Thought for the Week: The other
Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on recent events and 'the other'
David Bleakley’s father worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and once put rivets into the hull of the Titanic. His son followed in his footsteps and did an apprenticeship in the ‘yard’. Their family home was a small terrace house in working class East Belfast. Then, in his twenties, David Bleakley left the shipyard to study economics at Ruskin College, Oxford.
In Oxford he became friends with an academic who was also from East Belfast. C S Lewis, however, lived ‘up the hill’ in the fresher air of a leafy middle-class neighbourhood. Despite their different backgrounds and paths to Oxford, both shared a curiosity for the world, a dry Ulster sense of humour and a faith.
David Bleakley went on to become a politician, representing the Northern Ireland Labour Party. He hated sectarianism. It was a cancer in society. However, in the early seventies his tolerant position, advocating a politics of cross-community cooperation, was swept away by parties playing the ‘orange’ or ‘green’ card. Bombs and murders were happening almost daily in Ulster. People were afraid. David Bleakley’s political career stopped, almost overnight, and he became a teacher at Methodist College Belfast. I was one of his first students.
Sectarianism, he believed, was based on fear: fear of ‘the other’. In Northern Ireland this meant the fear between Protestants and Catholics. Fear, he taught us, was mostly based on ignorance. People who feared ‘the other’ generally knew very little about them. They were often educated apart, lived apart and grew up apart. In this vacuum of ignorance, fear thrives. Stereotyping thrives. Bigotry thrives. Sectarianism thrives. Racism thrives.
Ignorance could only be confronted through understanding and knowledge. If people knew and understood more about each other, then they would not fear ‘the other’ to the same degree. They may disagree on matters of politics and religion, for example, but they would understand each other at a human level. People, when they connect on a human level, usually find some ‘common ground’. Some people sometimes act badly, very badly, but they are not representative of their group. People are basically good.
David Bleakley went on a position in the World Council of Churches. He worked tirelessly to promote a better understanding between different denominations within Christianity and between different faith groups. This week is Inter Faith Week. The aim is to promote understanding, cooperation and good relations between organisations and persons of different faiths in Britain. Many Quakers are involved in promoting interfaith work.
In the wake of the events in Paris on Friday 13 November, the bombing of the Russian A321 airliner, the massacre at Garissa University in Kenya, the bombing in Beirut, and other dreadful atrocities, it is a time, while condemning evil, to confront ignorance and promote understanding. It is also a time to remember the good in people.
Thousands have been queuing patiently to give blood in France this week. Where there is tragedy and suffering, the writer Fred Rogers once said: ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’
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