NORTHERN IRELAND has undergone a remarkable and positive transformation although the peace remains far from perfect, President Mary McAleese told an audience at the West Belfast Festival last night.
Mrs McAleese, who delivered the annual Paddy McGrory memorial lecture, referred to the dissident republican murders of two British soldiers at the British army Massereene base in Antrim and of a police officer in Craigavon, and of the loyalist sectarian murder of Kevin McDaid in Coleraine.
She also recalled how trouble erupted in Ardoyne in north Belfast as an Orange Order parade passed by in July.
But in paying tribute to the well-known solicitor and civil and human rights activist Paddy McGrory, who died in 1994, Mrs McAleese said it was through continuing hard work and commitment that the peace process would succeed.
Referring to the current peace, she said: “It is still a far from perfect picture and there has been plenty of heartache in the events at Massereene, Craigavon and Coleraine, to say nothing of the disappointment that the legitimate hope and desire for a completely peaceful Twelfth of July were not fully realised despite huge efforts.
“But it is precisely in those huge efforts that success will eventually come. It is in not giving up, in refusing to be cowed into giving up, in holding on to the vision of a just and peaceful society and committing to that vision through thick and thin, that the small steps of progress will accrete to what history will one day judge to be giant leaps forward,” she added.
“This place is worth the effort. Its people are worth the effort,” the President said.
She described Paddy McGrory as a “fearless advocate and true advocate of peace” and she praised those who “lifted the heavy baton that fell from his worn hands almost 15 years ago”.
She also referred to how addressing sectarian divisions must be part of the work of reconciliation. “There are old force fields of enmity and distrust to be crossed and though the journeys may be short geographically from one side of a road or village or town to another, the journey of the heart is much much longer.”
Through the annual memorial lectures people were “reminded of the importance for stability and democracy of rights, of laws, of accountability, of public vigilance, of credible systems of vindication of rights,” she said.
“They have been reminded that human rights are not concessions begrudgingly given but rather an innate part of the birthright of every single human being that arises simply by virtue of being human.”
Mrs McAleese recalled how Mr McGrory, who appeared for the families at the inquest of the three IRA members killed by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988 in disputed circumstances and who also represented many republicans, won a number of libel cases against newspapers who tried to portray him as therefore sympathetic to republican paramilitarism.
“It had been a bitter battle for this man who abhorred political violence and for this superb lawyer whose professional advocacy on behalf of certain defendants had led to him being accused of sharing their perspectives,” she said.