Newton Emerson: Ground is shifting on integrated education in the North

When President Michael D Higgins declined to attend the ecumenical centenary service in Armagh last October, there was only one legitimate, if oblique, opinion commonly heard in his defence: why were churches lecturing anyone on reconciliation while still insisting on segregated schools?

It looks like more than a coincidence that President Higgins called for an end to this “shameful” segregation in a robust address in Enniskillen last week.

It also comes at pivotal moment for the debate in Northern Ireland. Integrated education is moving from a cause seen as more unionist than nationalist to the opposite political polarity. At Stormont, an Alliance private member's Bill for integration has won the support of every Executive party except the DUP. The UUP has joined the DUP in motions against the Bill at local government level.

The integrated cause dates back to the creation of Northern Ireland, when the unionist government tried to set up a single-school system and the Catholic Church refused to participate.

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For the politics of this to be turned on its head ... could reflect a changing balance of confidence and insecurity

The modern integrated movement began in 1973, when the Catholic Church banned children who did not attend its schools from receiving Communion.

Throughout it all has been a nationalist suspicion of integration as a plot to normalise the state, by assimilating its Catholic population.

For the politics of this to be turned on its head, from the Irish president down, could reflect a changing balance of confidence and insecurity. Nationalists may be thinking of all-Ireland normalisation; unionists may now be fearing assimilation.

In the zero-sum game of Northern Ireland, a polarity switch facilitates a more straightforward transfer of cynicism. If you know the other side is going to object to something virtuous yet awkward, it is safe for you to support it.

The Alliance Bill has technical flaws and some unionist objections to it have been genuine on those grounds.

In general, however, getting bogged down in detail is an avoidance strategy for defending the indefensible. Segregating schoolchildren in a divided society is wrong and everybody knows it. Every outside observer is aghast at the spectacle and its duplicitous justifications. In 2013, US president Barrack Obama was more robust than President Higgins, telling a Belfast audience integrated education was "essential to peace" and comparing Northern Ireland's school system to former racial segregation in the American south.

So the churches have adopted a broad-brush, faux-progressive critique of Alliance’s Bill, claiming they support integrated schools and simply do not want to see one sector promoted above others. This is the line being taken by the Catholic Church and the main Protestant churches, which have seats on the governing boards of most state schools as a legacy of once owning their buildings.

The DUP, unable to resist any clergyman’s incantations, has adopted this line verbatim and is now implausibly praising fairness, equality, diversity and the value of a Catholic education.

It is all nonsense, of course. There has been a statutory duty on government in Northern Ireland to “encourage and facilitate” integrated education since 1989. As no other sector was mentioned in this legislation, it means special promotion. This duty was restated in the Belfast Agreement, alongside integrated housing and encouraging Irish-language schools.

In 2015, a Sinn Féin education minister lost a court case for not promoting integrated schools, to much unionist tut-tutting.

Favouring integration has been law, agreement and policy for decades. It has not advanced, despite overwhelming public demand, for a daunting host of reasons ranging from profound cultural anxieties to prosaic issues of estate management. When a new integrated school is proposed, for example, every existing school within a 10-mile radius has to approve it.

Integration is defined by pupil quotas and a religious mix is difficult to achieve with so much segregated housing. American experience shows “bussing” children to distant schools does not work.

A more secular as opposed to ecumenical model of integration could also be considered

A solution might be to change the definition. People in Northern Ireland often boast of living in a “mixed area”, although it is not mixed. What they mean is anyone could live there. If any child could happily attend a school, is it integrated enough?

A more secular as opposed to ecumenical model of integration could also be considered - and extended to existing schools.

There is understandable fatalism over a breakthrough on integration but there is a striking parallel with abortion, another issue seen as intractable for decades. It featured a similar combination of religion and politics, and even a recent switch from nationalist to unionist-leaning obstruction. During the last Stormont collapse, Westminster intervened with legislation. Stormont has ignored it, so Northern Secretary Brandon Lewis is about to give unprecedented direct orders to commission services.

If London were to impose or threaten integration, there would presumably be support from Dublin, if President Higgins is any guide, and possibly Washington – Joe Biden was Obama's vice-president in 2013.

As the DUP has collapsed Stormont again, and is threatening not to restore it, perhaps the time for a matching threat has come.