Lisburn has just elected its first Council since it was given city status almost exactly three years ago. In that Council's first significant act on Tuesday night, it voted to fly the Union flag 365 days a year from the new Island Civic Centre, where Council meetings are held, and unionists engaged in some extremely questionable political manouevring to do it. What kind of message is that sending out to the burgeoning number of Catholic families who are making Lisburn their home?
The Council now has a DUP majority, but even so, it was to be hoped that there would be a recognition that Lisburn is a fast-growing and religiously and culturally diverse city. But not a bit of it. The mood music has been set for the next Council term, the message has been sent out loud and clear:
whatever the huge demographic changes that have been seen in Lisburn over the past 20 years, this remains a Protestant place for a Protestant people. Against that background, the city's new slogan – 'Lisburn, It's a City for Everyone' – sounds like some kind of sick joke.
The bitter irony is that this was a matter which simply did not have to be revisited. How many urgent issues could the Council have turned its attention to in the early days to convince the growing number of people who live in Lisburn that this is a modern and forward-looking Council that wants to lead all its people forward together into a peaceful and prosperous future? Unemployment, planning, racism, water charges, health, education, the list goes on. Local councils in the North may have limited powers but with co-operation and imagination councils can make the voice of their people heard. The voice that was heard from the Island Civic Centre this week was a voice not from 2005, but from 1955.
That the issue of the Union flag had already been dealt with mattered not a jot to unionists in their graceless rush to put the Catholics in their place. Like councils in England, the flag was flown at Lisburn Council on a pre-determined number of days as well as on those occasions – ironically yesterday (Wednesday) was one of them – when a member of the British royal family paid a visit.
It was devoutly to be hoped that the days of the 1970s and '80s were gone, days when the foulest language was common coin in the Lisburn chamber whenever the issue of the planned new housing at Poleglass was brought up. Back then, red-faced councillors tried to outdo each other in their sectarian spleen and promised to lie down in front of the bulldozers rather than let Catholics into their precious borough. Of course it was all so much huffing and puffing and the houses went up anyway, but there's no doubt that the lengthy and ultimately futile anti-Poleglass campaign still casts a dark shadow over Lisburn and there are too many unionists who will miss no opportunity to give two-fingered salute to those Catholics uppity enough to send Sinn Féin and SDLP representatives into what they still see as their territory. The depressing part of the whole thing is that many of the councillors involved in this shabby business were still at school when the Poleglass furore convulsed the borough.
Of course, nationalist representatives will refuse to take this lying down, because it's not just a matter of a piece of cloth fluttering in the breeze – it's a matter of people's dignity and humanity being acknowledged and respected. It's a matter of convincing unionists that the bad old days cannot be allowed to return, however much they want them to. It was only when nationalists pursued their rights through the courts that Belfast City Council ceased to be a sectarian bearpit. Lisburn unionists should know that the same will happen again, if that's what it takes.
