Community Development and Community Relations in Northern Ireland

Abstract

The troubles in Northern Ireland have economic and political as well as religious roots. A novel approach to the situation has been made by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission: the commission has adopted community development as a major strategy in working for the improvement of community relations. A community-development team of field workers has been assigned to the areas of acute conflict. For a time, late in the summer of 1971, the commission functioned virtually as a disaster agency. The acute crisis continues, and the future is uncertain. But in the long run there appear to be three main roads to the establishment of sound community relations in Northern Ireland: the political and legal approach, the educational approach by statutory and voluntary organizations, and the community-development approach.