from yourself, can you imagine what it is like to
be one? You can see that nationalists have
suffered a history of humiliation and have also
lost loved ones in the ‘troubles’. You are being
called upon to identify and differentiate in a
different way.
Now imagine that you are a republican who
remembers the stories about parents, uncles and
aunts who suffered at the hands of the unionist-
minded paramilitary police, the B specials. You
were personally traumatised in the late 1960s
when loyalist terror gangs set fire to properties
owned by nationalists. You detest the unionists
and you feel that a united Ireland is only possible
through the use of force.
Can you change your hatred into an attitude
of empathy so that you can see why unionists
feel so hostile to republicans and identify so
passionately with Britain? Can you imagine
what it is like to fear the future and feel that
your Protestant traditions and beliefs would be
trampled upon if Northern Ireland became part
of the Irish republic? In other words, you need
to change your identity, so that while you remain
a convinced republican, you can also put yourself
in the position of the loyalist ‘other’.
In both cases, a fixed sense of identity and a
sharp sense of differentiation have been
entrenched by violence, and the suffering has
made it more difficult to see the other’s point of
view. There is growing realisation, however, that
the triumph of one position over another is
simply not realistic.