Director's Blog

As I begin this blog, I thought it may be a good idea to give you an idea where I’m coming from. In fact in light of the recent tragic events in Northern Ireland, I felt moved to let you know exactly where I come from. It’s a wee place called Portadown in County Armagh. You’ll know the name as it has been sadly famous as the location of the “Drumcree stand-off” that brought Northern Ireland to a standstill in the summers of the mid to late nineties.

That’s why there was a special pain for me in hearing of the horrendous murder of the police officer Stephen Carroll, shot dead just a couple of miles from where my parents still live. Portadown is a segregated town, and I grew up oblivious of the fact that there was “another side”. Then as an 18 year old I sat down in a lecture room (right at the back, as I was a few minutes late) on the first day of medical school and was joined a few minutes later by a fellow dawdler. “How’re you doing?”, I asked. “Fine, thanks”, came the reply. Next - “I’m Andy” “Nice to meet you. I’m Gerry”. Then a firm but subtle handshake. We continued our hushed small-talk for the next fifteen minutes to discover that we had for example both 1) done the same A-levels 2) got the same A-level results 3) supported Liverpool FC 4) liked the same bands and had in fact been at some of the same gigs over the past 12 months etc. I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that we laughed about the fact that we could have been brothers. I then innocently asked, “So where are you from?” and Gerry said “Portadown”. I will never forget how I felt at that moment. It crystallised and personalised for me the problem of Northern Ireland. These two lads from the same town who played the same sports, listened to the same music and studied the same books had never met, simply because one was a Catholic and one was a Protestant.

Of course many folks aren’t fortunate enough to experience the breadth of university. But why should we have to wait that long anyway? There are still only 6% of Northern Ireland’s young people who are educated with folks from “the other side”. That means that a huge 94% grow up not encountering and therefore not fully understanding their brothers and sisters. We love to put a brave face on it, but what we have is still apartheid in smart clothes. In that vacuum grows all the ignorance and prejudice.

The response of the people of Northern Ireland to recent events has been as Barack Obama said this week, “Heroic”. The perseverance, hope and goodwill on both sides are there. They simply need to meet each other. I’m praying that leaders of real courage will rise up in Northern Ireland, who will challenge the status quo and put integrated education at the top of the political agenda. It’s not the whole ball game, but at least it would mean our children are playing in the same playground.