Maze Prison regeneration 'limited to health and safety'
A Stormont body set up to oversee a £300m redevelopment of the former Maze prison site has said its role has been "essentially limited to health and safety".Plans to regenerate the site near Lisburn have been in limbo for almost 12 years due to a political row.The high-security jail held paramilitary prisoners during the decades-long conflict in Northern Ireland known as the Troubles and was the site of republican hunger strikes in 1981 during which 10 inmates starved themselves to death.It closed in 2000 and while most of the prison buildings have been demolished, some were retained.
The 350-acre former prison is one of Northern Ireland's largest development sites in public ownership.Bryan Gregory, interim chief executive of the Maze Long Kesh Development Corporation (MLKDC), said a "political resolution" was needed."What the answer to that is, I don't know, but it is clearly in my mind a legacy issue that needs to be picked up and addressed," he said.
In 2013, Stormont's then First Minister Peter Robinson, of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), blocked a plan to build a peace centre on the site.It followed pressure from unionists who claimed the site would become a "shrine to terrorism".Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness, then deputy first minister, later said that no further development would take place until the dispute was resolved.Since then, the stalemate has led to many requests to visit the prison buildings being refused by the Northern Ireland Executive.However, some parts of the site have been used, such as hosting the Balmoral Show - an annual agricultural event.The Air Ambulance and Ulster Aviation Society are also based there.
'Limited remit'
Mr Gregory was speaking to the economy committee on Wednesday as members visited the site.He said the MLKDC has had a "limited remit since 2013" which is "defined by our sponsor department, the Executive Office".This has been "essentially limited to health and safety matters, site security, essential maintenance" and supporting those currently using the site.Mr Gregory said that "in addition to that formal remit, we have added in our business plan an aim to identify and explore options for consideration by ministers".Last year, it emerged the body in charge of Northern Ireland museums had been in talks about the future of the derelict jail.Neil McIvor, MLKDC's director of development, said they were "very preliminary discussions".
Alliance Party assembly member David Honeyford said the Maze site was a "microcosm of Northern Ireland"."The potential is here, but we're not realising it," he said.He urged the first and deputy first ministers to "move this forward and allow the potential to be actually realised".
DUP assembly member Phillip Brett, chair of the economy committee, said the "economic opportunities here are huge"."But we're also equally clear that we will never support the creation of a shrine to terrorism here," he added.Sinn Féin assembly member Emma Sheerin said there was a "shared objective across all parties" to realise the economic opportunities of the site.She said "there are different perspectives on the past" and "everybody's perspective should be respected".
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South Wales Guardian
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Mr Robinson believes the Finucane case is indicative of a government approach that sees the 'distasteful elevation' of some high-profile cases while countless other victims still await answers with no prospect of public inquiries. The DUP leader claimed 'Hapless Hilary' was pursing this stance while continuing to keep private any details on what he was negotiating with the Irish Government. 'The Irish Government have knowledge of and influence upon UK legacy plans, yet Northern Ireland victims, veterans and Parliamentarians are kept in the dark by the Secretary of State without so much as a blush on his face,' he said. 'Not for the first time, he advances a one-sided, partisan approach to the politics of Northern Ireland.' 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In 2023, the Irish government initiated an interstate legal case against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights, claiming the Legacy Act breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The case remains active, with ministers in Dublin wanting to see how Labour resolves its concerns over the legislation before any decision is taken to withdraw the action. Mr Benn told reporters in Newcastle that it was incumbent on all political leaders to finally secure agreement on legacy. 'Legacy is the unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement,' he said. 'It was the issue which the Good Friday Agreement, which achieved so much, was unable to take forward. 'And I would simply say we, all of us, as politicians, as leaders, have a responsibility to try and find a way forward so that we can bring truth and justice for everyone, in particular for the families who, after decades, are still waiting for answers as to what happened to their loved ones when they were murdered.' 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Mr Robinson's hard-hitting statement on Friday morning came amid mounting expectation that the two governments will soon set out an agreed framework for addressing legacy issues related to the Northern Ireland conflict. Also responding to the DUP leader's criticism, Irish premier Micheal Martin and deputy premier Simon Harris both moved to defend Mr Benn as they praised his efforts to work with their Government to try to resolve outstanding issues around unsolved murder cases and families who continue to seek truth and justice for lost loved ones. They also rejected Mr Robinson's assertion that the Dublin government has adopted a 'scandalous approach to legacy' in failing to rigorously investigate and provide answers on atrocities with a cross-border dimension. The DUP leader made his statement after Mr Benn announced the appointment of a chair to lead a public inquiry into the 1989 loyalist murder of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane. Mr Robinson believes the Finucane case is indicative of a government approach that sees the 'distasteful elevation' of some high-profile cases while countless other victims still await answers with no prospect of public inquiries. The DUP leader claimed 'Hapless Hilary' was pursing this stance while continuing to keep private any details on what he was negotiating with the Irish Government. 'The Irish Government have knowledge of and influence upon UK legacy plans, yet Northern Ireland victims, veterans and Parliamentarians are kept in the dark by the Secretary of State without so much as a blush on his face,' he said. 'Not for the first time, he advances a one-sided, partisan approach to the politics of Northern Ireland.' Since taking office last year, the Labour Government has pledged to repeal and replace some of the provisions of the contentious Legacy Act that was introduced by the last Conservative government, and bring forward a revised framework for dealing with cases linked to the Troubles. The Irish Government has been involved in the process, and political leaders in Dublin have said intensive engagement is ongoing to see if a 'landing zone' can be arrived at. The Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Act 2023 halted scores of civil cases and inquests into Troubles deaths and also offered conditional immunity to perpetrators of conflict-related crimes in exchange for their co-operation with a new investigatory and truth recovery body. The Act was opposed by all the main political parties in Northern Ireland, the Irish government and many victims' representative groups. In 2023, the Irish government initiated an interstate legal case against the UK in the European Court of Human Rights, claiming the Legacy Act breached the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). The case remains active, with ministers in Dublin wanting to see how Labour resolves its concerns over the legislation before any decision is taken to withdraw the action. Mr Benn told reporters in Newcastle that it was incumbent on all political leaders to finally secure agreement on legacy. 'Legacy is the unfinished business of the Good Friday Agreement,' he said. 'It was the issue which the Good Friday Agreement, which achieved so much, was unable to take forward. 'And I would simply say we, all of us, as politicians, as leaders, have a responsibility to try and find a way forward so that we can bring truth and justice for everyone, in particular for the families who, after decades, are still waiting for answers as to what happened to their loved ones when they were murdered.' 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A reputation for political violence is one reason Northern Ireland has historically attracted fewer immigrants than the rest of the UK. In that context, increasing diversity could be read as a measure of progress; a peace dividend after the Troubles. That isn't how it has felt to families cowering in fear of racist mobs this week. The riots started in Ballymena, ostensibly triggered by the arrest of two boys, reported to be of Romanian origin, accused of sexually assaulting a teenage girl. A community vigil mutated into a racist rampage. Masked thugs targeted the local migrant population. When police came to quell the pogrom, officers were attacked with bricks, fireworks, petrol bombs. There was contagion. Windows were smashed and a fire started at a leisure centre in nearby Larne that had been used as a temporary refuge for those fleeing the Ballymena violence. There were outbreaks of disorder in other towns. Leaders from across Northern Ireland's political spectrum have condemned the violence. But on the unionist side in particular, there has also been much leavening of opprobrium with reference to 'legitimate' underlying grievances. Judiciously expressed, the complaint is that migration has been poorly managed, putting a strain on local services. In its more pungent iteration, it is the insinuation that new arrivals get preferential treatment, especially regarding housing. On the street, that degenerates into a miasma of hatred – a generalised accusation of parasitism and criminality imported by the foreigners. Rumour and disinformation, propagated online, accelerates collective movement through the gears from inchoate frustration to vigilante rampage. Northern Ireland is the least diverse part of the UK. Immigrants make up about 3.4% of the population, compared with 18.3% in England and Wales, and 12.9% in Scotland. But that comparison belies relatively rapid and concentrated demographic change in places such as Ballymena. And while sectarian violence is no longer endemic, the Troubles cast a shadow of intercommunal suspicion that makes it harder for outsiders to integrate. There is also a developed infrastructure of far-right extremism that evolved through close ties to loyalist paramilitaries. Those are distinct Northern Irish inflections on a problem that is far from unique to the region. The escalation from a single spark to a conflagration of violent bigotry is grimly familiar from the rioting that erupted across the UK last summer. Then it was the murder of three young girls in Southport that became the pretext for a malevolent carnival of xenophobic rage. Then, too, it was possible to excavate a kernel of socioeconomic grievance from the ashes. It is always worth tracking the underlying forces that lead to public disorder. But that analysis can also be used to sanitise and normalise the kind of political rhetoric that makes scapegoats of migrants and inflames the grievances it purports to address. There is no justifiable pathway from a complaint about inadequate public service provision and fear of crime to terrorising innocent people, destroying public amenities and attacking the police. There are places across the UK where deprivation and social alienation, simmering for years, can be mobilised as racist violence. There is a line between acknowledging the social conditions that make such a danger possible and narrating those conditions in ways that make violence more likely. The boundary is not hard to see, which brings all the more shame on the politicians who routinely cross it.
