Ireland affirms a courtesy for Northern Protestants
DUBLIN - Ireland offered a potent symbolic concession yesterday to Northern Ireland's Protestant community - the right to bear Irish passports that say "Londonderry" instead of "Derry."
DUBLIN - Ireland offered a potent symbolic concession yesterday to Northern Ireland's Protestant community - the right to bear Irish passports that say "Londonderry" instead of "Derry."
It might seem a small gesture. But for centuries, the proper name of the largest city in northwest Ireland has been among the most emotive sectarian irritants dividing Irish Catholic from British Protestant.
Catholics long aggrieved by the early 17th-century "plantation" of Scottish Protestant settlers have insisted that the city's proper name must remain its original Derry or Doire, Gaelic for oak grove.
The Protestant commercial interests rechristened the city as Londonderry, and that remains the legal name today for Northern Ireland's second-largest, predominantly Catholic city.
Saying Derry or Londonderry is still one of the myriad cultural cues that locals today offer to indicate on which side of the Northern Ireland divide they belong.
Until yesterday, the Republic of Ireland gave Northern Ireland residents the right to passports - but those born in the city or county of Londonderry could use only Derry, as their home, to the annoyance of Protestant applicants.
Foreign Minister Micheal Martin announced yesterday that, from now on, Protestant sons and daughters of Londonderry will be permitted to acquire Irish harp-covered passports with their home city's preferred name in it.
Martin said the gesture was timed to highlight the 11th anniversary of the Good Friday peace accord, which the British and Irish governments and rival Northern Ireland parties achieved on April 10, 1998.
He noted that the landmark peace deal enshrined the right of Northern Ireland residents "to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose."
"I believe that for this birthright to be fulfilled, people of both traditions in Northern Ireland must be able to express their culture, language, and tradition in a climate of tolerance and mutual respect, free from discrimination or harassment," Martin said.
The disputed name of Derry/Londonderry - also widely called Stroke City in recognition of that slash between the two names - has long presented a semantic test for visitors. During his 1995 visit to the city, former President Bill Clinton said he was pleased to be "in Derry and Londonderry," and later referred to the city as Derry but the surrounding county as Londonderry. He still managed to offend some Protestants by describing them all as Irish, though.
The city's overwhelmingly Catholic leaders have tried to take naming powers into their own hands, renaming their local government Derry City Council and their local runway the City of Derry Airport and suing the British government for the right to rename the city and county itself. But a Belfast judge ruled two years ago that the 1766 royal charter renaming Derry as Londonderry still applies.
The city's business interests, seeking to appease both sides of the community, often describe their home as "Foyle," referring to the river that cuts Derry/Londonderry into an overwhelmingly Catholic west side and largely Protestant east.
British passports - with covers bearing the full national title of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - long have allowed Irish residents of Londonderry to register their home as Derry.
