Politics in Northern Ireland

Politics in Northern Ireland continues to puzzle me.

I am in no position to say whether or not Gerry Adams was in any way, shape or form involved in the murder in 1972 of Jean McConville.  In many ways I hope he was not.

There is a kind of uneasy peace in the province. In many ways, the sectarian violence of a few years ago has gone, yet the fundamental sectarian bad feelings are still there simmering just beneath the surface. A visit to Northern Ireland still has reminders of the past: the barriers between Catholic and Protestant areas are still there in Belfast, the police stations still have huge barrier fences etc. The politics is divided on sectarian lines even now, not politics in the sense we know it elsewhere in the UK.

It seems to me very little would be needed to change the current (uneasy) peace back to violence.

Why cannot the ordinary folk of this most beautiful province cast the past aside and really embrace peace? True peace can only come when forgiveness has a chance to flourish. We are still some way from this.