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Community
workers and local activists involved in inter-community
work within and across the interface communities of
North Belfast are the hidden victims of the most recent
cycles of interface violence.
Alarmed
by the rise in inter-communal violence in both North
and East Belfast politicians have been busy pulling
together the “great and the good” of civil
society to discuss ways and means of addressing the
issue. There is nothing particularly wrong in this.
Those who hold leadership positions in the CBI, ICTU,
the Churches and our political parties do have a role
to play in helping communities to break the vicious
cycle of alienation, conflict and violence that has
plagued interface communities for so long. But the
most recent initiatives by both Des Brown (NIO) and
Alex Maskey (City Council) have ignored those in the
community sector whose daily work is carried out amidst
the cut and thrust of sectarianism and interface violence.
Community
activists who are engaged in addressing interface
issues and promoting inter-community development,
many of whom are on the streets when the violence
is at its hottest, have been cast aside as irrelevant
to the debate as to how society can best address interface
problems. How many of the “great and the good”
have direct experience of working day and daily on
the interfaces? How many are called up out of their
beds in the wee small hours to act as mediators? How
many are there in the aftermath of the violence to
help repair broken relationships? How many actually
know what an interface looks like never mind knowing
the real issues that affect people living and working
in interface communities?
In
none of the discussions facilitated by either Des
Brown or Alex Maskey have interface workers been asked
to provide an input based on their daily experiences.
There has been no attempt to find out how community
groups and their interface workers are coping with
the pressures of working in a violent environment
- one would think that the health of interface workers
would be of concern to representatives of the ICTU
. There has been no attempt to find out how some of
these groups and workers are coping with funding cuts,
staff lay-offs and programme restrictions. Perhaps,
more importantly, there has been no attempt to hear
about the wealth of good positive intercommunity work
that is going on.
One
could be forgiven for believing that these much publicised
initiatives have more to do with political and civic
leaders making a show of being concerned about what
is happening on our streets, that being concerned
about understanding the issues or actually addressing
the conflict.
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