Northern Ireland must become a more equal society

Northern Ireland is 100 years old. As it emerges into its centenary year, the past weighs heavily in the air. That’s a good thing.

We should learn from history and heed its warnings. It’s important, however, to not let the past cloud the future. We all look back from time to time but life’s daily worries and issues are essential priorities for most of us. Never mind the next 100 years, people are thinking about the next few months:

Will I have enough money this month to pay my bills? Will I get a quick appointment with my GP if I ring my local surgery? Will my child get a good education?

In this centenary year, Northern Ireland’s politicians should look down from the hill and seek a way forward that merges with the public’s thinking about the future. Like the many activists and campaigners in Northern Ireland who campaign for labour conditions, capacity-building in communities, welfare bolstering and equality. Those who work across the artificial divide, that subverts better governance. Working across that divide delivers a unified voice for change and opportunities for all. Irrespective of one’s constitutional preference we should be seeking to ensure that the next 100 years’ is about embedding and sustaining equality.

Northern Ireland increasingly attracts foreign direct investment. This has produced a peace-dividend but mostly for graduates. It would be churlish to deny the value of such opportunities but for many, especially those from the communities that endured the hard brunt of the conflict there is less job security and related benefits. 

In 2017, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions highlighted that there was a sustained increase in those involuntary positioned as temporarily employed. Between 2008 and 2016 that was a 25% increase. Research from the University of Hertfordshire indicates that the number of people working in the gig economy (a labour market characterized by the prevalence of short-term contracts or freelance work as opposed to permanent jobs) has doubled in the last three years. Young people are increasingly likely to be on insecure or zero-hour contracts. This leads to delayed adulthood and other emotional and financial consequences.

Over the past twenty years the welfare state across the UK has been dismantling. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, inadequate benefit levels and debt deductions are the leading drivers of destitution in the UK. The five-week wait for Universal Credit is a particular concern for claimants, often driving them into debt and rent arrears. The two child limit has had a significant and negative impact on families across the UK.

Precarious employment and embedded social injustice is not a unique problem for Northern Ireland but a trend starting to show across the word. Those who propose a united Ireland cannot mask that the south is a neo-liberal society in which the urban and rural poor are also left behind the working elite and in which there are more working poor than any other country in Europe.

Politicians often complain about the brain drain to Britain. Yet, families and young people are more likely to stay if they can get access to good, secure and well paid jobs. Sticking an external investment in one of Belfast’s office blocks and offering people a zero-hour contract is not good enough. Trade unions should be strengthened to provide better representation for workers across the country. Good jobs need to be found across the country, not just Belfast. To make Northern Ireland a more equal society, those with power and influence should be pushing Westminster for a better, stronger welfare system. To begin with, the two-child limit, the bedroom tax, the benefit cap and the five-week wait for Universal Credit must be abolished.

Many who pro-union many want to hear an articulate and inclusive unionism that is finding solutions to the issues above and for the 38,745 people on social housing waiting lists. 27,745 of those people were in housing stress but where is the politics that speaks of them? Across the UK and the Republic of Ireland governments are relying on the private rented sector to meet housing need. This needs to change. Investment in public housing needs to be a priority over the next few years. Northern Ireland should look to Scotland and reform the private rented sector to make it more secure, affordable and accessible.

It will take many years for Northern Ireland to recover from the Troubles. It’s a damning indictment of our post conflict society that the communities most affected by violence aren’t seeing the benefits of peace. All the more so when identity politics triumphs over those that are issue based.

One of Lyra McKee’s most powerful essays was her long read, ‘The Ceasefire Babies.’ In it, she talked about her and friend’s experiences growing up in a working-class area of North Belfast. Lyra talked about her communities experience with mental health, suicide, and poverty. She wrote:

“We were to reap the spoils and prosperity that supposedly came with peace. In the end, we did get the peace – or something close to it – and those who’d caused carnage in the decades before got the money.”

Politicians in Northern Ireland need to make sure that everybody benefits from the peace-process, not just the middle class. Those left behind in our society should be at the forefront of the true politics of hearts and minds.

My generation want more than peace. The absence of violence shouldn’t be the benchmark for success in our society. Young people want good jobs, a decent income, affordable housing, a functioning NHS and a safety net to fall back on if things go wrong.

The past one hundred years don’t need to define the next fifty. In this centenary year, Northern Ireland should keep one eye on the past and focus