Decades too late . . .

An historic act took place in Stormont Castle today. A sight which I never thought I'd see . . . Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams sitting side by side announcing that the DUP and Sinn Fein would form a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland on May 8, 2007.
That date will hopefully go down in history as the beginning of the end of sectarianism in Northern Ireland. I say hopefully because there are many rifts to be healed, many differences to be ironed out.
Paisley will be happy because it makes him Prime Minister designate. Adams will be happy because his party will have powerful positions in the government.
Will the people of the province be happy? Only time will tell . . .
Time.
Sixty years ago this year I was born in Belfast. My late mother was a Protestant Baptist and my father (I don't know if he is still alive or not) a Catholic. In those days Protestants and Catholics did not mix, let alone marry and have children. My mother had helped to build bombers during WW2 and went on to join the Royal Air Force. My father was also in the RAF (I wonder how much castigation he had to endure from the Catholic side because he was "fighting for the enemy"?)
Needless to say my mother never talked to me about why we moved to Bristol, England when I was an infant but I suspect we were hounded out by sectarian bigotry - neither side would want to associate with Papist or Prod scum. We lived in various places until we were taken in by a kindly couple and given a living room and a bedroom in their house. We were to stay for 14 days. In the end we stayed for 14 years. Elsie and the late Ted Essery were our Good Samaritans. In fact Elsie, now in her nineties, is still referred to by my two grown-up kids as "Grandma Essery".
My father was posted to India with the forces and the family was separated. We would get the occasional letter and money for my upkeep but not much else. Then he contracted tuberculosis which, in those days, was considered as much a killer as cancer is today. He survived but with a chip on his shoulder as large as the Grand Canyon. He never came home to live with us. I gather he became a tramp, living on what he could in the way of state handouts.
I have been lucky. My mother sacrificed even her own diet while I was young to bring me up whilst working like a slave for a pittance firstly in a chocolate factory and later in a tobacco factory. She died of cancer at the age of 59 without ever seeing her two grandsons.
Going back to Mr Paisley I remember going to his Free Presbyterian church in Larne, NI in the 1970s. I was curious as to who would listen to this ranting bigot. I entered a packed church and after the obligatory hymns and prayers the "Big Man" rose to preach. I do not remember the words he spoke - just the horror that so much hate could be spewed out in the name of God. I rose to leave in the middle of the sermon and was politely but firmly informed by a "sidesman" who was built like a brick shithouse that Dr Paisley had not finished and it would not be good manners to leave without hearing his whole sermon. I did not argue. I sat quaking for the rest of the service, not hearing a word just fearing for my own safety.
A couple of years later I entered a Catholic church in Belfast. Again I was shocked and saddened to hear hate and bigotry being preached in the name of Jesus. Christianity should not be like that. "Love thy neighbour" - just so long as he is on the right side of the divide.
Back to tonight. I watched Messrs Paisley and Adams and listened to their guarded statements and the tears started to flow down my face. At last some common sense, some realisation that we must work and live together.
I cried. Tears of joy that perhaps at last there could be an end to the bigotry and violence. Tears of sadness that it was too late for my mother and father.
And then I thought "If only this had happened decades earlier . . ."
Perhaps my mother and father would not have been hounded out of the province.
Perhaps I would have been "wee Tommy", living in Belfast and growing up in a vibrant, living society unaffected by the troubles of man fighting man in the cause of bigoted ideals.
Perhaps my mother would not have had to work all her life just to stay alive . . .
Perhaps . . .
But for her, for my father, and for me it has all come decades too late.