The Consultative Group on the Past led by Lord Eames and Denis Bradley has created a bit of a stir by proposing that the families of those killed in the violence in the north of Ireland each receive £12 000 as a recognition payment. The main source of controversy has been agitation from loyalists complaining that Republican families would be getting some of the cash too. One could have a discussion about the merits of Republicans taking payoffs from the state that they were fighting but that is now such a well established practice that it is pointless to quibble.

In preparation for the story the BBC sent some journalists over to Belfast to put together their packages. The recurrent theme in all these reports from the frontline is that the violence is over and people have to get used to living together. Since children are the future we get the obligatory report from the integrated school.

It was a snippet on Radio 4 that made my ears prick up. The Clanmill Housing Association is building a development with 22 “social homes” out of a total of 140 near Lisburn, a town where I once spent a very uncomfortable lunchtime before getting out vowing never to return. Tenants who want to live in one of the social homes have to sign a shared future agreement which commits them to live harmoniously with neighbours regardless of religion, ethnicity and so on. The idea is that by building social housing in which Protestants and Catholics live everybody gets to know each other and the barriers of mistrust and suspicion are broken down. Lovely. One does wonder what you are supposed to do if you are an anti-social misanthrope who can’t afford to buy a house. It seems discriminatory.

It would be lovelier still if there were any evidence that it worked. What is often forgotten in just how uneventful the north of Ireland was before 1968. Belfast did have areas in which there was a fairly good mixture of Protestants and Catholics. That changed in 1969. According to a report cited in Michael Farrell’s book Northern Ireland: The Orange State 1820 families were forced out of their homes in Belfast between July and September 1969. 82.7% of these were Catholic and represented 5.3% of the Catholic households in the city. Farrell says that for some families it was their second or third forcible eviction in living memory. The sectarian state had been created through pogroms and British violence and the pogroms of the years following 1969 were something of a reply of those of the 1920s.

The Belfast estate to which we moved was specifically built in the mid 1970s to accommodate families who had been forced out of their homes in other parts of the city. Up till then we had lived in a mixed area. Protestant and Catholic kids played together, parents socialised and I have early memories of being taken to Orange marches on July 12^th by Protestant neighbours. No one had to teach us how to live together.

In the same radio package Newton Emerson of the Irish Times argues that the “peace process” coincided with a long period of growth prosperity, rising aspirations and development. He fears that economic challenges may lead some politicians to bang tribal drums. That would be the DUP. As Splintered Sunrise has already noted Sammy Wilson is way ahead of him.

When a state has been set up by counting how many adherents of each of the principal local religions live there and making sure that one dominates the other it’s fair to call it sectarian. Even the self-styled liberal wing of loyalism balks at the idea of a human rights act for the place and Sinn Fein has accepted a settlement which establishes it as the party that represents the Catholics. The British imposed settlement is the guarantee of sectarian division and for that reason it holds the certain promise of future violence and new pogroms

Integrated schooling and mixed housing are liberal chimera. So long as British imperialism keeps control of the north of Ireland and relies on the loyalists as its bedrock support history will replay itself. You can learn that from reading any book that tells Belfast’s story.