Drawing Back from the Edge: Community Based Responses to Violence in North Belfast

Author(s): Neil Jarman
Document Type: Report
Year: 1997
Publisher: Community Development Centre
Place of Publication: Belfast
Subject Area(s): Community Development
Client Group(s) : Community Groups

Abbreviations: CDC - Community Development Centre, RUC - Royal Ulster Constabulary, PSNI - Police Service of Northern Ireland

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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