Peace in practice

'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.
 

Language does not simply reflect what is going on in organisational life: it also influences what people think and what they do

Linda Holbeche, director of the Holbeche Partnership and visiting professor of HRM/OD at Cass Business School