A Marshall Plan is needed for loyalist communities, and so much more

Irish Times

3 days ago

The Twelfth of July passed off mostly peacefully, even if the effigy of mannequins dressed up as
immigrants
burned on a loyalist bonfire in
Moygashel near Dungannon
will leave a lingering bad taste in the mouth.
The hostility towards outsiders displayed by the bonfire, however, holds important messages not about those who have come to
Northern Ireland
for a better life, but, rather, about some of those who never left.
For some loyalists, outsiders threaten to dilute identity and a way of life, with feelings most acute where they feel most neglected, or most affected by the changes that have taken place around them.
The offensiveness of the bonfire in the Tyrone village is an expression of hopelessness and desperation, attempting by way of a tribal display to declare who they are, rather than who they are not.
Moygashel provokes two observations about loyalism, one where identity exists in a cycle of hopelessness and despair and another that demands urgent attention because of that hopelessness and despair.
One should not, and must not, assume that the feelings represented by the bonfire speak for all loyalism, but they do point to a sickness at the heart of loyalist culture. too often dismissive, isolating and extreme.
This is not just about emotion, but something buried deep in the heart of loyalist communities, supported by the continued existence of loyalist paramilitary groups.
The formal process of engagement with loyalist paramilitaries now being mooted by the Irish and British governments offers hope that extreme elements can be confronted, or, better again, disbanded.
The independent 'expert' body – announced, but not yet set up – that will get a year to report on the disbandment of paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland raises the prospect that serious action might follow.
Importantly, though, the disbandment case must be so overwhelming that it exposes the futility of the argument made so often that paramilitary groups are needed to maintain communal safety and order in loyalist communities.
Effigies of migrants in a boat burn atop a bonfire at Moygashel, Co Tyrone. Photograph Niall Carson/PA
Everyone must see the benefits of such change, especially loyalist communities themselves and those within them who would most object, and resist efforts to bring about disbandment.
For that to happen, the conversation must move far beyond condemnation and calls for tougher policing. Instead, real action is needed with deadlines and objectives that will be honoured, not just promised.
Graham Spencer, University of Portsmouth
Better policing is required to stop the criminality and exploitation that continues to blight poor loyalist districts and both remain the most obvious signs of the reach of paramilitaries in those communities.
The report that ensues from whoever is chosen by Dublin and London to lead the scoping work should be clear on what is demanded of the paramilitaries, but, also, Stormont and London.
So, what is needed? First, a group that brings together loyalist AND unionist leaders, along with a business and enterprise group involving loyalists and key business figure to drive economic progress in long-forgotten communities.
Equally, efforts should be made to attract significant US/European investment in technology, manufacturing, sports and creative industries into loyalist areas, backed by assistance from Stormont and the Northern Ireland Office
Loyalist communities should drive efforts to tackle sectarianism, while a civic forum should be established, too – along with a body whose job it should be to gather oral testimony from those who have lived in these communities for generations.
Politicians, business, both local and international business, unionist politicians must also step up to the plate, using the 2018 transformation statement made by the three loyalist paramilitary groups as a template to lay out who should do what, and when.
Importantly, loyalist paramilitaries must look honestly at their own histories, and, with help, give an honest and serious account of what they, The Troubles and the subsequent peace process did to their communities. Critical self-reflection is key.
If change is to come, the focus must be on the lives that can in future be led in loyalist communities, rather than people seeking to win arguments about the disappearance of the paramilitaries themselves, if that can be brought about.
Since the Belfast Agreement, loyalist leaders have claimed their role has shifted from paramilitarism to work in the community, but that 'transition' has come to mean a process without end.
Good work on education and community programmes does exist within loyalist communities, but the contradictory and never-ending problem of transition is heightened when they continue to recruit new members.
Significantly, the notion of transition is itself problematic in loyalist communities – or in unionism more generally – where there is no tradition or appetite for it. Here, transition means change and change means loss.
The emphasis has always been on preservation and holding ground and the idea of transition risks being dangerous precisely because it is a criticism about what one has and so what one is.
Change presented as 'transition' may be liked by conflict resolution theorists, but life is more complicated in a society where the architecture built up in conflict stubbornly continues to exist long after the guns have fallen silent.
Yet without a structured and planned change loyalist communities will remain stuck in a cycle of hopelessness and despair. In such an environment the expression of identity as increasingly confrontational and hostile should come as no surprise.
Graham Spencer is emeritus professor of social and political conflict at the University of Portsmouth