We need to face down the minority

YOU can say what’s happening in the North is due to a disaffected Loyalist working class, or recreational rioters, or good old fashioned thugs, but what does seem to be clear is that they constitute a minority: the vast majority of citizens in Northern Ireland are trying to go about their business as far as possible and stay out of the way of trouble until it all blows over.

Yet despite this, a small, noisy and violent group have managed to send the political system into convulsions, mainly because of the threat that this wave of riots could drag the North back to the bad old days.

By any measure it is profoundly undemocratic, yet this is not the only instance on this island where the majority are rendered timid by a small mob prepared to play outside the normal rules of debate.

As you know, we’re now in the midst what appears to be a debate about abortion. We’ve had expert groups and Oireachtas committees and much in the way of carefully worded pronouncements from politicians, all of whom are keen to point out that it is a ’sensitive issue’: meaning that they are crapping themselves.

But as things stand what needs to be done is relatively straightforward. Doctors need to feel they have legal protection if they act to protect the life of a mother and some provision needs to be made for those rare cases where a pregnant woman might be suicidal.

And not only is it straightforward, it would seem to be uncontroversial: polls have found a large majority in favour of legislation to cover such eventualities while there are indications that Middle Ireland would also support abortion for victims of rape or incest.

Of course, to change the law in regard to the last two categories would involve a referendum — and we’re constantly being told that we’re not in the mood for that; that no one wants to re-visit the divisive and bitter campaigns of the 1980s: the nastiness, the threatening letters, the bullets in the post.

But would we? That was 30 years ago, and Ireland is a profoundly different country now; not least because a series of deaths and human tragedies — of which the Savita Halappanavar case was the latest — have taught us that rarely are such situations black and white.

The politicians say they don’t want to rile the extremists ‘on both sides’. Yet during the 1980s, the most reprehensible tactics were employed almost exclusively by the lunatic fringe of the so-called Pro Life movement. Everyone in public life seems to know this; yet no one has the courage to say it in public.

Once again, we are in danger of instituting yet another sticky plaster solution to a profound problem — and all because we fear the shrieking voices of an irrational minority. Our politicians — and Middle Ireland — need to have more guts.