Guest Column: 'It's time for outrage' - Political leaders failing Derry on university

The Derry University Group has been repeatedly told by political representatives that our determined pursuit of an independent university for the city means we are not ‘with the project’.

‘Our party can’t be dealing with negativity,’ one group told us.

This was by no means an isolated incident.

The main parties on Derry/Strabane council actively prevent their members from commenting on issues pertaining to Magee.

If you doubt this, just look at how many of them raised their heads when Ulster University attempted to decree that ‘Magee’ be dropped from the campus’s title and it would be renamed UU Derry-Londonderry. Without process, debate or any reason given. By an organisation which has no rights to the Derry estate.

Attempting to mitigate for UU, one solitary stalking horse suggested that the benefactress Martha Magee’s money - like all money - may not have been clean. If that were indeed the case, and it is publicly felt that the name should be changed, then surely there must be a city-led and city-wide discussion about it?

It is not up to a Belfast university to rename a stick in Derry. And we certainly don’t dismiss an entire 180-year legacy on the basis of one tweet.

And while we’re at it, if we are going to start renaming things, perhaps we should begin with the city’s main business street, which memorialises the British viceroy to Ireland during the Famine, Lord Clarendon?

No, Derry autonomy from Belfast is not just a problem for Magee - it is every bit as much a problem for our local political reps who have to check back with Headquarters at the other end of the Glenshane Pass before blessing themselves.

Last weekend, former Derry News journalist Garrett Hargan caught the DUP and the civil service red-handed, drawing up an attack plan to stop Derry development. Where was the civic outrage? Where was the political uproar?

Can you imagine this going on in a democratic country? Just think for one minute what would happen if Dublin civil servants were caught conspiring with Dublin ministers to stop a project in Cork which had been promised for decades. All hell would break loose, the government would fall, and Cork would constitute itself as an independent republic.

Derry needs some of that Cork fire. We need to insist on a cross-border, Independent Commission to run Magee as Stormont is utterly determined not to help - and keeps telling us. And we need this immediately, if for no other other reason than to protect the recent Irish government investment in our region.

UU can’t afford us and is completely compromised. If it wants to sustain its massive debt in Belfast, it has to give up Magee, instead of bleeding it dry. In the short term, the new North West University, run by the cross-border Commission, can engage UU as a service provider.

By the way, the reason that Derry’s political parties are not on board with the university campaign is very simple. They’ve screwed it up so many times before, they are no longer allowed to control it. And they don’t like that.

But it’s time to get over it and get on board now, as we need your lifting power, and, in case you haven’t noticed, this is the time to weigh in. It is time to get fired up and start using your own brain and not be looking to borrow the party brain from Belfast.

Do you think John Hume or Martin McGuinness would have had to check back with Belfast before issuing a comment on the civic university?

Finally, as regards the charge that the DUG is negative, let’s quickly recap. We note with amusement that different representatives like to claim our campaign victories as their own, and good luck to them.

We don’t care who claims the goal as long as the ball goes in the net.

But one point to remember - over the past 10 years there has been one campaign group, and one campaign group only, which has kept this issue on the agenda for every single election, for every single hustings, for every single position paper, and for every single budget.

And every time we have raised an issue of patent unfairness or discrimination - like civil servants openly colluding with Ministers to stop Derry regeneration - we have been smeared as ‘whingers’, thanks to those people who are getting their lines from the NIO or their party HQ in Belfast.

Here’s the kicker, though. We haven’t gone away, you know - and we’re not going to. And, most importantly of all, we’re actually starting to get somewhere.

So instead of dismissing ideas that aren’t yours, and the campaigners who are giving you a win on a platter if only you could spot it, maybe instead it’s time you stopped with your own negativity - and got with the project?