Alice Wedega was the first woman member of the Papua New Guinea legislature and the first woman in her country to be decorated by the Queen of England. At a dinner welcoming Queen Elizabeth to Papua New Guinea in 1973, one of her security guards heard that Alice had visited Northern Ireland. “What on earth were you doing there?” he asked.

In her direct fashion Alice told the man that her great-grandfather had been a cannibal. “At that time,” she said, “our people used to kill and eat men. They would practice payback. That is, if one of your side killed one of mine, my side would kill one of yours. But the missionaries came from Europe to stop us doing all that. And now I have been back to Northern Ireland to help the Europeans there to stop doing it.”

            I have just visited Northern Ireland for the first time in many years and seen firsthand the way the community has moved out of a payback past. It is true that there is deadlock in the Northern Ireland peace process and concern over ongoing paramilitary activity. Some Republicans and some Loyalists in Northern Ireland haven’t entirely given up on retaliation and feelings still run deep, not only between them but also in terms of relations with Britain. But the last ten years statistics show a dramatic decrease in sectarian killing and ballots are replacing bullets as a way to settle differences. The public has made clear its preference for peace.

I was in Belfast to speak to the Northern Ireland Inter-Faith Forum on  forgiveness across faith traditions. The Forum has been for ten years helping people understand better the country’s many ethnic communities and is just one example of attempts over recent years to reach out to people who are different from you. Another is the dozens of integrated schools that are thriving when only a few years ago the very existence of one such school was regarded as news making. I was introduced to the work of the Healing through Remembering Project.  I learned more about Corrymeela, one of a number of centers that are bringing Protestants and Catholics together in prayerful commitment to peace.

There are still occasional sectarian killings. But nothing to support what I once saw in an American travel agents office, a map of Ireland with a line struck through it and the words “state of war”. In fact Northern Ireland is clearing the decks for increasing numbers of tourists. The Irish are only now tumbling to the potential of their city as the builder of The Titanic. Some of the places associated are being preserved and a waterbus takes visitors to see the shipbuilding heritage. I was shown round some of the development along the river Lagan in the heart of the city. It includes the Waterfront Hall and The Odyssey, a concert venue, an ice hockey stadium, home to the Belfast Giants, a 12-screen multi-plex cinema and an Imax, all together seating 10,000 people, which as my host told me would never have been built at the height of the troubles, people wouldn’t have dared to go to it.

            Two great cranes, Sampson and Goliath, which can lift 1600 tons, and which are “listed”, dominate the skyline, symbol yes to the decline of shipbuilding but also a pointer to a new economy. Beneath them is the new Titanic Quarter, as they have named it, the former shipbuilding area which in the next fifteen to twenty years will be providing housing, office space, and industrial development focussing on new technology. The increased employment and investment are positive indicators of the normalization of society in Belfast.

An impressive example of the desire to leave the past behind, even though it is incredibly difficult to do and sometimes misunderstood, is the journey being explored by Jo Berry and Patrick Magee. Jo Berry’s father, Sir Anthony Berry, was killed by the IRA bomb that went off during a Conservative Party political conference in Brighton, England, in 1984. Patrick Magee is the man who set the bomb. He was given eight life sentences for his act, but was released in 1999 as part of the Good Friday agreement between the Irish and British governments.

In the days after the bomb went off Jo faced a choice, she said, to stay as a victim, blaming others for the pain or to go on a journey of healing. “I made an inner commitment to the journey with no idea what that meant.” In 1999 when Patrick was released from prison she relived the day of her father’s death as if it was the first time. Meeting ex-prisoners she experienced first feelings of betrayal but then to her surprise discovered how normal and likeable they were. In November 2000 she met Patrick for the first time and realised they were on this journey together and could learn from each other. “The judgements fall away,” she says, “as I realize that if I had lived his life I may have made the same decisions.”

Patrick describes his meeting with Jo as a turning point in his life. “It occasioned me to look back over the past and to deal with some of the difficult issues.” A tangible result of these meetings was the establishment of Causeway, which aims to facilitate similar encounters between victims and former combatants.

An unusual perspective on Northern Ireland’s troubles was given recently by Archbishop Tutu when he was interviewed in the leading daily, the Belfast Telegraph. Religion Correspondent Alf McCreary writes, “As we were ending our conversation Archbishop Tutu leaned across and said to me, with his characteristic and infectious laugh, “Eventually you are going to solve your problems and do you know why? You people have such a remarkable sense of humour, and one day you will be sitting there and looking at yourselves, and asking yourselves: ‘Why were we so stupid for so long?’”

Articles Archive of Michael Henderson