How long must we wait for unionist leaders to catch up?

By Gerry Kelly
I, like many others, have witnessed and experienced many traumatic events, from the brutality of the H-blocks, to the Hunger Strikes, to pogroms, to the violent deaths of close friends. However, the most vivid image that still affects me emotionally and fills me with anger is that of seeing the faces of hysterical children as they ran a gauntlet of hate just to get to school.
I recalled this last week during a discussion on the last decade which, towards the end, has been dominated with the economic recession and its effect on ordinary people. A decade that began with the reception the girls of Holy Cross received as they made their way to primary school cannot be described as good.
Adults screamed abuse, calling the kids names such as “slugs” and “scum”. They were spat upon, had stones, bottles, ball bearings, urine and, incredibly, a bomb, thrown at them. This unionist and loyalist activity was described by the MP for the area as “a cry for help”.
When the trouble was first brewing the parents wrote to their MP, Nigel Dodds, but he never replied. He eventually did meet the parents, after having already stood along with his colleague Nelson McCausland with the loyalist protestors - some of whom were wearing masks and hoods - but denied having received their letter sent two months earlier. The parents considered the meeting a waste of time.
However, Dodds insisted that the loyalists also had grievances, for example, about the state of their housing, though what this had to do with the schoolgirls was baffling, given that Dodds was actually the minister in charge of housing at this time.
Those Catholic parents and their courageous young children who braved the terror and abuse did a service to the cause of civil rights by establishing that the nationalist community no longer agreed to sit at the back of the bus. (Nigel Dodds suggested that the children actually use a shuttle bus to get to school without appreciating what a throwback to American racism that represented – or maybe he did appreciate the irony and didn’t care.)
What happened during the Holy Cross Blockade was one of the most frightening and depressing episodes, not just of the past decade, but of the past thirty years.
Nigel Dodd’s role as MP back then was indicative of the DUPs political bankruptcy and his role since has done little or nothing to convince us that he intends to represent all North Belfast constituents with equality.
Some in the DUP leadership clearly still yearn for the impossible goal of returning to Unionist Rule. Nigel Dodds has held a number of ministerial posts including housing and has opposed the Equality Agenda throughout.
A huge regeneration project on the old Girdwood Barracks site has sat on the shelf now for years, because the DUP are opposed to any housing on the site despite the excessive housing waiting list in North Belfast.
Some have argued that Holy Cross was symbolic of a unionism lost and floundering. How long must the rest of us wait for unionist leaders to catch up? After all, after 70 years of unionist domination the ordinary Protestant people were no better off.
Nationalists and republicans always understood that they had to fight for equality under unionist rule. I believe that more and more ordinary Protestants need to fight for equality in the face of an expenses-driven unionist elite.
It is time for an MP who will represent all the people equally. That is not a DUP MP.