Intimidation as child helped Martin McAleese reach out to loyalists

His childhood as Catholic in a staunchly Protestant area of Belfast helped greatly in later life when building bridges to loyalists in that city, Martin McAleese has said.

He also said his favourite moment of his wife Mary's tenure as president of Ireland was the visit of Britain's Queen Elizabeth in May 2011.

“It took the 14 years and I thought I would never see the day, but it happened,” he said.

In 2002 Dr McAleese began to forge links with loyalist paramilitaries which proved crucial in establishing the Northern Ireland peace process. "When I first sat down with some loyalist paramilitaries and began the process of outreach and engagement, the greatest asset that I could bring to the table was the first 20 years of my life . . . They couldn't say that 'you don't understand'. I knew their streets, their pubs, their clubs, their schools, their churches. I had lived among them and their people," he said.

“I understood their accents and could share their sense of humour. All of those things that conspired to give a great street credibility that was absolutely crucial in that engagement and the subsequent development of relationships. It is an aside but what I was leaving behind came back as a tremendous asset.”

Loners

He recalled how his father “was one of the few Catholics” who got a job in

Short Brothers

in Belfast. As a result his parents “bought a house near his work, right in the heart of Protestant, loyalist east Belfast. We grew up, therefore, disconnected from our own community. Loners in our own community. Those circumstances led to a very difficult upbringing because of the exclusion and the sense of fear and intimidation and of sectarianism.”

He recalled how he suffered verbal abuse for the first 20 years of his life, being called a papist and a Fenian bastard. Intimidation was so frequent as to be normal, with occasional physical abuse.

Dr McAleese, a former dentist, was speaking in an interview for the current issue of the Journal of the Irish Dental Association.

‘We could never go back’

As regards the visit of Queen Elizabeth in 2011, he said “Mary had met the queen a good number of times before she was elected president. If we could get to the point where the queen could visit Ireland and be well received, we felt that things would never be the same again. We could never go back. And that is what happened.”

The visit, he said, was “the highlight” of the McAleese presidency. “We knew that she wanted to come. She’s a very warm person . . . She was very well informed on Irish history and genuinely wanted to make an impact.”