Northern Ireland Needs Its Own Version of "Brown vs The Board of Education" - and Fast

While we looked the other way - at a world that is melting, free-falling into depression, and warring over the remaining resources - the dreary steeples were there, waiting for us. After the First World War, Winston Churchill wrote: "Every institution in the world was strained. Great Empires have been overturned. The whole map of Europe has been changed... But as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short, we see the dreary steeples of Fermaagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world."

Now we are waiting, hunched, for Protestant paramilitaries to retaliate, or the Continuity IRA to launch another atrocity. Back to the future. After the flurry of resurrected hope on Good Friday, there a low sense of: is this it? Are we stuck watching this nasty little movie forever?

We aren't. Everybody has written about the amazing unity shown by the Northern Irish political class in urging people to hand in the murderers. Even Gerry Kelley - who bombed the Old Bailey in 1973 - issued a tender, plangent plea for Catholics with information to come forward. The world can change; it can get better.

But there is another dimension to this story that has been unmentioned this week - and offers the greatest hope of all. If we take the energy from the peace marches and plough it here, into this, we can dismantle those dreary spires at last. If we lose the opportunity, we will - over time - set up more generations of sectarian senselessness.

The Good Friday Process has - from the beginning - been focused on the small elite of politicians at the top. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness have been sitting together - inspirationally - but in the streets and estates beyond Stormont, Northern Irlenad has been becoming even more divided. Dr Peter Shirlow, of the University of Ulster, has conducted the most detailed survey of inter-communal relations in Northern Ireland - and found an almost completely segregated society. Only 5 per cent of the workforce in Catholic areas are Protestants, and vice versa. Some 68 per cent of 18 to 25-year-olds had never had a meaningful conversation with a single person from "the other side". The young are more likely to fear and hate the "Prods" or "Taigs" than any other group. We have been fixing the ceiling, while the foundations fracture.

You can see this when you visit Belfast or Derry. To a British person, they feel like any familiar CloneZone town - except they are layered with a strange hatred you cannot grasp. Taxis will either take you to green or orange areas - never both. Even the KFC is covered with a mural memorialising a centuries-old battle. The cities are sliced by vast 40ft tall steel walls, keeping Catholics and Protestants apart. And there are more of them now than ever before. Talk to the kids, and they will gleefully tell you the other side stink, or are stupid, or lazy. We are currently spending £1.5bn a year keeping the two sides physically apart.

But here's the good news: there is a proven, tested way out. There is a policy that has been shown over time to dissolve these hatreds. They are called integrated schools - and the parents of Northern Ireland are calling for them. Today, only 5 percent of children in Northern Ireland go to a mixed school. The other 95 percent are segregated in sectarian enclaves where they project feverish fantasies onto the other side. Violence becomes an inevitable bedsore where two uncomprehending tribes rub past each other in a small space.

But that 5 percent hold the key. A major six-year study by Queen's University, Belfast has looked at the long-term consequences of being schooled alongside The Enemy. They interviewed adults who attended these schools - and found that whatever their parents' attitudes, they were "significantly more likely" to oppose sectarianism. They had more friends across the divide, and they identified as "Northern Irish", rather than British or Irish. Their politics were far more amenable to peace: Some 80 percent of Protestants favour the union with Britain, but only 65 percent of those at integrated schools do. Some 51 percent of Catholics who went to a segregated school want unification with Ireland, but only 35 percent of those from integrated schools do. The middle ground - for a devolved Northern Ireland with links to both countries, within the EU - was fatter and happier.

It's difficult to caricature people you've known since you were a child: great sweeping hatreds are dissolved by the grey complexity of individual human beings. Think of the young lads who, as you read this, are being persuaded by the Continuity IRA and the Ulster Defence Force to sign up and take on The Others. If they had grown up with crushes on Catholic girls they sat next to in Geography, or playing football with Protestant boys at break-time, wouldn't they be more likely to question the demonisation they're being fed and find a way to live together?

But there is better news still. In the most detailed study of Northern Irish opinion, an extraordinary 82 percent said they personally support the idea of integrated schooling, and 55 percent of parents say the only reason their kids don't go to an integrated school is because there isn't one in their area, or they can't obtain a place. There is a huge pent-up demand in the province for the very mechanism that will - over time - provide peace from the bottom up.

So why isn't it happening? Small minorities of religious sectarians - both Protestant and Catholic - have been allowed to dominate the school system. The respective churches have deliberately obstructed integrated schools, refusing to nominate people to sit on their boards, and jealously guarding their profitable privileges. Northern Ireland needs its own equivalent to Brown vs, the Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court judgement that desegregated the schools in the Deep South. The church hierarchies will be left yelling, like Governor George Wallace of Alabama, "Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" - and shamed before the world.

There are brave forces within Northern Ireland fighting for this to happen. David Montgomery - chair of the Integrated Charter for Choice Campaign - says that Northern Ireland's children are being "deprived of the basic right to share each other's company because of rigidly segregated education. In later life, more and more of us have grown to deeply resent this system that has robbed us of friendships and the chance to experience and understand the other side's culture and community."

There is a neat historical coincidence that this call comes at the moment when Northern Ireland's school-age population is contracting - and many schools will have to merge anyway. There is currently a surplus of 50,000 excess school paces in the province, and it's set to balloon even further as the birth-rate falls. Schools should be folded together into integrated wholes. All new schools should be mixed by law.

The British and Irish governments can launch a Phase Two of the Good Friday Agreement now, setting ambitious targets for integrated schools to rapidly expand. Martin Luther King didn't dream of a little black boy and a little black girl playing in separate playgrounds, with a vast steel wall between them. No. Our leaders can offer a Northern Ireland where Catholics and Protestants will play together and, in time, have kids together, the most shining symbol of coming together. Who knows - a hefty push for school integration could yield, in a few decades, a Northern Irish Obama, carrying both sides in his veins.

The blood-spilling of the past week - and the rock-solid resistance to it - should lead us to a new political cry. Prime Minister Brown, Taoiseach Cowen, First Minister Robinson - tear down this wall between Northern Ireland's children.

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here or here.

Johann is interviewed on the latest Drunken Politics podcast about Palestine, piracy, and what makes him happy. Part One is here. Part Two is here.

Comments

[missmaryherself]

Whatever solution might be fully feasible, this isn't it. Whether a Catholic child lives in Belfast, Glasgow, Marseilles, or Milwaukee, her parents will, more likely than not, want her to have a Catholic education. It isn't a "nationalist" or "republican" choice, an anti-British choice: it's a religious choice. It is the reason my parents sent me and my five siblings to Catholic school in the 1950's through the 1970's in Columbus, Ohio, and it's the reason why the youngest of their grandchildren are in Catholic schools, also in Columbus, Ohio--my siblings paying tuition on top of supporting the public schools via often-steep property taxes. It is largely the reason why Catholic communities, especially the Irish, Italian, and Polish Catholic communities, have retained their identity in cities as large as Chicago and Boston. The people of the six counties that make up Northern Ireland may or may not want to remain part of the UK, but I guarantee that the majority of Catholic parents, including those who are unionist, will want their children to have a Catholic education and will see it as faith-promoting and not politically motivated..

[evagorman]

The death of three people in N. Ireland is horrible and must be condemned. This event reminds us all that a little part of Ireland is still a colony of the British Empire. I say they need to go home. There is only one Ireland.

[TimDanMick]

There are no quick fixes for the North of Ireland. Time and patience will continue to yield results. Any attempt to "force' progress will cause a negative reaction.
Separate schools are a major cause of the alienation as are the polarization of wealth and property ownership. These are not things which can be fixed by edict.

[LMPE]

When Ireland gained independence from the United Kingdom, why were English troops allowed to stay in part of the island and help their cronies oppress the local population? Seriously, when we gained independence from England, we made sure that all their soldiers returned to their island.

Vanessa Redgrave has called for the unification of Ireland, and I believe that Tony Benn (interviewed by Michael Moore in "Sicko") also supports that goal. This is a bigger embarrassment to England than any problem that the royal family has.

PS: if Ireland gets to be one country, can Scotland and Wales also gain independence from England? I've always found it weird to look at maps and see "United Kingdom" where I should see England, Scotland and Wales (Northern Ireland only exists because of England). The United Kingdom isn't very united.

[tobergill]

State schools in NI are desegregated and open to any. Catholic schools are the problem - religiously based and designed to keep the faithful from contamination and indoctrinate the young. Unless you are willing to force kids into schools in "foreign" areas where their basic safety is at risk from the inevitable extremists the problem is insoluble. if parents REALLY wanted mixed schools they'd have them. They don't.

[Joebetwa]

I agree with Tobergill. I went to a Grammar school which had always been mixed. During the Troubles the number of Roman Catholics dropped because a 'Catholic Maintained' High school was opened in the same town. When it was first due to open, parents of children at the Preparotory departments of the male and female Grammar schools in the town were sent letters by the Bishop warning them that their children would not recieve communion if they didn't send their kids to the new school. Fortunately the mother of a boy and girl at the preps took exeption to this and contacted her brother who was a Monsignor and aid to a Cardinal in Rome. The threat disappeared ,and the school I was at kept up its tradition of education for all. On another note the schools current biggest threat after 150 years of operation is the extreme left wing views of the current NI Education Minister who seems determined to destroy wholesale the education system in Northern Ireland without a thought and who believes she is right no matter how many votes of no confidence she recieves from the Education committe at Stormont.

[The Librarian]

So your solution to the violence between two groups who hate each other is to force then to live side by side and make nice? Insanity at its best. Multiculturalism has failed miserably, and it just astounds me that some people (usually white liberals) still think it has a chance.

[Klimb]

I am glad you wrote this article. After residing in African countries, the US and UK (including N.Ireland and saw how protestants and catholics disliked each other), I concluded that HUMAN BEING ARE THE CREATORS OF THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION I.E., HOWEVER, ALIKE THEY MAYBE, THEY WILL ALWAYS FIND ANYTHING TO DISCRIMINATE ABOUT AGAINST EACH OTHER! In N.Ireland, let's assume all are same race but guess what?...they found religion (protestants vs catholics) segregate each other; in Scotland-it was clan segregation whereby, the Campbells vs McDonalds; in African countries, assuming all the same race but have chosen to segregate on tribalism; Arab world-same race but have chosen religion (Sunni vs Shite); US have latched onto race; Hitler those days claimed purity was blonde and blue eyes only.
Does anybody see human behaviour pattern like I do?

Human-beings will always find something or anything to discriminate about...can we all learn to live together, ONEDAY?

[dtsteelsmith]

If you honestly believe that desegregation solved any problems in America you are sadly delusional. What followed desegregation was "white flight" and the phenomenon of suburbia. It is now politically correct in America to claim this was the American Dream but the truth is it was done because white people refused to send their kids to schools with minority children and the vast majority of American schoolchildren still are separated into school districts with over 90% white student bodies and districts with less than 20%. Desegregating Northern Ireland could very will blow the lid off the simmering hostility and will in the long run fail. Before you buy into the myth that is Obama take a long, hard look at whats really going within America.

[Klimb]

Desegregation indeed solved some problems in America...we need to acknowledge the positive results however little it might be.

Again, it is human behaviour to dwell on the "negative" more than "positive".

[Hazelnut]

I do believe desegregation helps, maybe not as much as we hoped, but it does help. My own high school was mixed, about 50/50 of both white and black, and I would say it helped us a great deal. Was everything always rosy? No, and there were still people on both sides who would have nothing to do with the other. But for most of us, it was a great experience. Its hard to believe old stereotypes about people when you see them everyday.

[missmaryherself]

I'm glad you brought this up. I am old enough to remember the time during which, when the first house in a white neighborhood was sold to a black family, within a week or two, 90% of the other houses in that neighborhood had a "For Sale" sign out front. My family stayed put, and I will never know for sure if this was more because my siblings and I went to Catholic school or if it was more a matter of my parents being the least racist people I knew and, in this instance and in hundreds of others, they were walking their talk. But getting out of a neighborhood where black families were moving in--and especially seeing to it that your children went to school with few if any black children--was the fundamental motivation. How it played out in public schools in the short and long term other posters have addressed. But you are absolutely right about the nothing-short-of-massive migration of white families further and further into the suburbs (and exurbs) to avoid proximity of any kind to black families and individuals.

[AngieMom57]

"It's difficult to caricature people you've known since you were a child: great sweeping hatreds are dissolved by the grey complexity of individual human beings. Think of the young lads who, as you read this, are being persuaded by the Continuity IRA and the Ulster Defence Force to sign up and take on The Others. If they had grown up with crushes on Catholic girls they sat next to in Geography, or playing football with Protestant boys at break-time, wouldn't they be more likely to question the demonisation they're being fed and find a way to live together?"

Aren't we forgetting the internet and computer element in this whole scenario?

WEB-SIGHTS not Weapons!

[lisakaz2]

The whole thing is stoopid and lame imo. Both the UK and Republic of Ireland are members of the EU. Both have to respect rights and laws the EU has determined. There seems zilch to gain from any particular political settlement. It seems some ppl finally recognize this but those on the ground want to keep their heads in the sand (at least at times). What exactly is worth fighting and dying over here? I don't see any prinicle whatsoever, just stubborn idiocy over slights from centuries ago.