Getting to the Root of Racism and Sectarianism
In May 2007 a 25ft-high peace wall was erected through the grounds of an integrated primary school in North Belfast because houses in the adjacent housing estate had been attacked by youths of the ‘other’ religion. There are now 57 peace walls here, mostly in North and West Belfast but they can also be found in Derry and Portadown. (In towns and villages around the North the geographical sectarian divide exists even if there are no walls to set it in stone.) A recent survey of more than 1, 000 people living near these dividing lines showed that 81% were in favour of the walls coming down, with 21% wanting them down immediately and 60% reporting that they want them down but only when it’s safe enough. Not yet.
After all, although the big guns are decommissioned, there are still ultra-sectarian elements on both sides who would like to take their fight forward. In April 2008 a man had his throat cut in a Belfast city centre bar when the pub was invaded by fifty loyalist thugs. The man’s crime? Supporting the ‘wrong’ football team. In May 2009 another crowd of young loyalist ‘football fans’ in Coleraine beat Kevin McDaid to death and injured his wife and neighbours.
In the wake of this awful murder Queen’s University academic Peter Shirlow commented:
“It’s all very well for politicians in the Northern Ireland assembly to condemn [such] murders. But there is no serious attempt to tackle sectarianism at its roots. No one is challenging the people as to why some of them are sectarian. And no serious effort is being made to encourage communities to confront the issue of why there is still so much sectarian division in our society.” (The Guardian, Monday 1st June 2009)
Added to this already toxic sectarian mix, racist abuse and attacks have increased as Northern Ireland has moved into the wider world. Examples of racist attacks are, unfortunately, legion. Earlier this year a nationalist paramilitary organisation calling itself Saor Uladh descended upon the houses of foreign workers in West Belfast and ordered them to leave the area. The paramilitaries accused the foreign workers of growing drugs but no-one really believes that this is the real reason behind the attack.
In 2004 the Belfast Telegraph reported that a number of Asian nurses were forced to leave their homes in Newtownabbey due to racist attacks. In 2005 a report on the 2,000 foreign workers in the health service in Northern Ireland showed that nearly 50% said that they have been subject to racist abuse or harassment from other staff, patients or relatives of patients. Nearly 15% said they experienced racism on a weekly or monthly basis, and a third said that they had experience of racist patients refusing to accept their care. More recently, in what amounts to a pogrom, 20 Romanian families were intimidated out of Northern Ireland by young men who may or may not have direct ties to fascist organisations.
Despite the shining new commercial facade that is Belfast City Centre, when it comes to how people relate to each other as human beings things appear to be getting worse. Research in 2002 by University of Ulster academic Dr Paul Connolly showed that nearly a third of all 12-17 year olds had been threatened or verbally abused because of their religion and two thirds of minority ethnic school children had experienced racism. Unfortunately, more recent research shows that racist and sectarian attitudes are hardening.
More than 10 years after the Belfast Agreement Northern Ireland remains a deeply divided society. If the words and aspirations of Stormont politicians were anything to go by, sectarianism would have disappeared from our streets at least a decade ago. Around that time mainstream politicians of all political shades began to talk about their “hopes for a shared future”. But as long as the Stormont regime remains a sectarian carve-up with no room for meaningful opposition based around class politics, then these fine words amount to so-much hot air and the rhetoric will slip into the more traditional sectarian mode when the situation demands it.
As journalist Liam Clarke put it in a recent article:
“The division is structural. The political system is still firmly rooted in tribal and sectarian affiliation. The Stormont executive is a carve-up between nationalism and unionism rather than real power-sharing. Each group’s confidence in the arrangement was built on a complex structure of mutual vetoes that often reduces decision-making to a stand-off.” (Sunday Times, June 21st 2009)
Without making any excuses for the perpetrators of racist and sectarian attacks, the structural roots of racism and sectarianism can be found in alienation, inequality, poverty and ultimately in tribal horse-trading in the corridors of Stormont. No amount of fine words can change that.
Discussion
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Comment by: Jenny Muir
Aug 26th 2009 at 20:08
I think your final paragraph is simplistic. Although I share the views of the author(s) - whoever he/ she/ they are - about the need for class politics at Stormont and the distructiveness of the sectarianised nature of the current party political system in the North, I don’t believe sectarianism and racism would go away if things were to change. Some people would continue to be afraid of difference, even if their economic position is not affected, due to NI’s insular culture (which is fully on display at Stormont). The nature of discrimination may change in more affluent times, or in a more equal society, but we have anti-discrimination legislation (with all its limitations) in recognition of the intractable nature of the problem.
Comment by: the simple truth
Aug 26th 2009 at 22:08
good to see people standing gainst racism.
But do youse have a position on immigration.
Racism and immigration require separate polices evn tho they are linked at the same tiime.
Comment by: Justin
Aug 27th 2009 at 07:08
Jenny Muir wrote,
“I don’t believe sectarianism and racism would go away if things were to change.”
Surely this is a counsel of despair. Change is possible, if extremely difficult.
“Some people would continue to be afraid of difference, even if their economic position is not affected, due to NI’s insular culture (which is fully on display at Stormont).”
There will of course always be people who define themselves by their negative judgement of some other more or less clearly-defined group of people and it is undeniable that Northern Ireland has a horribly insular culture.
However, as the book The Spirit Level shows, factors such as inequality directly correlate with a whole range of ailments, practices and beliefs. And the implication is that changing factors such as the level of inequality can have a broad effect on beliefs within a society. (This idea of human malleability based on distribution of wealth might be tarred as being crude economism but the facts seem to bear it out.)
“The nature of discrimination may change in more affluent times, or in a more equal society, but we have anti-discrimination legislation (with all its limitations) in recognition of the intractable nature of the problem.”
The fact that they have enacted a law in some area, doesn’t mean that things can’t get substantially -even structurally – better with respect to that area.
Of course, Jenny, you could be right. Given that kids have been throwing stones at each other - and worse - in Belfast for at least 150 years, you might well be right. But socialists of all people - and particularly socialists in sectarian set-ups such as NI- can only live by Gramsci’s adage, “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” Otherwise we might as well hang up our boots
Comment by: Séamus
Sep 2nd 2009 at 21:09
Divide and rule - the oldest trick in the imperialist handbook. Though I guess I’d be shocked if the Workers’ Party were ever to raise issues of imperialism in relation to the north-east of Ireland.