One voice

Last week Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's First Minister and leader of the main Unionist party attended the funeral of Ronan Kerr a young Catholic who had served with the Police Service of Northern Ireland prior to his murder by Republican dissidents.

Mr Robinson had never attended a Catholic service before but such is the political distance travelled by that battered province that all communities across Ireland have united to show their commitment to peace, North and South, Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Republican.

Like many I have Irish ancestry and my wife's family are from the Republic. As an MP I have made three official visits. Recently to the Shankhill and Falls Roads in Belfast.

I toured the peace lines separating opposing communities with the bricked up houses on either side where the detritus of hate, the rocks, the petrol bombs rained down and long ago hounded out their inhabitants — saw two schools (one Catholic one Protestant) on separate sides of the same road along which little children were pelted with stones and insults.

This is a place where within an area little larger than Okehampton more than 1,600 people were killed during the troubles. To witness this is literally choking — it leaves you with perhaps as profound a sense of sorrow as it is possible to experience.

Yet it also reminds you just how far Northern Ireland has come. Since the Good Friday Agreement once no-go areas patrolled by soldiers are open to community policing. The politics of division is now anchored on the issues we debate in Westminster.

There are certain to be further atrocities to come but as Northern Ireland laid to rest one of her finest sons she spoke with one voice; of peace — of reconciliation — of a determination never to look back.