SEND IN THE TROOPS

Belfast is my city: I was born here and have lived most of my life here. For most of my 57 years we have experienced community strife. Sometimes that strife has broken out into outright bloodshed and all that time we have been divided into the two major opposing camps of Protestant and Catholic. Since 1999 we have told ourselves that the Good Friday Agreemenet really was good and in time it will deliver peace and harmony even when some have refused to call it good.

Last night at the switching on of the Christmas lights some young people from both sides decided to have some fun throwing stones at each other, reminding us of those days when the city centre was abandoned because the population was afraid. What are we going to do? What can we do? The truth is that we can do nothing, we are powerless. We fool ourselves if we really imagine that we are in sovereign control. Our city is as much fragmented as ever; we have walls to keep us apart and help us to feel safe. Yesterday I saw three police officers walking up our street. One of them had a machione gun strapped to his shoulder and I thought tomyself, "Is that supposed to make me feel safer?" At the moment approximatelyhalf the population wants to see more police on the streets to give the community confidence that the police are on the ball but the other half are not so sure. With the daily fight between the governing partners over the latest dispute everyone wonders how we can eveer see improvement and truly feel safer but there wedre worse days, blacker days when men and women were killed daily, much like in contemporary Afghanistan.

Yesterday I had an interview with the District Police Commander who was expressing his frustrations at the impossible task of being a community police service. He mused on the difficulty of an officer having a meaningful conversation while carrying a gun and wearing a flack jacket and a hat pulled down so that all that can be seen are his eyes. Daily "joe public" expresses frustration and growing cynicism by blaming the politicians and the PSNI rather than asking tehe obvious questions as to how we can build a better society.

In 1969 the British Prime Minister sent in the troops to establish peace in Belfast and Derry/Londonderry. That was the begining of the break up of the political system which came to an abrupt end when Edward Heath, prorogued the Northern Ireland Parliament and set up Direct Rule which lasted some 30 years until the Good Friday Agreemenbt became the basis for an agreed Ireland North and South.

What we need today is a whole new breed of Irishmen. People who are able to think about the whole community; people who have the ability to see beyond their own political and religious desires. The contemporarty world is very different to the society of 1969. Today we are much more secular,much more pluralist; much less inclined to listen to the views of the institutional church. We need a security system based upon a communal desire for real peace. We need a security system that rests on the dismantling of the walls and looks to troops of people on the streets dedicated to peace and harmony. This calls for a new heart in the community. We, who take the name of Christ in our hearts and on our lips, need to demonstrate an alternative way of living in a divided country. We must refuse to wrap the Christ we follow in either the Union flag or the flag of the Republic.Why could we not call for amoratorium on the national question for a while to allow maturity to set in? Has the time not come for us to answer the question: what do we really want for this place we call home? Do we desire peace so much that we will put the question of sovereignty on hold? We will never settle the question of union until we find peace.

What we need is a new movement of troops, a new wave of people power. Send in the troopps and send them in today to win the peace. Let a new security policy take charge, a plicybased upona new kingdom and a new power-let Christ reign in our lives and in our politics. Jesus has alrady dismantled the barriers between Jew and Gentile but we insist on rebuilding them: can we not stop? If we are unwilliong or unable to do this we have no rigt to blame the men and women who sit up in Stormont. After all they are carrying out our wishes.