Lisburn Borough Council and the Equality Duty
BY LAURA FRIEL
When it comes to sectarian discrimination, Lisburn Borough Council is one of the most notorious local districts in the Six Counties. The fact that the borough includes three large nationalist estates, Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore, housing over 30,000 people is, as far as the unionist controlled council is concerned, a matter of accident rather than design.
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We're living under a form of economic apartheid here and these are the townships.
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Twinbrook, the longest established estate, was originally intended to house Protestant families but in the late 1960 s Catholic families fleeing from sectarian pogroms in Belfast sought shelter in newly constructed houses in Twinbrook.
Lisburn Borough Council responded to the plight of these families by refusing to provide services to the area. The matter was only resolved after residents took the council to court for failing to fulfil its statutory obligations. Since then, the unionist controlled council has pursued a policy of denial and begrudgery.
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The success or failure of the equality enterprise will stand or fall on its impact on communities like Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore.
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Poleglass, developed to address the housing crisis in West Belfast, has fared no better. In a campaign led by Ian Paisley, Lisburn Council fought against more homes being built for Catholics within the borough.
Lisburn Council successfully curtailed that initial new build to 2,000, 8,000 less than the projected need and condemned thousands of Catholic families to years of housing misery. Today Twinbrook, Poleglass and the more recently built Lagmore estates account for almost a third of the entire Lisburn population.
But in what local Sinn Féin councillor Michael Ferguson calls rates piracy, Lisburn Council continues to pocket the proceeds from nationalist areas while refusing to provide proper services or amenities.
``Twinbrook after 30 years has a few football pitches, Poleglass after 20 years doesn't even have a playground and it was only after I challenged the council to find, by way of example, as much as a litter bin in Lagmore that a few bins appeared,'' says Michael.
The most recent example of the sectarian ethos of Lisburn council emerged in a report commissioned by the council to inform a development strategy for the area. The proposed strategy did not contain even one reference to the needs of Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore.
Where are the plans for the development of a commercial centre, with corresponding employment opportunities? asks Michael. Where are the plans for a leisure complex to meet the needs of 45% of the borough's children?
Where is the social and community infrastructure to sustain thousands of families who have been herded into housing estates with almost nowhere to shop and nowhere to socialise and nowhere for their children to play?
Lisburn is a wealthy and vibrant town with hopes of securing city status but that prosperity and development stops short of including the three largest nationalist estates within its boundaries.
Rates of unemployment in these areas are some of the worst in the Six Counties, with over 80% male unemployment in Twinbrook and a high percentage of single parent families dependent upon welfare in Poleglass. But employment opportunities in Lisburn for Catholics living in these estates are negligible.
``We're living under a form of economic apartheid here,'' says Michael, ``and these are the townships.''
The council's own employment record reflects the same ethos of sectarian discrimination. Following the publication statistics detailing the composition of the workforce, fellow Sinn Fein Councillor Paul Butler called for an investigation into the council's practices.
``Almost ten years ago, the Fair Employment Commission drew up a report which examined Lisburn council's employment record,'' says Paul. ``They expressed their concern at the under representation of Catholics, particularly in staff grades and the low proportion of Catholic applicants for many posts.''
The FEC criticised the council's recruitment and selection procedures and the absence of any action being taken to actively promote equality of opportunity. Recently released figures show that far from improving, ten years later in some ways the council's record is even worse.
``The nationalist population of Lisburn area stands at well over 30%,'' says Paul, ``and the council's Catholic representation of 15% falls well below acceptable standards. Despite this the council has repeatedly turned down appeals to include statements aimed at encouraging Catholic applicants in its job advertisements.''
Next month marks the third anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. The agreement explicitly recognised the existence of widespread discrimination and established a statutory duty on public authorities to promote equality. But the success or failure of the equality enterprise will stand or fall on its impact on communities like Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore.
In a recent article, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams warned that the equality agenda is and will remain for some time a battleground between those seeking real change and those opposed to change.
``That is evidenced in the attitude of even those unionist politicians who are pro Agreement,'' said Adams. ``For many unionists the equality agenda is a nationalist aspiration that must be cut down to size of minority rights.''
The Ulster Unionist view of equality was summed up by the party's deputy leader, John Taylor when he said: ``Of course there can be equal opportunity, but not equality. The Irish minority cannot be equal to the majority in Northern Ireland. It's a view that would be less worrying if it weren't being cosseted by the British government.''
The British government is arming unionism with all the weapons required to subvert the provisions of the Good Friday Agreement, Adams has warned. In at least ten key respects, the implementation of the Equality Agenda is being thwarted.
Under the Equality Duty of section 75 of the 1998 Act, those public authorities and bodies that have been designated by the British government must draw up approved Equality Schemes which will be subject to impact assessments by the Equality Commission.
In a hard-hitting assessment, Dr Robbie McVeigh, formerly of the West Belfast Economic Forum, argues that the equality agenda has been constructed to obstruct rather than facilitate equality.
``There's a great difference between equity at one end of the continuum and equality of outcome at the other,'' McVeigh points out, ``and the agenda rarely spells out just what kind of equality it is talking about.
``Equality of opportunity sits neatly at the equity end and allows governments to appropriate the language of equality without any serious threat to the status quo,'' says McVeigh. ``If you are serious about equality, equality of outcome is the only game in town.''
Amongst the problems cited, McVeigh argues that the current project divides rather than unites different equality constituents forcing them to compete in terms of existing and inadequate resources. If the cake stays the same size, then one group getting more inevitably means the other getting less.
``The agenda relies upon a meritocratic, equality of opportunity, model rather than a class, equality of distribution, analysis. Equality of outcome involves the redistribution of wealth,'' says McVeigh. ``It cannot work any other way.
``It operates within a restricted notion of sectarian discrimination in which the key equality constituent is identified euphemistically by the religious belief and political opinion category.
``Catholics are disadvantaged because they are natives and nationalists and republicans not because of the intensity of their commitment to the principle of Papal infallibility. And the real representatives of these constituencies are the SDLP and Sinn Féin and nobody wants then in the equality equation since that might politicise the equality agenda,'' says McVeigh.
Indeed, the British government's current engagement with equality issues in the North of Ireland, according to McVeigh, began as a project to neutralise the impact of the MacBride Campaign in America. The MacBride campaign specifically addressed the problem of continuing sectarian discrimination in employment in the Six Counties.
McVeigh argues that this equality issue is particularly problematic for the British government because sectarian inequality is specifically a political problem and a dynamic within the conflict. In other words, unlike many other equality issues, it questions the legitimacy of the northern state and with it British rule in Ireland.
The British government's own Standing Advisory Committee on Human Rights assessed the potential impact of MacBride in 1997 by quoting Queens University academic Adrian Guelke:
``The government's sensitivity to international reaction stems in large part from a recognition that territories or regimes already seen as illegitimate by the international community attracts a disproportionate degree of opprobrium for breaches of human rights.''
``What better way to diffuse this pressure than to throw race and gender and sexuality into the pot?'' asks McVeigh. ``The US had little moral high ground on any of these. Moreover, it had specific problems in terms of continuing racial discrimination and inequality.
``Suspicions remain that the real goal was not a new found proactive and positive commitment to equality by the then British government but rather a cynical mechanism for diluting the struggle against sectarian inequality in the north.''
So what of Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore? Has this community secured any improvement that suggests that years of sectarian discrimination and deprivation are beginning to be addressed? And what of the Equality Duty?
Following the publication of statistics revealing Lisburn council's failure to address sectarian discrimination even within its own workforce, Cllr. Butler raised the matter with the Equality Commission. The Agreement had initially offered the possibility of a Department of Equality but in the event it became part of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister and controlled by David Trimble and Seamus Mallon.
``The Commission's response was far from adequate,'' says Paul. ``They cited the fact that ten years ago Lisburn Council had employed only 9% Catholics. Today's figure of 15% was an improvement and could be seen as evidence that the council was taking steps to address the problem.
``It's utter nonsense. The fact that Lisburn has a long and appalling record effectively lets them off the hook for years. The overall figure of 15% masks the fact that in senior positions there has been either no, or very little, improvement and in some instances a worsening of the situation,'' says Paul.
But despite Lisburn Council's reluctance to challenge sectarian discrimination and doubts about the adequacy of the Equality Commission, fellow Lisburn Councillor Michael Ferguson argues that change has been made possible.
``It's not being handed to us on a plate, far from it,'' says Michael. ``Nationalists will have to fight for every inch of advancement and resist attempts by unionists and the British government to claw it back. But the potential is there.''
Michael cites his experience as a representative from the council on the Lisburn Peace and Reconciliation Partnership. ``Partnerships, established throughout the Six Counties, were tasked to allocate European Peace money. They were able to make a difference in deprived nationalist areas like Twinbrook and Poleglass,'' says Michael, ``because the criteria for allocation promoted Targeting
Social Need based on social deprivation indices.
``It allowed the community and voluntary sector to access funding to address social need and exclusion and helped to build the capacity of the disadvantaged,'' says Michael. Then there was a unionist backlash.
Unionists on the Lisburn Council objected to the ability of projects within nationalist areas to secure funding and claimed that Protestants were not getting a fair share.
``It was a lie,'' says Michael. ``Poor Protestant areas like Old Warren and Milltown were also able to secure funding. What unionists really objected to was that the Partnership was acting as a brake on unionist misappropriation of funding which had traditionally flowed away from deprived nationalist areas and into the coffers of prosperous Lisburn town.
``All that the people of Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore were getting was minimal compensation after years of rates piracy,'' says Michael, ``but the unionist controlled council was furious.''
Lisburn Council attempted to collapse the Partnership by refusing to nominate representatives to the Board, but while this curtailed the ability of projects in nationalist areas from securing funding, it was a blunt instrument that also stopped funding to deprived Protestant areas. In the end, internal pressure from those Protestant areas forced the council to climb down.
But now another threat hangs over the Partnerships. Cllr. Ferguson has criticised proposals by the Assembly's Department of Finance and Personnel for the administration of forthcoming European Peace money.
``Proposals by the minister, the SDLP's Mark Durkin, to impose councils as the lead agencies in the new partnership arrangements is premature given the absence of a demonstratable commitment to equality and an end to discriminatory allocation of funding by many councils,'' says Michael.
``And Lisburn council's proposed Equality Scheme, currently awaiting approval by the Commission, is unlikely to demonstrate a clear commitment to the end of sectarian practices. Lisburn Council included 145 groups for consultation on their Equality Scheme and despite the fact that my constituency has a third of the total population of Lisburn, only nine groups from this area are included.''
So is Dr. Robbie McVeigh's pessimism warranted? The analysis offered by McVeigh is compelling and highlights many of the problems identified by Sinn Féin. The British government's apparent Road to Damascus conversion to a range of equality issues in the North of Ireland may well have been a cynical manoeuvre to undermine the impact of MacBride in America but does that necessarily negate the impact of that decision in Ireland?
In the rush to regain ground in the international political arena the British state was forced to conceded ground within the Six Counties, opening up a new and potentially dynamic arena of struggle around equality. It is now faced with a groundswell of nationalist expectation at a time of increasing nationalist political power. As political and community activists, Sinn Féin is well placed to rise to that challenge.
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