Groundhog Day Revisited
Back in the 1990s it used to be the Drumcree stand off which journalists dubbed "Groundhog Day" because it came around every year in seemingly unchanging form. Now the Ardoyne shops confrontation has taken over - an ugly annual episode which may be repetitive but remains both depressing and dangerous.
The PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Alistair Finlay stirred some political controversy earlier today when he used an interview on the Nolan show to criticise the First and Deputy First Ministers for not doing more to take a lead in condemning and tackling the violence.
The politicians won't be too happy with this - Gerry Kelly who is himself a junior minister in the First and Deputy First Ministers' office points out that, as a local representative, he has been busy trying to calm temperatues in and around the Ardoyne.
However the ACC made a distinction between local work and a more strategic approach. He talked about the politicains needing to have "a plan to meet this type of issue next time it comes round rather than waiting until it inevitably comes next year" and mentioned the as yet unpublished Cohesion Sharing and Integration strategy, which is meant to slowly erode the communal differences which fuel the kind of violence witnessed over the weekend.
Questioned further on this. ACC Finlay's boss, Chief Constable Matt Baggott, also mentioned the need to build a "shared future". However he deliberately steered the focus away from an argument between his force and the politicians. Instead he appeared to be excusing and playing down ACC Finlay's comments when he said some of his officers had been working for 24, 26 or 48 hours and asked for people to be "generous" in responding to comments which "may create political debate but are more about driving forward dialogue".
That said Alistair Finlay's comments haven't emerged from thin air - rather they echo the parting shot from Matt Baggott's predecessor, Sir Hugh Orde, when he told the Stormont politicians last year
So where do we stand on the "Cohesion, Sharing and Integration" strategy? Progress on this score was a key demand from the Alliance party before David Ford accepted the Justice portfolio. The First and Deputy First Ministers agreed what they termed "the core" of the strategy back in February. But since then a draft has been shuttling between departments and Stormont committees and whilst that timetable has now been exceeded. The latest guess is that the OFMDFM Committee and the Stormont Executive will approve the strategy for public consultation later this month.
When it comes out, though, will it contain anything which has the potential to narrow the divisions so evident this weekend? Cynics reckon that neither the DUP nor Sinn Fein have any great self interest in eroding the communal blocs on which they have built their political machines. Sinn Fein, in particular, rejects a lot of the "good relations" approach as a British sponsored exercise in trying to depict the problem here as being between "two tribes". Instead republicans insist that "equality" is the key to improving the situation. When you look back at the Education department's decision to slash its own community relations budget then the omens for a change of tack don't seem too promising. So even if we get a CSI strategy published and adopted, will it be pursued with enough vigour to deliver change on the ground? Or will we still be talking about Groundhog Day somewhere in Northern Ireland in 20 years time?
UPDATE 1500: The First and Deputy First Ministers have just condemned the riots - but in an outpoken response Peter Robinson also described ACC Finlay's comments as "unhelpful and unacceptable".
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