Coexistence work in Northern Ireland

Although people do not look very different in Northern Ireland, a researcher identified 32 ways in which children, by the age of 12, can identify the community origin of people they meet

By Mari Fitzduff

All nice people are like Us and We
And everybody else is They
Rudyard Kipling

After thirty years of bloody civil war which left over 3,500 people dead and more than 30,000 injured, and after two long, final and weary years of political negotiation, Northern Ireland's Belfast Agreement was finally signed on 10 April 1998, by Northern Ireland's political parties.

This agreement was substantially assisted in its development by important quasi-political activities carried out by many different organizations in Northern Ireland. Without the sub structure of coexistence and dialogue that many of these organisations had developed, it is unlikely that any agreement would have been possible, and even less likely that it might prove to be sustainable.

The population of Northern Ireland is roughly one and a half million - about a fifth the size of London. British colonial plantation of settlers in Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries successfully ensured a policy of separation to keep settler and native apart.

Since then every aspect of life - territorial shifts, political and religious allegiances, educational systems, social and leisure lives, sporting activities, shopping patterns, marriage, festivities, and work – has successfully conspired to reinforce separateness.

 The differences created a segmented structure in which different categories of social, political, cultural and theological elements rarely cut across one another in any depth. Segregation is the norm.

The education system is almost totally segregated with state schools having less than 5 percent of Catholics.

Integrated schools have recently started to flourish but as yet they cater only for about 5 percent of the school going population. Sports, cultural celebrations - and especially those marches that celebrate particular victories, or commemorate particular losses for either community - are often divisive and sometimes violent. 

Over 3,000 parades take place each year in Northern Ireland, most of them from the Protestant tradition. Demographic change has meant that Protestant parades often pass through Catholic areas, and are seen as provocative by many Catholic residents. Violence us associated with such parades as those that attracted world attention at Drumcree in recent summers. 

Music and dancing are usually aligned along particular identities, and the use of the Irish language has often been a particularly contentious issue between the communities.

Even work does not usually provide an opportunity for mixing, as many work situations (with the exception of the public sector) are segregated.

In this divided society, the police unfortunately are seen as not only consolidating the divisions, but as largely representing and supporting the unionist Protestant hegemony. In 1998 the percentage of Catholics in the police was 7 percent.

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