are no winners. The first 50 years of Ulster had real problems of discrimination, but there was also poverty in Protestant rural areas. One community were pushed to anger, the other to be silent. The Troubles lost all of us 35 years of transition from the 60s to the 2000s and we are still lagging behind in education and training. Every politician’s answers are predictable. We know what they are going to say, every time, every day because the response is always us and them. Always. There are mumbles that they will work together, but the first sign of trouble, and it’s back to the camp, prepare to fight.

We are talked to and educated as if we are still living in a world that has stuck, that still sees a huge majority heading to church every Sunday, that is white, has reason to fear others because they are told different things in school. It is nuts.

Here are a few things that we learn before we can think independently. What religion we are, what rules that we have to follow because of that religion, what school we will go to because we are this or that, the friends we will have, the football team we support, the music we like, the songs we sing, the food we eat, the places we shop, the holiday destinations, what names are ours and theirs, the things that are good about us and bad about them, the names we call them, the names they call us, the streets, the advantages they have. Now think about that if we were black and white in the US, and what we would be called, both of the communities.

Racists. All of us.

We have debate about academic selection at the age of eleven, through passing of exams, yet we have academic selection from the age of four, with publicly supported schools that educate sectarian differences by their very existence. In other parts of the world this is illegal, but here it is lauded.

Imagine if a child was born on the Falls and one on the Shankill, and they were identical. One to each religion, and on the same day they wandered across Lanark Way, got lost and were returned to the wrong homes. Would it be the genetics or the education that would result in the adult.

So who benefits from all this? Churches? Politicians? Because I for one do not see people getting more prosperous from anything that is Orange or Green.

Are we happy to perpetuate this for ever? Or are we, the people who live here, prepared to think about the future and what it could look like? To ask ourselves, no one else, if we think the way we do because that is all we have been taught? Can we look at things differently, creatively, open our minds to finding out why it is we feel so angry about the mere existence of people that are different to us?

We have two choices, division or diversity as our way forward. Division keeps Orange and Green at the core of the Irish political landscape. The desire to be Irish or British being the only game in town, and all other elements are put aside to fight that battle.

Or diversity.

Diversity is the 21st Century. Where we put aside the Orange and Green as political mantras and look at the lives of the people, and the prosperity that can make us all better off. Where every person is given hope that their children will live a better life than theirs, both economically and mentally. Where our politics is driven by moving forward and politicians are elected on their achievements.

Imagine that energy that is wasted in both communities by the expression of distrust and division. There is so much more awareness of mental health, but still we bring children up with anger as part of their lives, and fear. Of the unknown, in a country where when we meet others they are amazed at how we all seem to know each other! Young people looking out for other young people in case they are attacked. Young people fearful of going out with someone if they were brought up differently. Many young people lying in bed at night scared. Of life.

So we park the politics of division. We have a moratorium on hate. We push people together rather than apart. The border is pulled from the politics for ten years. I know that many will say – sure that is a win for the Unionists then, when the numbers are moving towards a United Ireland. It isn’t. It is a breather, a chance to get to know each other, to have a goal of prosperity that is about better lives for all, a real shared future, that revolves around not allowing the green or orange to be the driving force, that unless decisions are good for all they are seen as good for none. In the US research has shown that kids going to schools that are more racially diverse end up with better results. Why because it is a challenge to learn how to live with people who are different. It is stimulating. It is exciting. It is different.

We keep the border, we keep the protocol, we grow trade across the island, we create jobs and recruit across the island, we train young people from all backgrounds for the 21st Century Economy, we become active partners with both the UK and the EU in developing our economy, we mobilise the potential for new in the North by looking forwards.

Is it possible? The same things have already been done. Northern Ireland had no screen industry in 2001. In 2021, we have seen over £500 million in the local economy from the production of major films and television series, seen around the world. Not only has NI Screen facilitated production, they have educated the next generation to be able to work in the industry. Meanwhile one of the things we learned as kids has changed. We have changed. Gay rights were non existent, and then sneered at, and are now, thanks to us being educated and being open to change, totally accepted by most as the right way forward.

Prosperity. Not wealth for a few, better lives for all. Better education, a better curriculum, removal of religion to the church away from the school, efforts to engage, learn and embrace diversity, not to win over, but to learn and let go.

But it will take effort. Not be politicians, religious leaders, all those that have kept us apart, but from us. All of us. Every time we look through a green or orange tinted pair of glasses, we recognise that that is not what it really looks like, it is distorted by the colour, so we shake our heads, clear the view and look again.