Turning hatred into hope

27th January 1995, 12:00am

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Turning hatred into hope

https://www.tes.com/magazine/archive/turning-hatred-hope
Nick Holdsworth on how former Ulster hard men are helping point the young to more positive goals. Hugh Sinclair has already contributed to Northern Ireland’s woeful statistics on youth crime, delinquency and despair.

A patchy school record followed by long bouts of unemployment and a central role in Belfast’s Shankill Road street corner society - where groups of youngsters hang out seeking the excitement of petty crime, drugs or worse - set him firmly on the path to nowhere.

He counts a brief flirtation with Loyalist paramilitaries, the Ulster Volunteer Force, a cocaine habit which brought him to the brink of suicide and three years in a young offenders’ institute for possession of a handgun, as the milestones of a young life drained away within the confused and bitter sectarian world of inner city Belfast.

But now, at the age of 27, Mr Sinclair’s life is about something a lot more powerful than the next drug fix or crime. He is working to help other Shankill youngsters turn their backs on the violent and criminal influences fostered in communities where too many still give implicit approval to terrorism, and to encourage them to find the strength to commit their lives to positive, peaceful purposes.

Mr Sinclair is a trainer with the Higher Force Challenge - a voluntary youth programme backed by government funding through the Belfast Action Team and the probation service - which puts small groups of high-risk young people referred by the probation and other services through intensive courses designed to help them develop the confidence and self-esteem to make their own positive choices in life. Three groups of 12 youngsters take the course each year and subsequent further education and employment rates - as high as 90 per cent for one course - are a testament to its success. A full cross-community programme, teaming up with a Catholic youth group from the Ardoyne district of Belfast is scheduled to begin next month.

An evaluation commissioned by the scheme’s financial backers last year and written by Jim Lewis, a community youth work expert, said: “The young people have horrendous offending records - drugs, burglaries, grievous bodily harm - but through the programme they grasp the understanding that they can achieve in life without resorting to crime.”

Higher Force Challenge, based at the Stadium youth and community centre on the Shankill Road in West Belfast, has a religious dimension - its director, Pastor Jack McKee, is a Protestant clergyman and its volunteer administrator, Kenny McClinton, is a born-again Christian and part-time preacher.

But Mr McClinton is also a former paramilitary - an ex-commander with the feared Ulster Freedom Fighters - who was released from prison 18 months ago after serving 16 years of a 20-year life sentence for two sectarian killings in the Seventies. At his trial in 1979 the judge described Mr McClinton as a “cold blooded, callous and ruthless man . . . in fact a UFF assassin.”

Mr McClinton, who underwent a prison conversion to Christianity and later survived a brutal attempt on his life by Republican inmates - is now committed to a peaceful path out of Ulster’s political and social troubles. Like other men once counted among the most feared terrorist killers of the Troubles, he is keen to use his experience of the evils of paramilitary activity to guide today’s youngsters away from violence and crime.

Mr Sinclair and others at the HFC agree that Mr McClinton’s past helps give him credibility among the tough, disillusioned young men of Shankill, cynically accustomed to the appeals of do-gooders with little or no understanding of the lives they have led.

“The advantage in working with people like Kenny is that they have been through these criminal and terrorist experiences and are now doing something positive and can say: ‘I’ve been there and it does not work, but this does’, ” he said.

Mr McClinton said: “I can’t bring back the lives of the people I have taken. What I can do, by the grace of God, is to save other families from experiencing the same bereavement and terror.”

It is a measure of the new mood that men from different sides of the sectarian divide can work together for a peaceful and democratic future. Take Billy Hutchinson and Jim Auld. Mr Hutchinson, a former UVF commander, spent 15 years in prison for his part in the killing of two Catholics in Belfast, a crime for which he now recognises “moral responsibility”.

Mr Auld, a Republican, was interned in what is now The Maze prison under emergency powers, although he was never charged with any offence or membership of an organisation.

Now the pair work together at an unofficial level, talking with cross-community groups of young people about their lives, hopes, opportunities and future. “I want to believe that there is an alternative to violence, ” says Mr Auld, while accepting that some young people will not agree. Mr Hutchinson adds: “I came from a time when I thought violence was the right way, to where I think the best way forward is through dialogue.”

This kind of work is finding growing support among those in authority. Breidge Gadd, Northern Ireland’s chief probation officer, has criticised the security vetting of ex-paramilitary prisoners, warning that to exclude them from work in the community could have adverse implications for the peace process.

She told The TES: “Over the years we have been working with released paramilitary prisoners from both Loyalist and Republican groups, who help us with community groups we fund supervising both offenders and those at risk. They are excellent at working in the community and tend to make very good employees. This track record makes me convinced that if we are to have a lasting peace it’s critical to find employment for ex-prisoners.”

Her concerns are supported by the stark statistics of the human cost of the Troubles: behind the headline figures of the dead and injured of 25 years of Troubles, the cost to young people can be counted through the statistics of social deprivation.

Unemployment reaches 50 per cent in some areas for the under 25s. Crime is also a big problem with robbery and joy-riding topping the list. Truancy rates overall run at six per cent, rising to 17 per cent in parts of north and west Belfast.

A YMCA survey in 1994 found that half of 12 to 25-year-olds had been offered drugs when at school. Last year solvent abuse claimed the lives of 10 teenagers. Young people under 25 are one and a half times more likely to commit suicide than those in the rest of the UK.

Although many hesitate to give credit to men who have murdered for paramilitary causes, pointing to the majority who have been quietly working for peace within all communities throughout the Troubles, youth workers recognise the role such men can play.

Youth worker Terry Mearns, a Scots Ulsterman who lives in the staunchly Loyalist and Protestant Shankill area of West Belfast, was a teenager when the Troubles started. As a 19-year-old member of the “tartan gang” he was once offered a pistol by a UDA man and told: “Go kill a Catholic.”

Mr Mearns refused, but to this day knows how easily he could have taken the terrorist path. He understands only too well the peer pressures youngsters in sectarian communities have to live with.

He is helping to develop a new approach,“single identity work”, which helps young people examine their cultural roots to see what they have in common with their peers from other communities. “When you are sure of where you are here,” he says, his hand on his heart, “then you don’t need to feel defensive, you are more likely to listen to other people and not feel threatened.”

A mural on the Loyalist Glencairn estate reflects this new mood. It says: “English ascendancy and Irish chauvinism have combined to suppress knowledge of Ulster history to deprive Ulstermen of legitimate pride in their heritage and national identity.” Beneath the mural, a postscript asks passers-by: “Do you know your history?” In an initial exploration of the single identity theme, its power to transform how young people see themselves was evident.

Kathie, 14, drew gasps of surprise when she said she liked the Catholic prayer, the Hail Mary. “I like it because they say Blessed be the Mother.” Protestant religion concentrated on a male deity, leaving little room for a female contribution. The Catholics seemed to take a more rounded view, she said.

It’s from such small, but significant steps as these, youth workers believe, that tomorrow’s world in Northern Ireland can be reshaped.

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