Talking and compromise key to North peace

. SHEILA CHILLINGWORTH, born in Dublin, formerly worked as a school psychologist in Catholic west Belfast. She is an active member of the Church of Ireland who since her retirement has run schemes for children with reading problems in Ballymurphy.

THE POLITICIANS all seem to have I been demented from Paddy Mayhew, who I always thought was a sensible man, downwards. Attempts at dialogue should have started a year ago after the last Drumcree clash. When they came, they came far too late the church leaders only had a day or a day and a half to find a solution when they became involved.

I don't blame Sir Hugh Annesley either. He was suddenly very human when he spoke about being sick of being caught between the two sides. One felt a terrible sympathy for him.

It didn't help either seeing the police acting as they did against the people sitting on Garvaghy Road. Their actions only heightened those people's perception that they were second class citizens, as indeed they are.

The politicians behaved just as one would have anticipated. That's the frightening thing they don't change. I was reading Nelson Mandela's autobiography recently and one phrase leapt out at me. He was looking at his jailers but every so often he saw a little glimpse of humanity in one of them, and that made all the difference.

That's the problem with our politicians. They look at the other side and they don't see human beings they just see the other side. They don't see what Mandela saw that basically everyone is human with different perceptions.

As far as I can see there is no trust at all among the politicians, but there is trust among the people.

When I came up here in 1949 I was a right bigot. My father was a rector who had seen his congregation shrinking because of Ne Temere and other things and I was genuinely frightened of Catholics. I was also afraid of Northern Protestants. I've since become very fond of both sides. I've changed totally and I see no reason why they shouldn't.

. MAY BLOOD is a community worker on Belfast's Shankill Road and a lifelong trade union activist. A Protestant and proud to be a Prod she was the election agent for the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.

PROBABLY WE had deluded ourselves that peace was more permanent than it was. After 20 months of relative peace we thought all the bogey men had gone, but last week's events proved that to be false.

As a community worker I found that very depressing. It was almost as though we had climbed a mountain and at the then were knocked down to the bottom again. Now it's a question of whether we can climb it again.

The strong community relations between people who have built up a good relationship living side by side over the years won't be affected. That relationship helped community relations last week to survive under extreme and dangerous conditions.

A fortnight earlier the Whiterock Orange Parade which marches on to the Springfield Road on the last Saturday in June passed off without incident, although throughout the Troubles there has always been a history of violence at it.

This year, because of the good strong relationships built up since the 1995 parade, the people of the area were determined that it would not divide them, and came to an agreement.

I put that down to real community relations between people who realise there are two cultures in the area and both have to be addressed. For the past year people have tried to understand each other's culture, led by people like Sam Burch from the Cornerstone Community and Gerry Reynolds from the Clonard Monastery.

Political leadership during last week's crisis left a lot to be desired. The unionist leaders, in particular, should have thought a bit before issuing statements like Drumcree is unionism's last stand.

As for withdrawing from the Forum until Drumcree was over, I understood they were at the talks and in the Forum to solve, not make, problems.

. KATE KELLY is chairwoman of the Women's Information Group, which brings together women's groups, mainly in the greater Belfast area. She was formerly the leader of a Belfast Action Team co-ordinating community development in west Belfast, and an outreach worker with the Opsahl Commission. She comes from a Catholic background.

I WAS demented and despairing the media coverage of last week's events, listening to the politicians blaming everyone else and not taking any responsibility and then lecturing us, the public.

On the other hand, I felt some hope when I saw Aideen McGinley, chief executive of Fermanagh council, talking about the goodness of people in Enniskillen after the bomb there, and the positive ways in which people related.

When David Ervine speaks, he too seems to acknowledge that what he's saying is being listened to by people of very different views there's a real sensitivity there. Similarly, when members of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition appear on radio and TV, they're at least constructive and inclusive. They don't exclude you in contrast, I don't even hear the mainstream politicians any more.

The politicians have to find a way to understand there is more in their lives in Northern Ireland which they share than which separates them. The Irish dimension is basically a distraction which isolates Protestants, making them fearful and feeling that they and their culture are not honoured. That's what I learned from the Opsahl Commission it allowed people to express their views and dignified them by listening courteously and taking them seriously.

By now we should have realised that violence is directly related to self confidence in socially deprived areas. If people haven't got a feeling of ownership over their lives, they will turn to violence. Similarly, Orangemen don't feel they have any ownership over their future. It should be a government priority to fund community initiatives in areas like Garvaghy Road and its Protestant equivalents.

. BARBARA LOMAS is head of politics at Belfast Royal Academy, a large north Belfast Protestant grammar school with some Catholic pupils. She is a practising member of the Church of Ireland.

WHEN TEACHING 16 and 17 year olds about the nature of politics, the first thing I say to them is there are different opinions and they have to listen to them all before they make up their minds where they stand. Over the past fortnight I have wished many times that somebody would get our politicians to do the same.

I think something is needed to force all sides to sit down and talk properly. I remember listening to a lecture by Padraig O'Malley [Massachusetts based author of several authoritative books on Northern Ireland] at Queen's University recently. He said no major disaster had occurred to force the sides in Northern Ireland to leave their trenches and meet in the middle.

After nearly two years of peace the politicians are still debating whether they should talk at all, who should chair those talks, and what preconditions they will lay down for talking. Any sense of urgency seems to be missing. Last week demands a little more listening and talking to rather than talking at in the future.

Meanwhile people in our divided society who have been trying to move into nicer houses in mixed areas over the past two years are again being subject to what the papers call `ethnic cleansing', and being forced back into whatever houses can be offered to them in areas where they feel safe.

The unionist leadership has to look carefully at how it voices the fears of the community it represents and to remember that there has to be compromise if progress is to be made. Also I don't think the SDLP appreciates the alien at ion the Protestant community feels.

For example, if you listen to the Protestants in areas of Northern Ireland in which they are a minority, there is a sense that the Irish Government speaks for nationalists, the British government is neutral, but they have no one to rely on except themselves.

. HELENA SCHLINDWEIN is co-ordinator of the A Action for Locally Managing Stress centre in Derry, which helps stress sufferers, particularly from political violence. She was a candidate for the NIWC.

IN ONE sense, last week could wreck the peace process totally, yet in another it could be like the lancing of a boil which might allow healing to take place. In recent years sufficient people have risen above their tribal stances and see the humanity of the other side. Good work has been done by cross community workers who have developed great respect for each other.

I would hope that what happened in Portadown with the unionist leadership taking stances which seemed almost surreal wouldn't happen elsewhere. My experience of working with unionist people in Derry is that many want to dissociate themselves from what happened there.

It's vitally important that people in cross community work should maintain contact with each other. There is great isolation in this work, anyway, when you step out from your community and work on issues like rape and battered women which are deemed a distraction from the national question, and not men's business.

Events like Drumcree isolate you even more. You have to be either Protestant or Catholic and are not allowed to work between the trenches. Anything that is not to do with the constitutional question or the national question is seen as `soft' politics. Women's and children's rights are not serious business but nationalist and unionist rights are.

Having said that, nationalists in Northern Ireland waited last week with bated breath for justice which did not happen. In Derry the local Sinn Fein politicians and the community groups have worked hard to channel people's anger constructively.

If that hadn't happened last weekend's riots could have been a lot worse. I hope that kind of leadership will continue and include discussions with others coming up to the Apprentice Boys march on 10th August.

. GEMMA BROLLY is manager of the Newry Volunteer Bureau, which has nearly 500 volunteers working in community projects in the south Down area. She has worked widely in community work in Newry, Armagh and Belfast.

LAST WEEK'S events have isolated band angered the nationalist community, including many moderates. The issue of second class citizenship has come back with a vengeance. I have met three people in the past week who are talking publicly about getting out of Northern Ireland. People fear what's ahead, asking if we are facing another 25 years of violence.

People are appalled at David Trimble for his selective support of the Mitchell principles. They are angry about the more than 6,000 plastic bullets fired last week, only a few hundred were fired at the Orangemen during the Drumcree standoff.

We run a reconciliation programme for young people. We had one sensible young Protestant woman on it from an outlying Protestant village Newry is perceived as a Catholic town. She was in the town when the Drumcree news came through. She phoned home and was told to come home early.

She was due to come back the following day to finish her team project but was told by neighbours that if she did so, the house wouldn't be there when she got back.

After Drumcree there were burnings in Newry every night. One morning I was returning from a meeting in south Armagh down the Dublin road, through a middle class area, and there were two burning cars and young people stoned my car and tried to stop it. Camlough and Armagh were the same.

I was recently in St James's Palace in London for Prince Charles's Prince's Trust and last week I was at Hillsborough Castle with Lady Mayhew doing my best to use our situation to bring people together. After last week I started to think why would anyone bother taking all the flak for going to these places? I suppose you just have to keep doing it and trying to build it up again for the sake of peace.