Stakeholder

JUDGES can find themselves in compromising positions – sometimes the kind of positions that would make an exponent of the Karma Sutra blush. 

Others find that a stint on the ‘Bench’ morphs them into a character more like Judge Judy than a crusading Justice John Deed. 

Most rather boringly are left to interpret the law with all its faults. More than often it’s the legislators and not the judiciary who are out of step with public opinion. Legislators don’t like making policy on the hoof and judges are left with outdated and inadequate legislation with woefully, ridiculously lenient penalties. 

Experienced criminals know that with a good legal defence, their known criminality comes a far second place to a well placed procedural loop-hole. A bewildered public are often aghast when criminals walk free, literally giving a well publicised two fingers to the entire criminal justice system. 

No wonder so many people hold to the populist viewpoint that the law can be an ass. 

Last week a court ruled that Margaret Ritchie was procedurally wrong to cut the funding to certain schemes in loyalist areas. Apparently, the minister failed to properly consult in a timely manner with her ministerial colleagues in order to get full executive approval to proceed. But who in the executive was unaware of the minister’s proposals? Who would not have given approval? Did they all not share her outrage at the UDA campaign of violence?

The judge’s ruling had an air of inevitability about it and no-one can in pure technical and legal terms argue against his finding. The same could be said of Peter Hain’s decision to appoint Bertha McDougall as an interim victims’ commissioner. A decision, thanks to the determination of Brenda Downes, which was subsequently found to be illegal by a High Court but which Mr Hain then took to the Court of Appeal. The appointment was said to be a political sop to the DUP. 

No-one in the DUP has complained about the enormous costs incurred to the taxpayer in trying to justify Hain’s decision. 

No-one disputes that Mrs McDougall was an eligible appointee; nor does anyone realistically think that politically speaking, Mr Hain had much option but to do what he did. 

The McDougall case was useful in opening up the behind-the-scene machinations of the civil service, the NIO and the extent of ministerial discretion. 

Sometime in the future we may be able to examine the real truth about the behind the scene machinations of the same civil service, the NIO, the Irish government and ministerial intervention by other executive colleagues, during the time when Ms Ritchie was preparing to take her decision. Despite the blatant breaches by the UDA there are those in our chattering classes who could not find their own ass if it sat on their face.

Rather disingenuously some in the DUP are attacking Ms Ritchie for doing something that the vast majority of ordinary citizens actually support. 

The minister was not wrong to join with the chief constable in putting the spotlight on a renegade, illegal organization that refused not only to decommission but was actively involved in organising street violence and which still retains a sinister grip on its vice operations. 

Let’s not forget the now inconvenient truth that a police officer was shot and that it was the chief constable (whom all parties say they support) who linked the loyalist violence to the money being granted to certain organisations in loyalist areas. 

If this whole exercise was not a political bribe to the UDA – how come the geographical areas selected appear to reflect the UDA command structure with exception of the wayward south Antrim loyalist brigade? 

Who in government and the civil service decided to sign off and approve the selection of these particular areas for targeting social need as opposed to other deprived working class unionist communities which are not in thrall to or under the subrogation of the UDA leadership. 

Economic and social empowerment for those living under the cosh of paramilitaries can never be achieved by official recognition and government support for the command structures of sinister and shadowy paramilitary  organisations and this is as true for those living in Cullyhanna as it is for those living in Carrickfergus. 

The aborted Workplace 2010 project cost the taxpayer some £13 million. Against that backdrop £300,000 seems a small price to pay to protect the supremacy of politics over paramilitarism. 

Principled politicians are a rarity. Those who speak truth onto power – even rarer. Well done Margaret.