Great hatred, little room

It’s tempting but I’m going to walk right past Ruth Dudley Edward’s little anti-Gerry Adams rant in yesterday’s Sindo. There’s something almost Freudian about my old UCD classmate’s fixation on the Sinn Féin president so I think it’s more polite to avert my eyes and say a little prayer for the poor woman.

Instead let’s turn to the protest led in Derry yesterday by another old classmate of mine, Eamonn McCann. With over two hundred people he was objecting to plans that would turn the former Ebrington Barracks, now a centre for the arts, into some sort of digital hub. Among the arguments advanced for leaving it as a cultural site was that it gave those on the West Bank a reason for crossing the new footbridge and visiting the East.

That’s a compelling argument. Around 9,000 Protestants over a 20-year period left the West Bank of the Foyle to live in the East/Waterside area. Only a tiny enclave of Protestants currently live on the City/West side; the magnet of a cultural centre at Ebrington Barracks would do something to redress the city’s apartheid.

What’s sometimes overlooked, though, is that for decades there has been a minority of Catholics living on the Waterside of Derry. They feel a loyalty to it, even a love of it, and wouldn’t consider living anywhere else. Despite the kind of incident I’ll now tell you about.

It happened in the late 1970s/early 80s. A schoolboy from a Catholic school, wearing his school blazer, was in the queue for a long-awaited bus. At last it arrived and those waiting grateful boarded it, one after the other. As it happened, the Catholic schoolboy was the last allowed to board. “Sorry – we’re full” the driver told the rest of the queue. As the Catholic boy boarded the bus a large youth next in line behind him, clearly annoyed that he hadn’t been allowed to board, swung a fist which smashed into the schoolboy’s face. “Fenian bastard!” he yelled, as the boy fell back, blood pumping from his nose. When the youngster got home, his mother was convinced (wrongly, as it turned out) that his nose was broken, such was the volume of blood pouring from it. The father, when he came home from work, was full of solicitude but rejected any idea of going to the police. “Better let it go” he said. “Not worth the hassle we might get”.

“Big deal” you say. “Hardly a major sectarian crime”. No, but it shows how sectarianism flourishes when people feel preference slipping away from them and how they lash out at those they see benefitting from fairness. It also shows how for decades Catholics learnt to accept petty bigotry without raising objection, for fear of something worse to follow.

That schoolboy, I’m sure, will never forget the incident. Sadder still, his assailant will probably not forget it either – may even glory in his bullying strike. Which is about as far as you can get from Wordsworth’s famous judgement: “That best portion of a man’s life, his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love”.

Derry needs that cultural centre.