THE seventh annual Scariff Harbour Festival is due to kick off on the August Bank Holiday weekend. Each year, the festival focuses on connecting north and south so it is fitting that Northern peace activist Roy Garland will open this year’s festival on Friday, July 30.

Roy Garland, a former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) member, is now a columnist with the nationalist newspaper Irish News and is well known as the first Unionist to address the Dublin-based Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in 1995.
Once directly involved with Unionist politics and a follower of Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church in his early years, Mr Garland went on to have a serious rethink about political and religious issues. This led to a subsequent change of outlook that ultimately shaped the course of his life.
Addressing atrocities in Northern Ireland during the late 1980s and early ’90s, the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation was set up by the Irish Government in 1994 after the IRA ceasefire in August of that year. The group sought to bring about dialouge between all parties and the wider community.
The following year, Mr Garland made a ground-breaking address to this forum, which led to him being disciplined by the UUP.
In a pioneering move that same year and with support from Loyalists, he shared a platform with Sinn Féin’s Martin McGuinness, former taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, Presbyterian Minister Rev Ken Newell and the SDLP’s Mark Durkan.
Speaking about the launch of this year’s event, Michael Rodgers, chairman of Waterways Ireland Scariff Harbour Festival said, “Roy Garland’s presence in Scariff this year is evidence of the festival’s commitment to developing ongoing links with Northern Ireland, which has been at its centre since the festival began in 2003. For almost three decades, Roy Garland has promoted dialogue, mutual understanding and accommodation among cross border and cross community groups and continues to believe passionately in peace and the political process leading to a more tolerant and inclusive society,” he said.
Mr Garland grew up in an evangelical home on Belfast’s Loyalist Shankill Road and partially completed a Diploma in Theology in London before returning to Belfast in the 1960s following the death of his father. He subsequently participated in various protests and rallies in Belfast and London with Ian Paisley and became actively involved in Ulster Unionist politics and Master of an Orange Lodge.
By 1970, he returned to formal and informal study and later completed a Masters dissertation on ‘new thinking’ within the leadership of the modern Ulster Volunteer Force. This dissertation, which was entitled Seeking a Political Accommodation: The Ulster Volunteer Force Negotiating History  became a landmark document in understanding Loyalism not just for Loyalists but also for Republicans and leading politicians in Britain and Ireland.
Although he had engaged with leading UDA and UVF Loyalists since the early Troubles, he also helped lead a series of workshops entitled Understanding Ulster in the mid-’80s, through the Corrymeala Centre of Reconciliation. He began regular dialogue with Republicans, becoming a member of a steering group of Republican ex-prisoners and led a group of Ulster Unionists in dialogue with them. Known as the Union Group, they sought an inclusive agenda fostering healing and reconciliation within Northern Ireland, between North and South and between Ireland and other parts of Britain.
Although Roy Garland is no longer a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, he remains actively involved with political and reconciliation groups and in addition to his weekly column in the Irish News, he also acts as a TV and radio commentator. In addition, he has worked with former UDA and UVF prisoners and activists, and is currently working with a project involving IRA veterans entitled Then and Now, a future without political violence? Other publications he has authored include the biography of former Loyalist leader Gusty Spence.
Waterways Ireland Scariff Harbour Festival runs from Friday, July 30 to Sunday, August 1 and includes a range of diverse events. This year, some musical highlights include the revered folk singer, Mary Black; Irish rock band Aslan; trad band, Beoga and the legendary Tulla Céilí Band. An annual festival events including the family fun day and the young anglers’ competition also make a return.