PRC-UTE
20th March 2009, 08:02
Good Friday Agreement has failed wasteland estates Brian Feeney
By Brian Feeney The Wednesday Column
18/03/09
In the current edition of the New York Review of Books the Nobel
Prize-winning economist Professor Amartya Sen reminds us that in the
recession “the people most affected are those who were already worst off”.
He argues that “there is a critical need for paying special attention to
the underdogs of society in planning a response to the crisis and in going
beyond measures to produce general economic expansion”.
Sen was writing in particular about the United States and its notoriously
unequal society where the present crisis has thrown millions onto the
breadline without medical care or the hope of a pension. Nonetheless his
analysis is also relevant here.
Last week people thrashed around trying to find reasons for the killings
of members of the security forces. The emphasis was on the political
motivation of the republican splinter groups, their loathing for Sinn Fein
and their attempts to wreck the arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement.
While those objectives guided the people who planned the attacks, few paid
much attention to the locations where there is some support for the Real
IRA, Continuity IRA and Oglaigh na hEireann. It’s pretty obvious that
there is a direct correlation between poverty and hopelessness and
evidence of support.
What is the evidence? First, the badly spelled graffiti on the walls and
fences in dilapidated housing estates tells you where to look. Slogans in
support of republican splinter groups and ungrammatical threats to ‘tha
Bratash’. Then there’s the reaction to police and public service vehicles
like ambulances and fire brigades – stones and the occasional petrol bomb.
The youths (and they’re almost exclusively youths) who ring in bogus calls
to attract these vehicles stand around small piles of burning tyres and
rubbish they light on waste ground or string across roads most people
never go near. They drink cheap alcohol and take cheap drugs.
In parts of Belfast, Lurgan, Craigavon, Derry, Ballymena and elsewhere
these scenes are like clips from one of those ‘after the bomb’ films. Into
this picture step Oglaigh na hEireann, RIRA and CIRA, in some places
little more than a group of men who adopt one of the names as an attempt
to legitimise themselves. They claim to fill the role the IRA played in
dealing with ‘anti-social behaviour’ until they were stood down. Oglaigh
na hEireann in Belfast claims to have carried out about 20 punishment
attacks in Belfast in January alone.
Conditions are going to get worse in these wasteland estates. The young
people standing around with their drink and drugs are semi-literate and
unemployable. For any of them who could hold down a job there is now no
work available, nor will there be. Unemployment in the north is at 5 per
cent and rising. People say correctly that the huge public sector here,
employing almost two thirds of those working, will shield the north from
the worst effects of the recession. True, but none of the feral youths
roaming the roundabouts in Craigavon or lying comatose in boarded-up
houses in the Galliagh estate in Derry works in the public sector, or
anywhere.
The Good Friday Agreement has failed these places and the people in them.
There has been no economic peace dividend for them. Yes, it can be argued
that unionists of various hues wasted years messing about and fending off
the inevitable thereby losing any prospect of American goodwill investment
when the US had money. That’s not good enough as an explanation. Among the
politicians at Stormont there’s a dearth of talent evident for all to see
and part of that is an absence of vision and a lazy readiness to accept
the existing financial and economic structures they inherited from years
of ‘Blatcherism’ and Brown’s betrayal of Labour social values while he was
chancellor.
For a start, there’s an urgent need for housing built by the Housing
Executive and councils, not by housing associations and private
developers. Councils should be given money immediately. Then there’s
public transport so that estates built on the outskirts of Belfast and
Derry or in roundabout land between Lurgan and Portadown don’t remain
wildernesses cut off from shops and entertainment. For some reason
executive ministers don’t think such matters are their responsibility.
http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/6 ... Frida.html
By Brian Feeney The Wednesday Column
18/03/09
In the current edition of the New York Review of Books the Nobel
Prize-winning economist Professor Amartya Sen reminds us that in the
recession “the people most affected are those who were already worst off”.
He argues that “there is a critical need for paying special attention to
the underdogs of society in planning a response to the crisis and in going
beyond measures to produce general economic expansion”.
Sen was writing in particular about the United States and its notoriously
unequal society where the present crisis has thrown millions onto the
breadline without medical care or the hope of a pension. Nonetheless his
analysis is also relevant here.
Last week people thrashed around trying to find reasons for the killings
of members of the security forces. The emphasis was on the political
motivation of the republican splinter groups, their loathing for Sinn Fein
and their attempts to wreck the arrangements of the Good Friday Agreement.
While those objectives guided the people who planned the attacks, few paid
much attention to the locations where there is some support for the Real
IRA, Continuity IRA and Oglaigh na hEireann. It’s pretty obvious that
there is a direct correlation between poverty and hopelessness and
evidence of support.
What is the evidence? First, the badly spelled graffiti on the walls and
fences in dilapidated housing estates tells you where to look. Slogans in
support of republican splinter groups and ungrammatical threats to ‘tha
Bratash’. Then there’s the reaction to police and public service vehicles
like ambulances and fire brigades – stones and the occasional petrol bomb.
The youths (and they’re almost exclusively youths) who ring in bogus calls
to attract these vehicles stand around small piles of burning tyres and
rubbish they light on waste ground or string across roads most people
never go near. They drink cheap alcohol and take cheap drugs.
In parts of Belfast, Lurgan, Craigavon, Derry, Ballymena and elsewhere
these scenes are like clips from one of those ‘after the bomb’ films. Into
this picture step Oglaigh na hEireann, RIRA and CIRA, in some places
little more than a group of men who adopt one of the names as an attempt
to legitimise themselves. They claim to fill the role the IRA played in
dealing with ‘anti-social behaviour’ until they were stood down. Oglaigh
na hEireann in Belfast claims to have carried out about 20 punishment
attacks in Belfast in January alone.
Conditions are going to get worse in these wasteland estates. The young
people standing around with their drink and drugs are semi-literate and
unemployable. For any of them who could hold down a job there is now no
work available, nor will there be. Unemployment in the north is at 5 per
cent and rising. People say correctly that the huge public sector here,
employing almost two thirds of those working, will shield the north from
the worst effects of the recession. True, but none of the feral youths
roaming the roundabouts in Craigavon or lying comatose in boarded-up
houses in the Galliagh estate in Derry works in the public sector, or
anywhere.
The Good Friday Agreement has failed these places and the people in them.
There has been no economic peace dividend for them. Yes, it can be argued
that unionists of various hues wasted years messing about and fending off
the inevitable thereby losing any prospect of American goodwill investment
when the US had money. That’s not good enough as an explanation. Among the
politicians at Stormont there’s a dearth of talent evident for all to see
and part of that is an absence of vision and a lazy readiness to accept
the existing financial and economic structures they inherited from years
of ‘Blatcherism’ and Brown’s betrayal of Labour social values while he was
chancellor.
For a start, there’s an urgent need for housing built by the Housing
Executive and councils, not by housing associations and private
developers. Councils should be given money immediately. Then there’s
public transport so that estates built on the outskirts of Belfast and
Derry or in roundabout land between Lurgan and Portadown don’t remain
wildernesses cut off from shops and entertainment. For some reason
executive ministers don’t think such matters are their responsibility.
http://www.irishnews.com/articles/540/6 ... Frida.html