W2B-012 Community - Policing-0.txt
Community charged

Malachi O'Docherty

Whenever I hear the word community, I smell a rat. When I hear about a concerned community, I wonder about all the people who are dismissed as unconcerned.

The arrogance of Julie Burchill in recently describing herself as 'an important member of the gay community' was transparent, but by what right was she traduced by other gays as less part of that 'community' than themselves? Who decided that gays are a community? Who decides that some gays properly belong to that community and some not?

The answer perhaps lies in a notion of community as activity rather than as merely a collection of related people. Not all gays know each other, but most, presumably, have shared interests; in their legal rights, in the provision of service, in modes of sexual enjoyment that spill over into fashion and music.

The black community in parts of England is concerned to be seen as law abiding. So when Paul Condon announces that most muggers are black and male, there is outrage, but there is also a rallying of 'community leaders' to the support of the police. Bernie Grant says: "I call on people to co-operate with the police. No one will make a fuss if the right people are arrested for the right reason"."

Kenan Malik, writing about this in The Guardian said community was the new buzz word whose values hide the new language of racism.

Malik regards the black community has having been given the job, by the police, of criminalising those among it who are not deemed "respectable".

Community is a term of simplification and generalisation which washes over all distinction and enables the silliest and most dangerous political thinking to pass off as credible.

It might be a serviceable tool by which gay activists and blacks can campaign for legislative change in their favour, where they have a 'community of interests', but I smell fascism when I hear the word community. I hear someone claiming to represent people like me or unlike me, and inviting me to decide whether I am in or out.

The word 'community' is rarely used to refer to a group of people living in a defined area. In Northern Ireland it is almost always used to refer to the 'unionist community' or the 'nationalist community', terms which clearly exclude huge numbers of people in the very areas referred to.

The most blatant example of this exclusion was the rigging of the meeting of the Lower Ormeau concerned Community on July 11th, called to decide on whether to try to stop the Twelfth parade of the Ballynafeigh District Lodge of the Orange Order, on the following morning.
At least a third of the people there applauded speakers calling for the parade to be allowed to go ahead, but the two thirds who roared and whistled and stamped their feet in support of protest were represented to the excluded media (two reporters sneaked in anyway) as representing the whole community.
Gerard Rice said no vote was necessary and then went off and told the media that there had been a unanimous decision in favour of blocking the parade.

The result was that those who had gone there to vote against a protest, achieved nothing other than to enhance the impression of support for the view they had gone there to oppose. It was an incredibly optimistic endeavour for so many Lower Ormeau people to try to argue for letting the odious Orangemen through. Having seen how "community democracy" works, they may prefer to stay away next time. Then the Concerned Community really will be able to risk a vote and be confident of unanimous support.

Politically directed action is routinely described in the Northern Ireland media as an expression of community feeling. Dick Grogan, writing in the Irish Times about the meeting the Pilot's Row Community Centre which decided to protest before the Apprentice Boys parade on Derry's Walls said that only fifty people attended the meeting, but that their view was sure to have widespread support.

How was he to know that? The direction of the protest was managed by Sinn F&/ein, which is a minority political party in Derry - though sometimes you would hardly know that, given the current self effacement of the SDLP.

Similarly, when paramilitaries smash up homes, break legs and arms, order people out of the country, this is expressed by their spokespeople as the actions of the community, "the community defending itself", never as arising from the conscientious decisions of political operators who are working to defined goals.

As with the notion of the gay community or the black community as an organic representation of all gays and all blacks, here in Northern Ireland political groupings have been able to appropriate the notion that they are the whole of the community that they arise from, represent it entirely and even define who has the right to live on their patch, or march through it.

This is a triumph for propaganda.

Paramilitaries and political parties puff themselves up until they seem the size of whole geographical areas. Entire denominations of religious belief, including the lapsed and the disillusioned are taken to represent single communities of political aspiration, and it seems to be in no one's interest to question this.

For instance, the loyalist paramilitaries rationalised attacks on random Catholics through attributing IRA support to a nationalist community. The IRA was hardly going to argue with that and say, "But hang on, only a few support us". They were arguing also that their support extended beyond the Sinn F&/ein vote, and cited the passive co-operation of Catholics who declined to stand up to them as evidence of this.

Unionist and British government politicians have been arguing for decades that the solution to the problem of violence was for the communities to give up the gunmen, making similar assumptions about the organic unity of the paramilitaries and the people they lived among. They were all overlooking a complexity in the populations of areas like West Belfast and Rathcoole and Mid Ulster, and it seemed to no one's political advantage to correct them.

Loyalists, likewise, could rationalise that they represented whole communities that did not vote for them by arguing that their political aspirations were served by larger parties. The votes of those who supported the killings went to the DUP or the Ulster Unionists. Republicans were perfectly happy to agree with this excuse because it confirmed their own vision of a monolithic Protestant bloc that sought only to exterminate Catholics. All prods were the same, you could trust none of them.

Mary Holland, writing in the Irish Times, anticipated the West Belfast Festival: "One has the impression of a community proud of its history and traditions and confident of its own ability to make further progress, even to the extent of crossing the psychological barriers which still divide the people."

In other words, the forging of a coherent community identity is a means to making peace with others, if only they would get on with forge their identities too.

Earlier Mary had written of the failure of Shankill Protestants to take pride in the achievements of Michael Longley, Van Morrison, Glenn Patterson and Derek Mahon.

This is trite drivel. People can decide for themselves whether or not to like Michael Longley. It would be hard to reason, without being absurdly sectarian, that just because you are a Protestant from the Shankill you should take pride in him as one of your own.
And it is cruel that the people who do not imagine conveniently agreed identity of the imagined community are regarded as non-existent.
