Fine words are not enough to end the almost daily sectarian incidents, says Eilis O’Hanlon

The six main parties came together last October to issue a joint proclamation deploring loyalist paramilitary intimidation of Catholic families in south Belfast. “We as political leaders condemn all forms of sectarianism, intolerance and threats of violence,” the statement said.

Splendid words. Less than a year on, sectarian incidents continue almost daily across Northern Ireland. It seems that expressing disgust is the easy part. Much harder is acknowledging when sectarianism happens, and actually doing something to stop it.

The latest high profile incident comes in the form of a republican anti-internment bonfire in Newry which celebrates the 1975 murder of the father of Willie Frazer.

The victims’ campaigner has condemned those behind the mockery of his dead father as “mindless, uneducated, entrenched individuals”, but this summer it seems once again that there are plenty of them about.

Derry is still recovering from

❝ It’s imperative local representatives distance themselves from these ugly outbursts of bigotry

recent sectarian violence in the Bogside, while the flags of Protestant football teams have been seen burning on another anti-internment bonfire in Craigavon, an act slammed by Sinn Fein’s Upper Bann MLA John O’Dowd as a “hate crime”.

It’s imperative that local representatives publicly distance themselves from these ugly outbursts of bigotry; Sinn Fein’s MP for South Down, Chris Hazzard, also said of the bonfire mocking Frazer’s late father that “if you think this type of behaviour makes you a republican your (sic) a fool”.

But what moral high ground can the party sincerely take on this issue when, not far from the spot where the murder of Willie Frazer’s father was being celebrated, there’s a children’s playground named after IRA hunger striker Raymond McCreesh?

In many ways, that’s worse. The offence to Willie Frazer’s family was disgusting, but it could be dismissed as the work of a few unelected, unrepresentative bigots. The playground was approved by the forerunner to what is now Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, and stands there every day as a testimony to the IRA campaign, inculcatThe