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Past Imperfect Present Tense: equality and the Northern Irish
conflictEithne McLaughlin The Queen’s
University of Belfast
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Introduction
• Context The path to here
• Can the case be viewed as a majority – minority relations? (inter-group) issue? Like ethnicity in other societies
• What has been/should be the public administration [the public administration response to inequalities & inequities& intergroup conflict ]?
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The path to Here
• Equality & social inclusion in Ireland Project (EU funded project
• Equality & social inclusion = equity
• Equality of opportunity + basal equality of condition = fair equality of opportunity
•
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European equality policy developments
• Moving to ‘single equality approach
• Led by UK & NI (Irish conflict & UK devolution)
• Generic nondiscrimination law
• Single enforcement authority
• Introduction of positive equality duties
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The Social Politics Of Recognition
• Importance of group identities and systemic discrimination (exclusion)
• Requirement for policy response in terms of both individual and group characteristics, memberships & circumstances
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Governmental single equality approach
• Duties on public bodies to promote equality of opportunity and give due regard to good relations between persons of different genders, ages, marital status, with/without dependants, different beliefs, ethnicity, sexuality
• Nongovernmental concerns• Divide & rule potential implicit hierarchies of
deservingness,• The cindarella concern espec re disability
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The Cindrella Concern
• In NI context all lose out to dominance &
• Hypersensitivity of equality & HR political/religious belief (in)equalities
• Social political concerns may always lose out to which ever intergroup issue is dominant local electoral political issues?
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Is disability different?
• quantum or essence ?
• A bit not enough to justify separatist position & lose the possibility of benefiting through levelling up
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The policy response to disability: Needs or rights?
• Are the interests of disabled people best met by policy systems based on a minority of one
• OR
• A systems/group/rights response
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The HR Equality ‘tradition’
• Fair/same treatment & protection of individual from irrational prejudice of others to their group membership
• Artifical divide of individuals’ personal & group characteristics
• The universal equality question = how much/far should majorities/the dominant be expected to change their institutions, systems culture in order to accommodate/include minorities ‘The Other’
• Individualist & posthoc ignores ‘the past within the present’
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Social Welfare/public Policy response
• Biomedical & social professions’ responses to impairment & chronic illhealth
• Individualistic moral paternalism• Locate dysfunction of disability within the
individual’s impairment • Disability movement locate it within the
responses of human systems & social practices to impairment (social environmental model of disability)
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Needs or Rights
• Need = high professional power via gatekeeping/discretion/labelling
• Disability = a minority of One?• Underdevelopment of social economic & cultural
rights international law & practice• Reality of multiple & contingent identities• difficult to draft generic multidomain rights• Individual rights do not solve intergroup • Allocation decisions
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Three Distinctive Disability policy needs
• Self esteem, personal & health care (organism survival)
• Group esteem/value, culture, participation & representation (the politics of recognition) ‘Nothing about Us Without Us’
• Market rejection & failure
• Quanum difference
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Construction of a disability equality strategy/audit or review
• Consult local DM on relative salience of each of the three needs within their specific context – priority framework for change, review & action
• Debrief/ delearn cultural definitions of disability held by practictioners & decision-makers
• Move away from minority of One while holding to high quality
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Equality Strategy cont.
• Systemic response to disability embedded in/broadcast by institutional , structures & habitual practices
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Forms of discrimination, violence & abuse
• Direct intentional harm, disadvantage abuse of individual because of their presumed group membership
• Indirect harm by product of application of apparently neutral, universal norms, rules provisions ignoring difference when you shouldn’t
• [institutional]• Systemic = whole society structural & cultural
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Toward a Theory of Systemic Discrimination & Equality/Equity
• Whole society & whole person understanding of (in) equality, privilege, oppression, & resistance to change
• Integrated theory of human development & progress/learning
• Culturalist analysis of public policy & governance
• Critical social theory of maintenance of relations of (in)equality & oppression
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Integrated theory of human development/learning & progress
• Meaningless & contingent nature of separations & mystiques of personal, social, economic, political development
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Equality & conflict: the case of Northern Ireland
• Eithne McLaughlin The Queen’s University of Belfast
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Specificities & Generalities
• Northern Ireland an example of ‘Ethno-national conflict ? Quebec-Canada parallels; Arcadian overtones
• Israel -Palestine?• North-south Cyprus?• Basque Spain?• Kashmir • Narcissism of minor difference?• Nationalism, ethnicity land & group attachments as forms
of ancestor worship?/ rigidities
• Long low level conflict 3,600 killed, 50,000 injured pop. 2 million over 30 years 50/50 state and paramilitary perpetration of interpersonal violence
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Extant ethno-national inequalities
• Growing catholic/protestant female employment inequalities
• Reduced catholic underrepresentation in employment espec. senior levels public & private sector
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Equality,Conflict & Politics of Northern Ireland
• Irish Nationalists ethno-national ‘civil’ conflict ‘The troubles’ area subcomponent of the long war for self-determination & freedom from British rule the plantation 16th century
• pre 1994 political goal was Irish unity regardless of consent of Unionists; post 1994 with consent of unionists;
• To Scotch-Irish Unionists & Loyalists conflict began in 1969 when republican terrorists took up violence to achieve their political aim of destruction of Northern Ireland
•
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Ontological (in)security
• Absence of consensus on nature, duration, causes & solutions to conflict & division
• Ontological insecurity provides a commonality of repressive practices of state repression & apparent intractability of the problem
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Nationalist Perspective on equality & conflict
• Equality equity and justice between groups is as necessary as that between individuals if the conditions for sustainable democracy are to be met
• Absence of these pre 1972
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Unionist perspective on equality & conflict
• What’s equality got to do with it?• Inequality & exclusion of nationalists pre 1972 was
justifiable necessary response to ontological insecurity & threat of extinction
• Security policy >individual and group rights• The ‘Disloyal Other’/serpent within the breast• Majoritarianism + one party rule natural outcomes of
parliamentary democracy • No acceptance of validity of the universal equality
question how far should majority change in order to include minorities [tolerate, assimilate?]
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Outcomes
• By 1970• Systemic discrimination had resulted in
Nationalist minority (40%) socioeconomic disadvantage, limited political representation & civil rights
• Limited equality, identity, & social political discourses & action
• Hypersensitivity of equality, equity & HR issues
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hypersensitivity
• Inequality/inequity was/ was not the cause of politically motivated violence
• ‘They were in the wrong’ for resorting to violence ‘They were in the wrong’ for denying our human rights;
• [‘The Blame Game’]• Intergenerational responsibilities for the ‘sins of the
fathers’?• Recognition of & redress for past injustice = preferential
treatment threatens; good relations anti HR • ‘Get Over it’ the past is the past
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The 1998 good Friday agreement
• Negotiated settlement: 3 main components
• Equality & h
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