Inside Dee Stitt's Charter NI office: Football, Foster...and scripture

The Charter NI office, just opposite the Con Club on the lower Newtownards Road, is no more opulent than any of the surrounding buildings in a working class area once teeming with families who depended on the nearby shipyard for their livelihood.
By The Newsroom
Published 28th Apr 2018, 08:27 BST
Updated 28th Apr 2018, 09:41 BST
David Stitt speaking to the News Letter political editor Sam McBride in the Charter NI office on the Newtownards Road. Photo: PacemakerDavid Stitt speaking to the News Letter political editor Sam McBride in the Charter NI office on the Newtownards Road. Photo: Pacemaker
David Stitt speaking to the News Letter political editor Sam McBride in the Charter NI office on the Newtownards Road. Photo: Pacemaker

David Stitt’s office, on the first floor, is adorned with an eclectic mix of paraphernalia. Above a fireplace hangs an abstract painting, the work of a former loyalist life sentence prisoner.

On the mantlepiece beneath sit pictures of his young daughter – one of many family pictures around the room – beside the instantly recognisable photo of him beside the then first minister Arlene Foster in 2016.

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Just along the wall sit bookshelves filled with files – everything from ‘NIO enhanced disclosure’ to files marked ‘human rights’ and ‘Ex-prisoners’.

On the adjoining wall stands a certificate for the senior loyalist’s 2:1 Bsc degree in community development from Ulster University, beside a framed Manchester United shirt signed by former England captain Wayne Rooney.

Elsewhere in the room there are the usual accoutrements of a business organisation – a coffee-maker, a desk piled with papers, a boardroom table surrounded by chairs and a series of leaflets, including one on good governance.

Perhaps the most surprising item in the office of an alleged paramilitary commander is the Bible verse, written on a whiteboard. The verse is from St Paul’s Epistle to the Galations: “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will [word underlined] reap a harvest if we do not give up!”

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When I comment on the scriptural quote, he says that his mother was a Sunday school teacher and he changes the text each month.

Just a few doors up the Newtownards Road, I interviewed members of the Red Hand Commando who have applied to the Home Office for their paramilitary organisation to be legalised.

Mr Stitt is sceptical about such an approach, saying “that legalise thing will never happen – the Official IRA are still a proscribed organisation and they haven’t fired a shot in anger from 1974; let’s not kid ourselves and let’s not waste time on that...that’s their own personal choice...our feelings, my feelings, the east Belfast UDA’s feelings is [sic] that they want to go through transition; they want to go through the final phase of the peace process...they want to retire with grace.”

The Fresh Start approach involved both carrot and stick. While support is on offer for ‘transition’, the stick is meant to be coordinated police action against paramilitary criminality which is now starting to move forward.

Related topics:FootballArlene Foster