Arlene proves that gestures matter

A FEW months ago could you have imagined it? Arlene Foster sitting in the stand in Clones on Ulster final day watching her native county take on Donegal for the Anglo-Celt Cup. Arlene Foster standing as Amhrán na bhFiann rang out before throw-in.

That’s the same Arlene Foster who’s holding out against the Irish Language act saying that more people speak Polish in the north than speak Irish. The same Arlene Foster who’s backing Brexit. The same Arlene Foster who’s the direct successor to Peter Robinson – who once staged a very different invasion of Monaghan back in the eighties – and to Ian ‘Never, never, never’ Paisley.

To a certain number of people her presence in St Tiernach’s Park was little more than gesture politics and that may be so, but it’s one hell of a gesture. The leader of unionism came to the Ulster final and sought to build bridges between green and orange.

Of course it’s just a first step. More steps towards a shared understanding between both traditions on this island need to be taken, but to dismiss what Foster did last Sunday afternoon as insignificant in the grander scheme of things is to miss the point.

That it was clever politics for Foster to do what she did shouldn’t be a knock against it or her either. Sometimes for good to come about it needs to be politically expedient.

Change comes slowly and Foster’s decision to go – and the positive reaction she got from the terraces – could be a sign that the political stalemate up north might be drawing to a close.