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We all needs reference points to help define who we are. I choose two Harolds and an Ivan: John Harold Hewitt, poet (1907-1987), James Harold McCusker, politician (1940-1990) and Ivan Turgenev, novelist and playwright (1818-1883).

Turgenev first: “… if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.”

Harold McCusker died of cancer twenty years ago. Had he lived, he would have succeeded James Molyneaux as Ulster Unionist leader. He was a passionate, articulate defender of the Union. As a broadcast journalist, I interviewed him many times. Once, he gave me a bloody nose and a lesson I never forgot – a lesson in the importance of listening. He ran rings round me on Good Morning Ulster one day, to the point he was able to say “Now you are arguing my case for me!” I never, ever, let a politician do that to me again. I owe him. You can read one of the great passionate unionist speeches delivered in the House of Commons at http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1985/nov/27/anglo-irish-agreement
Harold McCusker sat on a think tank with the DUP in 1987. It was called The Task Force, and it published a report entitled An End to Drift. That theme fits today ….

John Hewitt (28 October 1907-22 June 1987) was an insightful, accessible poet who described himself as being Ulster, Irish, British and European. Below are some of the words that inspire and inform who I am.

AN ULSTERMAN

This is my country. If my people came
From England here four centuries ago,
The only trace that’s left is in my name.
Kilmore, Armagh no other sod can show
The weathered stone of our first burying.
Born in Belfast, which drew the landless in,
That river-straddling, hill-rimmed town, I cling
To the inflexions of my origin.

Though creed-crazed zealots and the ignorant crowd,
Long-nurtured, never checked, in ways of hate,
Have made our streets a byword of offence,
This is my country, never disavowed.
When it is fouled, shall I not remonstrate?
My heritage is not their violence.

THE COASTERS
You coasted along
To larger houses, gadgets, more machines,
to golf and weekend bungalows,
caravans when the children were small,
the Mediterranean, later, with the wife.

You did not go to church often,
weddings were special;
but you kept your name on the books
against eventualities;
and the parson called, or the curate.

You showed a sense of responsibility,
with subscriptions to worthwhile causes
and service in voluntary organisations;
and, anyhow, this did the business no harm,
no harm at all.
Relations were improving. A good
useful life. You coasted along.

You even had a friend or two of the other sort,
coasting too: your ways ran parallel.
Their children ad yours seldom met, though,
being at different schools.
You visited each other, decent folks with a sense
of humour. Introduced, even, to
one of their clergy. And then you smiled
in the looking glass, admiring, a
little moved by, your broadmindedness.

Your father would never have known
one of them. Come to think of it,
when you were young, your own home was never
visited by one of the other sort.

Relations were improving. The annual processions
began to look rather like folk festivals.

When that noisy preacher started,
he seemed old-fashioned, a survival.
Later you remarked on his vehemence,
a bit on the rough side.
But you said, admit it, you said in a club,
‘you know, there’s something in what he says.’

And you who seldom had time to read a book,
what with reports and the colour supplements,
denounced censorship.
And you who never had an adventurous thought
were positive that the church of the other sort
vetoes thought.
And you, who simply put up with marriage
for the children’s sake, deplored
the attitude of the other sort
to divorce,
You coasted along.
And all the time, though you never noticed,
the old lies festered;
the ignorant became more thoroughly infected;
there were gains, of course;
you never saw any go barefoot.

The government permanent, sustained
by the regular plebiscites of loyalty.
You always vote but never
put a sticker on the car;
a card in the window
would not have been seen from the street.
Faces changed on the posters, names too, often,
but the same families, the same class of people.
A minister once called you by your first name.
You coasted along
and the sores suppurated and spread.

Now the fever is high and raging;
who would have guessed it, coasting along?
The ignorant-sick thresh about in delirium
and tear at the scabs with dirty fingernails.
The cloud of infection hangs over the city,
a quick change of wind and it
might spill over the leafy suburbs.
You coasted too long.