Examination of Witnesses (Questions 600-616)
3 FEBRUARY 2004
MS MARY
MCKEE,
MR SEAMUS
MCALEAVEY
AND MS
FRANCES MCCANDLESS
Q600 Mr Clelland: What about the mix
at work? How many Catholics to Protestants, in percentage terms,
work in your organisations? Do you know?
Ms McKee: We are 50/50.
Ms McCandless: About half and
half. We do know, because we have to monitor that very closely.
It is a legal requirement.
Q601 Mr Clelland: You are half and half.
Ms McKee: More or less.
Q602 Chris Mole: NICVA touched on the
question of growing racism earlier on. Could you expand on why
you think this is becoming such a problem in Northern Ireland?
You referred in your submission to it being twice as significant
as sectarian prejudice and you also mentioned a 400% increase
in recorded racist attacks. Is any of that to do with better recording?
Ms McCandless: Yes; absolutely
and some of it is to do with the police recording things in a
certain way and people being more open to reporting things to
the police, to do with the ceasefires and different kinds of incidents
happening or not happening in areas. Interestingly the number
of racist attacks shot up after the ceasefires were announced.
That was partly because the media had less to talk about in terms
of bombs going off, so suddenly the focus was switched onto drugs
and onto the racist attacks at that time. The statistic about
racist attitudes being twice as prevalent as sectarian attitudes,
was from survey information and when people were asked which they
detested more, Chinese people or Catholics, that was the way in
which those preferences manifested themselves.
Q603 Chris Mole: What was the answer?
Ms McCandless: Chinese people.
Q604 Chris Mole: How does it really relate
to the sectarian divide? Some of us are aware of the links between
Combat 18 and the Red Hand Defenders and all that sort of thing.
Mr McAleavey: Combat 18 has certainly
appeared in South Belfast where most of the recent racist attacks
have taken place. There has been evidence that either supporters
or people who may be connected to Combat 18 have been influencing
some of the Loyalist organisations, much to the embarrassment
of some of the political organisations associated with the Loyalist
groups.
Ms McCandless: If I may give you
an anecdote, the two sides in one area of North Belfast like to
capitalise on other divisions in the world and the Republican
side will often fly Palestinian flags, so the Loyalist side automatically
put up the Israeli flag as a retaliatory gesture. Then some of
them came down again, because there was so much anti-Semitic feeling
within the Loyalist community that they were not going to fly
the flags, but then it was more important to antagonise their
neighbours, so the flags went up again.
Ms McKee: The UDA commander in
North Belfast was Egyptian. Figure that out.
Mr McAleavey: In terms of the
racist attacks, our recent press release condemning those was
quite strong. The point we were making was that Northern Ireland
often gets itself a reputation for being a very welcoming, friendly
place for outsiders. We were saying that is not the case. We are
and can be as racist as anybody else. There was less of an opportunity
in the past and that is increasing. We are just showing the same
sort of traits as happened in parts of England and other places.
Ms McCandless: That is right.
It is something to do with normalisation. We have been very busy
with sectarianism and now we are getting a chance to be a bit
more racist!
Q605 Chris Mole: Do you think it is possible
to tackle the religious, the political and the racist problems
together by tackling the root causes of intolerance or do you
need bespoke solutions?
Ms McCandless: We think they are
the same root causes.
Ms McKee: Absolutely.
Q606 Chris Mole: They are fundamentally
the same issue.
Ms McCandless: It is about values.
This is about coherence of values and human relationships and
they all come down to the same thing.
Ms McKee: Absolutely.
Mr McAleavey: Racism and sectarianism
are two sides of the same coin.
Q607 Chris Mole: Could you project that
conclusion? Is that a solution which is not just appropriate for
Northern Ireland, but for the whole of Great Britain?
Ms McCandless: Yes.
Ms McKee: Absolutely.
Q608 Mr Sanders: To what extent is deprivation
a factor in all of these problems?
Mr McAleavey: Deprivation is certainly
always a factor because the extremes of sectarianism are most
noticeable in the poorest working class areas. That is where interface
riots will take place and that is where people historically will
have been shot and killed because of sectarianism. The sectarianism
manifests itself in well-to-do middle class areas as well. It
will be reinforced by people in those areas who will talk about
not being able to trust certain groups of people, whether it is
Catholics or whatever it happens to be. That will keep fuelling
the situation. Certainly in terms of deprivation, it is classic
stuff "They're going to take our jobs" even if they
are not doing those jobs and things like that. If you are poor,
I think you are canon fodder for both sectarianism and racism.
Ms McCandless: These relationships
are complex. There is no evidence which links poverty and lack
of cohesion in the way we could point quite simply to cause and
effect. We have no doubt anecdotally that deprivation exacerbates
the situation, but it would be unfair to those working class communities
which are hugely deprived and which have remained peaceful and
remained integrated to say poverty is the cause, because they
have worked very hard to make sure poverty was not the cause of
any kind of trouble in their area. It is much more that one feeds
and fuels the other.
Ms McKee: It is a very interesting
conundrum. I work in a number of communities which are some of
the most cohesive I have ever worked in and that is about keeping
people out, so there is this tremendous community spirit. Frances
is right, it is complex. The manifestation of sectarianism is
the Rost,which is like gladiatorial pits where it is played out:
the flags, the signs of sectarianism. However, it translates into
middle class areas as well, through the golf club, through the
faith communities, through churches. People are still wedded to
exclusivity and keeping people out.
Ms McCandless: Which is why I
think we would argue that this is definitely a lesson which could
be considered in the rest of the UK. Do not just fire-fight in
the areas where the manifestations are greatest, in our case the
interfaces between Catholic and Protestant, do not just put the
money and resources and shine the light where the trouble breaks
out and where the fighting is, because that is just a symptom,
it is just the nasty eruption of a disease which is much, much
more widely spread throughout society. If you allow people to
opt out of that, because they can afford to live in a better area,
then that is a whole other kind of lack of cohesion which you
are going to have to deal with later on.
Q609 Chris Mole: Ms McKee, you use environmental
concerns to engage people from different religious or political
identities. I think you touch on child care as one other issue,
but are there other issues you could tell the Committee about,
where you might draw people together in a common cause?
Ms McKee: Yes, again very close
to the conversation earlier about youth services and youth provision
and work with young people. We would use the environment, but
we would join up a number of key policy areas. We have a project
in East Belfast on an interface which was perhaps two years ago
when violence erupted after 20 years of relative calm. We had
a project just about to go on the ground there, which was employing
a Catholic youth worker and a Protestant youth worker. I may say
that these people were qualified. Part of the challenge is to
invest in people in the local area who can become qualified but
also are known as key stakeholders. It would have been disastrous
for us to bring somebody in from the outside who maybe had different
values to that community. So the Catholic and Protestant workers
began to work and it was not a big youth project, it was pulling
kids off an interface, off riots every night for four months.
This was a soulless task, I have to say. Eventually things settled
down. We began to join up the whole idea of young people and sectarianism
and racism. In Groundwork we have linked our work with young people
to Bradford and Burnley and some of the debate with other young
people in those areas, also looking at the mental health implications
and the health implications of sectarianism and racism and we
used the environment, though we are not an environmental organisation,
to get small wins and confidence builds, young people who were
the first to take off the sectarian graffiti and paint over paramilitary
murals which gave a huge confidence boost to an area, an area
which has been beleaguered. Young people from either side would
paint views of the opposite side of the street on peace lines,
which again is a hugely significant message of hope, dictated
by young people. The voluntary sector has been prolific in Northern
Ireland over 30 years of growing civic engagement; civic leadership
when there was none there and we were being administered. We were
the people who had to link the debate and do the lobbying on a
number of things, on unemployment, youth crime, anti-social behaviour
orders. There is a plethora of examples of being proactive.
Q610 Chris Mole: I do not know how many
of those examples you were giving me there were connected to the
Greencare case study which you reported on. You talked there about
the importance of the formation of partnerships being central
to the project. To what extent were those partnerships across
the cultural and religious divides? Were there any other benefits
which came from that approach?
Ms McKee: Greencare is a model,
it is actually going into its third phase and we are now working
with another set of four communities. These four communities are
in inner city Belfast: two Catholic, two Protestant, very evidently
in areas which display their cultural identities in your face.
We do not underestimate the challenge of creating that particular
partnership. There is very little you can ask communities to do
unless you are giving something. One of our successes with one
of the communities in the Greencare project was an area called
Tiger's Bay in North Belfast, which is probably one of the most
volatile in Rost [?] and there was a politically offensive political
mural which would be akin to hate crime. We asked the community,
after working with them for two years, to locate a sports zone.
We got the money, we did all the planning with the local community
because it was their plan, their ownership. We got the money and
UDA commanders came to us, to me, and said the mural could now
come down. It is a very graphic example where we had a great success,
a great partnership. If you manage it properly people will meet
together round a table on very tangible issues. The issue is if
you frontload and you ask them to talk about the difference. If
you talk about areas which are common to them, the trust and relationship
builds up in very small ways. I am delighted to say that Greencare
won several awards for community engagement and consultation.
Q611 Chris Mole: Yet in that you talked
about bringing together the Catholic and the Protestant communities.
You did not mention any other ethnic groups which we were just
talking about in the context of the growing racism problem in
Northern Ireland.
Ms McKee: That is a very good
point. It is a perfect example of where our awareness of the race
issue is. We are still the two tribes. For us to bring in an ethnic
minority to that, we would have to go out and actively find one,
because they do not live in corrals, they live within communities
as well. They are part of communities.
Q612 Chris Mole: Earlier on, Mr McAleavey
talked about the importance of working with groups of young people
and how that can be most productive. What techniques were used
to facilitate interaction amongst young people during the Short
Strand project?
Ms McKee: First of all, we had
two very strong role models: one of the youth workers from the
Short Strand, a Catholic part of East Belfast, is an ex Republican
prisoner. That is a great role model, believe me. Young people
will not engage in anti-social behaviour while in his care or
in close proximity to him. The techniques are to find role models
which young people can sign up to and which young people will
believe and can trust. Then they will build up the relationship.
One of the other very successful issues is that if you ask local
people, including young people, to engage in a visioning exercise
about their community, the worst thing you can do is bring out
a plan with a sticky-backed plastic model on it. This is not Blue
Peter. What people do is bring in architects who use 3D Studio
Viz. These young people are adept at PlayStation, so why give
them something which takes them back to play school. The first
technique was to take them seriously and put very professional
people alongside them who would listen to them; not dictate what
they think they heard but listen to them. All of a sudden one
of the key products of that interface in East Belfast is an area
which was previously a riot zone and is now a community park for
the Catholic side; we have not yet got to the panacea of both
playing on that particular green, but two years ago the interface
violence on that particular piece of ground was quite significant.
This year it is almost down to five% policing. Financially there
have been massive savings. We have not yet convinced the police
they should give us the savings.
Q613 Mr Betts: We talked about the schools
being separate and that is very well known, but apparently there
are separate health facilities and bus stops even.
Ms McCandless: We do the whole
range of separation.
Q614 Mr Betts: Do you think the public
services have just bowed to the inevitable or have they actually
acquiesced in a way, when they ought to have stood up and resisted?
Ms McCandless: Both. They have
partly bowed to the inevitable because if they were delivering
health services they took a decision that it was more important
to get people to access the services than to try to teach them
a lesson and force them to go somewhere they did not want to go
and did not feel safe to go. It may be that there was a time when
they could have taken a stand and said, "Sorry, this is where
this facility is going to be and you have to make your way to
it", but they made a decision to say no, we will put this
here. In one instance in the Lower Shankhill, they had to build
an extra door on to a health facility so that no-one had to walk
past Johnnie Adair's house and I am not making this up. Even in
the Lower Shankhill when the feud was going on, there was a demand
for a separate swimming pool for one group of Protestants and
another group of Protestants and kids had to be separated in school
during those times and they had to use different entrances and
exits to the school. That was intra-community rather than inter-community.
The problem is that as time goes on, it is more and more difficult
to make a stand and say "No, we're not going to do that any
more". We traditionally do it. We traditionally spend in
that way. Where do you start rolling back the tide? As the areas
have become more and more segregated, it is increasingly dangerous
to cross from here to here to get to a job or to cross from here
to here to get to your job. Work with young kids on interfaces
which asked them what their travel zones were revealed that someone
who lived a couple of miles from the centre of Belfast had never
been in the centre of Belfast because in order to get there, they
had to travel through unsafe territory. The public services debate
is incredibly difficult. Are you trying to deliver effective services
at the point of need, or are you trying to deliver a cohesive
society with good public services within it? Where do you draw
the lines within that?
Q615 Mr Sanders: It sounds almost intractable.
Just take the example of the public transport system. Can you
expect bus drivers to risk their lives taking people in the wrong
area?
Ms McCandless: That has been a
hugely contentious issue and the unions have started to say "No,
our staff won't do that. We won't allow that".
Mr McAleavey: Bus drivers have
been attacked and their buses stoned as the bus goes to another
area and passes through one of a different community. The issue
about the bus stop is not that people want to stand at a different
bus stop, but 200 yards down the road may be a very dangerous
place to stand. If you want to go to the health centre and it
is located 300 yards away but in a different piece of territory,
you might well be told "Don't come here or we'll kill you.
We'll be the biggest danger to your health". It is not the
easiest thing in the world to change. When Mary talked about the
Short Strand, during that conflict the local Catholic community
were told not to go near the FE college and masked men turned
up one day and put out whoever was in it. You cannot simply say
that you will change everything and it will work out. People will
not use the facilities if they are in fear of their lives. What
did cause Belfast to happen is that the neutral venues of Belfast
were in the city centre and they are the very expensive venues
for people. We, NICVA, could not locate our new headquarters in
the city centre, because it would have been far too expensive
to build. So we picked a peace line; we are sitting on the peace
line in North Belfast between Protestant Tiger's Bay and Catholic
New Lodge Road. The other thing was that the ground was cheap.
We can make our contribution to social cohesion by being there,
because everybody comes into our building.
Q616 Mr Betts: Are there not more opportunities
for public services to do exactly the same?
Mr McAleavey: Yes, there are things
like that. We would say that it is about putting your money where
your mouth is, so you do have to find places where there is not
a chill factor to either side. Some of our organisations, some
of our groups are a bit fearful; people who came from outside
North Belfast were saying they did not like it up there, it was
a patchwork quilt, too dangerous. Gradually they know that it
is the same for everybody and people come in and out, politicians
come in and out of either side as well and some of them might
be fearful at times. If you pick your locations well and negotiate
with the community, you can do these things. I am just saying
it is not easy.
Chairman: On that note, may I thank you
very much indeed for your evidence.
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