Two events reported recently in your paper, although they happened in two quite different circumstances, resonate strangely together.
The first is the decision taken in Derry's Oakgrove Integrated College to deny some pupils permission to wear a poppy. This decision, it was reported, was reached after a careful and thorough consultation with parents, and it was concluded that in the interests of harmony within the school community, the wearing of the poppy should be banned. To be fair, Oakgrove has on many other occasions displayed a keen willingness to foster the diversity of cultural experience within the community it seeks to serve; on this occasion, however, its response owes more to a lowest common denominator mentality than to the liberal fostering spirit that is meant to animate the integrated school movement.
The second event was the handling by the senior EU civil servant Mr Trojan of what was in effect a rather harmless bit of lesserspoken language symbolism onthe part of a member of the NI Assembly during a recent group visit to Brussels. At best this was a surprisingly inept handling of what must be a very common occurrence in a Commission serving such a linguistically diverse community; at worst, it was an insensitive put-down of someone attempting to make the mildest of cultural assertions (asking a question both in Irish and English).
Both events in their own way make the point very clearly that we are still a very long way from being able to take for granted, even among those whose professional responsibility it is to be sensitive to such matters, the unityin-diversity guideline which is at the heart of the European ideal and a vital ingredient in the new, more enlightened and culturally tolerant society that is now emerging in our own country.
Risteard Mac Gabhann,
Duncreggan Road,
Derry.