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Another Ireland?
An admission is in order here: Northern Ireland is not somewhere where I have been very much. A weekend trip many more years ago than I care to admit was the only occasion when I spent any extended amount of time or even stayed a night there. Other than that, travel to and from ferries to Scotland from Larne has been the only other reason for my passing through that part of the world and the since my last such incursion is going on for next to a decade ago now.
History is of interest to many, even its more traumatic episodes. You only have to consider both of the World Wars in the twentieth century for this to make sense. Auschwitz has garnered a mention in the news not so long ago because of its holocaust associations and the need not to repeat the horrors of history. Knowing your history does have its uses and, if economic history was heeded, we might not be in the economic mess in which we find ourselves right now. Hindsight is always 20/20 vision but it does strike me how history wasn't heeded by the various technocrats who then went and unwittingly repeated it almost verbatim. Looking at it now, it staggers me how property was used to security for loans underpinning the now busted boom and how the lessons of 100 years were never heeded. History shouldn't repeat itself but who was that wise seer who commented that not knowing your history condemns you to repeating its mistakes?
As ever, it's always nicer to look back on history from more stable times. Whatever about the unpleasant buffetings of an economic downturn, finding oneself in the heart of violent events is worse and it cannot be much fun to be living in Iraq right now. NI felt like that for much of the latter half of the last century and growing up with the reports of what those living there had to endure left me with the impression of the place being a no go area (stories about British soldiers walking about a house in the middle of the night didn't help). Though times have changed and the extensive violence has been relegated to history by the Peace Process with its decommissioning of arms and their being put beyond use. It always reminds me that it's the militant mentalities that really need to be decommissioned and put beyond use. For that, the healing process needs to continue. You can turn off the violence on television as my mother did one night in the early eighties but those who lost loved ones in the Troubles have a harder cross to bear, especially anyone who witnessed a violent demise.
It may seem counter-intuitive to some but those happenings didn't venture into the Republic too often. Yes, there were loyalist bombings in Dublin and Monaghan in 1974 with bank robberies and kidnappings committed by republican paramilitaries but, so long as you were sufficiently far away, you could always look in on "that place up there" in horror and stay away in the knowledge that the violence wasn't likely to come after you in the Republic. To those caught up in the tumult, that will sound far too comfortable but that was how it felt at the time.
Thankfully, that continuous daily eruption of tragedy has eased to almost nothing and Northern Ireland is better placed to offer itself as a visitor destination nowadays. It helps that it has the countryside to draw them in too. The Mourne Mountains in the southwest of the region come to mind with their hilly drama. After that, there's the volcanic basalt columns of the Giant's Causeway and the lakes in County Fermanagh to go along with Lough Neagh too. Naturally, there's more than these to be savoured and quieter times allow you to conquer those memories of the recent past and go for a spot of exploration.
There have been economic good times in recent years too and I suppose that the prosperity over the border must have been attractive too. Now that the boom has passed, one can only hope that peace continues to reign supreme. That can only help attract those seeking the delights of the place and I may be counted among their number yet. Never being much of a television viewer and less so in these web dominated times, I have to cast my mind back in time to recall a slogan exhorting people to go to NI because "you won't know unless you go". I cannot say if they are still using it but it's as usable now as it was when I last encountered it at the end of a TV ad.
