Loyalists fear being left behind

The Protestant working class traditionally worked in heavy industry

Loyalists in working class areas claim they have lost more than they have gained in the six years since the Good Friday Agreement.

Poor quality housing, unemployment and lack of access to services make some areas feel like they have been left out in the cold, they claim.

Michael Briggs, from the East Belfast Community Development Agency, said that the area had "suffered in silence" as thousands of jobs had been lost in the shipyards.

He said: "That unemployment has just existed. There has been no packages in place to retrain people."

'Suffering deprivation'

Members of the majority loyalist grouping, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA), have met Secretary of State Paul Murphy to express their concerns about what they regard as a lack of investment and community initiatives in their areas.

On Monday, a Progressive Unionist Party delegation urged the secretary of state to set up a series of task forces in loyalist areas dealing with education, health, social welfare and housing.

Mr Briggs said that community leaders were fighting hard to revive the communities but support was needed.

He said: "We can't do it on our own. We as community people have got ideas but we need the government behind us and we need money to make it happen."

Many protestant areas have empty houses

The Reverend Colin Hall-Thompson, who represents the Church of Ireland in the Ballymacarrett area of east Belfast, said that much had been done to redress the historical imbalance between the Protestant and Catholic communities.

"But it has swung the other way and people have forgotten that there are inner city areas with Protestant people living in them who are suffering deprivation," he said.

Duncan Morrow, chief executive of the Community Relations Council, said that there were big changes affecting both the economy and the demography of Northern Ireland.

He said: "For example, Protestants in general have moved out of Belfast over the past 30 years while the Catholic population has remained resident.

Often in loyalist areas you get huge disputes between different parties and there are problems between different paramilitary groups fighting over it Duncan Morrow Community Relations Council

"So there are a lot of houses empty in what were Protestant areas and a lot of demand in Catholic areas."

Mr Morrow said the Protestant working class traditionally got jobs in heavy industry which had disappeared in recent years.

"Catholic working classes historically invested in education and in this generation, education has proved to be the better bet," he said.

"There is some evidence that among young Protestant males, school achievement is very low and that will have long-term effects on the economy.

"The skills required to work in the shipyard are not the skills required to work in the Hilton hotel."

Mr Morrow said that there was not a huge imbalance between loyalist and republican areas.

However, he said: "The same money invested in different places does not lead to the same results.

'Territorial control'

"Often in loyalist areas you get huge disputes between different parties and there are problems between different paramilitary groups fighting over it. This causes all sorts of problems."

He said that to a degree, it was an issue of ending territorial control by individuals and making sure people got access to the services they needed.

"I think that is why it is not just about doling out to individual groups here.

"It is about creating conditions under which a vision can be created under which the communities can actually work together and everyone gets a share rather than some godfathers dividing it out - that has to be finished.

"The government's agenda is also to ensure that paramilitarism is no longer the defining factor of who gets what."