The BelTel

A senior DUP member set out their explicit support for violence - just weeks before the Good Friday Agreement.

Files released in the National Archives in Kew have revealed the details of a politician’s comments to a government official - the individual wasn’t named but there were clues to their identity.

It’s also been revealed that First Minister David Trimble was being paid thousands of pounds more than the deputy first Minister, Seamus Mallon, a year after the agreement – despite the roles being equal.

Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Sam McBride.
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When many people hear the words ‘Holy Cross’ - short for Holy Cross Girls Primary School – the words take them back to a dark time.
Holy Cross is a Catholic School in a loyalist area, Upper Ardoyne or Glenbryn.

In 2001, community tensions boiled over and led to loyalist residents protesting nationalist parents from Ardoyne taking their kids to schools through their part of the area.

That protest became notorious for its viciousness.

Two clerics, one Catholic, one Protestant became synonymous with the events of Holy Cross and attempts to resolve them.

They were Fr Aidan Troy and the Rev Norman Hamilton.

Fr Troy joined Ciarán Dunbar in the BelTel studio with the Rev Hamilton down the line.
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The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, but certain areas of Belfast felt little effect of peace. In September 2001, the Holy Cross dispute became one of the most disturbing flashpoints of the post-Agreement era.

Holy Cross was a Catholic Girls' primary school but sat a few hundred yards inside the loyalist Glenbryn estate, in an area known as Upper Ardoyne. Within days of the school year starting, the world watched in horror as demonstrations involving abuse, spitting and a bomb attack ensued.

What legacy has the Holy Cross dispute had, what impact did it have on the children involved, and why did protesters feel that they had no other choice?

Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Allison Morris and Olivia Peden.
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In September 2000 a body was found in a bog in Fermanagh. This was not a so called ‘bog-body’, sacrificed long ago - the body turned out to belong to local bus driver David Sullivan, who had gone missing 17 months earlier.

There were things that were particularly disturbing about this discovery – the first of which was that Sullivan was the subject of dozens of allegations of child abuse, the second was that his body had no head.

Olivia Peden is joined by Belfast Telegraph’s Andrew Madden and former DCI Norman Baxter.
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For much of the world, the Troubles in Northern Ireland were about Catholics and Protestants fighting each other. With those labels being used as shorthand to this day to describe members of the two main communities, it's easy to see why.
But whilst for some the conflict clearly included a religious element, the role of religion is certainly up for debate.

But what about peacebuilding – what role did Christians have in ending the conflict? Professor Gladys Ganiel’s research focuses on the role of religion in conflict in Northern Ireland. She has written a new short book – it's entitled Christianity and Peacebuilding in Northern Ireland.

She joined Ciarán Dunbar.
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