IN 1997 after Mary McAleese was elected President, the then DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson described her as a “dyed-in-the-wool green belligerent nationalist”, adding that the Republic now had a “President who pleases the Provos”. Some years later the Rev Ian Paisley thundered that she was “dishonest”.
The notion of a north Belfast Catholic, whose family was burned out of its pub business early in the Troubles by loyalists forcing them to regroup in Rostrevor, Co Down, allied to her high-flying academic achievements and her professed if liberal Catholicism, just stuck in the craw of some unionists.
At the time of her election everything about her seemed to rankle with people such as Mr Robinson and Dr Paisley, especially her official title, “President of Ireland” that she has never shirked from using. In fact that title still rankles with many unionists, but otherwise and overall there is definite respect and some affection for her among a sizeable portion of unionists as she leaves office. That’s quite an achievement.
Last month Mr Robinson as First Minister attended a special and cordial reception and dinner in the President’s honour hosted by Northern Secretary Owen Paterson at Hillsborough Castle. This also marked her last official visit to Northern Ireland. Fourteen years earlier she had urged an end to “harsh words” and there was no such language in the castle that pleasant night.
It was towards the end of an impressive double-term presidency, and indeed incredible year which culminated in May this year with the visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Republic – a crowning moment in her presidency and in the peace process.
She had an able companion in her husband Martin who, as is well known now, played an important behind-the-scenes role in seeking to bring loyalism in from the cold. He was the quiet hero of the past 14 years. He also paved the way for her visiting hardline loyalist areas such as the Shankill and east Belfast, opening up contacts that hitherto were forbidden to most Southern politicians, never mind presidents.
There were risks to such diplomacy but generally they were worth taking. In fact it could be argued that it was Jackie McDonald of the Ulster Defence Association – a friend and occasional golfing companion of Dr McAleese – who helped her out of the hole she dug for herself over her remarks about unionists, Nazis and Jews.
That was one of a number of setbacks for Mrs McAleese in the North. These cases were greatly outnumbered, however, by what Wordsworth called “those nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love”, which was really how she won the North. President McAleese visited the North on 138 occasions.
Usually she would have three, four or five engagements on each visit, which amounts to at least 500 events in Northern Ireland. That’s an awful lot of people and an awful lot of community centres and old folks’ homes, and day centres, and schools, and peace groups in receipt of her attention. Add to that the 200 or so visits from Northern groups to the Áras, and you have an idea of the extent of that commitment to bridge-building.
And much of this was “nameless”, in the Wordsworthian sense, in that most of these engagements didn’t trigger any publicity. Take for example how in January this year she visited Darkley in Co Armagh. That’s where, in 1983, the INLA unspeakably attacked a Pentecostalist prayer meeting killing three people and wounding seven others.
A small number of the 60 worshippers who were in the Mountain Lodge church on the evening of the attack heard her profess how the name Darkley was synonymous with “sadness, brokenness and hurt and loss on a dreadful scale”.
She was speaking at the cross-community Crossfire Trust in Darkley, close to the church, an organisation run by Ian and Pauline Bothwell that carries out its work with homeless people such as released prisoners, drug addicts and victims of paramilitary and domestic violence efficiently but quietly.
These were the type of people she met on a regular basis. Mrs McAleese said the centre was about challenging the bitter word. “If we can say the gentle word, the healing word, the encouraging word then believe you me we are colonising day in and day out space that used to be colonised by violence and colonising it with goodness,” she added.
That visit made little or no media impact but it made an impression on the people who were there, some of them deeply hurting. Multiply those kind, colonising words and acts over 14 years and you see how those bridges she constantly talked about building with people in Northern Ireland were so painstakingly created.
But the foundations of the bridges were shook when in January 2005 she spoke about how the Nazis “gave to their children an irrational hatred of Jews in the same way the people in Northern Ireland transmitted to their children an irrational hatred of Catholics . . . ”
The apparent comparison between Nazis, Jews and anti-Catholic bigotry in Northern Ireland, unsurprisingly, infuriated many unionists. She quickly apologised but contrition isn’t always accepted.
UDA “brigadier” Jackie McDonald assisted in the comeback by rallying to her cause and insisting that “no matter what she said or whatever way it was taken it wasn’t meant that way”. Those efforts of Martin McAleese yielding fruit again.
It took longer to turn around the Doc. In 2006 at the DUP conference the then party leader Ian Paisley said he did not like President McAleese because she was “dishonest”. The DUP followed up with claims she breached protocols when crossing the Border – a charge that was officially denied, but nonetheless a sign that all those visits were getting under the skin of some unionists.
But again she persevered and the following year cordial relations were established when the two met officially for the first time at the opening of an exhibition at the Somme Heritage Centre in Newtownards, Co Down. There was a warm handshake and Dr Paisley and the President had no difficulty in shaking hands a second time for the photographers who missed the first traditional act of friendship.
Not long afterwards Mr Robinson enjoyed breakfast at the Áras while Dr Paisley was treated to lunch – two breakings of bread hugely symbolic of how, over 14 years, President McAleese and her husband were important, energetic players in the success of the peace process and how they helped break down old barriers of distrust, bitterness and hatred.
Key moments in McAleese presidency that had impact on peace process
November 1998
Met Queen Elizabeth for the first time at Irish Peace Park in Messines in Belgium, at a ceremony commemorating all the Irish men, Catholic and Protestant, unionist and nationalist, who died in the first World War
January 2005
McAleese infuriated unionists on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz when she likened Nazi hatred of Jews to the way in which Protestant parents had instilled a distrust of Catholics in their children. She later apologised for her comments, saying they had been worded “clumsily”.
July 12th, 1998
Invited Orange Order members to the first of a series of garden parties at Áras an Uachtaráin celebrating the most important day in the Orange calendar – a series which has continued annually since
March 2008
Met Queen Elizabeth for the first time on Irish soil at a ceremony at Queen’s University, Belfast, with then Democratic Unionist Party first minister Rev Ian Paisley in attendance – the first time British and Irish heads of state met on the island of Ireland
December 1997
After just a month in office, Mary McAleese took Holy Communion at a Church of Ireland Eucharistic service in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin
August 1998
Visited Omagh to offer her solidarity and sympathy to the victims of the Real IRA bombing that claimed the lives of 29 people, including a woman heavily pregnant with twin girls
Early 2003
Dr Martin McAleese held first of a series of secret meetings with Ulster Defence Association “brigadier” Jackie McDonald in the loyalist Taughmonagh estate in Belfast, which opened up critical contact with grassroots loyalism. In September 2005 the McAleeses were publicly greeted by McDonald and the local community in Taughmonagh
May 2010
The visit of Queen Elizabeth to the Republic towards the end of an impressive double-term presidency was seen as a crowning moment in McAleese’s tenure and in the peace process
