Margaret Ritchie – Mna na hEireann

Mna na h Eireann (Women of Ireland)

It was Mary Robinson who brought the poet’s phrase into Irish politics. She lit a torch that has since been carried by Mary Harney, President McAleese, Dawn Purvis and today Margaret Ritchie. Women of Ireland and leaders of people.  They embody our modern island.

Margaret Ritchie has excelled around the Executive table. She may be out numbered and often outvoted by Sinn Fein and the DUP but never out maneuvered.  The SDLP membership recognised this today and voted for a new ’shared future’ politics.  They endorsed a programme for renewal in policy and personality terms. 

Here is Sinead O’Connor’s version of the Sean O’Riada classic.

SDLP should take the time to debate the future

So the race is on to succeed Mark Durkan as SDLP Leader. I have been asked by a number of media outlets to offer my views on who should succeed him.  

I think the real issue is whether the SDLP chooses to make the leadership election a debate about renewal or whether it reduces it to just a personality contest.

We need a policy on community relations.

We need more then tough words from the Deputy First Minister on Sectarianism. We need a policy on community relations. A few months ago Margaret Ritchie MLA highlighted the lack of leadership in the issue from SF and the DUP.

….We now look to the unlikely duo of the DUP and Sinn Fein to deliver reconciliation and the signs so far are not very encouraging. They couldn’t bring themselves to put reconciliation at the centre of the Programme for Government where it belongs. In fact I’m not sure they know what reconciliation really means, or worse still, that they actually want to achieve it.

The real work of reconciliation is not just to end conflict and to reduce tension but to figure out a pathway to a Shared Future. There is an enormous difference between the vision of a Shared Future which I would subscribe to and the uneasy coexistence that the two parties leading our government seem to be content with. But it won’t put me off doing what needs to be done in DSD.

When Mark Durkan asked me to take on the Social Development Department, I of course, spotted the opportunity to tackle the growing housing crisis.  I also saw the potential to direct the work of the Department in such a way as to effect positive social change in pursuit of reconciliation and a Shared Future.

And surely no one can doubt that radical social change is what is needed now in Northern Ireland if we are finally going to grow up and face the things that divide us. We cannot expect to heal our divisions if we continue to reinforce them by maintaining the comprehensive and thoroughgoing segregation of our people.

Our ‘Troubles’ have created a legacy of communities that live apart. For too long people have grown up, played and lived in separate neighbourhoods, been taught in separate schools, followed different sports and been slow to share the workplace.

There can be no doubt that over the years this segregation fuelled the conflict. Entrenched, both physically and mentally, communities grew further apart, unwilling and unable to see that this segregation was as much the cause of their insecurities, as the answer to them.

It is my view that unless we try to reduce segregation by driving forward a progressive public policy agenda then we cannot achieve reconciliation.  And for me the obvious place to start is in housing.

When I announced the New Housing Agenda in February this year, I very deliberately made Shared Future a central theme in all housing policy development. Although I have always held this view about segregation, it is heartening to know that I am not alone.
The Northern Ireland Life and Times survey has revealed that some 80% of people would, given the choice, live in a mixed neighbourhood. Yet the reality is that those waiting for social housing have very often little or no choice in this regard, and more often than not end up in single identity estates simply because there is no alternative. In the same survey some 52% of people thought that Government could do more to address the problem.

We have now started work on a number of new Shared Future housing developments across Northern Ireland. In these Shared Future developments a considerable amount of community involvement is required to ensure that tenants are ready to commit to sharing and abandoning the trappings of a single identity enclave.

Significant progress has been made on new schemes in Loughbrickland and Sion Mills and I expect to launch these in the coming months. Every new build scheme that now comes forward onto our Social Housing Development Programme will be screened to explore its potential for inclusion as a shared future development. In time, and I accept it will take time, shared future housing in the context of our new build programme must become the norm, not the exception.

However it is not enough just to focus attention on new developments.  The majority of existing social neighbourhoods remain single identity estates.

Over the next three years, we will develop at least 30 Shared Future housing neighbourhoods within existing NI Housing Executive estates. These will offer existing tenants the opportunity to live in a neighbourhood where diversity is welcomed and where there is real encouragement and support.

Five neighbourhoods from across Northern Ireland have already committed to participating in the programme – Springfarm in Antrim, Lissize in Rathfriland, Knockmore/Tonagh in Lisburn, Gortview/Killybrack Close in Omagh and Ballynafeigh in Belfast.

The key for me to this programme, the unique aspect that will make the Programme work, is the community-led nature of it. Neighbourhoods must commit to the Programme, if they seek inclusion within it. It builds on good work already underway within a community where there is already a realisation that a Shared Future will lead to a better future for everyone on the estate. When that desire is there, then the statutory authorities can support it but no amount of money will deliver that support if neighbourhoods are not ready to make that first step.

The first ‘Shared Neighbourhood’ initiative at Springfarm estate in Antrim provides a good example

Springfarm Community Association five years ago identified that older residents were moving away, replaced by younger people who didn’t want to stay long. The estate had a growing reputation for drug dealing, and sectarian attacks were on the increase. Not surprisingly, the Housing Executive struggled to find tenants for empty homes and these vacant properties added to the ant-social behaviour issues in the area

Throughout this time, the Springfarm Community Association worked hard to develop a sense of community cohesion. They improved not just the image of Springfarm but also the physical appearance of their homes, gardens and streets within the estate.  A voluntary charter has been put in place, signed by all residents and embracing anti-sectarian measures as their commitment to a new future, once and for all turning their back on the past. There is now a waiting list to get re-housed in the estate.
 
I want to replicate this work in each of the other 29 neighbourhoods who have signed up to our Programme. Just like Springfarm, they will require support and buy-in from their respective communities. There remains a need for community volunteers to work alongside the Community Cohesion Officers that we will put in to support the Programme. I recognise that some Shared Neighbourhoods will undoubtedly suffer setbacks, but these initiatives will improve the lives of many people.

However for me – while I will celebrate the Shared Future initiatives now underway in new and existing estates – I know their limitations. We can trumpet the progress in the selected areas but the truth is that the Shared Future work we are doing is only possible in areas where there is already a fair degree of cross-community integration. In a sense we are picking off the low-hanging fruit, places where sharing has a chance. At the same time, if we are honest, we are doing relatively little to counter the ghetto mentalities that exist in more staunchly single-identity communities.

Part of the reason for this of course is that our system of allocating houses according to objective need, actually reinforces the status quo. The existing housing segregation means that waiting lists are largely segregated also, so that when a house becomes available to be re-let it is, in the vast majority of instances, going to be allocated to someone of the same community background as the previous tenant – thus perpetuating the segregation.

So a more radical approach is needed if we are serious (and believe me, I am) about stepping up the delivery of ‘Shared Future’ housing. My view is that we now have to regard Shared Future housing as an entitlement for those who want it.  This is a radical proposition, yet it is only replicating what already exists in the Education sector

Many parents today choose the medium of integrated education for their children because they want them to be educated in a mixed, shared environment. The State recognises this demand and generally does its best to meet it. So why do we not offer the same thing in housing? If parents want to bring up their children in a mixed, shared community then surely the State has a duty to meet that demand also?

The Education sector also has a well established Shared Future ‘product’ – the integrated school. We now need to create a similar product in Housing and, although I don’t underestimate the difficulty, I will be undertaking the necessary work to make this a reality.

Factoring Shared Future thinking into the provision and allocation of social housing could have profound implications for both our system of allocating houses (the Housing Selection Scheme) and also our planning of where to build (The Social Housing Development Programme) – but I am convinced that it is necessary.

I also want to factor Shared Future thinking into how DSD develops policy around its many community support programmes and initiatives aimed at tackling deprivation.

I know I will face opposition to this policy direction: There are those who are simply opposed to a Shared Future. In some cases because they find their single identity communities easy to control. Also, some housing and/or equality ‘purists’ will object to any interference with the Housing Selection Scheme – and yet how can they justify a perpetuation of a sectarian carve-up?

This is the big issue in housing and social development. The proverbial elephant in the room. Yet if we don’t radicalise our Shared Future agenda our society will never grow up. And it needs to grow-up.

Do we really want to have a society where the first thing people think about when they meet is ‘which foot’ the other person kicks with? Where we have a Minister changing an official document 150 times because he finds the term ‘Northern Ireland’ unbearable. Where the BBC has a daft ‘policy’ on the use of the word ‘Derry’?  And where paramilitaries still rule the roost in single identity  working class communities all over Northern Ireland.

I believe most people want to move on. They want to ditch all the baggage from the past and build a new future together. They want to make our new society a success.
And what will success look like? There is a great example from the South.

I have a picture in my mind of the Ireland/England Rugby match at Croke Park where 75,000 Irishmen stood respectfully for ‘God Save the Queen’ and many proud Ulstermen stood for a thunderous rendition of Abhrainn na Fheinn.

I have never seen so many tears before a match! But they were tears of joy, a recognition that a special moment had passed. Where a nation was able to show that it had grown-up and buried the prejudices of the past.

When do we get our special moment?

Isn’t it time for us all to grow up?

 

Will SF back Ritchie?

The High Court judgement against Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie  MLA, presents an interesting dilemma for Sinn Fein. Does the party back a nationalist minister who stood up to the UDA when they were ‘on riot’ or does it stand with Peter Robinson who sought to scupper Ms Ritchie’s initiative on technical grounds?

Earlier SDLP MLA Carmel Hanna pointed out that the High Court vindicated the Minister’s substantive position which, she said, is overwhelmingly backed by all decent members of the community. The court of public opinion has ruled firmly in her favour, according to the South Belfast politician.

The Minister won on three substantive grounds with the judge ruling on technicalities regarding the ministerial code.

On the other, the issues raised by those who opposed her decision – that she pre-judged the issue, that she failed to consult, that she was wrong to take the decision– were all dismissed, as they had already been dismissed in the court of public opinion.

At the time of writing I can see no public comment from Sinn Fein on the judgement. The First Minister, Mr Robinson, has claimed total vindication for his attempts to block Ms Ritchie.

The question as to where they stand on this issue therefore remains.

Can the SDLP go on in the Executive?

Social Development Minister, Margaret Ritchie MLA, has publicly suggested the SDLP may not be able to continue in the Executive if the party’s mandate and her role as a minister are not respected by the DUP and Sinn Fein.

With the SDLP conference little more than a month away this is a conversation we are likely to hear a lot more of after Christmas.

The BBC has the story.

A bad day for….

Today is a bad day for The Maze, the Irish News and Margaret Ritchie.

The Maze Stadium is dead according to Terry McLoughlin in last night’s Belfast Telegraph and with it dies a symbolic opportunity to fulfill a shared future here in the North.  

Margaret Ritchie is also having a bad day. Turns out Sinn Fein don’t like her proposals to cut fuel poverty so they are blocking them at the Executive. They are reported to have a problem with the recommendations of the Fuel Poverty Task Force which brought together NGOs and experts from across government. It would be helpful to us all if they were to able to tell us what better idea they had to address this crisis. You could be forgiven for believing politics is being put before people yet again.

Last but not least the day has not got off to best start for the Irish News. The front page looks more like a Daily Mail special then the lead from one of the finest regional newspapers in these islands. The paper described what is a report by the Human Rights Commission, an advisory body to government as a draft bill, or piece of legislation. It is no such thing. The British Government will have to consider this report and consult on draft legislation which may or may not include all the Human Rights Commission’s recommendations.

Having mis-reported the status of the report the story focused on a suggestion that children should only go to prison as a last resort and that they should spend the shortest amount of time possible in prison.  Does the Irish News believe we should throw away the keys when a young person offends? Much of the rest of report was speculative and reactionary, including ‘fears’ by unnamed sources that treating young offenders differently would lead to minors who have committed heinous crimes walking free. I can see nothing in yesterday’s report that suggests this would be so.

O’Conall St looks forward to good public debate about a Bill of Rights for Northern Ireland. I hope this is a debate that about people, not politics and about and about the facts not fears.

Tomorrow is Friday.  O’Conall St is committed to spending the rest of Thursday trying to find something positive to blog about.