LCC have been meeting politicians for years, why is there a fuss now?

THOSE who condemn the DUP leadership for meeting with the LCC need to reflect on their own double standards and lack of any meaningful contribution to making Northern Ireland a better place, or they need to come clean about their real agenda. Equally, the BBC needs to explain why suddenly, after five years of existence when the LCC meets with the NIO, DUP, or whoever; it is suddenly headline and controversial news.

Since the LCC was founded in October 2015, its delegations have regularly met with the UK and Irish governments, Northern Ireland MPS and peers, and NI parties, church leaders including the Archbishop of Canterbury, senior police officers, the IRC, and many community groups. Why does the Alliance Party and Sinn

Fein suddenly think it is now wrong for all these groupings to meet with the LCC?

Can Sinn Fein explain why the late Deputy First Minister Martin Mcguinness had no issue with working with the LCC to help resolve the Twadell parade dispute or why the Sinn Fein Education Minister John O’dowd had no difficulty in meeting the LCC to discuss our concerns about educational under-achievement in loyalist communities. Why has the current Deputy First Minister such a problem now?

Stephen Farry’s comments display how far up the Alliance Party’s ivory tower of alternative reality he has climbed. Or does he also condemn his party leader, whose officials in the Department of Justice which she heads regularly meet with LCC groups in pursuit of their transition to peace agenda?

The irony of all of this is that since the LCC was launched, successive police reports and IRC reports have pointed to a steady reduction in loyalist-related criminality.

We are not all the way there yet, but why such vitriol instead of encouragement?

Or do these parties actually fear the development of a loyalism which is progressive and dare I say respectable, but just as determined to thwart the united Ireland agenda of Sinn Fein and Alliance?

DAVID CAMPBELL Chairman, Loyalist Communities Councils