BUILDING the infrastructure of bias and discrimination which continues to permeate every aspect of our lives was the work of several generations of unionist and British administrations. It stands to reason, therefore, that undoing the damage wrought by countless decisions made by blinkered mandarins and bigoted ministers will also take time.
Just ask the folks up in Foyle battling (with considerable success, let it be said) to reverse the sectarian sixties decision to locate the North's second university in unionist Coleraine rather than in nationalist Derry.
There were equally egregious actions in Belfast by the old Stormont regime which served to deny nationalists equal opportunity – the locating of the city's industrial base in East Belfast and Mallusk being the most consequential.
However, this uneven allocation of resources also applied to even the most mundane of matters: appointments to public bodies, the selection of public holidays and, indeed, to the playing of games.
For an illustration of the latter we need only to look at the clearly prejudicial policy to under-resource Gaelic sports in Belfast. Indeed, it was Belfast City Council's own report in 2010 which blew the whistle on the extent of this injustice.
At that time, Belfast City Council was providing 107 pitches for soccer but just 18 for Gaelic games. A bias of over five-to-one at a time when Gaelic games were the most in-demand sport in the city. The Council's own study showed that there was an over-provision of 43 soccer pitches and a a shortage of football/hurling/camogie pitches of around 70 pitches.
For the past 15 years, enlightened Council officials and nationalist public representatives in both Belfast City Council and Stormont have been working hard to redress that disparity – and with considerable success.
In fact, many clubs in Belfast which had been fielding teams for over a century only recently became stewards of their own facilities, courtesy of the City Hall 'pitches strategy'. But more, much more, remains to be done to provide equality of provision to Gaelic games.
All of which brings us to the recent decision to take the playing fields at Boucher Road back into the use for which they were created – with one important difference. This time, the facility will be redeveloped to provide two much-needed Gaelic pitches.
The use of playing fields for (the audacity of it!) playing sports has, of course, triggered the usual hostility from unionism. The reality is that Belfast got to the position where it had 128 soccer pitches and just 18 Gaelic pitches because of the actions of unionism. Weakened and drastically reduced in numbers though it might be, the unionist family remains wedded to the mistakes of the past. Thus this week's City Council brake, as a result of a unionist-led revolt, on the decision to transform Boucher Road from a part-time concert site to a full-time sports amenity.
The lesson: reverse-engineering discrimination takes planning, persistence and politics – ultimately votes are what will make the difference. We have no doubt but that our political representatives will take this setback in their stride, strategise and then score again.
For the days of Gaelic games being consigned to the city's bogland, accessible only by winding boreens, and with players changing in the hedgerows, are gone. All that is in play now is how long it will take until the prejudicial practices of the past are kicked into touch.
