Few episodes over the past quarter-century better illustrate the tensions and lack of generosity which characterise relations between the majority and the minority in Northern Ireland than this week's removal of Irish language signs from the Students' Union at Queens University Belfast.
Signs at the Union premises had been bilingual - in English and Irish - for some time. Over the past few months there has been a mounting volume of complaints from students and staff of the majority tradition who describe the use of Irish as provocative, triumphalist and threatening. For many of them, Queen's University now has a "chill factor" which makes them feel alienated. The Fair Employment Commission's intervention finally appears to have been decisive in bringing the signs down. Reaction to the removal of the signs has followed predictable lines. Nationalists see it as a further denial of their equality of status. Mr John Taylor MP, perhaps facetiously, remarked that there is more Chinese spoken in Northern Ireland than Irish. (Clearly Mr Taylor is not a regular visitor to the nationalist community centres and clubs in West Belfast.) The unionist News Letter assured its readers that the propagation of minority languages has little value in the real world.
It is a sorry tale which hardly augurs well for an accommodation between both traditions at the end of the talks process due to recommence at Stormont next month. One would have to travel to former Yugoslavia to find another location in Europe where one people's intolerance of another is so deep that they feel compelled to remove the evidence of the other side's language and culture. French and Catalan can co-exist on the same streets in the Roussillon. The Welsh are not provoked by bilingual road signs. Even in the troubled Basque regions, the Euskara language can co-exist with Spanish.
Irish has a place in the consciousness of many Northern nationalists which goes well beyond its linguistic curiosity. It is a statement of tribal affiliation, of cultural identity, of political aspiration. But formed of two traditions, as Northern Ireland is, does not English serve precisely the same function for those who cherish the Union and who see their identity as British? After almost three decades of killing, reasonable people on both sides must recognise the imperative of allowing both cultures, both traditions, both languages to exist in a climate of mutual esteem. One would expect that much understanding on a factory floor - yet this is a university.
The Irish spoken in the Falls and Ballymurphy and Crossmaglen may be something of a political contrivance. But it is a tangible sign of pride in the nationalist identity. It is also an ancient and learned language which flourished in Ulster when the acres around Queen's University were no more than forest. To proscribe it from practical use and to declare it irrelevant is to pretend that Ulster's history began in the 16th Century.
Moderates of both traditions recognise the starkness of this episode and are rightly disquieted by it. Unionists have been angered by what they see as the greening of Queen's University but forward-looking members of the majority tradition know that the minority's culture and its emblems must be accorded full equality of esteem. Forcing the removal of its language signs from the walls of Queen's University is a hollow victory. It bespeaks a profound insecurity and narrowness of spirit which will have to be exorcised if lasting peace is to be secured.