Discrimination - They Think It's All Over

In 2014, jobs are scarce

and the whole process of getting one is very complicated.

When you apply for a job, you have to fill in a form

telling your employer your religion, your race, even your sexuality.

But the people appointing you or interviewing you aren't allowed

to know any of that or if you're married

or your age or whether you have a disability.

Why? Well, in case they discriminate against you.

Things were a lot simpler back in the 1960s.

The Catholic boys and men around this district, or any Catholic,

actually, can't pick and choose their jobs.

As that woman has told you,

the Protestants get the pick of the jobs.

They're out for civil rights

and there's no civil rights to be out for.

You take a man here of a Protestant who's working,

and his basic wage is £12-14 per week.

You take a man on the Roman Catholic side, there's no call to work.

His wages of the Government are £20-25 per week.

There's nothing right with being a Roman Catholic,

the Protestants have better privileges and everything else.

In the past there may well have been discrimination

but nowadays there's very, very little.

I fought for 18 years in the Army for liberty and freedom.

But simply because I'm a Catholic I cannot get freedom or liberty here!

Discrimination in employment was a major divisive issue in

Northern Ireland in the 1960s,

and in 1969 that anger and resentment boiled over.

Even years later, lack of fairness in employment was said to be

a major cause of the Troubles.

According to Martin McGuinness, one of the main reasons he became

a Republican was not necessarily

what flag flew over public buildings.

When I was 15 years of age,

I walked into a Unionist-owned business in Derry.

I was asked my name.

I said, "Martin McGuinness." It's not spelt the same way as Ken's.

They asked me then, what school I went to, and when I told them

the Christian Brothers School, I was shown the door.

Martin McGuinness and his cohorts

are coming from the...killing of 2,200 people

because he said he didn't get a job in 19-something-or-other!

I think it was slightly more complicated than that, Ken Maginnis.

So, there you have it, Martin McGuinness could have been

a car mechanic instead of a Deputy First Minister.

Nowadays, we take the issue of fairness in employment for granted.

We're all used to the culture of equal opportunities

but it wasn't always like that.

This is the story of fair employment in Northern Ireland.

The issue of discrimination in employment goes way back.

I mean, in 1690 we even fought a war over

whether a Catholic or a Protestant should get the job as King.

But we don't have to go that far back.

Lack of fairness in employment was a problem that stretched

back to the 1900s, and even before then.

It was very much a feature before partition.

Belfast shipyards, for example, tended to have a very small

percentage of Catholic workers, and many of those were

expelled in the sectarian violence of the early 1920s.

Edward Carson, who contributed

so much to the foundation of Northern Ireland, was offered the

post of Prime Minister but declined, preferring to live in England.

And he still got a statue up in Stormont.

But when the Northern Ireland state was created,

Carson had a warning for his fellow Unionists.

I want to remind you of one great Unionist, Edward Carson,

when he said, "Look after the minority." We didn't...

..and have we suffered for it.

Many Unionists, even Ian Paisley, now concede that Carson's words

might have fallen on a few deaf ears.

But what was the actual extent of discrimination in employment?

Well, this is Northern Ireland, so views vary.

Discrimination was systematic, it was structural, it was endemic.

It was planned.

There was discrimination in Northern Ireland, I would just

add that it was probably on both sides as well.

I think there was a factory of grievances.

I think that's what part of the civil rights was about,

"Let's try and produce as big a list of grievances as we can."

-CROWD CHANT:

-Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

Many of them were grossly over-egged

and I think...employment discrimination as well.

The Unionist Party ran the Government of Northern Ireland

from the 1920s to 1972.

A period which many nationalists have

described as "50 years of Unionist misrule."

But this was not the Southern States of America.

Protestants didn't own Catholic slaves.

Nor was it apartheid South Africa.

Discrimination was not enshrined in law.

But it is clear that a culture of discrimination, of unfairness

was allowed to flourish.

There's a famous saying that I always remember,

"You'd neither in ye nor on ye, but we were in power!"

So, it was always about...you might think you and the Protestant

working class were doing really, really badly

but look at THEM across the way.

Lord Craigavon very famously, within 18 months of Stormont being opened,

says, "All I boast is we are a Protestant Parliament

"and Protestant State."

His Agriculture Minister, Sir Basil Brooke,

a future wartime Prime Minister,

actually urges Protestant employers in 1933 to employ only

Protestant lads and lasses and not Roman Catholics who

were 99% disloyal and are out to cut our throats.

And then we have the famous one, of course,

of JM Andrews, Minister of Labour and a future Prime Minister,

who actually says, in 1933, that there are rumours that the

number of porters at Stormont are Roman Catholic

but he has counted them

and of, actually, 31 porters, 30 are Protestant,

one is a Catholic - but he's only temporary!

And he actually makes this speech.

Dawson Bates was in charge of everything, the police,

the electoral system, the strongman of the Cabinet,

former organiser of the UVF.

And he's there for over 20 years in this key position.

But Dawson Bates refused to use a telephone at Stormont,

when he discovered that somewhere amongst that mass of young ladies

there was a Roman Catholic telephonist.

Now, this takes some beating, you know.

When the Prime Minister and the Minister for Home Affairs,

in charge of the police, adopt these attitudes,

it's not surprising that they might be replicated among employers.

Many ordinary people didn't think in those terms at all.

They had great neighbourly relationships, they would

employ their neighbours at harvest time and all the rest of it,

but there was a political culture embedded, I think,

in the Unionist system and in the Unionist state.

All of the empirical evidence clearly shows that there

was rampant discrimination against the Catholic community.

I think it also clearly shows that there were many

people in the Protestant community who didn't do that well either,

because effectively the Northern state was being

controlled by a hierarchy of people,

who looked after their own.

It was in the powers that be, the landed gentry, the sirs,

the majors and the lords,

ably assisted by some of our big daily newspapers,

that played that Orange card.

Unionists argued that discrimination was exaggerated, that much Catholic

unemployment was due to them having larger families or to geography.

The areas you have mentioned, they haven't high unemployment

because they're Catholic but simply

because they are based on the periphery of Ulster.

They're away in the west, most of them, and Newry is deep in the south.

Because of the economic setup,

mostly initiated or maintained by a Socialist government

across the water, unemployment is sometimes very attractive.

Particularly to people with large families.

They also said that discrimination wasn't always one way.

In areas where Catholics were in the majority,

they tended to discriminate against Protestants.

One side is just as bad as the other.

Erm, and it's the Trade Union principle,

they want their own people.

They want their own people in their own businesses.

With housing as one of the political issues, unemployment is the other.

In Derry, unemployment has always been high.

Today, one man in five is out of work

and here, too, religion complicates the problem.

Every time they would ask you what school you were at.

And when you said Saint Columba's, that's that, they've no vacancies.

That's not the Protestants,

that's these people that's on the Guildhall and up in Stormont

that's making the difference.

The Protestants and the Catholics could live here all right,

if they were left alone to live.

I know the person who,

in the 1960s, his job...he was employed as a civil servant,

was Protestant but he told me

his job was to put a star beside the names of the Catholics,

who were applying for boards, to get promoted and so on.

And even applying to get into the civil service.

This is BBC Northern Ireland.

Ulster stands at the crossroads.

At this crucial time, Northern Ireland had a new Prime Minister,

Captain Terence O'Neill.

Unlike his predecessors, O'Neill knew things had to change and

for a time, it looked like he might be the man to do it.

I think by the '60s O'Neill appears to be addressing the issues.

He's trying to improve community relations,

but it's very much gesture politics.

It's the visit to a convent school, you know, it's a civic week,

it's nothing of any substance.

Cardinal Conway, actually,

accuses O'Neill of raising Catholic expectations and then dashing them.

And that seems to be the green light

for the emergence of a movement on the streets.

Gentlemen, please! God, save us all!

Do you think that the recent riots could have been avoided

if you'd done more to deal with the grievances of Catholics?

I didn't have any particular

grievances put to me.

It's only recently that those have

been stirred up...chiefly

by...I suppose, you are aware that the composition of those riots

was not entirely those people who are suffering from civil grievances.

It was composed of the Irish Republican Army - admittedly by them -

and by communists.

Can you think of things which could have been done to ease

Catholic discrimination?

Yes, it could have been done but been politically very difficult

because of the antipathy of their own Catholics.

And the fact that they were backing the Irish Republican Army,

who are out to defeat Northern Ireland and to shoot our people.

Five, four, three...

I am speaking to you, tonight,

as your Prime Minister for the last time.

You have O'Neill's famous speech,

a month after he lost office in 1969, when he's rationalising

his policy of good feeling towards the Nationalist population.

He said, you know, you can't make extreme Unionists understand that if

you give a Catholic a house, erm, and treat them well,

they will live like Protestants.

Unlike the Catholic in a terrible hovel, who will have 18 children,

they will see their Protestant neighbours with televisions and cars

and they will ape their habits.

He seems to be explaining...

It's almost racist, obviously, it's condescending.

It's easy to be hard on O'Neill but we have to remember,

this was the first time a Unionist Prime Minister tacitly

admitted that Catholics were being treated unfairly

in Northern Ireland, and he did it a mere 45 years before Ian Paisley.

But, by 1969, we were far beyond arguments about fairness and justice.

The discrimination issue fed the belief among Nationalists

that Northern Ireland was an irreformable, sectarian state.

Part of the source of the conflict was the fact

that the Nationalist/Catholic community

WERE discriminated against, could see no other way out of it.

The irony was, of course, that within months

of the start of the Troubles, most of the demands

of the civil rights movement had been met.

But there was one elephant still sitting in the room,

discrimination in employment.

In September 1971, I applied for a job as a librarian

and in the course of the interview

they asked me what school I had gone to.

I said, I went to St Peter's Secondary School,

in Brittons Parade.

And one of them turns around and says,

"Oh, is that where Joe Cahill gave his press conference?"

A few weeks after introduction of internment,

the school had been empty for the summer holidays and, yes,

Joe Cahill had given an IRA interview at the school.

So, they told me, "Well, you'll be hearing from us."

And it's now 2014 and I still don't know whether I got the job.

Amid the escalating violence, the Stormont Government was

abolished in 1972 and replaced by direct-rule Westminster.

MUSIC: "Changes" by David Bowie

# Turn and face the strange changes! #

..in our endeavour to provide just government in Ulster

have been betrayed from London.

Discrimination in employment was now a problem for the Government in London.

Everyone knows that there has been a strong Protestant

tradition in Harland and Wolff over the years.

The management have made it perfectly clear,

and so have I, that we are seeking a balanced workforce in the future.

That is what we are going to do

and everybody's going to work to that end.

But it took another four years.

In 1976, the Government passed the Fair Employment Act

and set up the Fair Employment Agency.

For the first time, it was unlawful to discriminate in employment.

So, that was that sorted!

Well, not quite.

# I believe in miracles! #

The agency had a tiny staff, the law was weak and ineffective.

Employers had little to fear from a body with so few powers.

If you felt you'd been discriminated against,

the Fair Employment Agency could investigate your complaint,

but the whole thing was conducted in private.

The 1976 act was complete rubbish.

It was so that, when someone questioned the British,

the British could say, "Look, we're completely opposed to discrimination.

"In fact, we have a law which is outlawing discrimination."

But it just made it illegal to discriminate.

You couldn't prove it.

Of course, there's a place

in the firm for you.

After all, you were recommended

by one of our own people.

Mind you, we were looking for someone with more experience

but you should fit in very nicely.

In Northern Ireland, some people get jobs

because who they know not what they know.

Or because they're one religion, not the other.

Give ability a fair chance, pick the best person for the job.

The agency had very little compliance powers.

So, there was a good deal of hearts and minds work that was being done.

And really, that was my role.

If I remember right, you advertised that job.

Suppose he was the best you could get.

That's just it, he wasn't.

There was a better person that applied for the job,

but I didn't think he'd fit in...if you see what I mean.

No, I don't see what you mean.

He dug with the wrong foot.

The wrong sort!

Not one of us!

Wrong religion - do I have to spell it out?

I'll tell you something, you WILL have to spell it, Arthur.

How can your business afford cock-ups like that?

How can anyone's business afford not to employ the best person?

Don't rub it in.

I've already learned the hard way.

When the Government set up the Fair Employment Agency,

they needed someone to lead it,

to lead the campaign to end discrimination against Catholics.

So, they chose a Protestant Unionist.

I would accept that there are problems for Protestants,

in particular areas of employment.

The biggest problem and the reason the agency was set up was

because of the problems for Catholics

and I think that still remains at the present time.

Though, I hope it is a diminishing problem.

The fact that Bob had been so heavily involved in politics and was

quite high profile and certainly had been heavily

involved in the process of fair employment right from the beginning

was a huge asset, in my view.

He was very political.

He had initially joined the Ulster Unionists Party

and then was important in established in the Alliance Party.

What significance would you attach to this bombing?

It's certainly inconvenient, a couple of days before the election.

I think it's an attempt by some men of violence

to get at a political party,

which is working for peace and reconciliation.

I think, the interesting thing is that we wouldn't have a clue

which side is doing it because both sides have reason to dislike us.

Both sides are opposed to what we are trying to achieve.

In the power-sharing executive he had been

the Minister for Manpower, and he had seen, of course,

first-hand the impact of the Ulster Workers' Strike,

which brought down that Government.

So, for him, he knew that there would be no society

if it wasn't an equal society.

Republicans thought he was just a Brit lackey.

Unionists said he led the Fenian Employment Commission.

It seems to me that the attitude within Unionists circles,

they don't think of it as a Fair Employment Agency,

and I'm sorry to use this word,

they see it as a Catholic Employment Agency.

We never worked on the basis that employers all over

Northern Ireland were waking up, and their first waking thought was,

"How can I keep X or Y out of my workforce?"

The Sirocco Engineering Works in East Belfast extends

into Short Strand, yet the workforce has traditionally been Protestant.

At the present moment in time, I think

we have about two or three people from the Short Strand area.

Have you tried to encourage Roman Catholics to come and work here?

No, the company has made no attempt in this direction.

We have found many companies in Northern Ireland,

many companies in Belfast,

which simply employ almost 100% Protestants.

We've other companies in an area like Derry,

where it is the other way around.

I would like to see the Fair Employment Agency

disbanded forthwith.

Being shown around East Belfast by one of the local community

representatives, as it were, and they came past a pub...

..and the guy said to the American, "See the guys in there,

"If they had a choice of getting their hands on Gerry Adams

"or on bog paper, they'd go for bog paper every time."

I get threats. Many people get threats.

I have as many threats, probably, as most people in Northern Ireland.

And the establishment didn't like that the agency had the power to

investigate all employers, even the upper echelons of the civil service.

Did Minister of State Hugh Rossi

ask you not to do the civil service report?

I told him, it was our intention to do a report

on the civil service, and investigation on the civil service

and he suggested that he would really rather we didn't

because he felt that things were improving quite a lot.

We did not accede to his desire that we shouldn't investigate

the civil service.

Three years ago,

the Government set up a Fair Employment Agency

for Northern Ireland, to make sure that Catholics and

Protestants have equal chances at work.

We can reveal that is not happening.

If they're Catholic, they're more than twice as likely to be

unemployed as their Protestant counterparts.

If a company has always had a 95% Protestant workforce,

then it's likely it always will.

Partly because many boys will only hear of job vacancies

through their family or friends in their own area.

Hopefully get into Gallaher's.

And how will you do that?

My father got me a form out of it,

cos he works on it, and filled it in and sent it in.

-How have you gone about trying to get a job?

-My uncles are trying to get me into it.

He got an internship for it and I asked him, could he get me one, he said OK and he got it.

Even though Protestants had work in the shipyard and apprenticeships

and other industries in East Belfast,

it masked a much greater problem, in terms of educational disadvantage

because they were leaving school at an early age, barely capable

to read or write, but they were getting jobs in the shipyard.

But in Catholic West Belfast, it's not so easy,

and for many of the children and families, there remains a real fear

of working in traditionally Protestant industries.

What happened when you took the boys to the shipyard?

Well, I took them down and we went around

and the people were... they were very good and helped us.

But once the boys saw the bunting and the flags,

they were completely put off.

When they came out and got into the minibus,

the first thing they did was tear up the literature.

The big employers in Northern Ireland simply weren't co-operating

with the Fair Employment Agency.

When we wrote and asked for basic information,

not a question about making

judgment - basic information.

They said no and consistently

went on saying no, till they

were threatened with subpoena.

Then, they came across with information,

which wasn't the specific information that we asked for.

Why did it take four years before Shorts agreed

to an affirmative action programme?

Why did it take that length of time?

Well, I think that's something you should ask the company.

In the '70s and '80s there was a push for anti-discrimination law

from academics, from Nationalists

and from the FEA itself.

But what really broke the log-jam was pressure from America.

# But I'm sailing across the sea

# To see my Uncle Sam...#

The campaign across the US to get every state to accept

the MacBride Principles has hit town.

The dealings of American businessmen in Northern Ireland -

how many Catholics, how many Protestants they may employ -

has become everyone's business.

We have a right to tell American firms that they cannot

join in an apparatus of discrimination.

They were named after Sean MacBride.

In 1984, MacBride proposed that US companies, US pension funds

and the US government itself should refuse to invest in Northern Ireland

companies, unless they signed up to his MacBride Principles.

The MacBride Principles is the perfect way

for Americans of conscience and justice to say, "We don't

"want our dollars subsidising anti-Catholic discrimination."

The MacBride Principles were enormously important

in putting pressure on the British,

and particularly the MacBride campaign in Congress.

The MacBride Principles did have a huge impact

on the psychology of 10 Downing Street and London.

# Sailing across the sea

# To see my Uncle Sam. #

The Government had to fight a rearguard action

in the US, to prevent American states' pension funds

and companies from adopting the MacBride Principles.

What would be tragic

if people of good intent,

of the best possible motive but with, unfortunately,

a misguided approach to this problem were actually to pursue

policies that may discourage further investment.

Bob Cooper wanted tougher fair employment laws

but thought MacBride's threat of disinvestment went too far.

The people who are going to suffer from the enactment of this

type of legislation are the people who are my former

constituents in West Belfast.

He was acting under pressure from the Government in London,

from the Republic's Government in Dublin, let alone

the Nationalists in Northern Ireland, Washington and Brussels.

In a sense, there is an implication, since they are tied in with

the South African investment and disinvestment measures,

there's a sort of implication that it's slightly discreditable

for an American company to invest in Northern Ireland.

He came to the conclusion,

"I can live with the Unionist pressure

"if I keep the international people happy, and their picture is, employ more Catholics."

That was the whole regime.

Faced with the prospect of a massive loss of American investment,

the Government introduced a new Fair Employment Act.

Having spent five years campaigning against the misguided

MacBride Principles, the Government more or less adopted

most of them in the new Fair Employment Act of 1989.

I will have very little sympathy indeed for those who seek

to create problems or who point to difficulties,

when merely that is an excuse for a latent sectarianism which they

may be seeking to preserve in whichever area they operate.

The 1989 Fair Employment Act was the toughest

piece of anti-discrimination law in Europe, and who introduced it?

Margaret Thatcher.

Yes, Margaret Thatcher!

And does she get a word of thanks in West Belfast?

Does she... Frankly, no!

I wouldn't give any nod of thanks to Margaret Thatcher for anything,

given her very poor reputation.

I think sometimes the British Government on these things,

more out of care for their own interests than for anybody else's,

ie not being accused by the Americans of discriminating

against Catholics.

People in Northern Ireland want

to know that they are living

in a fair and just society.

In which the laws are fair, in which

there is equality of opportunity.

The old FEA went.

There was a new Fair Employment Commission, or FEC,

and they had a far larger staff.

They could initiate investigations against employers and stop employers

getting Government contracts if they didn't like what they saw.

The 1989 Act required employers to monitor their workers.

For the first time, they had to reveal the numbers of Catholics

and Protestants they employed.

I'll have to start asking questions that I've never asked in my life.

I have never felt it important to ask anybody's religion

when I'm going to employ them as a sheet metal worker.

There were those who said,

if you start doing a kind of head count, a sectarian head count

within the workforce, it will put worker against worker.

You're talking about enforced monitoring.

People being brought into the position of enforced

sectarianism in the workforce.

That is what it's going to be.

People are going to be recruited on the basis

of the fact that they are a minority Catholic or a minority Protestant.

Staff from the FEC would have to go in with a pile of personnel forms

and go through them.

Where people had identified themselves as undetermined,

you would do it by name, you would do it by school,

and doing it that way helped explain why there wasn't quite

the number of Shi'ite Muslims in Ballylumford power station

as first came through on the returns.

Some companies reported that they had a very low,

and I mean a VERY low number of persons of one religion.

We immediately began work with those companies to establish

why and what were the reasons, and what would bring about change?

For the first time, individuals could take

complaints of discrimination to a public tribunal.

And this is where I come in.

The FEC's job was to eliminate discrimination

and to enforce tough new laws, so they employed a comedian.

PHONE RINGS

Hello.

New complaint, OK, thank you.

Yes, they gave me a job

and then they decided that one comedian wasn't enough.

So, they also employed Michael McDowell,

better known as Billy, the peeler from Give My Head Peace.

We were employed as complaints officers

and our job was to help individuals who had

complaints of discrimination to take their case to tribunal.

For me, it was about how people were treated in the workplace,

so you know, I just thought it was wrong that somebody should be

subjected to sectarian harassment.

I thought it was wrong that somebody didn't get a job

because of their perceived religion.

We all know about the compensation culture, you know the kind of thing.

People suing the X Factor because they got Louis Walsh as a mentor.

Well, there were real fears that

when the Fair Employment Act was introduced,

that would attract these no-hopers, these time-wasters,

these people who think taking a case of discrimination

was like winning the lottery.

The reality, however, was a lot different.

To say, I have worked somewhere or I have attempted to work

somewhere and the reason I've not got the job there or the reason

I'm dissatisfied with what has happened is because I have

suffered discrimination on grounds of my religion or my political belief.

It's just as sensitive as you can get in Northern Ireland.

The case involved a security firm and a young girl who had

suffered pretty systemic harassment throughout her employment.

She'd actually put up with, maybe,

three or four years of this behaviour.

One particular incident that she'd complained about was

when the Corporals were murdered, they had left all

the pictures of the Corporals being murdered on her desk.

She'd been out to lunch and these were all lying, opened, on her

desk because she was effectively the only Catholic working in that place.

LOUD EXPLOSION

Times were very different back then.

In the early 1990s, the IRA

and Loyalist campaigns were in full flight.

This was the era of proxy bombs, of random shootings,

and of mortars fired at Downing Street.

And workers don't live in a bubble.

What was happening out on the streets

often crept into the workplace.

Belfast's Shankill Road, this morning.

One of the areas which the UFF, in their statement yesterday,

said Catholics shouldn't go to work in,

but major firms contacted today said they had no signs

that their Catholic employees had refused to come in.

Here, there were many people going to work,

not for very large salaries, mind you,

and they were risking life and limb,

while they were going to, coming from work.

And they were heading toward a workplace where the atmosphere

was anything but friendly.

You know, in many ways they were the real heroes

of the Fair Employment world.

While making this programme, we contacted a number of people

who had taken and won cases of religious discrimination.

But almost without exception,

they declined the offer to talk about their experience on camera.

Even 20 years on,

issues of discrimination remain controversial and sensitive.

It was a major decision to take.

If you recall at that time, in the early '90s,

in terms of the general environment, it was mayhem here.

It was the middle of the conflict.

Also, I had a very young family then.

My two daughter were aged two and four.

I was working full-time and studying part-time for a degree

and had lost my mother to cancer the year before.

All personal stuff as well.

It makes it difficult because you're entering

into these things, you don't take it lightly.

What it said was that tribunals should be structured in a way

that a person could walk in off the street

and be able to represent themselves.

I didn't find that experience at all.

They tended to be very heavy with lawyers,

employed by both sides in those... certainly in those initial cases.

It was conducted very much as, I would imagine,

a major criminal case would be conducted.

A shudder went through employers.

Suddenly, a failure to take the new legislation seriously could

cost a company an awful lot of money, as well as their reputation.

A headline along the lines of "£25,000 paid for case

"of unlawful discrimination", you know, focuses attention.

We had cameramen from early morning

if there was any particular case of interest on.

So, that was an additional hurdle that applicants had to encounter.

People were able to read in the papers,

what this particular firm had got up to or what it's employees had

got up to, and that had a terrible impact and, you know,

I don't know what effect that had on their suppliers,

the people they were working for.

There must have been questions asked, and that was a wake-up call

to a lot of employers that this couldn't go on.

Many cases actually settled before they reached the tribunal.

Many employers said they only settled, even though

they hadn't discriminated, because they were afraid of losing

or because of the cost of defending themselves.

Whereas the FEC thought many employers only settled

because they knew their case was hopeless.

You'd ask, "Why do you feel you've been discriminated against?"

And they'd say, "Well, they make me go for the tea

"or I have to get the sandwiches or I do more photocopying than anybody else."

We had a case like that, and it wasn't really going terribly well.

It was the third day in, he said,

"I don't know if this is relevant

"but I was given this on my birthday."

And he produced this medallion,

which had a ribbon in the colours of the Irish tricolour,

but written on the medallion was, "Fenian-cy of the year award."

HE LAUGHS

So, this had been given by his employers, and that

kind of changed the dynamics of the case.

So, we brought it around to the other side,

and as soon as they saw this thing, they settled immediately.

In landmark cases, the list of employers who were either

found guilty of discrimination or who admitted to it included

local and district councils, major retailers, manufacturers,

car companies, security firms, health boards.

The Government had introduced the legislation

but even Government departments were being sued.

And, crucially,

the commission didn't just take cases alleging Protestant bias,

but they also took and won

a number of cases against mainly Catholic employers,

proving that discrimination in Northern Ireland affected

both communities.

There were, clearly,

workplaces which had a very low proportion of Protestants

and the agency and commission worked as fervently with those companies as

they did with companies that had an under-representation of Catholics.

The decisions of the tribunal carried a lot of weight

and it made a lot of employers wake up and take notice and say,

"Look, we don't really need

"A - the publicity that surrounds a case.

"B - a decision from a court saying that we're discriminators

"And, thirdly, the amount of money we have to pay out for this."

So, I think that was absolutely critical in turning around

the equality agenda in Northern Ireland.

Bigger firms and public-sector employers quickly got

the message and it soon filtered down to smaller companies.

The old ways of a nod, a wink and getting a job

because of which foot you kicked with were on their way out.

And a number of cases were also taken to ensure

the removal of flags, emblems and bunting from the workplace.

Gone were the days of the mini-Twelfth

around the factory floor.

One of the shop stewards said,

"Right, are you telling us that

"if someone puts a flag on the end of a jib of a crane, that

"Bob Cooper would come and take it down?" And I said, "Yes, he would.

"Next question, please?"

The Fair Employment Act of 1989 worked.

Workplaces were more neutral, more integrated.

The religious breakdown of the workforce, more or less,

reflects the population of Northern Ireland.

The Act changed Northern Ireland's society dramatically

and effectively removed religious discrimination

as a huge political issue.

Well, until recently.

SHE SCREAMS: No surrender!

MUSIC: "I Predict A Riot" by Kaiser Chiefs

# Watching the people get lairy

# It's not very pretty, I tell thee

# Walking through town is quite scary

# Not very sensible either...#

The removal of the Union flag from the City Hall,

except on designated days,

is a direct result of equality legislation.

So, before we go patting ourselves on the back,

perhaps it's time to ask, have things gone too far?

# I predict a riot

# I predict a riot! #

I refer to it as the swinging of the pendulum.

I think now, the most disadvantaged thing to be

in Northern Ireland is a Protestant male.

We had the case of the police service in Northern Ireland,

for ten years, where we had this 50/50 rule,

which was a specific religious bar on recruiting

numbers of Protestants because too many Protestants applied,

and therefore numbers were excluded specifically on their religion.

Now, within the civil service,

if you are a Catholic applicant,

probably a female applicant,

your chances of promotion through the ranks seems to be enhanced.

It is certainly true to say that the Fair Employment Act has not

been the answer to all our problems.

What they should be targeting is the "haves" and the "have-nots",

whether they be Catholic, Protestant or of no religion.

The big difference and problems in Northern Ireland

are between those who have and those who have not,

and we know what that means.

We're still very segregated, erm, along religious lines.

We still live in our ghettos.

We still live in areas where people don't know each other

and have no notion of getting to know each other.

So, there's still a lot of work to be done,

in terms of building peace and breaking down those barriers

because that's where discrimination and prejudice come from,

not knowing one another.

It may well be in the future, in places like Newry and Derry

and so on, that the Fair Employment legislation will be to the

Unionists' or Protestants' advantage.

So, did the Fair Employment Act really make Northern Ireland

a better place?

We still have a way to go, but are we on the right track? Absolutely.

Did the Fair Employment Act contribute to that? Absolutely.

Do you sometimes wish you'd got that job as a car mechanic?

Well, you talked about "here we are now", well, LOOK where we are now.

-Sitting here in Stormont.

-If you had that job as a car mechanic,

you wouldn't have ended up here.

Yeah, well, I think that, you know, it's all very, very interesting

but it's all very serious.

When I look around now and see the change...

I mean, you don't hear very often

of cases of religious discrimination any more.

And I hope that's because the system is better,

employers try harder and workers feel they are covered and protected.

I think peace, in this country,

could not have been achieved without the work

of the Fair Employment Commission, creating equality in the workplace.

It was a serious running sore for Northern Ireland.

Whatever it is that divides us today,

it's rarely said to be sectarianism in employment.

Religious discrimination no longer forces people to march or protest.

Of course, the act has now been extended to include

sex and race and disability, and even age.

That's why you have to fill in all those stupid forms.

On the plus side, however, if you have recently got a job

it's probably because you were the best candidate for it.

So, well done!

And give a little nod of thanks to the Fair Employment Act of 1989.

MUSIC: "Sweetest Feeling" by Jackie Wilson

# Sweetest feeling

# Baby, the sweetest

# Sweetest feeling

# Honey, the sweetest

# Sweetest feeling

# Loving you! #