Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Why we're backing Willie

As the classic song by The Verve goes, "it's a bittersweet symphony, this life".

These lyrics sprang to mind this week with the news that one of the most biliously sectarian politicians in the Six Counties, the DUP's Boxcar Willie McCrea, had been elected to the chair of Magherafelt council with the full support of Sinn Féin.

McCrea is the willing beneficiary of a Sinn Féin initiative to ensure that, in the spirit of the Good Friday Agreement, all council jobs are shared out on the basis of equality.

We don't envy the Sinn Féin councillors their bittersweet task, after all it would be hard to find a unionist politician less well disposed to nationalists and republicans. Nevertheless, they have shown that republicans have the courage of their convictions.

The commitment to equality cannot just be a soundbyte. It must be adopted by all.

The sulking unionist members of Belfast City Council, who staged a token and short-lived walkout for the benefit of the cameras last week, before getting on with council business, should take note. Magherafelt is just one council among many across the Six Counties where power is being shared successfully.

Unionist councillors in Belfast, who for so long denied the top job to Sinn Féin, may well still be in shock. Certainly, Willie's colleague Sammy Wilson had plenty to say.

Yet they are out of step with their own parties. Their refusal to elect a deputy mayor is little more than a childish sulk.

It is disappointing that still, unionists have to have majority rule wrenched from their grasp before even contemplating accepting the equality agenda.

Facing down the Orange

Settled in Dublin's High Court on Tuesday, the case for wrongful dismissal brought by Rev Niall Bayly against his own church sets an example that other Church of Ireland members might rightly follow.

Involved in peace and reconcilliation duties since 1969, Bayly's refusal to engage in ceremonies held for the Orange Order led, he contended, to his failure to attain positions he applied for in several parishes and even to his being left with no means of income for some years.

It was a brave stance that many in the Church of Ireland have toyed with, but few have taken. Bayly's professed calling - as a peacemaker - meant, he said, that being dictated to by members of the "Orange aspect" was out of the question.

Already having declared war on the Short Strand, many people of the Orange aspect will this summer be combining their seemingly contradictory businesses of churchgoing, ceremony and sectarian violence as usual.

Rather than blithely accepting this contradiction, Protestant leaders need to take Bayly's example and play their part in steering unionism away from this ultimately self-defeating campaign.