Courageous leadership will be able to eradicate partition

FRANK GALLAGHER, author of the book The Indivisible Island (1957), quotes a significant comment made by Lord Craigavon, Northern Ireland’s first prime minister, who was on his way to visit Neville Chamberlain, then the British prime minister.

At that time (1938), observed the author, Craigavon admitted privately that partition could not last: “In this island we cannot live always separated from one another. We are too small to be apart or for the border to be there for all time. The change will not come in my time but it will come.”

It is 35 years since the challenge was posed as to whether, in the North, we had a leader with the charisma to lead anxious unionist people to join with their neighbours to resolve once and for all our long-standing recurring conflict so that it might never again emerge in the different context of a succeeding generation.