West Belfast Community Treated With Contempt
West Belfast has taken another blow in the ongoing battle for ownership of the Andersonstown barracks site.
Community activists in the Stop the Sell-Off Campaign have been lobbying and organising in favour of public ownership and a community centred initiative on the site of the former British Crown Forces barracks for many months. In an initial success they recently exposed and stalled the shady deal between private developers of the Carville Group and the Six County Department for Social Development.
The deal would have meant the establishment of private properties for the sole profit of the Carville Group, an initiative which, had it been pushed through, would have had no benefit for the local area whatsoever.
Residents organised and made it clear that no such development should be allowed and recently forced Six County Social Development minister Margaret Ritchie to review the privatisation plan for the site. Having successfully stalled the bid, the Stop the Sell-Off Campaign awaited the consultation on the future of the site and conducted their own survey, to which respondents overwhelmingly replied in favour of community ownership.
Brian Kelly, a local resident and chairperson of the SSOC, released a statement on behalf of the group following the success of their recent mobilisation, which showed the eagerness of the residents to engage in an open and honest consultation with the DSD.
“We look forward to a full, inclusive and binding consultation that will put control over the future of the site back into the hands of the public, where it has belonged all along,” he said.
However, any optimism that the campaigners might have had has been seriously dented in the face of the most recent move on Ritchie’s part.
The following is a more recent statement by Kelly.
“When the Carvill Group announced, in late September, that it was withdrawing plans to build a block of private flats on the former Andersonstown barracks site, they presented SDLP Minister for Social Development Margaret Ritchie with a perfect opportunity to put things right.
“Under Direct Rule ministers the DSD had opted for a development process that completely excluded the local community from any say in how the site would be used, and the result was — predictably enough — a commercially-driven, tower block monstrosity that was so offensive that it managed to make some people nostalgic for the familiar architecture of the barracks.
“It wasn’t just the design that people objected to, though. Local residents and the wider West Belfast community felt rightly that, after having put up with a hostile and unwanted police barracks in their midst through very difficult and painful years, they deserved first say in what would replace it. In their starry-eyed moments, government spin-doctors call this sort of thing a “peace dividend,” or a “new dispensation.” But apparently there was none coming our way.
“Judging by her comments in Saturday’s Andersonstown News (“The hub of Andersonstown?” 24 November 2007), Margaret Ritchie has learned nothing from the entire debacle, and rather than taking the opportunity to start anew with local people at the heart of this process, has decided to go around us, yet again offering private developers first say in what will be built on the site and then — one has to guess — bringing local residents in later on to rubber stamp a decision that has already been made.
“We can assure her that people will not allow themselves to be used in this way. Not one brick will go on the site unless this community has first say in how the site will be used for its own benefit.
“People have opinions, of course. In every survey ever taken among local residents, people are overwhelmingly in favour of the site being set aside for 100% community use. Of nearly 200 local residents surveyed at the Reclaim Our Site Festival in mid-September, people’s top preferences were for a youth centre, a community arts and culture centre, and/or a garden or open space. At the very bottom of the list were private flats (2 votes) and commercial shops (0), the two options that DSD seems most inclined to push for.
“Whenever they have been presented with the option, people have voted overwhelmingly for a publicly funded facility on the site. Margaret Ritchie suggests in her statement to AN that the community’s views are “extremely important” to her, and that DSD “will be contacting the local community in the immediate future to see how best to assist them” as the process moves forward. We would advise people not to wait by their phones.
“There has been no real engagement since the DSD acquired the site more than two years ago, and none even since Carvill withdrew in September. There is no mystery about where this community stands on the issue. In fact, the unanimity of local opinion is the real problem for DSD. If local people were signing petitions and holding pickets and sponsoring festivals demanding that the site be sold off to private developers you can bet that DSD would have engaged the community long ago, the deal would be signed and sealed, the tower block built.
But demands for a community centre — something so clearly needed in the area — present DSD with a problem. The dilemma for DSD in relation to this site — and it is a problem bigger than petty party politicking — is that the Northern Ireland Assembly has accepted the logic of privatisation, of handing over public assets to private companies whose main priority is not the public good but private profit.
Among the pile of correspondence obtained by the Stop the Sell-Off Campaign under Freedom of Information legislation, one thing stands out clearly: DSD is more than aware that any real consultation will confirm local preference for a public facility. “If we are to pre-consult on every site,” one of the internal DSD communications warns, “then all we are likely to get are projects which require…public sector funding — with the private sector options ruled out.” (McArdle to McGrath, 2 August 2007).
“In other words, given a real say people are more likely to reject handoffs to the private sector in favour of publicly funded facilities that elevate our communities, and especially the most vulnerable among us. This explains a great deal, I think, about why the DSD has avoided real consultation all along.
Forty years ago next year this community and others like it across the north rose up against a sectarian and undemocratic system. Over the decades that followed, the Andersonstown RUC barracks became, in the eyes of local people, a potent and hated symbol of the repressive and undemocratic character of the British presence.
We are told from all quarters these days that all of that is behind us, that we live in a “new Northern Ireland” where democracy can be taken for granted. But the DSD’s continued manoeuvring and double-talk over the development of the barracks site suggests otherwise: that we have merely traded one form of antidemocratic practice for another, and that under the new Assembly ordinary people are to be excluded from any real say in rebuilding this society, just as they have been in the past.”
“One way or another we are determined that they will not get away with it.”
Éirígí spokesperson Daithí Mac an Mháistír expressed support for the SSOC and scalded the DSD and its privatisation strategy.
“This small campaign in one small area of Ireland is indicative of the litany of similar issues that working class communities face the length and breadth of the country. The most vulnerable of people have to battle daily with the status quo to get delivery on even the most basic of rights and this battle is no different,” he said.
“It is clear that the constitutional, parliamentary avenues laid down have failed this community and, as a result, they must take matters into their own hands – and not for the first time. The people of west Belfast have endured mistreatment and oppression for decades under successive regimes, which seek simply to keep them in their place. But they have resisted and defeated such bullying before and we in Éirígí commend the activists of the Andersonstown/Glen Road area involved in the Stop the Sell-Off Campaign as a worthy example of this proud tradition.
Daithí finished, “We wish to extend our solidarity to the SSOC and the people of west Belfast in their endeavours to thwart the privatisation agenda of the Six County assembly and the British establishment in Ireland.”