Ulster divide
PROTESTANTS who rioted in Belfast over the weekend are misdirecting their anger. Rather than their old sectarian rivals, the Catholic nationalists, their real enemies are ignorance and outmoded job skills.
The immediate cause of the riots was the refusal by the quasi-judicial Parades Commission to allow the Orange Order to march down Workman Avenue, which connects Catholic Springfield Road with Protestant Shankill Road in northwest Belfast. Instead, the commission shifted the route a short distance, through the old Mackies factory site. The exclusively Protestant Orange Order refused, and rioting broke out in North Belfast -- a traditional flashpoint -- and other neighborhoods, recalling the worst of the Troubles in the 1970s and '80s.
Ian Paisley and Reg Empey, leaders of the two major Protestant parties, criticized the Parades Commission more than the rioters. The British government established the commission in 1997 to decide whether these provocative parades should be allowed to march past Catholic neighborhoods. Protestant politicians should have applauded the compromise, not denounced it.
Beyond the issue of parades, many Protestants feel that they have been shortchanged by the peace process, which culminated in the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and the emergence of Catholics into economic and political prominence. ''They have got rid of everything Protestants hold dear . . . ," one rioter told a reporter for the Guardian newspaper. ''The police is now filled with Taigs [Catholics] and they treat us young Protestants as scum."
Profound changes have taken place in Northern Ireland. Forty years ago, Mackies employed 7,000 people, almost all Protestants, who built machines for textile processing. Protestants controlled most of the jobs in the shipbuilding and the other industries that dominated the Belfast economy.
The desirable blue-collar jobs are just about all gone, and the future of Northern Ireland lies in the service industries that have brought prosperity to the Irish Republic. Many residents of the Shankill and the other Protestant working class neighborhoods lack the education for these jobs.
Despite the violence, 5,000 people attended a classical music concert in downtown Belfast Saturday night -- an event unlikely to draw a crowd during the '70s. Northern Ireland as a whole is more peaceful and prosperous because of the Good Friday Agreement.
Mackies, employing only 330, closed in 1999. A couple of years ago, the government broke ground for an office park on the site. Few companies want to set up shop in a riot zone. Protestant politicians need to tell their constitutents to stop rioting, avoid provocative parades, and prepare themselves for the equal-opportunity jobs of the future.
