Opinion

Allison Morris: Depressing to see young people dragged back to the past

Allison Morris
Allison Morris Allison Morris

With hindsight it was far too optimistic to expect the Twelfth week to be a repeat of last year's utopian peace.

The disturbances in Derry and parts of Belfast were familiarly depressing, a reminder of an era we hoped we'd left behind.

We have an imperfect peace process, one that has obvious failings in dealing with sectarianism, division, poverty and the legacy and hurt of Troubles victims.

It has, however, brought many positive changes.

I often point to the very different lives of my children compared to mine.

They've never had to negotiate around a soldier crouched at the end of the garden path to get to school or walk that journey because the school bus was hijacked.

They didn't watch endless funerals, see adults broken by grief or go to sleep at night with the not so comforting drone of an overhead helicopter.

And then I looked at images from the trouble in Derry last week, young people, some of primary school age, involved in violence against their neighbours in the Fountain estate.

The age of those arrested since, so young they can't be named in the press, should concern all those tasked with creating a stable and prosperous future.

Young people with no recollection of the Troubles and yet who have been dragged back to that place, by both people and environment.

Young people, who if convicted, will face employment and travel restriction because of a week of mayhem that will now follow them forever.

The PSNI said the violence was orchestrated and blamed the New IRA on being responsible.

This is a group with dwindling support and little in the way of political direction using a disaffected youth for nefarious purposes.

A 15-year-old did not fire an automatic weapon nor were they responsible for making and throwing pipe bombs.

But orchestration does not mean that someone lined up a group of youths, handed out scarves and petrol bombs and barked out military orders.

There are people who are still filling young people's heads full of romanticised nonsense about the conflict and what was or could be achieved.

Who create a narrative where everyone is the enemy in the minds of those young people instead of promoting positivity, education and a future where sectarianism should have no place.

You can still hold government and authorities such as the PSNI to account without sending young people to a detention centre and sentencing them to a life on the dole with a criminal record.

Many of those responsible for orchestrating this behaviour are already eternally angry, blaming everyone on their own shortcomings and failures rather than taking a long hard look in the mirror.

There are also those from within republicanism both mainstream and at the fringes who took to the streets and spoke to those involved and helped end the violence.

Among them were people who also once lifted petrol bombs and stones and know the consequences of those actions and are prepared to speak the truth rather than use disaffected youth for their own ends.

In Belfast it was bonfires rather than parades that caused a disturbance to the hoped for peace.

Building towering infernos next to people's homes and businesses under the guise of culture - it is bizarre that this has been allowed not only to continue for so long but at times been publicly funded.

The carrot approach in funding bonfires through ineffective management schemes has clearly had its day.

That a local government body in Belfast City Council had to take another government body in the Department for Infrastructure to court to have a troublesome bonfire removed is beyond ridiculous, even for Northern Ireland in July.

Masked former members of the military lifting wooden pallets and tyres from bonfire sites in east Belfast, guarded by around 200 riot police was an unprecedented event and one I never thought I'd see.

Who is paying for all this? That was the question I have been asked most over the past week.

Well the simple answer to that is you fine people, whether rate payer or tax payer, public money was used to control fires which should never have been placed where they were in the first place.

Like in Derry the young people of loyalist east Belfast cannot and should not be abandoned.

Young people who continually score lowest on educational achievement indexes despite millions in funding being pumped into the area to address this over the years – albeit to questionable organisations rather than schools, colleges and training organisations who could actually make a difference.

These young people are not without considerable skills, indeed they are able to build structures that defy gravity once a year, only to set fire to it at the end.

I'm a big believer in prevention rather than a security response, I'd like to believe those young people can be encouraged to build some kind of future, one they don't set fire to, one that lasts longer than July 11.