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26 October 2010

After decades of conflict, Northern Ireland does have a limited functioning private sector economy. We might think of ourselves as a kind of Bosnia, kept on life-support by injections of public spending and international cash. In truth, most of us have been relatively lucky: most places where groups have feared or hated each other enough to start killing one another don’t get to keep normal life together.

And we got a second chance.  The ‘peace process’ was mostly paid for by people who don’t live here.  The massive EU PEACE programmes have no precedent, pumping £2bn into reconstructing a society for peace over twenty years.  The International Fund for Ireland has put £630m into rebuilding an economy and promoting a shared society and there have been huge contributions by individuals and organisations.  All of that was on top of the £8bn per annum subvention from the UK which kept our living standards in touch with those across the water.

All of this gave us the massive opportunity of now:  an opportunity to sell our wares as a worldwide feelgood story at the investment conference in Washington, an opportunity to make a case that- with careful thought and real partnership- we could wean ourselves off dependency and make this a beacon of reconciliation and hope.  We have an opportunity to feel safe without having to rely on massive forty foot physical barriers, to move to school system which does not simply live with producing ‘sides’ to a conflict but produces citizens of a shared and diverse society and to treat our city centres, swimming pools, streets and housing estates as places where everyone can go in safety rather than having to worry about whether they are wearing the right football top or in favour with the local leadership.  Above all we might become a place where the brightest might move to rather than avoid and where our young saw a shared and better future rather than endlessly bitter and sectarian past.

The trouble is we are missing the boat.  The international money is on the way out.  Public spending is being gutted and core services are at risk.  The police need extra money, but only to tackle a problem which should be behind us.  And poverty and disappointment continue to blight the same places as before.  So no interfaces have come down, our education system is in crisis and we are sorely lacking in ideas about how we move on from dependency.

Terminal division is our signature weakness and it continues to undermine all of our efforts to move on.  That is why the policy on reconciliation and building a shared and better future- now called cohesion, sharing and integration-should be a Rolls Royce vision of reconciliation, driving a shared society determined to put violence behind it.  It should build on the investment of the past but move it to a new level.  Less community pilots and more ideas about how to share our schools, our housing estates and our assets- like shops, parks, leisure facilities and libraries.  We should spend less money to manage conflict and more money to promote change.  Instead of making a special case to treasury for a hand-out, we should be asking them to give us a hand-up by presenting plans to turn this into a safe, attractive, open and tolerant place where people might want to invest and creative people might stay. 

Cohesion, sharing and integration  so-called CSI) should be the twin of a policy for prosperity and growth.  There is no point in calling for investment, if we don’t tackle the issues which put investors off.  Small business will continue to lose customers if there are no tourists.  We must find a way to avoid spending money where we don’t need to - on too many police, on too many schools, on too many duplicated public facilities - by ensuring that everyone is safe and welcome wherever they are.  And we must find a way to tackle poverty, by taking the fear out of whole areas and opening up the future to investment and regeneration.

Reconciliation is a massive economic issue.  Get this wrong and we will still be a basket case in a few years time, but this time without international support.  Get it right and we might even be able to argue that money spent here to get us to a new place is money well spent.

As it stands, the cohesion, sharing and integration strategy is simply not good enough.  It misses too much out, it provides no budgets and - above all - it seems to walk away from reconciliation and settle for the dull vista of resentful apartheid.  Even worse, it seems to focus on gathering power back to the centre rather than leading an inclusive new vision.

The Community Relations Council believes that this is a very important moment.   We will never have another chance like this again.  The repeated message of the CSI consultation period has been that cohesion, sharing and integration policy is not a good enough answer to the challenges we face.  Instead of a Rolls Royce we have an old banger.  It is time for the Executive to listen to the consultation, rethink the priorities and lead the change.  Quickly.

Belfast Telegraph 22.10.10