VIEW, Issue three, 2012


Website: viewdigital.org


Page 19


‘Ethnic divisions and not social need is setting the agenda . . .’


At the Community Convention in the Lansdowne Court Hotel in Belfast earlier this month (which was organised by The Community Foundation for Northern Ireland), peace activist Paddy Logue delivered a speech, called ‘Addressing the Legacy of the Conflict’, which was about the urgent need to address social problems in Catholic and Protestant housing estates. We welcome replies to the arguments outlined below


T


he conflict impacted on every aspect of life in Northern Ireland and its impact is still being felt. In this brief five-minute talk I want to look at the impact of the conflict in two specific ways that affect the community sector today. And in both cases the effect was negative. The first is the uncomfortable position the sec- tor finds itself in with regard to the Government of Northern Ireland. There are historical reasons for this: • The sector was patronised by the NIO and Di- rect Rule Ministers in 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. • The sector was used to fill the vacuum in political and civic life caused by the conflict. • Some in the sector relished this role of influence. The people most excluded from this patronage


were the DUP and Sinn Fein. After many years outside the city walls looking


in, the DUP and SF are now the government. And it is a stable government accepted by the vast major- ity of the population, not just for the short-term but for the long haul. Today the sector is divided between those who


are in and those who are not. The second is the transformation of the funding climate that took place with the EU PEACE pro- grammes and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI).


would have given its eye teeth for a grant of £500. Then along came the “extraordinary and unprece- dented funding” of the PEACE programmes and the IFI. Today, community groups would nearly turn up their noses at a grant of £50,000 While there were huge benefits from this fund- ing there is no doubt that the sector was damaged by the gold rush, notably in the loss of a grass- roots agenda and, worse, the adoption of auditors’ agenda, auditors’ language and auditors’ goals. In short, we lost the run of ourselves. Some took the shilling and we took the euro. When I take a snap-shot of the community sec- tor today I see many decent and hard-working people committed to social change but I also pick out tendencies such as: ‘Confused, feeling unloved, distanced from the centre of power’, for example, there is a tendency to huff, preach and attention- seeking behaviour. Bogged down in the huge task of addressing the legacy of conflict while pressing social issues like poverty, youth unemployment and growing gap be- tween haves and have-nots are relegated to the back boiler


any professional elite, a self-perpetuating and con- servative ethos has taken hold of community workers, for example, jealously guarding one’s own patch: the prevalence of gate-keepers and, let me add, they are not all victims or former political prisoners.


ices. Activism and radicalism, once the hallmarks of community development, are now rare. What are we to do about this? Here’s one thought on how we might meet these challenges:


The bulk of the work is the provision of serv- The sector has been professionalised and, like There was a time when a community group


Social need: Paddy Logue addressing the Community Convention in Belfast


‘The goal of community development is to help working class people to empower themselves to build a decent future for themselves’


Undoubtedly our society is divided vertically along ethnic lines, but there is another division in society that works horizontally. In my view the horizontal division, the social and economic division between the haves and the have- nots is the one that we in the community sector should prioritise. Walking through working-class estates in any


part of Northern Ireland at present time is a wake- up call. Here people are impoverished, are living in slum estates, they have no work or are working for very low wages, they have none or very low educa- tional attainments and are in poor health. This is the natural habitat of community develop- ment. The goal of community development is to


help these people to empower themselves to build a decent future for themselves. If we concentrate on the social issues of poverty and economic inequality we will eventually reach and deal with the ethnic divisions that separate us. But now that we are bogged down in all the detail of the ethnic divisions, we are failing to address the social issues. It is ethnic division, and not crippling social need, that is setting the agenda of commu- nity development.


• Do you have an opinion on Paddy Logue’s speech.? Let us know what you think. Send your views to view.editorial@gmail.com


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