Sometimes it seems to be a big deal if you refuse to shake someone’s hand; but why do it if you don’t mean it? Footballer Rio Ferdinand was right, surely, not to shake the hand of John Terry after the awful way the “leader, legend” behaved towards his cousin.

Handshakes were in the news again last week, and this time in a far more serious context than the trivialities of sporting niceties, when Prince Charles and Gerry Adams greeted each other on the Royal dignitary’s (Charles that is) visit to Ireland.

A handshake can mean many things, from a simple cordial greeting to a mark of respect or congratulation, right up to a symbolic means of acknowledging reconciliation.

Some of the right-wing British press were in no doubt that Charles was simply doing what the establishment required of him, and anything from headlines to cartoons portrayed him as shaking a hand dripping with blood.

The Prince’s speech in Sligo was as personally touching as one could imagine from a “stiff upper lip” British Royal, and he spoke movingly about the death of Lord Mountbatten, the grandfather he never had. So, as much as these handshake occasions are staged and probably as the result of lengthy and difficult negotiations on both sides, I don’t buy into the idea that Prince Charles or, indeed Gerry Adams, were simply fulfilling a role; in Adams case, the cynicism of electoral advantage was weighed against the opposition of families bereaved by the Parachute Regiment.

Those who were in Galway, Sligo and Mullaghmore last week seemed genuinely uplifted by events, and I think the handshake and the words of the Prince genuinely meant something; not least following the Queen’s historic visit to Dublin, it was another step along the way towards better relationships between Britain and Ireland.

An important step, but just a step.

It’s what happens next north of the Border which will decide how big the steps towards reconciliation are.

If the squabbles are Stormont are anything to go by, Charles’s use of Yeats’ quote “peace comes dropping slow” certainly applies. Not just in terms of the difficulties over welfare reform, but in many areas of cooperation and a shared future, the progress is painful.

The point has been well made, especially by the ever-impressive Baroness May Blood, that the many people in our society who are struggling for a living will see little immediate benefit from set-piece handshakes or lack of connect between those at Stormont and the people directly affected by their decisions.

It has to be said, though, that one of our great difficulties in reconciling the two tribes remains dealing with the past; and the words of Prince Charles again brought to the fore the reality of the pain of personal loss.

The anguish of losing a loved one is all around us, and not just from the Troubles. I was reminded again this week of the pain of hearing of the suicide of a loved one, and it’s a burden many people feel. Whether it be road death or cancer, or sudden loss in so many ways, the cruel passing of life is no respecter of age.

In the context of moving society forward, we not unnaturally think of lives needlessly lost in the violence of division.

People are dealing with this loss in very different ways; some can forgive, some cannot and all their voices should be heard. When I say the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”, there seems there to be a link between us receiving forgiveness if we forgive. But even that opens up a theological debate.

There does appear to still be a curtain between our peoples.

It’s said that the “war is over”. But the bitterness and mistrust is continuing. Holding out the hand of friendship, shaking hands even metaphorically, is going on at community level every day, but it doesn’t always happen at leadership level.

I think of the quote from the author Sun Tzu, who said “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and wonder if that is the phase we are now in. Rather than another Tzu line: “Build your enemies a golden bridge to retreat across.” Instead, we’re continuing to demand the other side grovels.

I’ve often said that in my reporting life, I visited many homes of people bereaved. All I can say is that the pain of those left behind is the same, whatever the circumstances of the violent death.

I was interested to listen on radio recently to the Bishop of Leeds, the Right Rev. Nick Baines, who recalled that a monument to the victims of the Warsaw Uprising at the end of World War Two included bronze figures of Nazis which had no faces; as if to give them faces would humanise them. Yet, said the Bishop, is that not the point; they were human.

All the thousands of people killed and maimed in our troubled history were human beings, as indeed were those who inflicted death and hurt; perhaps the real meaning of the handshake between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams was a symbolic recognition of each other’s humanity.

Bishop Baines said “Violence and death do not have to have the final words.” Sometimes it seems to be a big deal if you refuse to shake someone’s hand; but why do it if you don’t mean it? Footballer Rio Ferdinand was right, surely, not to shake the hand of John Terry after the awful way the “leader, legend” behaved towards his cousin.

Handshakes were in the news again last week, and this time in a far more serious context than the trivialities of sporting niceties, when Prince Charles and Gerry Adams greeted each other on the Royal dignitary’s (Charles that is) visit to Ireland.

A handshake can mean many things, from a simple cordial greeting to a mark of respect or congratulation, right up to a symbolic means of acknowledging reconciliation.

Some of the right-wing British press were in no doubt that Charles was simply doing what the establishment required of him, and anything from headlines to cartoons portrayed him as shaking a hand dripping with blood.

The Prince’s speech in Sligo was as personally touching as one could imagine from a “stiff upper lip” British Royal, and he spoke movingly about the death of Lord Mountbatten, the grandfather he never had. So, as much as these handshake occasions are staged and probably as the result of lengthy and difficult negotiations on both sides, I don’t buy into the idea that Prince Charles or, indeed Gerry Adams, were simply fulfilling a role; in Adams case, the cynicism of electoral advantage was weighed against the opposition of families bereaved by the Parachute Regiment.

Those who were in Galway, Sligo and Mullaghmore last week seemed genuinely uplifted by events, and I think the handshake and the words of the Prince genuinely meant something; not least following the Queen’s historic visit to Dublin, it was another step along the way towards better relationships between Britain and Ireland.

An important step, but just a step.

It’s what happens next north of the Border which will decide how big the steps towards reconciliation are.

If the squabbles are Stormont are anything to go by, Charles’s use of Yeats’ quote “peace comes dropping slow” certainly applies. Not just in terms of the difficulties over welfare reform, but in many areas of cooperation and a shared future, the progress is painful.

The point has been well made, especially by the ever-impressive Baroness May Blood, that the many people in our society who are struggling for a living will see little immediate benefit from set-piece handshakes or lack of connect between those at Stormont and the people directly affected by their decisions.

It has to be said, though, that one of our great difficulties in reconciling the two tribes remains dealing with the past; and the words of Prince Charles again brought to the fore the reality of the pain of personal loss.

The anguish of losing a loved one is all around us, and not just from the Troubles. I was reminded again this week of the pain of hearing of the suicide of a loved one, and it’s a burden many people feel. Whether it be road death or cancer, or sudden loss in so many ways, the cruel passing of life is no respecter of age.

In the context of moving society forward, we not unnaturally think of lives needlessly lost in the violence of division.

People are dealing with this loss in very different ways; some can forgive, some cannot and all their voices should be heard. When I say the Lord’s Prayer, “forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us”, there seems there to be a link between us receiving forgiveness if we forgive. But even that opens up a theological debate.

There does appear to still be a curtain between our peoples.

It’s said that the “war is over”. But the bitterness and mistrust is continuing. Holding out the hand of friendship, shaking hands even metaphorically, is going on at community level every day, but it doesn’t always happen at leadership level.

I think of the quote from the author Sun Tzu, who said “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting” and wonder if that is the phase we are now in. Rather than another Tzu line: “Build your enemies a golden bridge to retreat across.” Instead, we’re continuing to demand the other side grovels.

I’ve often said that in my reporting life, I visited many homes of people bereaved. All I can say is that the pain of those left behind is the same, whatever the circumstances of the violent death.

I was interested to listen on radio recently to the Bishop of Leeds, the Right Rev. Nick Baines, who recalled that a monument to the victims of the Warsaw Uprising at the end of World War Two included bronze figures of Nazis which had no faces; as if to give them faces would humanise them. Yet, said the Bishop, is that not the point; they were human.

All the thousands of people killed and maimed in our troubled history were human beings, as indeed were those who inflicted death and hurt; perhaps the real meaning of the handshake between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams was a symbolic recognition of each other’s humanity.

Bishop Baines said “Violence and death do not have to have the final words.”