Hi, Joel. Regarding your dilemma over whether or not to go to university, don’t worry about that or about your critics! If you never go to university, but wade through the blood and guts of …
Ben Lowry sounded alarm bells when writing in his column, Sat, March 27th ‘There should be no Irish Language act, but it’s too late—DUP agreed it . He further commented “ The Irish Language will …
Centenarian receives new NI Centenary flag from LCC in Belfast | Belfast News Letter The Loyalist Communities Council launched its new Northern Ireland centenary flag on Wednesday with a presentation to a centenarian in Belfast. …
The Loyalist Communities Council can confirm that a small delegation of its members led by Chairman David Campbell met with Lord Frost and Secretary of State Brandon Lewis on Monday. The delegation emphasised the need …
Yesterday evening our group unveiled our new Dalaradia Centenary mural. It celebrates not only the Centenary of the land we hold so dear, it also recognises local Orange lodges, flute bands, the Northern Ireland football …
Great news for Rathcoole. The council has voted in favour of renaming the Rathcoole Play Park to the Sir James Craig NI centenary park. 22 votes to 15.
A big well done to our members whom contacted Sir James’ granddaughter to seek approval which was accepted and sent to the centenary group within the council.
James Craig was a leading Unionist figure of his time. He became the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland and served in that capacity for nearly 20 years. He was elected as the MP for East Down and later North Down before becoming a member of the Northern Ireland Parliament. Craig played a key role in organising resistance to the Home Rule Bill on behalf of the Ulster Unionist Party, was a supporter of partition, and was pivotal in the decision for the 6 counties to form the basis of Northern Ireland. A huge well done to the council.
2021 is a significant year in the history of this beautiful country and the place we all call home, marking 100 years since its creation.
The centenary of Northern Ireland is a time for joyful reflection on reaching such an important milestone. We believe it is incumbent that we look back, acknowledge the present and look towards the future.
With the current worldwide pandemic, events have and will be hugely effected however we can still in our own way celebrate something so dear to our hearts and for Rathcoole, it’s a new piece of wall art.
Respect – Heritage – Culture
Would you like some more information on the Centenary? Check out the following link – www.ni100.org.uk
Northern Ireland’s young people and community investment at the heart of UK Government’s centenary programme
· An extensive young people’s programme to inspire youth to shape Northern Ireland’s future
· £1 million fund awarded to 39 community projects across Northern Ireland as part of a Shared History Fund with the National Lottery Heritage Fund
· A major Northern Ireland 2021 Business Showcase in London to boost investment and build back better.
The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis has unveiled an extensive programme of projects and events to mark the centenary of Northern Ireland in 2021.
This includes a major Northern Ireland 2021 Business Showcase in London, a £1 million Shared History Fund, an ambitious programme for young people, tree planting projects, academic and historic events and a Cultural Programme
In addition, stakeholders from across Northern Ireland are delivering activities including a George V event in Belfast City Hall and an International church service for all denominations.
The initiatives reflect the UK Government’s commitment under the New Decade New Approach deal to showcase Northern Ireland’s economic, cultural and social achievements on a local, UK and international stage when marking this key anniversary. This will entail reflecting on the past and looking forward to a bright future for Northern Ireland, with the programme focusing on investment, young people, culture and the environment.
The centenary will also highlight the strength and beauty of the diverse perspectives and identities within the four nations of the UK which make our Union unique.
Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Brandon Lewis said:
“The UK Government’s centenary programme of events provides an opportunity for us all to reflect on the history of Northern Ireland and to take pride in all this fantastic place has to offer the UK and the world.
“In its 100th year, the people of Northern Ireland can build on their spirit of togetherness and recognise their enormous achievements over past decades.
“I hope that these projects and events will help drive Northern Ireland’s post Covid recovery forward, inspire the next generation and showcase to the world the beauty, innovation and tenacity of the people of Northern Ireland.”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:
“2021 marks 100 years since the creation of Northern Ireland, which has paved the way for the formation of the United Kingdom as we know it.
“Our centenary programme will reflect on the past and on the people and developments that make Northern Ireland the great place it is today.
“The activities will pay tribute to all those who have worked tirelessly to support Northern Ireland throughout the pandemic, and will champion the incredible young people in Northern Ireland who offer so much to the shared success of our United Kingdom.”
Our Story in the Making programme includes;
· A Shared History Fund – working in partnership with the National Lottery Heritage Fund, £1m has been awarded to 39 community projects across Northern Ireland, to research and demonstrate what 100 years of Northern Ireland has meant to them and their community. Projects will mark the centenary in an inclusive way, giving a wide range of people the opportunity to participate and understand the key events and history which made Northern Ireland the place it is today.
· Historic Centenary Event – Belfast City Council will host an event marking the hundredth anniversary of the opening of the Northern Ireland Parliament on 22 June 1921, by King George V. This event will take place in the Council Chamber, exactly one hundred years on from this historic occasion.
· Building Back Greener – every school in Northern Ireland will be presented with a native tree, to plant in their grounds. Each school will be encouraged to video their planting ceremony and share with the world, via ourstoryinthemaking.com, their moment in marking the centenary and working towards a greener future.
· Our Future Northern Ireland – an extensive young people’s programme exploring what the future will look like in the next 100 years, and how they can shape it to become the nation they want it to be. Working in partnership with Youth Action Northern Ireland across the mediums of live performance, radio and social media the young people of Northern Ireland will engage and showcase their hopes and ambitions for Northern Ireland’s next 100 years.
· Launch of the ‘Centenary Rose’, a unique flower of reflection and hope, produced in Northern Ireland for the centenary and planted in the gardens of Hillsborough to flower throughout the summer of 2021 and beyond. A Centenary Rose will be presented to Her Majesty the Queen for her own garden, and there will be a decorative rose pin designed and produced in the UK, to be worn by VIPs at centenary events, and given to programme participants. A small number will also be available to purchase in exchange for a charity donation.
· Hosted by the Churches, an International Service for all denominations in the autumn.
· A reception at Hillsborough Castle and historic buildings across the UK will be lit to signify a bright future for all.
· Academic Events – working in partnership with an expert Historical Advisory Panel and academic institutions including Queens’ University Belfast. A Reflection of the Government of Ireland Act, through further events which seek to explore and deepen our understanding of the historical context of the centenary. Further details of the Historical Panel’s programme will be announced by Lord Bew and the Panel members soon.
· Marking the Centenary – in partnership with Royal Mail, a special postmark reading “Our Story in the Making – Northern Ireland Beyond 100’, will be applied to stamped mail sent around the world. Stamped mail across the UK will receive the postmark from 26 April to 3 May. From 3-29 May, stamped mail originating in NI will have the postmark applied. Promotion of the 2021 Northern Ireland, First and Second Class stamps will be showcased in Post Offices around the UK.
· Build Back Better – London will pay host to a Northern Ireland 2021 Business Showcase. Companies and organisations from across Northern Ireland will promote their products, services and expertise; networking and meeting with international companies, governments and investors to showcase the very best on offer to boost exports and investment into Northern Ireland.
· Born in Northern Ireland – a dedicated cultural programme showcasing the talents and contribution of those born in Northern Ireland. Encompassing communications activity and a series of live and on-line events to promote and highlight the talents and skills of people from Northern Ireland; from doctors and teachers, contributors to the Covid-19 efforts, to writers and artists, actors, singers, poets and dancers. As part of ‘Our Story in the Making: NI Beyond 100’ campaign, this strand will run from May to September, culminating in a VIP reception and public centenary concert.
Share and sign folks. Petitions are easily dismissed but when one reaches 10,000 signatures parliament by law have to respond to it. If the community speak loud enough people will have to listen.
It cannot be justified to not only demolish an iconic building; but to also demolish a building that could put a small dent in an already huge and rising housing waiting list within the area.
The Housing Executive have a tower block action plan in place, rightly or wrongly. In that plan there are 33 tower blocks. Why is it that the first to be targeted is located in one of the most deprived areas in Northern Ireland with one of the highest waiting lists.
If demolished it will lay vacant for 5 years until plans are put in place to demolish the neighbouring Abbotscoole house. That leaves a possible 8 years before anything is actually physically built in the area. Nearly a decade!
At present there are around 500 families (and rising) who require immediate housing within the area.
There is no logic behind these plans. Your help would be much appreciated.
Loyalist Jim Wilson on the Newtownards Road in Belfast. Photograph: Stephen Davison
Jim Wilson has seen tension on the streets of Belfast for much of his life. Today, he uses the image of the boiling kettle to describe the atmosphere in loyalist areas: “It’s simmering and simmering.”
“And then it’ll start to come to the boil. A lot of us are trying to calm it down … but the frustration in our communities, it is really serious. People are trying to keep a lid on it.”
A former member of the loyalist paramilitary group, the Red Hand Commandos, Wilson is now a community worker in east Belfast trying to calm tensions caused by the controversy over the Northern Ireland protocol.
“The very last engagement we want in our communities is violence of any description,” says Wilson; the only thing the flags protests of 2012-13 achieved was to give over 300 kids criminal records, he emphasises.
‘One minute the vote for Brexit was a UK-wide thing, but now what they’ve said is the UK voted to leave but Northern Ireland, you have to stay a wee bit there’
“Violence has hurt us in the past and it’ll hurt us in the future and we don’t want violence,” he goes on. But his declaration, speaking to The Irish Times, comes with a caveat.
“I’m not saying violence is totally out the window. We’re a bit long in the tooth, there are younger lads coming through … they’ll push us aside and say, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter what you say’.”
Graffiti voicing opposition to the Irish Sea Border and the Northern Ireland protocol – which loyalists oppose because it places a customs and regulatory border between the North and the rest of the UK – first appeared in January, and has mushroomed since the controversy over the European Commission’s hastily aborted plan to trigger article 16 and the temporary withdrawal of some staff at Belfast and Larne ports amid concerns for their safety.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) subsequently said these threats were not credible, with both the police and loyalist sources attributing them to individuals or small groups, not loyalist paramilitary organisations.
However, the concern now is that the further tensions are raised, particularly among the younger generation, the more difficult the situation might be to control.
Jim Wilson at a mural for the Titanic on the Newtownards Road, in Belfast. Photograph: Stephen Davison
Brexit
“It just seems to be taking and taking and taking of the unionist community,” says Wilson. “[The Protocol] is probably the biggest kick in the teeth we have had from the government in the United Kingdom in a long, long while.”
“One minute the vote for Brexit was a UK-wide thing, but now what they’ve said is the UK voted to leave but Northern Ireland, you have to stay a wee bit there [in the EU],” says Jim, a north Belfast community worker who works mainly with young people in the Tiger’s Bay area.
He is the only one of a number of community workers from loyalist areas in Belfast and north Down who would be fully identified talking The Irish Times because of the past abuse they have received on social media.
There is the sense that unionism is treated with a ‘lack of respect’ by nationalist politicians, and by those in the Republic
For example, there is frustration and anger over how loyalists are portrayed by the media, as well as successive incidents within their own communities that have fuelled disillusionment and resentment.
They list these as including unfounded claims made about loyalist communities in north Belfast following the disappearance and death of schoolboy Noah Donohoe in June.
Then, there is a Belfast City Council motion that clears the way for a minority of people in a community to ask for the erection of Irish language street signs.
Then, there was the unhappiness caused internally when Crusaders FC – a north Belfast club with a strong tradition in loyalist areas – backed calls for an all-island league.
Finally, and this appears often in conversations with loyalists, there is the sense that unionism is treated with a “lack of respect” by nationalist politicians, and by those in the Republic.
Such factors are symptomatic, they argue, of the extent to which their identity is being undermined. “People are now just collectively demonising everything about being British in Northern Ireland, and it’s working,” says Jim.
Brexit has brought a united Ireland forward, “there’s no doubt about it,” says Martin, from the Shankill area of west Belfast. “Somewhere along the line there will be a big, major discussion on a united Ireland
“It’s inevitable, but the way it’s being done at the moment, it’s getting forced down your throat without your opinion or how you feel about it,” he tells The Irish Times.
Of the protocol, he says, “we’re saying clearly in unionist communities it won’t work because we don’t want it to work. It’s aggressive, it’s offensive, it totally demeans our situation in our own state, and nobody seems to care.”
Unionist parties have called for the protocol to be scrapped, expressing concern not just about the constitutional implications but also the impact on businesses and the availability of goods in the North since it came into effect.
A DUP online petition calling on the UK government to trigger Article 16 to secure “unfettered” trade from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, has attracted more than 142,000 signatures. It will be be debated in Westminster on Monday.
Last week Reach UK, an east Belfast community organisation which represents former loyalist paramilitaries, called for “calm and rational” engagement to lower tensions and solve issues related to the protocol; Wilson points out that so far, “the leaders of loyalism have been very, very quiet”.
“This is in the hands of politicians, and if the politicians don’t sort it and fix it then that’s where you run the risk … that then loyalism might look at it in different ways.”
On the streets, “what I’m hearing from young and old, people are talking silly stuff about violence,” says Jim. “These are people who I never would have thought would have talked that way, so you’re not talking loyalists here but all shades of unionism from top to bottom. They’re really angry.”
He puts it down to “windbagging” rather than a serious call for violence. Nevertheless, he emphasises that he and others present lived through the Troubles and “it’s probably those who didn’t engage in violence are shouting it the loudest, but they’re still shouting it and young people listen to that.”
“You stand at the market on a Saturday and you hear someone saying they can’t get the fish from Scotland, and then that ripples around, and that’s where you hear the talk, ‘Oh, we should do this, why don’t the boys get out’, and that’s where it gets dangerous,” says David, a community worker in Ards and north Down. “Somebody will listen to that and think that’s what people want.”
“It’s a catalogue of things and it’s just building and building and all it takes is one kid pointed in the wrong direction and you’ll have kids going to jail again,” says Martin.
His concern is for the summer ahead, and the marching season; he explains that young people now begin collecting wood for the bonfires – traditionally lit in loyalist areas on the eve of July 12th – as early as March or April.
“You know what there is an appetite for? A long, long summer,” he says. “See when the kids start building for bonfires here, and you then have councils going in and moving them … they feel that everything they do as far as tradition round bonfires is getting taken away year by year, bit by bit.
“That’s going to fuel an awful lot of violence from young lads whom people can’t stop over the summer months.”
A loyalist sign in Lurgan, Co Armagh, about the Belfast Agreement amid tensions over the Northern Ireland protocol. Photograph: Liam McBurney/PA Wire
A community organisation which represents former loyalist paramilitaries has called for “calm and rational” engagement to lower tensions and solve issues related to the Northern Ireland protocol.
East Belfast-based Reach UK also gave its support to a plan announced by the DUP last week to “free” Northern Ireland from the protocol.
In a statement the organisation said it “endorses the five-point plan from our country’s First Minister, and call on all to engage with it as a first step to resolving the divisive Irish Sea border and Northern Ireland protocol”.
All parties in Northern Ireland should “calmly and rationally engage with the UK government to address the protocol and Irish Sea border issues, which are causing such alarm within all our communities”, it said.
It is understood these sentiments are backed by the loyalist paramilitary groups the UDA, UVF and Red Hand Commando, and by loyalist community groups.
Loyalists and unionists are opposed to the protocol – the part of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement which relates to Northern Ireland – because it places a customs and regulatory border in the Irish Sea between it and the rest of the UK.
An online petition by the DUP calling for triggering of article 16 in order to secure “unfettered” trade between Britain and Northern Ireland reached the required 100,000 signatures within 24 hours, with the party receiving notification on Friday that it will be debated at Westminster later this month.
The petition was part of its five-point plan which also includes the boycott by the DUP of all cross-Border activity related to the protocol and the opposition of all protocol-related measures in the North’s Assembly.
The DUP leader, Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster, said on Friday that people needed to “take heed” of what was being said by the unionist community. “There has to be recognition in London, Dublin and Brussels that damage has been done by this protocol and therefore we have to deal with it.”
However, a joint statement released by the EU and UK following talks on Thursday night gave no indication either side was prepared to abandon the protocol, with Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove and the EU vice-president Maros Sefcovic reiterating their “full commitment” to it, and saying they had agreed to find “workable solutions on the ground”.
In recent weeks graffiti opposing the protocol has appeared in loyalist areas, and staff carrying out physical checks on goods at Larne and Belfast ports were withdrawn from work for a time over concerns for their safety.
Questions have since been raised about the decision-making process which led to their withdrawal. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has consistently said there was no credible threat and those responsible were “individuals or small groups”, an assessment backed up by loyalist sources.
Those sources have described growing tensions in their areas, and while it is understood former paramilitary groups have no desire for a return to violence there are concerns that if tensions continue to rise this could become harder to maintain.
Customs checks
Instead of the protocol Reach UK said it supported a mutual enforcement proposal from the pro-Brexit think-tank the Centre for Brexit Policy, also backed by former Ulster Unionist party leader Lord David Trimble, which it claims will avoid customs checks by having the UK and EU agree to recognise each other’s standards in law.
In its statement it called on everyone in Northern Ireland to sign the DUP’s petition “extending the 100,000 signatures to 250,000, not as a party-political exercise but as a measure of province-wide opposition to the Northern Ireland protocol and Irish Sea border”, and called on the British government to fulfil its commitment to “delivering unfettered access” within the UK internal market.
It also warned the Belfast Agreement had been promoted during Brexit “as a totally green document”. If the agreement could not be implemented “inclusively, pro-union citizens will have no choice but to withdraw all support” from it.
