Examination of Witnesses (Questions 363
- 379)
MONDAY 13 SEPTEMBER 2004
MR DO«NAL
MCKINNEY,
MR PETER
MCGUIRE,
MS MINA
WARDLE, MR
TOM WINSTON
AND MR
JIM AULD
Q363 Chairman: Lady and gentlemen,
thank you so much for coming to help us with this inquiry. We
have had a lot of really differing opinions so far today and I
have no doubt we are going to get some more from you. First of
all, let us talk about your perception—and it may well be
different—as to the relative balance of `hate crime' activities,
that is race, homophobia, sectarian. We get the impression that
it is much more sectarian `hate crime' than the others put together,
but that may not be the case in particular areas. Perhaps if we
go from left to right, starting with Mr Auld and then moving down
the table.
Mr Auld: Maybe you could come
back to me.
Mr McGuire: The only reason that
there are more sectarian crimes is because there are more Catholics
than Protestants. If there were more gay people and more people
from a different ethnic background living in Northern Ireland,
there would definitely be more incidents.
Q364 Chairman: I suppose the Almighty
may be working on that, but I rather doubt it.
Mr Winston: I do not think I am
going to say anything that is going to shock you. There is obviously
more sectarian crime in Northern Ireland than racism or homophobic
crime.
Q365 Chairman: But as far as the
people you deal with in the Greater Shankhill area, is it mostly
sectarian?
Mr Winston: Yes.
Q366 Chairman: Is there a race element?
Mr Winston: It is creeping in,
yes.
Q367 Chairman: It is growing, is
it?
Mr Winston: It is becoming more
prevalent.
Q368 Chairman: What about Ms Wardle?
Ms Wardle: Hate crimes are a complex
subject. Sectarianism would be the main one for us. I believe
we have a golden opportunity to stop racism before it starts because
it is occurring in areas of high concentration of ethnic communities.
It is not a community problem if all of a sudden people are expected
to know about everybody else's culture. I think we still have
time to work on it. I know that at least one political party in
south Belfast actually put their election literature in Chinese
as well. Some parties are attempting to address the issue, and
that was four years ago.
Q369 Chairman: Which party was that?
Ms Wardle: It was the PUP. Change
is difficult. Going from sectarianism to a tolerant society needs
a lot of work. The people who live and work in the communities
have had to take the lead role as community workers because statutory
people we cannot get at the weekends or in the area after high
tension. At times the challenge is whether it is diversity, it
is sectarianism or politically sponsored exploitation of the lower
classes. That is a thing that comes into my mind all the time.
I think it is time we all took risks. I believe we have already
seen that, which has not been perfect, since 1994. It is about
how we run our organisations, how we ourselves recognise our past
can be imperfect and work towards leading our community out of
it. It is how you apply yourself to those things that is important.
We all know the ills of the past, but the way out of it is to
lead from the community. It is most difficult at the minute because
we are in a political vacuum. There are things happening now that
were not happening when we had an Assembly and that makes it more
difficult for people like us. We noted in the IMC report that
the amount of punishment beatings, which is another form of `hate
crime', had gone up. I think it is more about a lack of energy
and resources by the police than about people themselves. In our
community we are practising an alternative system where people
have to recompense their community for the ills done and not by
a punishment beating.
Q370 Chairman: Mr Corr?
Mr McKimmey: Mr Corr is on baby
duty. I am Do«nal McKimmey.
Q371 Chairman: Where are you from?
Mr McKimmey: I am from the Falls
Community Council. Sectarianism is the main dynamic here in relation
to `hate crime' only because that is the one people understand
and that has been exposed over 30 years. Sectarianism and racism,
whatever that means in this context, is one and the same ill.
Q372 Chairman: We have a clear distinction.
Sectarianism is between nationalists and unionists or whatever
you want to call them. I think the Committee is well versed in
the problems that we have had over the years. Let us look at the
other growing ones. Racism is something that is relatively new
in Northern Ireland as you have had more and different ethnic
minorities arriving here. Homophobic prejudice and `hate crime'
probably always have been there but it has come to the surface
much more. How are you in your various ways trying to cope with
those two? Let us put sectarianism to one side for a moment because
I think we all understand the dynamics of that and the difficulties.
These are relatively new problems for organisations like yours
to tackle. Can we try and leave the sectarianism out for a moment.
Tell us what your problems are with racism, homophobia and `hate
crime' and disability too, which is another thing that apparently
is growing, and tell us how this reacts in your community and
how you are trying to cope with it.
Mr Auld: Perhaps I can go back
to the sectarian question. In terms of my own organisation, in
general terms we would be dealing with a lot more sectarian outline
cases or generalised cases, but in particular incidents we would
be dealing with more families or individual people who have suffered
because of either homophobic attacks or race attacks. How do we
tackle it? I assume this is the same as some of the other people
here would tackle them and that is by trying to get an understanding
from the perpetrators about why they do what they do, getting
the victims to confront them about their behaviour, getting some
sort of mechanism in place where that can be done in a safe environment,
where perpetrators get an opportunity to see the harm and the
hurt that they have caused others and get an opportunity to apologise
to the victims of those attacks. While that is being done we can
support the victims through that whole process so that they feel
that they have a safe place to live.
Q373 Chairman: Any other offers on
this? Does it take up a lot of your time and effort?
Mr McGuire: The history of this
island is that it has been isolated from the rest of Europe, particularly
the north. I work with young loyalists, with people either on
the fringes or members of loyalist paramilitary groups. My experience
of them is that they have no experience whatsoever of difference
or diversity, and why would they have because everybody here is
white and Catholic or Protestant, and Catholics and Protestants
are segregated. They have no experience of the others even here
in this country. The majority of them do not even know the name
Europe or internationalism and I think the only way that you can
break that down is by bringing people into contact with it.
Q374 Chairman: That is not the question
I am asking. I am asking you how homophobic, racial and disability
`hate crime' impact on the work you are doing. It has got nothing
to do with Europe, with respect. You can be pro or anti Europe
and you can be as homophobic as hell. Is it a growing problem
in the people you work with, and how are you handling it? I want
to get a feeling of how big a problem this is.
Mr McGuire: What I do is try and
bring our groups into contact with people from the gay/lesbian/bisexual
community with international people, people from different ethnic
backgrounds and to work on relationships and to renegotiate new
relationships.
Mr Winston: As far as we would
be concerned in the Greater Shankhill area, we are funded to try
and stop young people getting involved in anti-social type behaviour
and we have been quite successful in doing that. The funding comes
from outside the UK and that is another problem. The difficulty
we face with young people is that a lot of them do not know what
they are getting involved in. When they start to get involved
in racist attacks they do not understand the problems behind it.
They do not realise that what they are doing is counter-productive
to the community that they are living in. It is a small number
of attacks. They are attacking people who are working in folds,
in hospitals, giving a service to the community that they are
living in. So we try to educate them in that, but unfortunately
we do not get funded to do that so we cannot do it as well as
we would like because we are busy doing what we are paid to do.
I think the Government fails in that respect. There is a lot of
money given to organisations who are not on the ground and who
cannot deliver to the people that are on the ground and I think
that is something that needs to be looked at seriously.
Q375 Mr Clarke: I appreciated the
candidness of Mr McGuire's first answer. I think it is a very
complex issue. I think sometimes we have to get down to basics
and say things as they are. I hope you will forgive me if I make
it a little bit more complex by asking you to help me with a quandary
which I am unable to answer myself. Mention was made earlier on
of the good work the PUP did in south Belfast. Over the last few
years the majority of these cases of race hatred have taken place
within Protestant communities and that has confused many of us
and left us unable to provide an answer as to why race `hate crimes'
are more prevalent within Protestant communities than within nationalist
communities. I ask that question not to point a finger, I ask
it purely on the basis of trying to understand whether or not
it is about class, it is about community work. What is the difference?
Why do we have an imbalance in terms of where the attacks are
taking place?
Mr McGuire: The main reason is
that these people are being housed in loyalist areas because that
is where the housing is. It is not members of the Ulster Unionist
Party putting bricks through people's windows, it is working class
loyalists on the fringes of different paramilitary groups. Why
are they doing it? Because they feel under threat. They see their
area disappearing. They believe there is a conspiracy to depopulate
areas close to the city centre in Belfast so that they can build
more commercial properties. They feel under threat from nationalist
republican areas and in the morning they wake up, come out of
their door and there is an Asian family or a black family living
beside them. It is obvious what is going to happen, particularly
because no work or preparation has been done within these communities
for these people coming into the community.
Q376 Chairman: Is it a fact that
more of the ethnic minorities, Asians, blacks and others, are
sent to Protestant public housing rather than Roman Catholic?
Mr McGuire: Yes.
Q377 Chairman: Is that a fact?
Mr McGuire: It is a fact.
Q378 Chairman: Does anybody know
why?
Mr McGuire: Because there is no
housing in nationalist Catholic areas.
Q379 Mr Clarke: The Sub-Committee's
inquiry into housing discovered that housing pressures within
the nationalist community were so great that there were not the
voids prevalent within Protestant areas, whether it is housing
executive houses that are empty or ex-private housing being used.
Here is an example where housing policy is having an impact on
`hate crime' and I think the Committee needs to take that into
account.
Mr Winston: Sandy Row is just
out the back of us and a hotel has been built where there were
once thousands of houses and you have apartment blocks where there
were once thousands of houses and the community is being squeezed
and squeezed and squeezed. They feel under threat by multi-nationals
coming in and bulldozing their houses and putting apartment blocks
up or ethnic minorities coming in their areas as well. You have
to put that into the mixing pot and realise that that may be part
of the problem.
| 
