A tale of two Derrymen

Two Derrymen spoke out boldly last week.

The first was James McClean, who did an interview with Football Focus which received a surprising amount of admiring comment. I say surprising, not because the interview didn’t deserve attention, but because McClean has had a PR mountain to climb.

Predictably, the interview focused on McClean’s opting to play for the Republic of Ireland rather than Northern Ireland. McClean is frank, that he used the NI youth system to develop as a player before declaring for the south. How refreshing, to have someone who talks about doing what most of us would have done in the circumstances. If the system is there, why not take advantage of it? If people feel aggrieved by that, then change the system.

He also talked about how his refusal to wear a poppy on his football shirt had led to a vicious response from some club supporters, including death threats. In his final game for Sunderland, he talks of going over at the final game and handing his shirt to a young lad – only for the lad’s father to take the shirt and hurl it back at McClean. And how, when driving home with his missus, who was pregnant at the time, a car drove up beside him at the traffic lights, the guy in it rolled down his window and spat on McClean’s car.

Despite all the abuse, McClean has stuck by his no poppy decision: “If the poppy was simply about World War One and Two victims alone, I would wear it without a problem,” he said in 2015. “Because of the history of where I come from in Derry, I cannot wear something that represents that.”

The other Derryman – ooops, Londonderry man is Gregory Campbell MP. Gregory is keen to register his support for his leader, Arlene Foster, and her efforts to “find out more about” the Irish language. He says he’d be happy, with his leader, to support the Irish language, but Irish language activists simply are not going to get an Acht na Gaeilge. ( I said that. Gregory said “Irish language act:,)

The report in the Belfast Telegraph shows Gregory widening out developments to show who are the good guys and who the bad.

“Mr Campbell, who failed to apologise for parodying the Irish language using the words ‘curry my yoghurt can coca coalyer’ in 2014, also said that the outreach efforts by unionists were not being matched by republicans.”

No, that wasn’t a temporary brainstorm you suffered – Gregory actually did say that unionists are reaching out to nationalists and republicans but are receiving no reciprocation.

C’mere, Gregory. Let me put a fatherly arm around your shoulders. Sinn Féin and particularly the late Martin McGuinness – remember him?- have spent the last ten years and more making gesture after gesture to unionism, and as Martin McGuinness said about his meetings with Queen Elizabeth, “Not one unionist politician said ‘Well done’.”

The truth is, Gregory, republicans and nationalists have had it up to here with contempt for all things Irish by the DUP and other unionists. They’ve also had it up to here with people who sign up to things, like an Irish Language Act and a Bill of Rights, and then act as if they haven’t. It’s called bad faith. So do we think you’re showing respect for Irish language speakers? Um, no. And does Arlene’s Damascene conversion to the Irish language ring true? Uh-uh.

Two Derrymen, then, Both holding fiercely to their beliefs. One, swimming against the tide and refusing to play the hypocrite by wearing a poppy for armed forces that slaughtered fourteen of his fellow-citizens in broad daylight. The other, also swimming against the tide if only he knew it, who refuses to apologise for openly mocking the Irish language, who asks us to believe that unionism is the open, reconciling force in our society while republicanism is negative and reactionary.

I haven’t met James McClean, but if I did I expect I would like him. I have met Gregory Campbell, and on a personal level I do like him, found him pleasant, polite and accommodating. What a shame he can’t carry that open attitude into his professional life.