On Nolan on Friday we discussed Colum Eastwood’s claim that as an MP he often found it easier to get things done when Stormont was down than when it was up. He wasn’t advocating for abolition, but merely stating there’s a serious case to answer.

His particular beef was the way the northwest and Derry in particular has been neglected in spite of the fact that city has had representation right at the top of the Stormont tree. Martin McGuinness was elected in Mid Ulster but was a fixture in the city.

What’s perplexing is that at the same time Derry is economically floundering, NI is flourishing. So the job market increased by 50,000 (largely new sector jobs that pay well) between 2011 and 2021, and unemployment has fallen by 87.5% since 1997.

So now we have the highest media wages of any region and the lowest levels of child poverty in the UK. There’s been a doubling of the communications and tech sector and the top twenty UK law firms all have back office facilities in Northern Ireland.

Since 1998 there have been a thousand cases of foreign direct investment. This is often missed by journalists and public commentators since very little of the investment now comes in the form of more visible manufacturing concerns.

What’s also been missed (often by very nationalist politicians who complain loudest about how the west is missing out) that these new FDI projects need Grade A modern office facilities that are open plan and can plug into fast internet speeds.

In the last 20 years modern office blocks on the bank of the Lagan have replaced the coal and scrapyards from the pre- and early Troubles days? If I have my own aesthetic quibbles with them, they have brought new and very well paid jobs to Belfast.

This reflation of the private sector shows how a laser focus on the economy by government can help float all boats. Importantly it has been accompanied by a significant rise of the number of Catholics living in the most affluent areas of Northern Ireland.

However, the west has not had the same focus. Derry has only just begun to build the right sort of modern accommodation on the Ebrington Barracks site and has seen a small number of firms (including Ernst and Young) moving in.

Nationalism’s focus on building a fast road linking the NW with Dublin has come at the price of improvement in transport links to a Belfast economy that could be in serious danger of overheating (see the end of the Celtic Tiger to see how that works out).

This is a political failure that stems directly from a refusal to take an all NI approach to problem solving. Current instincts (particularly within nationalism, though not exclusively) are to divide out the spoils of local patronage. Solutions are piecemeal.

By contrast in 2009 Nigel Dodds commissioned BT to role out fast broadband to rural businesses right across Northern Ireland, largely to advantage of nationalist voting communities, yet the economic effects have advantaged everyone living in those areas.

That work has continued under subsequent ministers, but the entrepreneurship which has grown up in its wake in rural areas west of the Bann, where many businesses are now both innovative in their practices and almost exclusively export focused.

Why an all NI approach really matters to Derry

So why is Derry, with two of Northern Ireland’s top performing schools pumping out extraordinary talent, year after year and generation after generation sat (with some exceptions, like Seagate, E&I and a number of smaller businesses) in the doldrums?

During the Troubles the city lost most of its Protestant business class, once a critical moving part in the city’s economic life. Fleeing to safer parts of Northern Ireland they took both their generational wealth and their civic interest in the city with them.

In their wake there’s been a temptation to point out historic wrongs than to roll up sleeves and use the power sharing Executive and tackle pressing current issues, not least the fact that Derry now has four out of the top ten of NI’s most deprived areas.

Nevertheless some things have begun to kick through. The new AI Unit at Magee, the next level office accommodation at Ebrington and the modest but effective fixes to the A6 (on both sides of the Sperrins) are already making a critical difference.

There’s still twice as many train services between Coleraine and Belfast as Derry, which needs to be advocated for and addressed as well as improvements to that section of the line. None of it will be either cheap or short term.

As Steve Bradley (of this very parish) noted on Nolan, it won’t happen if politics remains as Belfast centric has it has been (in spite the west of the Bann nationalist leadership at the very top of the institutions). Nor indeed, the civil service.

The politics of resentment is meaningless if you are the ones responsible for fixing the problem. Joining “Gaels for the A5” style protests when your minister (in spite of attempts to blame protestant farmers) is responsible would be funny, if not so tragic.

The case for the regeneration of Derry should be driven by concerns that Belfast is overheating, where the average house price is £170,000 (a ten per cent year on year rise) and rentals £1,093. Derry could draw off that heat, and benefit economically.

Sadly that’s not how the issue has been framed in the past. There needs to be a coordination of movement within government and a recognition that rejigging the flow of populations within Northern Ireland is as important as any external concerns.

Our language and our ideas are split, not just tribally but regionally. Putting money and bringing a functioning economy back to Derry and the wider north west doesn’t just help those whose lives are anchored there but to the rest of NI, the island and UK.

Good transport infrastructure aids the flow of travel and opens potential for economic activities that currently don’t exist, whilst restarting prosperity in an area that has for too long punched well below its weight. And the benefits flow back to the centre.

Derry’s had generations of scarred youth, not simply from the Troubles and the economic war on its business centre but from the lack of opportunity that has improved since 1998 but not enough to lengthen the shadow of a prosperous future at home.

The leadership required to make that happen has to come from its representatives, so that they ensure the city’s profile over the long term becomes a living, dynamic “thing” in the minds of people who live in other parts of Northern Ireland and beyond.

That means being a lot more vigilant about the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves.

And the first object he look’d upon, that object he became;
— Walt Whitman

Discover more from Slugger O’Toole

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.