Following on from the interview with incoming first minister Peter Robinson, Tim Smedley examines the issues that have affected Northern Irish HR practice in recent years and discovers its role on the road to peace
'The only time I ever felt personally threatened was when some National Front posters appeared in a workshop,” recalls Joe Stewart, former personnel director at the Harland and Wolff (H&W) shipyards in east Belfast.

Stewart is a Catholic and the shipyards were an infamously Protestant heartland. “I knew from my sources that there were Red Hand Commandos, linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force, working there. I told the supervisor that if I found this stuff up on the walls again they’d be in serious trouble,” he says.