Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Open SecretAuthor(s): David SimpsonSource: Fortnight, No. 314 (Feb., 1993), p. 10Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25553849 .

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^^H BRIEFING

And I promise, we will listen."

The audit has recruited a team of

'auditors'?political scientists, lawyers,

sociologists, statisticians and other

experts?to scrutinise the way the UK

is governed. They include Stephen

Livingstone, Elizabeth Meehan and

John Morison of Queen's University, Belfast.

^

Opon secret

David Simpson

X hree decisions by the Northern

Ireland Fair Employment Tribunal?

in Copeland v Queen's University of Bel

fast, McKernan v Department of the

Environment and McConnell v Police

Authority for Northern Ireland?finally removed the obstructions placed by some of the region's largest employ ers against disclosure of documents

required by individuals making com

plaints of religious discrimination.

A number of complaints against

Queen's were subsequently settled at

the door of the tribunal, or during its

hearings, as disclosures and cross

examination of senior university per

sonnel revealed serious discrepancies, from which the tribunal would have

been entitled to draw an inference of

unlawful religious discrimination.

This must add to the growing pres

sure on the university to take correc

tive action. A recently leaked report

by independent experts revealed that

non-Catholics still comprised almost

80 per cent of the staff at Queen's.

The tribunal has yet to adjudicate half

a dozen or so outstanding Queen's

cases?if it ever gets to hear them.

Meanwhile, Belfast City Council has

been indicted in a ruling that it unlaw

fully discriminated against five com

munity workers, applying in an

internal trawl for a senior post, in

favour of the "least qualified, edu

cated and experienced candidate".

Five of the region's 26 district coun

cils have now been found guilty of

discrimination by the tribunal.

In a robust ruling before Christ

mas, the tribunal noted the profes

sional and academic (including

postgraduate) qualifications of the five

Catholics, and said of the marking of

the successful Protestant (who only

had an unexamined diploma) that "it

is difficult to comprehend how any

one might assess a child's time in the

Brownies deserving of marks".

The tribunal found it "alarming" that one interviewer, the registrar of

births, deaths and marriages, had

made an internal complaint about the

way the chair of the panel, the assist

ant director of the Community Serv

ices Department, had assessed the

applicants and that she had expressed no confidence in him.

The assistant director knew all the

candidates, yet, said the tribunal, his

marks did "not reflect at all the advan

tages which we see the applicants as

having over the successful candidate

in terms of qualifications and length of experience". The applicants, rep

resented by the Fair Employment

Commission, had maintained

throughout that the assistant director

had sought to appoint "someone safe

to ensure an easier future relation

ship with his political masters".

The former senior community

worker had been suspended (later

reinstated) as a result of an article she

had written in the Irish Times in 1988

about the 'beastlike' portrayal of the

people of west Belfast in the wake of

the killing of two corporals at an IRA

funeral in Andersonstown. Unionist

councillors had called for her imme

diate dismissal. The tribunal noted

that her complaint of political dis

crimination had still been with the

FEC at the time of the interviews.

It will be interesting to see what

action, if any, Belfast City Council will

now take. But it is more likely to squan

der further ratepayers' money in an

expensive appeal than invest in fair

employment practice and develop ment of equal opportunities policies.

Another major employer will shortly come under the spotlight?the North

ern Ireland civil service. ^

Bitter pills Jim McDowell

X o say that unionist ranks in Belfast

City Hall are in disarray is like saying

the Irish rugby team are set fair to

'win' the wooden spoon in the Five

Nations Championship this year?in

deed they may also have to swallow it.

The unionists certainly had some

bitter medicine to swallow last month.

The most ascetic was the 'secret' visit

of the Dublin mayor, the affable Fine

Gael politician Gay Mitchell.

Not only did the Ulster Unionist

mayor of Belfast, Herbert Ditty, score

another public relations disaster with

his churlish treatment ofDublin's first

citizen. But Mr Ditty was hounded by the apparatchiks in his own party?

because they were not told about the

visit; worse, only a few were invited.

Changed times, as Stella Empey

pointed out, since her husband, Reg? one of the few unionist mayors who

could wear the man tie of' progressive' without blushing?was keel-hauled up

the Lagan for addressing a business

conference attended by the then taoi

seach, Charles Haughey. But then, for

some other 'progressive' unionists,

being keel-hauled is what life in City Hall has lately been about.

First, the Fair Employment Com

mission prised open some old barna

cles on the hulk of City Hall's

employment record. Then Sinn Fein

torpedoed notions the loyalists may

still have had about immunity from

the law, with more in a string of suc

cesses in the High Court?other ac

tions are in the Sinn Fein engine room.

Mr Ditty's PR fiascos?the first was

over the City Hall snub to the gold

medal-winning Dublin boxer, Michael

Carruth?left even the Ulster Union

ist party skippers floundering on the

rocks in embarrassment.

Party headquarters had been even

less amused when the BBC Spotlight

programme onjunkets hit the screens.

There were rumours of senior party

members in City Hall being carpeted round at the Glengall Street HQ. Some

councillors have been warned that

their renomination for the May elec

tions is by no means certain.

The evidence of that may come in

Court ward, in the loyalist heartland

of the Shankill Road, where the local

government boundary commissioner

recently cut the seats from six to five.

There, Mr Ditty, Fred Cobain, Liz

Seawright, Joe Coggle, Hugh Smyth,

the Rev Eric Smyth and Chris McGimp

sey, to name but a few, will slug it out

in an internecine unionist battle.

It was against this background that

the unionist 'olive branch' of limited

power-sharing?their word?was held

out to the City Hall opposition {Fort

night 313). The unionists were trying to mimic colleagues like Ken Magin

nis in Dungannon by offering an ex

tra committee chair?two out of six in

a new format brought about by the

'rationalisation' of services ordered

by Price Waterhouse, in the run-up to

compulsory competitive tendering.

10 Fortnight February 1993

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