Radio talk shows are full of speakers who default to the intractability of ‘Problems of Legacy’, when discussing social and political difficulties that bedevil citizens in Northern Ireland today.
The war between state forces, their allies and anti-state paramilitaries left great wounds. Grieving families, mutilated bodies, devastated infrastructure and social schisms in the aftermath of grim violence perpetrated by a range of combatants did not lead to formal resolution of the underlying causes. They produced a cessation of violence and a precarious peace process that was very welcome, but inherently fragile, despite agreements in 1998 and 2006.
One key source of conflict was the manner in which the state enacted policing on its citizens. Policing is the iron fist of state power delivered at citizen level. It presumes the consent of the citizenry, a challenging presumption all over the world.
In Northern Ireland intense debate produced proposals to create a service from the existing force, in 2001. The Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) was stood down and the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) was formed. It has new powers, badges, protocols and a whole new recruitment process known as 50-50, a form of positive action seen in different jurisdictions. It sought to draw people from the Nationalist/Irish/Roman Catholic elements of the community in the face of the preponderance of members from Unionist/British/Protestant members of the community.
This was an understandable, but crude and contested response to the need for change. As society changes, it has proven inept in tilting the recruitment balance to an even keel. 50-50 was dropped in 2011. Calls for its return are made at present, because recruitment into the PSNI remains stubbornly below the desired figures.
Various reasons for the recruitment problem are cited by politicians and others on the radio talk shows. They are invariably bundled as ‘Problems of Legacy’, notably the threat from anti-state para-militaries, which, though reduced, is still very real.
These ‘Problems of Legacy’ are de facto intractable. When the term is used, no speaker names or lists them. No definitions are rolled out. Chambers Dictionary says that a legacy can be money or property received from someone who has died. Or, more relevantly, legacy can be situations that developed as a result of past actions and decisions. Such problems are presented as beyond the realm of the human. It is as if they are ‘outside of time’. And yet they are as current as the weather.
With regard to policing and its recruitment difficulties, no one mentions that the PSNI is an organisation trammelled with failure. It failed to protect the private details of its staff at least twice in August 2003, publishing them on an external website and losing them in a laptop left in a car. leading to a threat to life, followed by a compensation bill that cannot be met within current budgets. Officers were put under investigation for sharing inappropriate images of incarcerated people. Officers are cited for misogyny.
Radio reports of a recent inquest into the disappearance and death of a boy include details of officers not following up on calls, not keeping hand-written notes and not reacting readily enough to developments and threats.
These are not ‘Problems of Legacy’. They are not historical. They are current.
Terming them thus allows them to be dodged. It allows senior officials and the political board of governance to raise their arms in the air in an appeal for understanding, while being ineffectual. Educated young women and men, regardless of social and political background, are understandably wary of committing to a hapless organisation that struggles to deliver on its basic aims. And that is currently a compromised bedfellow of the spooks. Vincent Kearney, Trevor McBirney and Barry McCaffrey are just three journalists enduring court processes for intrusions into their personal information.
When flags of violent British/Unionist/Protestant proscribed organisations were hoisted on lamp-posts beside the police training college, the PSNI were unable to remove them, though a public outcry demanded it. They fluttered to flitters, leaving the organisation looking impotent.
More flaggery accompanies the release of new public and private housing blocks, with the purpose of intimidating prospective buyers by crude sectarian territorial marking. Again the PSNI is inept, then engages in hand-wringing when families are bricked and petrol bombed.
While individual officers performed well in dangerous circumstances, people facing racist attacks across towns and villages last summer were not served and protected as well as they should be. The burning of a replica boat of immigrants at a 12th July event in Moygashel, without any police intervention amidst political bleating about legislation, would not encourage publicly-minded young women and men to join the service.
These are not ‘Problems of Legacy’. They are ‘Problems of Now’, in an organisation living by Brendan Behan’s observation that he knew of no situation that could not be made worse by the arrival of the police.
These problems and others are easier to blog and comment about rather than to solve.
Long, over-running public inquiries? Check out Muckamore Hospital. The worst polluted lake in the land? Check out Lough Neagh. Connect that with the ‘cash for ash’ farrago. Or the singular over-production of chicken fillets and the mis-management of effluent by a legally immune water authority.
Many people are genuinely attempting to respond practically to these and other problems, at street level, by surmounting the barricade of ‘Problems of Legacy’ in order to act now. This is the single biggest challenge facing peace-building today. It challenges the peace-building desire for ‘moving on’, which cannot be achieved without attention to social and economic justice and the emotional impact of conflict and injustice. Now.
There is a role for artistic and imaginative work in this.
And now history and time have stopped, as if they were cogs in a great engine turning the century and I stuck my little finger in there. So they’re stopped. And I’m waiting.
Opportunities to create and implement programmes of works of non-violent social change in the direction of peace and justice can be taken. Public and philanthropic financial support for this work presents its own difficulties of co-option, distortion and power. How can state funds be used when the state is itself a continuing protagonist? And when terms like ‘change’, ‘peace’ and ‘justice’ are contested and unsettling to people?
Perhaps they provide a place to start, when working with adults. Working with children is worthy, but the challenges are present now, not in the future and lying under ‘Problems of Legacy’ or yearning for the future take from actions necessary in the present world.
Word games, writing activities, action games, movement and spatial treatments are among a range of imaginative activities and programmes with adults that can help to build peace.
Three words – change, peace, justice. Press PLAY.
Other arts practices can also be called upon also.
This helps to ensure the availability of non-violent tools for resolving our conflicts, and will be a significant part of the process of making our society more integrated and more just.
Good luck to us all.
Waiting… by Dave Duggan, Sole Purpose Productions, 2000
Published in Plays in a Peace Process, Guildhall Press, 2008
Arts Approaches to the Conflict in Northern Ireland by Dave Duggan
Published in Arts Approaches to Conflict, ed. Marian Liebmann, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London 1996
www.facebook.com/DaveDugganWriter
© Dave Duggan
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