So what’s in a name?

The day peace was forged brought a promise of redemption for us all. Clearly aware of the timing, those involved in the talks pushed beyond the midnight hour to a conclusion on 10 April 1998. It was a Good Friday, in every sense of the name.

The outcome was officially entitled ‘The Agreement,’ yet we hailed it as the Good Friday Agreement, basking in that ‘feel good’ designation and remarking on the contrast with the blood-soaked days that preceded it – Bloody Friday, Bloody Sunday and more from a lengthy calendar of horror.

So we breathed a collective sigh of relief as dawn broke and cheered again when the Good Friday Agreement was sealed by popular vote throughout the island. However, we wavered when it was delivered for action because, by then, we had begun to forget what it was called.

The Irish Times began designating it the Belfast Agreement, as if its intrinsic value was vested in a place. This suggested that if you simply changed venue, you could change the outcome. But even the subsequent St Andrews Agreement failed to fire the popular imagination. It was mere housekeeping with the reminder that the Good Friday Agreement was still the ‘only show in town’.

The ‘Belfast Agreement’ certainly had its proponents and foremost among them were the opponents, uncomfortable with the positive connotations of a Good Friday Agreement.

The ‘Belfast Agreement’ was also upheld by pedantic commentators, insisting that similar accords are called after the place in which they are agreed – Treaty of Versailles etc. Yet what we had was not ‘site specific’ to Belfast, another treaty to be added to a catalogue of place-name accords. It was more than an armistice between belligerents or even a treaty between sovereign powers.

It was endorsed by the Irish, British and American governments, by the European Union and all its constituent members, as well as by other governments, religious leaders and people of goodwill throughout the entire world. However, our Good Friday Agreement was also an unprecedented accord between all the people of Ireland to forge a better future for all of us and to do this in peace. Together we hailed it as a new model of peace-making.

So most of us persisted doggedly with the Good Friday Agreement, even against the guiles of media style guides. In one memorable early purge, the Irish Times – ever- vigilant enforcer of the geographical designation – pursued it all the way into a report on the Presbyterian General Assembly with one naysayer remarking that the “only Belfast Agreement” he recognised, “was won for us on the cross by our Saviour”!

Fifteen years on, vigilance is still needed against those who would unpick what was won for us at the dawn of that Good Friday. Its promise is still denied by dissidents, including those who by stealth diminish the name we bestowed on the Agreement in our first acclamation.

They came after the name; let’s ensure they don’t succeed in coming after the terms. 

Mixing sport and geography

Omagh schoolchildren greet the Olympic flame on its passage through Ireland.

It was probably no more than a slip of the tongue but it spoiled my breakfast… and it has been niggling since. The fact that it was a ‘good news story’ on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland hardly alleviated the inexplicable feeling of being slighted once more.

Brother boxers keep her lit on the Border.

I didn’t even catch the name of the reporter who informed listeners that the Olympic flame was ‘now in Ireland, if only for a few hours’ after the symbolic handover between fellow Irish Olympians Wayne McCollough and Michael Carruth at the Border on the Newry to Dundalk road.

It jarred because, by no coincidence, I was actually in Ireland yesterday morning to witness the same Olympic flame making its passage through Omagh, having come from Derry City via Strabane before heading off out the Dromore Road towards Enniskillen and a string of other Irish towns and villages.

The feeling of euphoria I had felt since about the passage of the Olympic flame on a symbolic course that included both parts of Ireland was dissipated by the carelessness of yet another ‘professional’ news reporter who can’t even be bothered to look at a map and know the difference between a country and a state.

Jack Kennedy, 15, carries the flame through Omagh.

‘A few hours’ indeed, I thought, my mind tracing the earlier path of the flame from Belfast through Antrim, along the north coast and through each of these six Irish counties in Northern Ireland before its brief interlude in the Republic of Ireland.

Yet such geographical dismissal should be like water off a duck’s back by now, one would think.

For all of my life, I have listened to unionist politicians talk of ‘Ulster’ and the ‘Ulster people’ in a way that pointedly excluded me and all those in Northern Ireland who espoused Irish reunification, not to mention one-third of the actual province of Ulster. Such geographical and social selectivity was always deliberate, however, a contrived formula to bestow historical pedigree and political legitimacy on the partition of Ireland.

It was anathema to news reporting in most of Ireland, of course. Reporters were reminded forcibly by editors, who were sticklers for ‘House Style’ back then, that there were very precise rules on these matters.

Standards appear have slipped since the Good Friday Agreement (or ‘Belfast Agreement’ in Irish Times house style). And I blame soccer for that.

For just as we prepare to root for the Irish Olympians at the London games, the hype is reaching a crescendo for the European Football Championships. Notwithstanding that the Irish team taking part includes (controversially for some) players from throughout the island, it travels to Poland under the auspices of the breakaway Football Association of Ireland, one of the two bodies that persisted in fielding teams under the name ‘Ireland’ until the 1950s.

Representing Ireland against Brazil at Landesdowne Road in July 1973 were the Shamrock Rovers XI (from back left) Miah Dennehy, Tommy Criag, Paddy Mulligan, Martin O'Neill, Derek Dougan, Alan Hunter, Liam O'Kane and (front from left) Bryan Hamilton, Pat Jennings, Tommy Carroll, Johnny Giles, Don Givens, Terry Conroy and Mick Martin.

Fab Four – Don Givens. Johnny Giles,
Martin O'Neill and Pat Jennings .

It hardly mattered so much at a time when there was little prospect of playing on the world stage, but then the 1970s came along with the Troubles and possibly the best crop of home-grown soccer talent we ever produced. From this, a team was put together in 1973 by the two serving captains of Northern Ireland and the Republic – Derek Dougan and Johnny Giles. With no official backing from the ‘representative’ bodies, they engineered a match with the mighty Brazil in Dublin and, with no official sanction, they had to field as the Shamrock Rovers XI. That didn’t stop them racking up three goals against the world champions’ four.

Despite the continuous efforts of the great Dougan to unite the Irish soccer teams, the divide continues, bolstered by marginal success for Northern Ireland in 1982 and for the Republic on occasions since then. It has become firmly institutionalised with many professional reporters persisting in the belief that rugby’s adherence to an all-Ireland selection is the exception, rather than the rule. Indeed, soccer is the exception.

So as the FAI side heads off for the European finals with a team of varied pedigree, the Irish Football Association and its supporters resort to irony and self-derision. Their favourite chant in recent years is the refrain, ‘We’re not Brazil, we’re Norn Iron’.

As if we need to be reminded.

So as credit union accounts are raided for the road to Poznan, I’ll be looking forward to the Olympics and lamenting that the last outing for the Ireland soccer team was in July 1973 – a glorious sporting occasion ‘if only for a few hours’.