Maginness: Politicians should work together to ease parading tensions
Thu 3rd June

SDLP North Belfast MLA Alban Maginness said the PSNI have a perfectly reasonable expectation that politicians should work together to prevent trouble around loyalist marches.

He said: “The intemperate response of Gerry Kelly and Nelson McCausland to remarks by ACC Finlay simply underlines the point he was making – politicians should not accept that sectarian violence is inevitable. This is not about individual politicians getting out to stop rioters on their own side of the sectarian division, it is about working together politically across that division to get at the deeply root causes of sectarian trouble.
 
“The police, like the rest of us, are suffering the consequences of the Sinn Fein-DUP failure to build a vibrant, working political partnership. Their whole approach to parading, as seen at Hillsborough, is all about political deals and trade-offs, one for me and one for you. Stalemate and stand-off in the Executive means stalemate and stand-off on our streets. The political bitterness and division in the Executive is mirrored in our local communities and is focuses in on contentious parades.
 
“Interface violence is essentially a political problem of historic proportions that needs to be addressed by contemporary politicians. It is unreasonable to ask the PSNI to bear the burden of political failure alone. A good policing strategy must be based on a shared future strategy and that can only come from the top, from the parties that control the Executive.”