Often there's an assumption that English people are just not interested - that the situation in Northern Ireland (or in Ireland as a whole for that matter!) is just too complicated and defies either logic or understanding - that it would be easier to study Bosnia (people used to say South Africa), places where the issues could be seen clearly "in black and white".
Even at this early stage in Let's Talk, it is clear to us that young people in Birmingham are not just interested but actually are positively disposed to becoming involved. The teachers and young people in this development education project demonstrated keen interest, enthusiasm and, most importantly, a desire to question what is going on and what is possible for the future.
What attracted us to a partnership in Let's Talk was the opportunity for young people to get together, to think, to talk through issues about international conflicts. The dynamic of linking this to conflict in these islands - in particular in Northern Ireland - and to conflict in our own community brought a reality to the project which in the planning stages "felt right". Through our work over the past decade, we have discovered that the relationship between Britain and Ireland is our "local" international relationship- and that it is in many ways a microcosm of other such relationships. In many ways misunderstanding between these islands is a "microcosm of international misunderstanding". This was in the mid 1980s, the time of the New Ireland Forum and some optimism. We argued in a book, Half the Lies are True, that education had an important role to play in building new understandings, not only in "the North" but also in both England and Ireland. Let's Talk was for us borne out of the frustration of waiting for political change amidst the growing realisation that the global dimension, drawing on experience from many places, can often bring new insights into our own local experience.
We now find ourselves in a time of new optimism, one that seems to be heralding the possibility of real change. This accelerates the need for projects like Let's Talk - projects which help young people to see issues in a wider context; projects which look to the future but with an awareness of the past; projects which provide a forum for young people to bring their own ideas to the situation. We in Birmingham have a particular interest in such a project. There are many, many families from Ireland who have made Birmingham their home. The Birmingham pub bombing, which was nearly 25 years ago, had a considerable impact on local community relations but we, like most of England, continue to see conflict in Ireland as a purely local issue. The reasons for this are sometimes difficult to figure. This is the "English question". It deserves an airing, not because it will make interesting history debate but because it has to be part of the reconciliation process, part of the lessons we all should learn.
There are some key lessons we feel we have already learnt from the early stages of the project, but some of the most challenging are about what conflict means for us here in Birmingham, such as issues about our involvement in conflict in other parts of the world. For example, the arms trade: do we know to what extent Birmingham firms are implicated?
What about the basis of Birmingham's development, about our historical links with other parts of the world, about the extent to which we were implicated, for example, in the slave trade?
How can we learn from the positive experience of multi-cultural Birmingham?
To build on what has been achieved, we need to be aware of potential conflict and, for example, be pro-active about racism; to provide opportunities for young people and about providing them with opportunities to constructively learn with and from each other. What are we doing to work on a positive collective identity - as Birmingham, as England?
These are just some of the challenges that the Let's Talk project has already posed for us.
