Let's sing indignation once again

A small whirlpool of indignation may swirl for a time around Tony Blair's equation of "Protestant bigots who kill Catholics" …

A small whirlpool of indignation may swirl for a time around Tony Blair's equation of "Protestant bigots who kill Catholics" with Muslim extremists. Instant reaction suggested he could scarcely have caused more offence if the question of Protestant bigotry had dominated his lengthy defence of his foreign policy, writes Fionnuala O Connor

But his remark, in a speech at the Foreign Policy Centre in London on Tuesday, was more than an aside. As the critics complained, the prime minister mentioned only one breed of Northern murderer, and attributed the "Protestant" murderer's motivation to a "strain of extremism within his religion."

Entirely predictably, DUP voices denounced Mr Blair. Less predictably, he was criticised by the Rev Ken Newell, the Presbyterian minister who has tried to explain the Gerry Adams reshaping of republicanism to his own congregation, and the wider Protestant, unionist community. Like the Rev Harold Good, a friend and colleague, Mr Newell has taken considerable abuse. The two stood up for Fr Alec Reid, when in Mr Newell's church hall he was stung by a hostile questioner into drawing parallels between unionists and the Nazis.

Mr Blair's remarks, Mr Newell said on Tuesday, were unwise and unbalanced.

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He added: "I know for a fact that everyone within their own faith traditions realises that in those communities there are people who are extreme and very bigoted." The reaction, with no time to reflect, was characteristically aimed at promoting understanding rather than mistrust: Ken Newell soft-pedalled.

There are many who recognise no bigotry in their own religion, or consider any bigotry in their own community considerably less prevalent and less poisonous than that of "the others". For once, an Ulster Unionist spokesman hit an acute note by first querying the wisdom of "comparing conflict areas", then making the unambiguous statement that his party "would not defend people who murdered innocent Catholics". But it infuriates many Protestants, by no means ambivalent about loyalist violence, that the IRA often escapes being tagged as bigoted and sectarian, and is so rarely dubbed "Catholic". Other Protestants have always seen loyalist paramilitaries as primarily sectarian bigots. Some loyalists have declared it themselves: "Any Taig will do" is a favourite slogan within the UDA, on T-shirts and gable walls.

What might be called "comparative bigotry" is an explosive topic, a reliable filler of airwaves, letters columns and opinion pages. It may become more rather than less tendentious. Rough drafts of Troubles history have been through the first major revisions but the main participants will be hammering away at their keyboards - an activity far preferable to its predecessor - for years yet.

A simple narrative satisfies many of those who take an interest. Some are aware of how the killing began: most probably realise that republicans are responsible for the greatest proportion of the deaths. They know roughly how many were killed and that much lasting damage was done to people, the economy, and to relations between Protestants and Catholics in the segregated North.

They also know that unionists were not blameless and that anti-Catholic bigotry was a feature of Northern society.

Many unionists ask why Catholics have always reaped such sympathy from the wider world, given the IRA's responsibility for so much bloodshed. But some know perfectly well why that happens, and why Tony Blair so confidently produced his "Protestant bigotry" label. Before the first Southerner pitches in to support offended unionists, they might stop and consider why the initial DUP outrage came from Ian Paisley jnr rather than his far more eloquent father. Then they should imagine the amusement value, at home and abroad, of the senior Paisley in full cry against the charge that bigotry might spring from the religion he has preached for so long.

Nearly all Catholics fool themselves that Catholic bigotry is somehow a lesser evil than the Protestant strain. The parents who rant at daughters and sons when they choose to marry Protestants like to claim that of course they are not bigoted, just concerned to preserve culture and identity, anxious that precious faith should be handed down the generations. The same arguments have been used to try to justify intimidation and genocide around the world.

After decades of conflict, a number of reporters concluded that the IRA was basically political with a sectarian element, while violent loyalism was basically sectarian with only a tinge of politics. Some close observers of Tony Blair have long reckoned that he believes, or at the very least affects to believe, that IRA violence was basically political. He has also given the odd, mostly heavily concealed, hint that he has nothing but contempt for violent loyalists. This time, there was no code.

Killers, academics and journalists will keep on arguing about whether the Troubles were mostly political or mostly sectarian and tribal. Perhaps the key word there is academic. The dead cannot be revived. The motives of those who killed them ranks a very poor second to that.