‘listen to loyalists feeling left behind’
Foster speaks out after riots erupt in north
LOYALIST concerns the peace process has only delivered for the nationalist community must be both listened to and challenged, Arlene Foster said yesterday.
The North’s First Minister added some of the claims she had heard about politics failing loyalism were not true, but she acknowledged they were still “very strongly held perceptions”.
The DUP leader’s comments came as Deputy First Minister Michelle O’neill urged the UK and Irish governments to get more involved with efforts to return stability to the region after this month’s street disorder.
Anger at post-brexit trading arrangements has been cited as one factor behind the violence that has erupted in loyalist areas.
Another is the outrage felt at a decision not to prosecute 24 Sinn Fein members, including Ms O’neill, who attended a huge republican funeral amid lockdown restrictions last year.
But many within the loyalist community have also pointed to more long-standing concerns the peace process, particularly the Good Friday accord of 1998, has handed them a raw deal.
They cite under-investment and deprivation in loyalist working class areas as further proof they have missed out on the gains of peace. Nationalists and republicans reject this premise, insisting their communities have experienced just has many problems with poverty and unemployment since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement.
Last week also saw violence flare in some nationalist areas.
On Saturday, DUP chairman Lord Morrow told the News Letter the authorities had shown a “total and absolute capitulation to the demands of militant republicanism”. Yesterday, Ms O’neill described those claims as “nonsense”.
Mrs Foster, who described the Deputy First Minister’s reaction as “disappointing”, said concerns within loyalism could not be ignored.
She added: “All of those things have to be tackled head-on and not dismissed as nonsense because, you know, one person’s nonsense is another person’s absolute belief in what is happening at this moment in time. And therefore I will not dismiss what people have to say as nonsense.”
Mrs Foster told BBC Radio Ulster: “I fundamentally believe responsible leadership doesn’t ignore views from the community because you may not agree with them or they may be difficult to listen to.
“I’m not going to go through all of the things that I’ve heard over this past week, some of which are not true or they are perceptions, but they are very, very strongly held perceptions. And how do we change perceptions?
“We change perceptions by engaging, by listening, by actually saying to people, ‘Well, actually here is what the case is in terms of the loyalist community’.”
Ms O’neill said she did not think loyalism had been left behind.
She told Radio Ulster: “I actually see the same challenges in working class loyalist communities that I do in a lot of working class nationalist communities.”