In my part of Ireland, the old religious divide has more or less disappeared. Nobody pays much attention to it now. But when I was younger, it was certainly there, even if people didn’t always talk about it.
There was, however, one thing that could overcome generations of suspicion almost instantly.
A Protestant bake sale.
You could have all the ecumenical meetings you liked, but nothing brought people together quite like the news that there were apple tarts, sponge cakes and scones for sale in the local Protestant Hall.
Catholics who might rarely have crossed the threshold suddenly became very relaxed about the whole Reformation business.
Protestant women had a reputation for being very good bakers. Whether that was actually true across the entire Protestant population I have no idea, but there was certainly plenty of evidence in my own family.
My mother was a Methodist, and she was a wonderful baker. So was her mother, and so were her sisters.
We weren’t particularly well-off, but there always seemed to be something being produced in our kitchen. Apple tarts, rhubarb tarts, lemon meringue pies, gingerbread, trifles and huge sponge cakes. Then there were the scones, still warm, split open with butter and jam. My personal favourite was jam roly poly made from the leftover pastry.
Nobody called any of this artisan food.
It was just baking.
If you’d told my mother she was an artisan baker, she’d probably have looked at you suspiciously and carried on rolling pastry.
Today, of course, her apple tart would probably appear on a café menu as hand-crafted seasonal apple tart using locally sourced fruit, accompanied by a little blob of cream and costing the best part of a tenner.
My mother would have given you a quarter of the tart and then asked why you weren’t eating more.
The bake sales were much the same. Long tables covered with homemade cakes and people hovering around trying to work out what they could buy before somebody else got there first.
Centuries of theological disagreement didn’t seem terribly important when there was only one lemon meringue left.
It does make you wonder whether food might be the answer to some of the world’s problems.
Perhaps the United Nations has been going about things the wrong way.
Instead of another international summit with politicians sitting behind flags making speeches, they should organise a massive international supper.
Every country brings something.
The Italians bring pasta.
The Indians bring curry.
The French bring pastries.
The Israelis arrive with falafel and hummus. The Palestinians bring maqluba.
The Irish bring stew, soda bread and several women from a Methodist church carrying apple tarts.
Nobody is allowed to discuss borders, sanctions or historical grievances until everyone has eaten.
Ireland already has some evidence that this works.
Italian families came here and opened cafés and chip shops and, most importantly, brought us proper ice cream.
Nobody was terribly concerned about cultural differences after that.
If somebody can make a decent 99, you are inclined to welcome them into the community.
Perhaps peacekeeping forces should occasionally include a few grandmothers.
Put them into a large kitchen, give them flour, butter and several dozen eggs and let them sort things out.
There would still be arguments, obviously. Someone would insist their grandmother’s recipe was the original one. There could be a serious diplomatic incident over whether raisins belong in scones.
And the Irish and British delegations should probably be kept apart when tea is being made.
But it might still work.
Looking back, those little Protestant bake sales probably did more for community relations than anyone realised.
There were no speeches about reconciliation, and nobody issued a statement afterwards.
Someone just opened the hall and announced there was tea and apple tart.
And everybody went in.
