To our shame, there is a lot more genuine goodwill coming from the other side of the Irish Sea, writes DAVID ADAMS.
I'VE BEEN "on tour" for much of this week, attending events in London, Dublin and Belfast (with Derry scheduled for next week) to help launch Britain and Ireland: Lives Entwined, a collection of semi-autobiographical reflections on evolving relationships between the two islands.
This is the third such volume in a series commissioned by the British Council in Ireland.
Like the previous two, the latest is top-heavy with local or locally connected writers, so the focus is almost wholly on contemporary Irish attitudes to Britain.
My own contribution is in august company, sitting alongside essays by John Hume, Olivia O'Leary, Mary Fitzgerald, David McWilliams, Richard English, Susan McKay, Fionola Meredith, Katy Radford and Naoise Nunn.
Such a deliberate skewing towards Irish opinion is no bad thing, for we already know what the British think of us: they have only positive things to say.
The real question is whether this friendliness is now being reciprocated.
I'm afraid the answer is, no.
Self-evidently, relations are a lot better than they were, but genuine goodwill seems still to be flowing largely in only one direction.
On this side of the Irish Sea, the past is not so much being put behind us, as being put to different use.
Forgiveness rather than outright hostility is now the official Irish attitude to Britain, and this is reflected throughout the Lives Entwinedseries.
But it is forgiveness of the self-serving kind.
One that positively revels in the rehashing of old ills and the selective trawling of history, ensuring that all and sundry (most particularly the "former oppressor") are in no doubt about the enormity of what is being forgiven. And this usually as precursor to a shameless marvelling at one's own ability to forgive despite the myriad injustices of the past.
This is not forgiveness, but smug self-righteousness masquerading as such.
It is a stick to beat with, another means of heaping blame.
So much for Ireland's new levels of self-confidence and maturity.
It appears the old comfort blanket of victimhood has not been discarded after all, just newly spun. Nor, it appears, is one blanket any longer enough.
There is now a growing tendency within Ireland to grab on to other people's
tortured history and lay claim to shared ownership of that as well.
Echoed in Lives Entwined is the increasingly common assertion that Ireland is a "former British colony".
The attraction in trying to shoehorn Ireland into this category is of course obvious.
It suggests equivalence of suffering (at the hands of the British, naturally) with the likes of India and large swathes of Africa.
The hard historical truth is that Ireland was, at best, every bit as much coloniser as colonised, it being part of the then United Kingdom (of Great Britain and Ireland) on whose behalf the British Empire was founded and maintained. Whether it suits or not, it is nonetheless indisputable fact that it wasn't only the English who sailed around the world laying claim on behalf of the UK to wherever and whatever took their fancy, but the Scottish, Welsh and, yes, the Irish as well.
It should hardly need pointing out that, unlike elected representatives from Ireland, there were no gentlemen from India or Africa or any other colony able to take seats in the British House of Commons.
Does anyone truly believe that Ireland would not have created, just as anyone with enough military muscle did, an empire in its own right had it been able? Ireland is indeed exceptional, though, in at least one sense.
It is somewhat ironic that most of the nations who were former British colonies long ago discarded the comfort blanket of colonial victimhood (though God knows they had every right to cling to it).
Although some have been independent for less than 50 years, virtually all now welcome with open arms periodic visits by British dignitaries of every kind, including royalty.
Compare that with the situation here.
After almost a century of independence, Ireland is congratulating itself no end on now being mature enough to stage a rugby game against England at Croke Park for the first time, with the British national anthem played without fuss. By any standards, hardly the mark of maturity.
I'm not much of a believer in official state apologies.
Tony Blair apologising for everything from slavery to colonialism and The Famine to Bloody Sunday rather devalued the whole concept for me. Rather, the fact that he was willing to apologise for everything except that for which he was personally responsible (the British invasion of Iraq) did.
However, in this instance, an official State apology by the Taoiseach or the President might just be what is needed to jolt the nation out of this perpetual good guy/perpetual victim notion of itself.
What is there to apologise for? Well, the "political offence" legislation that cost so many lives in Northern Ireland and beyond during the Troubles would do for a start.
But then, we don't want to be dragging up the past now, do we?
The full version of David Adams' essay appears in 'Britain Ireland: Lives Entwined III - a new dawn?' published by the British Council and available at www.amazon.co.uk