Jarlath Burns is a leader who can build bridges across communities

When the GAA club in the Maghera area of south Derry was formed in the late 1940s, it was named Watty Graham’s GAC Glen in honour of the man executed in 1798 for his part in the United Irishmen rebellion.

In 2023, the Glen club reached the final of the all-Ireland club championship and were defeated in controversial circumstances when their Dublin opponents, Kilmacud Crokes had at least 16 players on the pitch at the end of the game.

In the widespread publicity following the match, the significance of the club’s name may have been lost.

Watty is short for Walter Graham, a farmer and an elder in the Presbyterian Church in Maghera in the 18th century. Like many other Presbyterians at the time, such as textile manufacturer Henry Joy McCracken, Graham’s Christian ideals saw him fight against injustice and slavery and the United Irishmen rebelled allied with the Catholic Defenders in Ireland.

It's often recalled that Presbyterians played a crucial role in history in saving the Irish language, including helping to translate the Bible into Irish and holding services in Irish. Indeed, I recall recently a Presbyterian Moderator reciting The Lord’s Prayer in Irish on RTE.

To digress further for a moment, McCracken’s grandfather, Francis Joy, a Presbyterian Republican founded the Belfast News Letter back in the 1700s. I don’t think anyone today would, er, accuse the News Letter of living up to those ideals.

But the role played in the past by Presbyterians in trying to achieve founder Wolfe Tone’s ideal to “unite Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter under the common name of Irishmen in order to break the connection with England” underlines the complexity of our shared history.

Another Protestant, Sam Maguire from a Church of Ireland family in Cork, is an iconic name in the GAA with the All-Ireland county champions receiving the trophy named after him each year.

Maguire and Graham are just two of the Protestant Irish who fought against British rule.

But as the 20th century progressed after the partition of Ireland, the GAA has become synonymous with the Catholic community, particularly here in the north; furthermore indeed, the divisive nature of our society has resulted in many people in the Unionist community seeing something dark in all things GAA.

The election of the new president of the Association at the week-end, therefore, marks an extremely interesting and positive point in the relationship the organisation could have with the other community.

The new president, Jarlath Burns is a remarkably impressive man. A fine player in his day, he captained Armagh to the Ulster Championship in 1999, an indication of his leadership qualities which he has shown in abundance in his many roles since.

Most notably, as principal of St. Paul’s High School, Bessbrook which has 1,700 pupils. He is passionate about education, particularly at putting all the children first, front and centre of everything the school does.

“It is a question of values which, in our school, are built on integrity, truth, compassion and kindness. We never give up on a pupil. We believe there is something special in every child,” Jarlath Burns said in a recent interview.

“In our school, up to the age of 14 we do not impose excessive homework on the pupils. We try to make them enjoy the experience of education and, during this time, we work on building their resilience. We wonder why mental health is such a huge issue with teenagers. It is due to the pressure they are under. Instead, we teach our junior pupils about their local history and geography. We set our own curriculum. At their age, we were picking blackberries and climbing trees, not buried in homework.”

Significantly, Burns gives considerable help to local schools in the minority Protestant sector when they struggle for resources and also brings speakers from the Orange Order in to talk about their culture to his Catholic pupils.

So, in terms of building relationships across the divide, the new GAA president has a track record, And in a recent interview on a BBC podcast, Burns indicated very clearly that he will continue in this vein in his three-year presidency.

He told the podcast: “I have a serious curiosity and interest in British culture and Unionist culture and Orange culture. We have the Orange Order in our school all the time talking to our young people, to get them to understand what that is about, what parading is about, what walking to give witness to their sincere belief in their reformed faith is about.”

“If we show in our organisation that we have sympathy and an understanding for the culture of the Protestant people in Northern Ireland, maybe then, when we ask them to respect our culture, they will. Because it can’t be our culture and nobody else’s.

"There’s a significant British population who reside in this part of Ireland and they feel under siege, and they are misunderstood in many respects and they become outraged and furious about many things because they feel their backs are against the wall. And because we are becoming a majority we can [say] ‘yahoo – we can do what we want with our flag and anthem’.

“But I think the GAA is a good example of how you do those things sensitively. We are proud to be Irish. The Irish flag is my flag, it’s not everybody’s flag. What I am trying to say that I would be open to a situation in a new Ireland, in a new Ireland that wants to be fully inclusive of all traditions and faiths, that it may be a compromise we have to make, and it wouldn’t be a very big one for the big prize of having a united Ireland, which would be a dream for me,” said Jarlath.

The GAA was formed in 1884 (before partition) as a sporting and cultural organisation to promote gaelic games, and also Irish culture through music, dance and language.

Privately, many Protestants admire the community aspect of the GAA. It is deeply rooted in community, as indicated by the response in his own Silverbridge club when Jarlath Burns was elected president and the hands-on role such a senior figure plays at local level.

As someone from a Protestant background, I have been following gaelic games for many years, both watching on television and going to live matches. Gaelic football is great to watch and the All-Ireland hurling is a sporting spectacle which among the most exciting in the world.

Many of my co-religionists keep their distance from the GAA. Indeed, it is denigrated with people accusing clubs of “naming grounds after terrorists". It’s an attitude symptomatic of an derogatory attitude to all things Irish which built up in some Unionist quarters in the last century.

There is, of course, so much more to the organisation and I believe that Jarlath Burns will demonstrate that in his presidency and build a greater understanding by building bridges across communities.

His tolerant and respectful attitude to the British and Orange tradition on the island is refreshing and encouraging. It’s real leadership, and an example of where we need to go to value all cultures and traditions on this island.

A footnote to all this, perhaps. The new Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland is Dr. Sam Mawhinney who was interviewed recently on BBC Radio Ulster’s 'Sunday Sequence' programme. There was criticism on Twitter about him being asked about the united Ireland debate.

But it seemed a fair question to me, certainly in the current climate. The Presbyterian Church, like all our main churches, never partitioned and is organised on an all-island basis; so Dr. Mawhinney, himself Minister of a church in Dublin city centre, will have members who consider themselves British and others who consider themselves Irish.

He replied that his allegiance was to the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, but he would like to see more open dialogue between Nationalists and Unionists. The conversation, he said, was valid and he would like to encourage it in a “respectful and open way".

People across this island have lived too long in their silos, with the resultant fear, mistrust and division. Too often we hear from the naysayers who want to keep us there.

But I’d rather listen to the voices of people like Jarlath Burns who can break taboos and make a real difference to the dialogue between our peoples.

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