Clueless on loyalist grievances

Until John de Chastelain turns up for the cameras with mud on his boots, the aftermath of the loyalist riots will remain centre…

Until John de Chastelain turns up for the cameras with mud on his boots, the aftermath of the loyalist riots will remain centre-stage, but there are no fresh ideas about how to tackle the nihilism and self-destructiveness the riots revealed, writes Fionnuala O Connor

"The Provos created jobs by the hundred and gave them to their own supporters," says a Belfast man who knows the world of community development inside-out and who loathes republicans. "But at least they bothered to set up structures. All loyalists do is take the money." It is a resigned assessment, widely shared by people of different sympathies.

Nobody knows how to help without helping loyalist paramilitaries most - nor how to regenerate the flimsy politics that produced their fringe parties.

Despite cries of shock-horror and neglect from unionist politicians, money has been pumped into inner-city districts for years mainly to the benefit of the UDA and UVF. As the DUP prepares to puncture whatever hype attends the IRA's next move by declaring itself massively unimpressed, it suits it to bang the drum for Protestant victimhood.

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The parade of grievances, however, which supposedly provoked organised petrol- bombings and live fire at police and army has on mature reflection been shaded by a few qualifications.

The lament that IRA violence has paid off and the "concessions" won by nationalists and republicans are still the leading complaints, voiced as though loyalists had only now decided, in the first years of the 21st century, that it might be an idea to use or threaten violence as a bargaining-chip. But the initial attempt to present Protestant districts as heading league tables of deprivation shrivelled in the spotlight.

The assertion that the poorest loyalist areas had been starved of help instead shaded into discussion of "the perception" that nationalists and republicans are favoured. A few of the most adroit spokesmen discreetly conveyed their own awareness that the scale of Catholic disadvantage outweighs that of Protestants, by intoning "perceive" with extra understanding.

David Ervine, for example, the last substantial representative of loyalist paramilitary politics now beached by the UVF's visible, whole- hearted commitment to violence, says it is the perception that matters.

In pursuit of that perception, Peter Hain has already plunged into "intensive consultation" and "meet-the-people" visits. But few if any of Northern Ireland's most deprived districts have failed to attract funding of some kind.

When Garret FitzGerald's government coined the term "nationalist alienation" in the 1980s to push London into attempting to drain away support for the IRA, the Catholic Church was supposed to oversee development projects in west Belfast.

Priests were easily outclassed by up-and- coming republicans. There was no such competition in Protestant districts, no pretence about where money would go.

Years later, a builder in the Shankill was still telling people about the extortion that almost shut down his housing site: "They kept coming back for more - how could they do that? They were ripping off their own place!"

Objective assessment has taken second place to the certainty of complaint from unionists if a true hierarchy of need dictated priorities. Reviews of effectiveness and accountability have been described by Westminster committees as negligent and ineffectual.

The entirely unsurprising outcome in districts dominated by paramilitaries has dismayed many. One Protestant involved in a struggle to set up enterprise units in streets plagued by a battle for control of the drugs trade says in near despair: "Not even the Provos at their worst feed drugs to their own people."

Some now claim that this month's rioting could have been predicted if anybody had bothered to take the unionist temperature, but the previous weeks were dominated by different emotions. First individuals, then groups of Protestants, had begun to express disgust and shame at attacks through the summer on isolated Catholics.

Voices began to be heard questioning the worth of the marching season, as measured against the trouble it inevitably brings. When Ulster Unionists fell in behind the DUP, "understanding" of the rioters and the Orange Order briefly threatened to outweigh criticism.

The order's own ineptness helped to right the balance.

Republican smugness at the unionist-loyalist spectacle should have been dented by the ugliness of yet more attacks against the McCartney family campaign.

Sinn Féin boasts about republican courage in facing up to the demands of ending the war: as the general climbs out of the last ditch, they have miles to go. Michael McDowell is the last person republicans will listen to, but building confidence among unionists and loyalists may be the final pre-condition for a lasting peace, and they clearly cannot do it themselves.