A Big "Yes" for Peace

By Barry Hillenbrand

In Londonderry, the second largest city in Northern Ireland, the citizens can't even agree on the name of the place they all live. The Catholics call it Derry, the original name before the English arrived to colonize the island. The Protestants insist on using the name with their preferred national capital stuck in front.

But even as just over 71% of the citizens of both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland voted to endorse a peace agreement that offers the best hope ever of ending the sectarian warfare in the North, Londonderry stands as the symbol of what went wrong in the British province, of what could go right in the wake of the positive vote, and of the difficulties ahead.

Londonderry was where the Troubles started more than 30 years ago, when a nascent Catholic civil rights movement decided to take on the Protestant establishment, which had dominated the politics of the city for centuries. Demonstrations degenerated into pitched battles between the armed gangs of the Irish Republican Army and the British army. In 1972, 13 civilians were killed by British paratroopers on "Bloody Sunday," one of the defining events of the Troubles. The bombers and terrorists retaliated, transforming large tracts of the city into blackened shells.

Now Londonderry wants to be known as the city of peacemakers. The citizens have moved well ahead of the rest of the country in trying to promote understanding and tolerance between Catholics and Protestants. "People have been worn down by violence," says Mayor Martin Bradley. "They now realize that there is no need for it, and see the economic benefit for living together." The look of the city reflects the relative tranquillity. Gone are the bleak tenements in the Catholic Bogside and Protestant Fountain areas, which were free-fire zones in the '70s and '80s. In their place is substantial, even charming, public housing. The center of Londonderry is filled with boutiques and restored Georgian buildings.

While sectarian murders and bombings continued apace around the province, an informal cease-fire gradually took hold within the city in the early '90s. "Both sides realized that they could not win a military victory," says Donncha MacNiallais, a former I.R.A. member who became a community worker in the Bogside after serving 10 years in prison. To encourage the move away from violence, Britain, the U.S. and the European Community poured money into Northern Ireland to fund community groups and self-help schemes. Local agitators, including dozens of former prisoners, were given offices and mobile phones in the hope that they would begin worrying about funding targets, not bombing targets. In central Londonderry, every other street corner seems to house the offices of some worthy center dispensing advice, trying to foster peace. Teresa McKeever, the manager of a parent-and-toddler association in Creggan, a Catholic district in Londonderry, brings mothers and children from her area to join in a weekend in the country with mothers and kids from Tullyally, a Protestant area. The talk is generally nonpolitical, but, says McKeever, "it's really all about the future. I can't lose my fears and suspicions overnight. Maybe I never can, but how can my son grow up to hate someone he had such a good time playing with?"

Protestant and Catholic businessmen and -women work together and do some socializing, but even that is constricted by geography. More than 20,000 Protestants have fled the central section of the city on the west bank of the River Foyle for the safety of the largely Protestant communities on the east bank. So drastic was the exodus that some in the Catholic community feared the west bank would become entirely Catholic. They sent Christmas cards to residents in the Fountain area, the last remaining Protestant enclave, encouraging them to stay.

Even with the acceptance of the new peace agreement, the veneer of civility is far too thin to think the Troubles are completely in the past. "Remember," says Glen Barr, a former Protestant politician who heads one of the most progressive self-help community groups, "you have nearly three generations of people in this country who have gone through a war with their neighbors as their enemy."

The hope is that the new political structures set out in the agreement will allow these differences to be worked out peacefully. Says Eamonn Deane, editor of Fingerpost, a Londonderry monthly magazine: "We first have to learn to coexist and get through the day without damaging each other. Once people feel safe, then we can work on building a pluralistic society where people can mingle with ease." They may even agree on a name for their city.