Letter: Leadership of Carla Lockhart and her DUP colleagues at Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign parade in Scarva an example to all
A letter from David Rose:
At the weekend Carla Lockhart and party colleague Diane Forsythe put themselves in the frontline of an emerging culture war that threatens to drag Northern Ireland back to darker days.
What they did was put Northern Ireland’s need for a peaceful outcome to a situation in Scarva above a justifiable instinct to avoid the now tiresome and overly emotional outrage that defines the liberal/left fellowship that composes Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Alliance Party, the Green Party and People Before Profit.
On Saturday (June 6) a group called the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign (IPSC) held the Great March for Gaza which happened to pass through Scarva on the Newry towpath on route from Lurgan to Newry.
Being a decidedly unionist community, the people of Scarva might be more inclined to support the Israeli position at the current time, and they would certainly have preferred being left to privately remember the many allied soldiers who died liberating the Normandy beaches on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
But that hardly seemed to have concerned the IPSC which seemed to have taken the view that it would only take a couple of minutes for the parade to pass by and the local community should be able to stomach such a minor inconvenience on the occasional times it might happen.
Unfortunately this was not a view shared across the unionist community and people from across the wider family came to stand in solidarity with the residents of Scarva as the unwanted and uninvited parade passed by their community. And it is true that some sought to hide their identity by wearing a mask.
One of the most outraged members of the liberal/left fellowship was Sinn Fein MP for Newry and Armagh Chris Hazzard, who found common ground with outraged Alliance MP for Lagan Valley Sorcha Eastwood. He was most especially upset that a politician would ever be seen in the company of men who sought to hide their identity by wearing masks.
Elsewhere, SDLP supremo Claire Hanna made common cause with the rest of the liberal/left fellowship and made it known that she was not one bit pleased.
But truth be told, Carla Lockhart and her DUP colleagues delivered the goods and the community in Scarva did end up stomaching the IPSC parade that passed uninvited and unwanted by the local people.
As a result, she was able to report that though she had had to, ‘intervene, had to de-escalate, had to negotiate with the police, encourage the community and we were able to keep what could have been an absolute bloodbath very quiet, peaceful, and ultimately no incidents’.
An excellent example to all and perhaps a marker for how real leadership enables resilient communities to withstand the occasional discomfort of a passing parade that might make them politically uncomfortable.
And finally, one last thought. Is the liberal/left fellowship as outraged when those Hamas chaps choose to wear masks to hide their identity in Gaza?
David Rose, former Progressive Unionist Party activist with experience of West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem