On an icy cold morning, we talked with a couple of people who work within the East Belfast community. Considering this area has seen a dramatic rise in interface violence over the last two years, we asked: What have the people here gained from the ceasefire?
After the ceasefires came along there was this feeling that most people would have had, something like: �this is brilliant, there�s a bright future for us all now we have peace�. And it would have remained like that even after the Agreement. But in the last two years the communities round here have drifted further and further away from supporting it. The leadership are still behind it, but the communities feel that there�s been a lack of opportunities for them, that most of the benefits are flowing to the nationalist communities. Rightly or wrongly, most people thought when the Agreement was signed that this was going to be an opportunity for everyone to have a bright future.
It is true to say that Unionist communities don�t have confidence in their future. Most people are coming round to the idea that all this is just going to lead us into a United Ireland. I have a feeling it is not just people on the ground, but our politicians are not confident either. They are still saying exactly the same things as they were back in the 1970�s about �there will not be a United Ireland�. I would have thought that there would have been more concrete things to say about the subject. It makes people think that maybe even the politicians think that Sinn Fein is right and there will be a United Ireland. If they were confident that that isn�t going to happen, they would be giving us more concrete things to think about. Maybe to all intents and purposes we will be in a kind of unified Ireland. NI will almost certainly remain within the UK, but it will be a very different part of the UK than other parts.
Unionists have found it very difficult to be visionary, to think in terms of the future. It is very difficult to do that when you are essentially defending the status quo. One of the worrying things is that there has been a tendency to resort to the language of victim-hood. That is not to say that Sinn Fein have not used the Most Oppressed People Ever card and been very successful. But they have also told their people to go and get and education and find your way out of it, even whilst playing the victim-hood card. We just don�t have a strategy yet to get people off their knees. I just don�t think the world is going to be as sympathetic to us in the way they were to Nationalists twenty or thirty years ago. The Catholic community has been very good at pulling together. The parish system means that even if people go away from the area, even as far as the US, they still belong to that Parish and they will bring money and jobs back home with them. It just doesn�t happen the same way in Protestant communities.
What about the principle values of the protestant work ethic, particularly that of self-reliance?
Yes, but those values are also very isolating. In protestant areas once you have helped yourself, you just get out of here. Most of the people whose family maybe scrimped and saved for their children to get a university education, have moved away. May be not out of the country altogether, but to places like Newtownards, Bangor and Helens Bay.
There�s always been a neighbourhood thing. In Catholic areas the church has always been about helping yourself. In protestant areas it�s about helping the person sitting in the seat beside you. I remember when I was young in the 70s seeing ministers going up and down the street, hoping that they would bump into people that didn�t belong to their church, but going out in the hope that they could persuade them to come in. And we are taking about very small areas compared to other places. There are four churches on this road serving a fairly small church community. In the Short Strand they have one church that serves four to five thousand people.
I think that is compounded by the fact that the two theologies work in completely different ways. To join a protestant church, you have to include yourself in. But in the Catholic church, you have to have to make it clear to the community that you want to opt out. Therefore you have a greater sense of community coherence.
Is that not a role that the Orange Order once played?
Well yes it would have been. And they have opened a Credit Union just down the road here. Mind you I am a member, but it was a long time before I realised that it was set up by the Orange Order. And to tell you the truth, if I had known it was behind it, I would not have joined it. And that goes for a few other friends I have too.
Why?
I don�t agree with some of the things they have done. I joined them when I was younger, and to be honest from a social point of view, it was one of the best things I have ever been involved in. There were some great people in it when I was. But then about ’79/’80, I left, because it started to become very inward. Now, you�ll find round here that whilst people are not looking for it to be closed down, it has gone right down.
So what can be done to turn things around in East Belfast?
Basically we want to make East Belfast an attractive place to live. Somehow over the last ten years or so, East Belfast has gone under the radar. Until two years ago it was all very quiet, so that little of the money that was going to other areas came here.
I have only been here for about three years and it was the first time I had worked in a single faith community since I came to Belfast, most of my work before would have been cross community in nature. I couldn�t believe the lack of resources in the area. And no one actually said anything about it. They seemed to accept it the way it was. The problem we are now faced with is, �how do we improve the situation without going down the victimhood route?�. We need money and resources, but we want to throw them at solutions, not problems.
There are a lot of social problems here. Especially as this is an area that would have been dependent on the Shorts and the shipyard. Of course there are similar problems in Liverpool and Glasgow, where people have suffered the loss of heavy industry. But people in Belfast don�t always seem to see that. They tend to think that all their problems are unique to Belfast. The major economic impact in the area took place about ten years ago, but it only in the last two or three that people are beginning to suffer the psychological impacts.
Have you done anything to address the problems?
About two years ago we got together a forum of groups to try and get people together in the community and talk about pooling resources, and looking at how we might co-ordinate things much more efficiently and co-ordinate responses. The trouble down at the interface at Cluan Place began, we came together and asked for a security gate to put up in Madrid Street. One community worker had been asking for one for ages, but with 15 or 20 organisations behind him, we got that in place very quickly.
We have worked with the paramilitaries. Before the forum, every time there was trouble down at the interface, we had to fire fight all the time. Since we have got the co-operation of the paramilitaries, it may take a bit longer, but they are doing the fire-fighting not us. We had a situation in the summer when two kids were shot in Cluan Place. Normally the loyalists would have gone mad and started attacking the other side, so that by the time cameras got down there all they would pick up is Loyalists rioting and the original shooting would have been missed altogether. It is something that Republicans have been able to rely on. This time they held back and the story of the two shootings got out into the news. It was a hell of a risk. Partly because they had never done that kind of thing before, and partly no one knew what the reaction on the other side might be. For years they had relied on the Loyalists doing just what they expected of them, but this time it didn�t happen.
And that began to change other things. The paramilitaries began to voluntarily take down graffiti that might have been offensive to the residents in Short Strand. Since November there has only been one incident. It doesn�t mean it won�t happen again, but at least they have a procedure they can follow. We have since set up a Community Safety Committee, which has engaged an outside agency to monitor the interface for breaches. For the paramilitaries it has meant taking some unpopular steps. But that has to be the way forward for the future.
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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