Paul Givan was ridiculously naive and unbelievably stupid to meet the LCC - Tom Kelly

Victor Hugo, the French writer and politician, once said: “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.”

The Loyalist Communities Council (LCC) should take note.

Loyalist paramilitary organisations (which comprise the LCC) have done more than enough to keep prisons open. Their continued existence insults both democracy and all law abiding people.

The LCC is well past its sell-by date and has utterly failed its original purpose - i.e. the ending of loyalist paramilitarism, better known as ‘transitioning’.

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Belief in transitioning loyalist paramilitaries is like Tommy Cooper trying to disappear the QE2. It’s worse than an illusion - it’s failed magic, and the joke is on the public.

Loyalist paramilitaries have zero legitimacy and - not to put too fine a point on it - they are societal leeches.

What they are not, are experts on education.

Well in fairness, there are some educators within their ranks, who run Fagan-like academies, schooling naive and gullible youths from working class loyalist communities for a life of petty crime, larceny, vice, drugging dealing and extortion. The graduation path for these young people is well worn; look out, runner, pimp, drug dealer, enforcer and eventually a prison record.

The LCC may have been born out of good intentions but it was ill conceived.

Paul Givan, the DUP education minister, seems decent and open. In the past, he has demonstrated a willingness to to reach out beyond his political silo.

His decision to meet the LCC was ridiculously naive and unbelievably stupid. The ministerial in-tray is full.

For example, there’s the spiralling cost of the Strule Shared Education Campus in Omagh, an expensive vanity project which is expected to bring a total bill of £375 million, though it will bizarrely offer segregated education with six different schools on the one site.

And yet, the minister took time to hear the views of the LCC on the underachievement of working class Protestant boys. Why? Have they some undeclared expert analysis?

A quick piece of desk research will show educational experts have been producing papers on this issue for various ministers and parliamentary committees for decades. Excellent academic researchers have published detailed evidence on the reasons behind academic underachievement amongst young Protestant males in, among other years, 1992, 1997, 2005, 2012 and 2014.

The minister took time to hear the views of the LCC on the underachievement of working class Protestant boys. Why? Have they some undeclared expert analysis?

In fact, Mr Givan’s predecessor as education minister, Peter Weir, established an expert panel on the subject in 2020.

Furthermore, the Independent Review of Education in Northern Ireland only submitted its report last December.

The point being, that if expert opinion was needed by the minister, it was readily available.

Of course, it turns out (rather unsurprisingly) that during the meeting with the minister, the LCC also raised their opposition to a proposed Naíscoil and Bunscoil in east Belfast.

At this point, Givan should have shown them the door. The LCC has no locus on the matter and the project has demonstrated demand from parents and children and the school will follow the national curriculum.

It’s difficult to comprehend in a civilised society how anyone could raise rational objections to the building of an educational facility. No-one is compelling objectors to attend the new school. But then stupidity spreads like wildfire when fuelled by ignorance and fear.

Over 90 years ago, Nazis burned books which they believed contaminated public life. In truth, they were destroying the prospect of informed minds which would challenge their warped ideology. The thing is, one can’t snuff out thought or learning; it’s for life.