Background
to the
Research
- This report looks at some
of the work initiated by the CDC, and in particular at ways of empowering
community activists and workers to deal with problems at interface areas
at times of heightened tensions during the marching season. It describes
in detail how a network of community activists across North Belfast
have utilised mobile telephones to enable communities to maintain contact
with other areas, across interfaces and with the police and other statutory
agencies during the summers of 1997 and 1998 following the severe sectarian
violence in 1996.
Research
Approach
- Discussion about the ways in which community
activists sought to reduce tension and conflict during the 1998 marching
season is largely based on a series of interviews with those involved
in the mobile phone network.
- Detailed interviews were held with fourteen
of the nineteen phone holders between 8 July and 5 August. These were
equally balanced with seven phone holders from the Protestant community
and seven from the Catholic community.
- Interviews were also held with members
of the RUC (now PSNI), and with members of staff at Making Belfast Work
and Belfast Interface Project, with local politicians, with community
activists who were not phone holders and with CDC staff. The Northern
Ireland Housing Executive also supplied information.
Main
Findings
- The vast majority of phone holders felt
that the mobile phone network had proved extremely useful as a tool
to reduce tension and in dealing with incidents at the numerous interfaces,
although concerns were raised from a number of people about liaising
with the then RUC as part of the project.
- The work placed a heavy burden on a small
number of community activists. It was also felt that reactive projects
such as this should not be seen as supplanting longer-term plans for
interface areas.
- The view expressed by those interviewed
was that although the mobile phone network had worked extremely well
it would have been better if it was enlarged and extended.
- There is now a wider recognition of the
need to maintain lines of communication across interfaces, particularly
at times of heightened tension, and in public order situations more
generally.
- The members of the network felt that access
to the phones needed to be consolidated and that the best way would
be for the CDC to confirm that funding was available over the next two
or three years.
- It was recognised that having the phones
was only part of the process. It was felt that the working relationships
that had been started through a common desire to maintain the peace
should be encouraged.
- Although it was felt important for the
network to remain independent, it was also agreed that contacts with
the statutory agencies and other bodies were very important and those
relationships should be maintained and developed with a view to improving
communication, liaison and practices still further.
Conclusions
- The positive impact that community workers
and activists can have in potentially difficult and violent situations
is only possible if there is a broad desire to avoid local conflict,
and if there is an appropriate space created by political, statutory
and paramilitary actors. Community organisations and activists can then
operate within that space to counter rumours, reduce tensions and help
prevent disorder.
- Tensions created during the summer months
of 1997 and 1998 have placed considerable strains on inter-community
dialogue across North Belfast. The work done by members of the mobile
phone network helped re-open processes of communication and thereby
in turn created space for the re-establishment of dialogue between some
communities after the summer tensions had died down.
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