End animosity between this island’s people

IT’S time anti-Britishness and anti-Irishness came to an end on this island.

Most people are growing weary of a record that’s been played far too often.

This type of mentality has no place in a modern society, which desperately needs to come away from the past.

Both cultures have many similarities in everyday life but remain so far apart in times where crucial agreement is needed.

Northern Ireland has been stuck in a rut of historic animosity for far too long, refusing to give itself a chance to develop until recently. This is also true of the Republic, where old attitudes die hard.

No nation is entitled to define its way of life and culture by its contempt for another. Unfortunately, this insidious way of life has prevailed by those who keep it going in a living museum, ultimately becoming part of the exhibits themselves.

This is how the historic clash of cultures in Ireland transformed into a dangerous form of purism through the Troubles; mutating nationalism from a democratic ideology into fundamentalism. This in turn produced personalities who kept an artificial sectarian hatred alive and kicking for decades, with all its terrible consequences.

The term ‘dangerously-old-fashioned’ could never be more fitting in the British/Irish context, where many backward people have sought the perpetuation of division for their own cynical ends — in many cases, actively seeking it out and fabricating division where there was none.

Religious or culture backgrounds should not be used to further animosity; for some, they represent an ineluctable temptation to label.

If one looks at the reality, there is a strong mix of British and Irish people living throughout this Island, working beside each other without any problem.

We have to ask a very important question — is it sectarianism or ignorant backwardness that’s holding things up?

Maurice Fitzgerald

Shanbally

Ringaskiddy

Co Cork.