Mowlam meets residents
By Eoin O'Broin
Mo Mowlam met with Orange Order representatives and loyalist
supporters last Wednesday 28 May. The meetings were held in
Belfast and Derry with Orange chiefs including Robert Saulters,
Apprentice Boys of Derry spokesperson Alistair Simpson, and ORDER
activist Pauline Gilmore.
The meetings were described as ``crucial'' by Mowlam who hoped that
they would ``help alleviate the problems that we have seen in
earlier years''. She stressed the importance of dialogue in
resolving the issue of contentious routes.
The meetings came amid simmering tension over her decision to
meet Nationalist residents groups a week earlier. Prior to her
meeting, Pauline Gilmore said that Mowlam's ``behaviour last week
was diabolical'', and said she would be telling her that ``Sinn
Féin-IRA were manipulating residents groups and that the
Government should not allow them to get their way''.
Mowlam came in for criticism from nationalists when she suggested
that Brendan MacCionnaith was ``part of the difficulty we face in
the Garvaghy Residents Association''. However residents were
furious after Mowlam's remarks, particularly as MacCionnaith was
elected as a councillor for Craigavon on a residents platform.
The residents group issued a statement expressing its ``complete
surprise'' at the comments. Joe Duffy, a member of the Residents
Association, also recently elected, said, ``to term Brendan `the
difficulty' means that almost 2,000 voters who freely and
democratically elected him are also `the difficulty'''
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