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A fund should be set up to pay for unionists to learn about their culture - and STOP burning bonfires, a senior Sinn Fein member has said.

Jim McVeigh, the party’s leader on Belfast City Council, also rounds on a number of state agencies for their handling of bonfires over the Twelfth period.

He accuses the PSNI of “cowardice” in their policing of the fires and says the Northern Ireland Environment Agency’s “silence” over damage caused by them has been “pathetic”.

The West Belfast councillor also says the Housing Executive and Belfast City Council should pay for repairs to an apartment block damaged by a massive bonfire on the edge of Sandy Row in South Belfast .

In his vision for the future of bonfires, the veteran republican says he collected for bonfires as a child, but adds that the internment bonfires in West Belfast were replaced with street parties that grew into the West Belfast Festival.

He says that rather than wait until next year a “long overdue debate” about bonfires needs to happen in the coming months so solutions can be found ahead of next July. He also says “political leadership” from unionism is needed if any progress is to be made.

Turning to the role of government agencies, Cllr McVeigh is particularly critical of the NIEA.

He says: “How is it possible, when you think of the environmental damage done, the dirty nature of the way these things are stored to the burning of them, and the stuff that it’s putting up into the air yet the NIEA have done nothing, have said nothing.

“We know the type of environmental damage these bonfires can do, and yet the NIEA, the agency responsible for the environment are silent. If this was a spillage into a river, they’d be all over the news with what they’re doing. Yet year in, year out there’s not a peep from the NIEA about any of this stuff.”

The police are also criticised, along with the NIEA, as “their role in this has been pathetic, it’s been cowardly”.

He adds: “They have turned a blind eye to activities that are illegal. It’s actually illegal, no matter what the police say, to gather material with the intention of burning a bonfire simply in the middle of a road, in the middle of a playpark, next to apartments, it actually is illegal.”

Cllr McVeigh accuses turning a “blind eye to crime, hate crimes, to illegal tipping and dumping to environmental damage”, adding: “These people have just disappeared, they have just turned a blind eye to all sorts of illegal activity. It is a disgrace.”

But he says his party intends to confront these agencies.

He adds: “What we want in the weeks and months ahead, now the Twelfth is over, is an engagement with all these agencies to ask them, to demand that they step up, show some courage and we begin to work out a solution. They cannot be allowed, going forward, to remain silent.”

Rounding on the police, McVeigh says their stance is “it’s not their role, it’s always somebody else’s job”, adding: “That can’t be allowed to continue.”

He says there is no need for any “new law”, adding: “There’s environmental law, there’s fly-tipping, there’s hate crime. You look at some of these bonfires, take the Ravencroft one. Health and safety, environmental law, it’s on public property. There’s hate crime material on some of these bonfires.

“They are breaking a number of laws, not just one law. We need the laws that we have to be respected and enforced by the relative agencies. Belfast Council at last showed a bit of courage by taking those injunctions, even though they had little or no impact. They at least sent a signal that this Council, going forward, wasn’t going to turn a blind eye to this stuff, wasn’t going to do stupid things like keeping material only for it to be returned and burned.

“It’s certainly acted as a catalyst for what we think is a long overdue debate.”

Asked if he has any sympathy for police not rigorously enforcing the law for fear it could inflame tensions, he says he has “no sympathy whatsoever”.

Drawing a comparison, he says if a coffin containing an effigy of Margaret Thatcher or Tony Blair appeared on a Guy Fawkes bonfire in England “there would be an outcry over that”.

He adds: “The problem here is that there has been a blind eye turned to what can be only be described as hate crimes.

“This notion that it’s okay to burn effigies. I was as offended when the Divis bonfire [several years ago], which we fought tooth and nail to stop, had union jacks on it. That was sickening, disgraceful, nasty, xenophobic, sectarian, call it what you will. There has to be zero tolerance for this sort of thing. But for too long here, there’s been a blind eye turned to these activities as if they don’t hurt anybody.”

He also drew a comparison with the recent appearance of IRA style banners at the Celtic v Linfield game.

He adds: “Look at the banners at the Celtic match. They have been condemned by Celtic, you’ve UEFA taking action. Sport can’t tolerate nonsense like that, of any sort whether it’s Rangers, Celtic whom ever. Here, UEFA intervened, Celtic condemned. But there was a banner on one of the bonfires, about one of the Celtic players who’s black, and a reference to eating bananas.

“I’m not aware of any unionist politician, or even the police for that matter, saying anything about that, criticising that. If that had of happened in England, Wales or Scotland there would rightly have been a huge political outcry. But here it’s say nothing because if we confront these people there’ll be murder.

“You can’t turn a blind eye, you can’t turn a cheek to these type of activities because all that does is endorse sectarianism and racism. So I think now’s the time, we need to take the time between now and next year to try and ensure that these things don’t happen again. There has to be firm legal intervention on the part of those agencies that have responsibilities like the Council, like the Housing Executive.”

Turning to what he sees as a process to find solution for issues around bonfires, Cllr McVeigh describes Belfast City Council’s bonfire management strategy as “a disaster”.

But in a move sure to spark some controversy, he says there needs to be a strategy along with a “substantial fund, a fund that should be contributed to by central government, local councils, other agencies”.

The strategy will involved suggesting to communities where there are bonfires “particularly where there are these nasty bonfires, like Ravenscroft, Hope Street, etc, don’t have a bonfire, celebrate your culture in a different way”.

Cllr McVeigh adds: “We will support you financially in other ways, over a number of months in the run up to the Twelfth. Learn about your history, have debates, show films, take people down to the Boyne, take kids away to do kayaking etc. Do all of that, but you don’t have a nasty, dirty environmentally damaging bonfire right in the middle of a public amenity or you don’t put stuff on it to offend people.

“If it’s all about the Twelfth, if all about the Protestant Reformation, if it’s all about religious freedom, then do it in a constructive way. Have street parties, have debates, have lectures, take people to the Orange museum and we’ll play our part, we think we should play our part in funding that type of activity.”

Offering what he sees as one avenue unionists could go down, the Court Cllr says the Féile is an example.

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He adds: “People forget that we had our bonfires in the 70s. I was only a kid, but I collected for bonfires, the anti-internment bonfires. But political leaders on our side in the 70s, people like Gerry Adams, recognised that all these bonfires were doing was destroying our own communities.

“They were damaging our own environment, they were horrible looking, they attracted anti-social behaviour. The politics, the historical background, was being forgotten about and a debate began about an alternative and the alternative became the West Belfast Festival. Street parties instead of bonfires.”

He admits a “long term strategy is required”.

But adds: “There’s no magic wand here, but what is required is political leadership in the first instance, is leadership from [government] agencies, a determination to oppose illegal activity, to confront hate crimes and to work with people who are prepared to move away from those type of activities with a strategy which is good for everybody, good for communities and good for the people who are on the receiving end of some of this stuff.”

He says that any programme to transfer bonfires could also be applied to those in nationalist areas.

Slating unionist reaction to bonfires he accuses some DUP politicians of ‘disappearing’ due to the fact the party were backed by the Loyalist Communities Council. He criticises South Belfast MLA Christopher Stalford for not visiting residents in flats damaged by the Sandy Row bonfire and South Belfast MP Emma Pengelly for a social media post in which she said we “live in a free society within the UK where opposition, offensiveness and flag burning is not outlawed”.

(Image: Kelvin Boyes/PressEye)

Regarding the Council and Housing Executive paying for damage to the Sandy Row flats, he says the Council “have a responsibility, but the Housing Executive have the biggest responsibility, as that’s Housing Executive land” the bonfire was on.

But Cllr McVeigh insists Sinn Fein is “not opposed to all bonfires, but we are opposed to bonfires on playparks, or beside people’s homes or that any of these hate crimes associated with them”.

He adds: “We are not implacably opposed to bonfires, we do not want to see an end to bonfires. We want to see an end to dangerous, nasty bonfires that damage property, threaten people’s lives or generate hate as well as environmental damage.”

Cllr McVeigh says part of the problem with bonfires is an inability or unwillingness to confront sectarianism or even admit its existence.

He says this problem is ongoing and was highlighted recently with an event to publicise the new Innovation Factory which sits on the old Mackies site off the Springfield Road. Cllr McVeigh said he was contacted by people angry at the fact event, looking at the history of the site, failed to address what has regarded by many as the lack of Catholics who worked there despite it being next to a Catholic neighbourhood.

Invoking the problems faced by playwright Sam Thompson when he tried to stage his play Across The Bridge about sectarianism at the shipyard, McVeigh says “there is this reluctance across the board to confront ths history of sectarianism in this state”.

He added: “I lived beside Mackies. I was born in Forest Street and Mackies was the gable wall at the end of our street but no one in our street worked at Mackies.

“If you lived in Birmingham, Manchester or indeed Dublin the people who would live around any type of factory would work in that factory, but, by in large, yes there was obviously a small number, a minority of Catholics, worked in the place, every time the horn would go at the end of the day the workforce would spill out the gates, down Cupar Street and onto the Shankill. Or, down through our street across Beechmount and into the Village and Sandy Row. The people who lived around it, who were unemployed, watched as they made their way home.”

He said the Innovation Factory is a positive project about the future, but that the history of the site cannot be “whitewashed”.