Killing sectarianism stone dead

The divided Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland have been caught like wallflowers on the sidelines of the dance-floor bemused by the enchanting mood music heralding the new diplomatic romance that has blossomed almost overnight between Scotland and the Republic of Ireland.

The divided Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland have been caught like wallflowers on the sidelines of the dance-floor bemused by the enchanting mood music heralding the new diplomatic romance that has blossomed almost overnight between Scotland and the Republic of Ireland. It has not gone unnoticed by hard-headed people in Northern Ireland that this romance is proceeding at a fast pace. Within weeks of a visit to Dublin by Scotland's First Minister, Mr Donald Dewar, the President, Mrs McAleese, is taking the burgeoning relationship a stage further with her official visit this week to Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen before heading south to meet the Queen in London.

The President's visit is a strong signal to the political establishment at Stormont that in the new set of political and cultural realignments that are being put in place between Britain and Ireland, it could be left behind by Dublin's wooing of Edinburgh.

The dilemma for open-minded Ulster Presbyterians, who have traditionally looked to Presbyterian Scotland as their protective elder sister is summed up pithily by the former Moderator of the General Assembly, the Rt Rev John Dunlop: Belfast could be marginalised and the Dublin-Edinburgh axis could become pre-eminent.

At stake for Northern Ireland is not only the formation of an Executive in Stormont and Cross-Border institutions with the Irish Republic, but also its participation alongside the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish in the British-Irish Council, a body which could prove to be the Good Friday Agrement's ugly duckling turned into the golden swan.

President McAleese's visit is also a timely reminder to Ulster Unionists that one of the underlying dynamics reshaping the future governing structures of Northern Ireland is the eradication of sectarianism.

As Steve Bruce, the Professor of Sociology at Aberdeen University, has observed, Catholics and Protestants in Scotland are not at war over their country's political future. On the contrary, the lesson which they have learnt from the Ulster Troubles is the need to kill sectarianism stone dead in the new Scotland.

While Paisleyism still remains a potent reactionary force in Ulster politics, political religion has collapsed in Scotland. Paisley's fundamentalist ally, the Rev Pastor Jack Glass, is no longer the voice of traditionalism which he was in the 1970s. The changed perception of the Irish Republic from that of a backwater economy dominated by the Roman Catholic Church to that of a progressive modern State at the heart of the European Union has changed attitudes among Scottish Protestants towards their neighbouring island.

Jimmy Reid, who came to prominence in the early 1970s as the leader of the Upper Clyde shipbuilders work-in, believes that while the Scottish media has recognised the changes that have transformed the Irish Republic, they have failed to highlight how Ulster Presbyterianism remains caught in a time-warp and has not evolved in the more secular way that Scotland has.

It has been estimated that eight out of ten Ulster Protestants regard themselves as similar to the Scots. Centuries of anti-popery left their mark on their psyche. The Reformation Parliament in 1560 abolished the authority of the "paip" and banned the Mass. The Westminster Confession of Faith called the Pope that "anti-Christ, that man of sin and perdition."

Anti-Catholicism blended with anti-Irishness into a crude brew following the immigration of Irish workers from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, reaching a climax in 1923 when the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church published a pamphlet, The Menace of the Irish Race to our Scottish Nationality. It welcomed the assimilation of Irish Orangemen from Northern Ireland but warned that Catholic immigrants of Irish origins could not be absorbed into the Scottish race.

Over time, economic change has dimmed this mixture of racial, religion and class bias against the Irish in Scotland. Northern Ireland, too, looks increasingly like a backwater compared with the modernity of the Celtic Tiger. Outwardly, however, the Scottish dimension remains a dominant feature of Ulster life. Scottish Pipe Bands are an integral part of Ulster culture. There is a revival in the Scots language. Scottish regiments serve on rotation in Northern Ireland. Ulster students are choosing Scottish universities rather than Trinity College Dublin. Some Ulster farmers are buying land in the south west of Scotland. The rival Glasgow soccer teams, Celtic and Rangers, have a huge following in Northern Ireland. Each July sees massive two-way movements of Orangemen across the Irish Sea. In a study, published in the autumn issue of History Ireland, T.G. Fraser, the Professor of History at the University of Ulster, has attempted to identify the ways in which Orangeism has tried to adapt to changing circumstances in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

"A major difference between the two is that while in Northern Ireland the Order can draw upon a broad hinterland of support and sympathy in both political and religious circles, in Scotland this is not the case," he writes. Although the composer James MacMillan has complained that anti-Catholicism is holding up the movement towards a multicultural society in Scotland, Orangeism is having to adapt to the new sense of Scottishness that includes the descendants of Irish immigrants as well as the Muslim community.

At this critical juncture in history, it is symbolic, therefore, that two of the Northern Ireland Ministers are Scots: the Security Minister, Adam Ingram, a former member of the Orange Order, who represents East Kilbride, and John McFall, MP for Dumbarton, is Parliamentary Under-Secretary with responsibility for the Economy and Education. A Catholic, McFall says that he has not experienced any sectarian hostility in the course of his day-to-day duties in the North.

Referring to that fact that "inclusiveness" is a basic principle governing the peace process, he is delighted that recent policy document, Towards a Cultural Tolerance was warmly welcomed by church leaders.

"Co-operation and tolerance are the only way forward," McFall argues.

In their pursuit of peace and tolerance in Northern Ireland, both Ingram and McFall will find themselves redundant in the new political dispensation there. The fate of these two Scottish political representatives from the respective Orange and Green traditions will provide a telling clue to the reworking of the Dublin-Belfast-Edinburgh triangle.