Last Thursday, in an article in The Irish Times, Ken Maginnis was kind enough to say that Mary Robinson, Eoghan Harris, Chris Hudson and I, unlike Mary McAleese, had built bridges across the sectarian and political divide. He went on to say that after 16 years visiting and speaking in the Republic, he had come to the reluctant view that we were almost unique.
That should not surprise anyone. Our tribes are so different in values, outlook and language that, from whichever side you start, it requires a huge amount of open-mindedness, imagination, commitment and time to get to understand and like the other. And it is difficult to do without being frequently alienated from, and by, one's own tribe, who tend to blow up the bridge from behind.
Take the presidential campaign. I hate cant and meaningless rhetoric, so I've been wincing a great deal recently, and one reason I so hate it is that my friendship with many Northern Irish Protestants has enhanced my natural taste for honest words and judging people by their actions.
Adi Roche's lovebabble is bad enough. Mary McAleese's is much worse, for she has always been a champion of Catholicism and nationalism, is disliked and distrusted by every Ulster Protestant I've ever asked about her, and yet has the brass neck to present herself as someone who will be uniquely qualified to hold out the hand of friendship to unionists.
That makes me mad. Like Chris McGimpsey, I see no reason why she shouldn't stand - and, indeed, be elected - as an unrepentant nationalist. What offends me is that she pretends to be what she is not. If Ulster Protestants voted in the presidential election, Dana would do much better than McAleese (who would come in last), for those that know anything about her think she is straight - the greatest compliment an Ulster Protestant can pay anyone.
I never consciously set out to build bridges with unionists but I tended from the beginning to take them as they were. Our relationships evolved: they were never forced. During the 1980s, I began to know and like several Ulster Protestant academics and politicians, and to find them refreshing company: they said what they meant and wanted you to do the same. And they were far more tolerant of criticism than were their nationalist counterparts, for theirs is a culture of dissent. I've always walked on eggshells with John Hume: I've never pulled a punch with David Trimble.
As I became more interested in Northern Ireland, it seemed obvious to me that I should learn about what I knew least. One July I went to Belfast, called on Orange HQ, sought their advice on which was the best spot from which my Dublin friend Una and I could view the Twelfth parade, was welcomed and helped and had a good time.
By 1993, when I began to write journalism, I wouldn't have thought myself particularly well-informed about Northern Irish Protestants, but it became quickly clear to me that, compared to the vast majority of Irish journalists, I was. So I listened to my Prod friends and tried to explain their thinking.
And then I found that I was now being described as a neo-unionist and that, when I talked about Northern Ireland, most of my Dublin friends and acquaintances stopped listening or shouted me down. The British, at least, are polite enough to listen.
And then a Tyrone Orangeman who read my columns invited me to stay with him and his family and attend a typical rural parade. I went, and my host was a delight and I loved walking behind a band, as I always have since. And it was typical of my host and his tribe that he insisted we sit on the wet grass and listen to some mad, doddering evangelist who was being ignored by 95 per cent of the others, so that I should realise how bad it could be. In the last few years I've been to many parades and have come to know many Orangemen, Apprentice Boys and members of the Royal Black Preceptory. Most of them are exceptionally decent, honest people, yet they have been demonised and traduced by the brilliant propaganda techniques of their opponents, by their own inability to make their case articulately, and by their inherent suspicion of PR.
Week by week last year I was in close touch with those who finally brought about the rerouting of contentious parades. You might have thought the Department of Foreign Affairs would have a passing interest in picking my brains: instead, in recent years I became persona non grata.
And in wider nationalist circles, however sophisticated, the fact that I have Orange friends is a sign that I've lost my marbles. Try to explain that most Orange behaviour at Drumcree I, II and III was not necessarily wicked, and you are shouted down, or treated as perverse or even mad.
We are a lazy-minded and bigoted tribe and we would rather not have our prejudices interfered with. Ulster Protestants, when I explain the manifold virtues of people in the South, at least listen; they rarely agree, but then they have the decency to admit they are bigots.
Late at night at an Anglo-Irish conference a year ago, I was standing in the bar with two Orangemen when a third came up and said: "I spent an hour last night explaining to X and Y (two unusually sophisticated TDs) why I was an Orangeman. One of them has just bounced over to me and said `We've been talking about you, and we've all decided that you can't be an Orangeman, because you're too nice.'
"To which the second Orangeman replied: `I was in Dublin a few years ago when one of the group asked why I didn't tell those awful Orangemen to stop those parades. And when I explained that I was not only an Orangeman, but an Apprentice Boy and a Blackman, they said `You're not.' I said `I am', and they said `You're not.'
"And then the first Orangeman, who believes the Southern Irish mind is so closed it's a waste of time trying to build bridges, said `There. What did I tell you?' "
