IN COLD BLOOD

AN ICE-CREAM man is killed in Belfast. He is of the Catholic faith. The men who killed him belong to the UVF. The man's parish priest goes on radio to announce that the man was a totally innocent victim because he didn't take part in politics and didn't belong to any organisation. The man's sole interest was in family and work, the priest said.

People are outraged when they hear that. Imagine being killed for doing nothing at all, they think to themselves. What has the world come to that a man is killed for doing nothing at all? And it is that, more than anything, which is outrageous - that in Northern Ireland, the sole proof of innocence is held to be that a person plays no part in the community whatsoever.

If you withdraw altogether from any kind of democratic intercourse, the reasoning now goes, there is a chance that you might reach old age. Act like a robot, think like a robot, go outdoors only to work or fetch food and clothing, and it may be that you will be allowed to live. Like a troglodyte.

The priest innocently expanded on the theme. When people are killed in the North, he said, you wonder at the back of your mind if they weren't involved in 'something' that might have rendered them vulnerable. He rehearsed examples that ranged from the extreme of those who "live by the sword, dying by the sword," through membership of a political grouping to the outer reaches of ordinary communal activity known as 'something'.

IRISH TUNES

He meant well in his defence of the dead man's character, and his words were all the more shocking for that because you can always find some political connection with any activity in a full rational vibrant life. The price of bread is political as we saw recently in the Pat the Baker strike, and the price-war over loaves that regularly erupts between supermarkets.

In the North, where you buy bread can easily be classed as a political act. Is there republican or loyalist literature in the shop, and if you shop there, aren't you giving tacit support to that political tendency? At the very least, you haven't withdrawn custom in protest. These matters can be important. In Derry, after the war broke out, a shop which sold comic-cuts to British soldiers in the nearby army base, was boycotted. After a fashion.

If you were stuck for baby-food late at night you'd forget the ban. And school-children whose money was burning a hole in their pockets first thing in the morning found it nigh impossible to walk past the bright sweets displayed in the window of the only shop within quarter of a mile of the classroom. The matter was resolved when it became too dangerous for soldiers to leave the base on foot and eventually the camp was located outside the Bogside altogether.

And why are you giving your custom exclusively to a shop-keeper of your own faith? A bit sectarian that, is it not? The ice-cream man was, ironically, purchasing supplies from a wholesaler in a loyalist area.

That's the thing about the war in the North. It's been going on so long, twenty-five years now, that you don't even notice it and you relax your guard. Armed soldiery are part of the background wallpaper. The two communities meet at so many interfaces - in work, in shopping and leisure centres, in hospitals, libraries, universities, football grounds, at concerts, at supply depots - that you begin to act normally and then, maybe, you're dead.

And the message goes out continually - try not to be involved in anything at all, anywhere at all, and with luck, no bullet will be fired directly at you. The UVF recently issued a threat to anyone found frequenting establishments where Irish music is played. The logic of that would be a bomb in Horseguards Parade on St Patrick's Day when the Queen Mother presents shamrock to regiments of Irish origin, whose bands play Irish tunes, and the UVF withdrew the threat.

It is still possible, just about, to sing safely in the North if you're in a good mood, but you wouldn't want to place too high a bet on that. A countermanding order was issued in 1916 and not everybody got the message.

Cardinal O Fiaich once famously said that it is entirely possible that people would vote for Sinn Fein because they supported its policy on gardening, not because they supported the IRA. Equally, you might vote for a Unionist party despite its desire to intern the IRA, so impressed are you by its strong support for the hothouse cultivation of avocados in which you have just invested your redundancy money. Politics is the art of the possible, after all.

MORTAL DANGER

The point is that everything is political, including a desire to work in what others might regard as enemy territory. Perhaps the ice-cream man was calling down a curse on all political parties and striking a blow for independent thinking when he insisted on treading on opposition turf. Perhaps he didn't see Protestants or unionists as the opposition. Perhaps he had no choice but to buy supplies where he did and that too is political - that he lives in a country where a worker must risk his life if he is to bring home the bread. It is unlikely that he lived his life as an unthinking uninvolved neanderthal, without feeling for his community.

In a country where religion is held to be a badge of political identity, where it is loyalist practise to kill people solely on the grounds of their Catholic religion, he chose to practise the Catholic faith, as the priest's familiarity with his parishioner confirms. If the church was the only organisation he was involved in, then he was killed for being a Catholic. That should be emphasised, not dismissed as something of such insignificance that nobody should pay attention to it. There is no harm, wrong or evil in being a Catholic or a Protestant or a Jew and anyone who says there is - who, particularly, kills you because of it - should be politically shunned.

Anyone who apologises for religious belief, who suggests that it is of such insignificance that nobody should pay attention to it, is diminishing the courage of believers, insulting their mental faculties and placing them in mortal danger in Northern Ireland. Their right to practise should be defended politically and if that means dipping our toes in unfashionable waters, so be it.

It should not be said of us that an ice-cream man died in Belfast because we were too busy fighting about the pill with the Pope over in Rome to pay attention to his humble plight.