We all know about the spirit of the Presbyterian United Irishmen at the end of the 18th century; we have heard of Armour of Ballymoney. In recent times there has been Dr George Dallas - now no longer with us - on whose life and thoughts Dr Roddy Evans, Belfast, has written a moving short biography. Dallas suffered three years in hospital when young with tuberculosis, and later, as a medical man, devoted his life to the treatment of the disease. He was, among many other interests, a keen gardner.
In 1977 he and his wife joined a Bible class at Clonard Monastery for Catholics and Protestants. A conversation with a Catholic friend from the group remained with him to the end of his life. "It caused him," writes Dr Evans, "to break down and weep bitter tears." It was a story of a man whose life at work was made miserable by a bully-boy who intimidated not only this particular Catholic but also Protestants. "A dozen such bullyboys can terrorise a large factory and make it impossible for Catholics to work there." But the interesting point here is that the Protestant who was bullied was deploring his own lack of Christian forgiveness for his persecutor. Dallas said that he realised "the injustice of our dominance which at all times depends ultimately on the threat of sectarian murder". Some will say, "What about the other way round?" Dallas was a realist at the same time and asked himself what "repentance must mean for our community in relation to Ireland. Surely it must mean a humble and glad acceptance of ourselves fully as Irish people, as we were always meant to be, not Irish and British as well, or any other formula that allows us to go on feeling superior. Unless our community finds this kind of repentance and learns to care for all the people of Ireland, there will always be violence in this country."
He began to study the ideology of nationalism and was much helped by a book written by a man of this newspaper - Sean Cronin's Irish Nationalism - A History of its Roots and Ideology. Dallas was very much a Presbyterian. He was conscious of the time when his church, like the Catholic, paid tithes to the Anglican establishment, and its members were debarred from many positions. The Second Conversion of Dr George Dallas by Dr Roddy Evans, published in an edition of 500 copies in 1999, may help some people on both sides to think better of themselves - and of the people on the other side.