Community leader vows to continue work helping most vulnerable

Community leader vows to continue work helping most vulnerable

13 April 2016

THE leader of the Ardglass Street Safe has said he will continue with the community group despite recent media reports on his past.

Gerard Forward had planned to fold the group following several reports in a Sunday newspaper but said he had been buoyed by subsequent local support and didn’t want young volunteers in the group to suffer.

Mr Forward, who has been open about his time spent in jail as a republican prisoner following an armed robbery, said he had been bewildered at the recent focus on his past and temporarily disheartened. Speaking on Monday, however, he said Street Safe was here to stay and that recent support had been “overwhelming”.

Street Safe was set up in Ardglass in November 2013 and now has a core group of 15 volunteers, many young people, aiming to provide a 24 hour lifeline to the vulnerable in Ardglass, ensuring the elderly especially are safe and comfortable in their homes.

Trained in areas such as first aid, Street Safe has campaigned on issues such as the future of the Downe Hospital and given presentations on their work to meetings of the Policing and Community Safety Partnership.

“Everybody locally knows about my past, for the young people in the group it is good enough, the police seem happy enough and I am totally Access NI [police check] cleared,” said Mr Forward.

He said that sometimes young people in the group ask him about the Troubles and he said he was in a “prime position” to advise young people to stay away from violence.

The 41 year-old said he had been upset when a press photograph, in which he featured alongside local politicians at a community event in Killyleagh, had purportedly left members of the DUP “red-faced”. He said, however, he had since been reassured by DUP councillor Billy Walker that that was not the case.

Mr Forward said his aim not was not to see the violence of the past repeated and believed people deserved a second chance.

“There are people in Stormont who have been up for murder and escaped from prisons,” he said.

“I was jailed for armed robbery for five years in 1999 and released after two-and-a-half.”

Describing his actions, during which a 16-year old girl was held hostage in a frightening ordeal along with her family, as “wrong and foolish”, Mr Forward said he did dwell on the impact.

“It does play in my head,” he said. “At the end of the day I am only human.

“This, what I am doing now, is part and parcel of me saying I am going to do right. I apologise to the family for what I have done.”

Mr Forward also admitted being a former member of the IRSP (Irish Republican Socialist Party) and giving a speech on a stage accompanied by masked men in 2006, speaking out against police. He said he wanted to point out that he was not masked.

He said that in many ways he was proud of where he came from, but his transformation towards supporting police came after a period of reflection.

“I got away from everything and settled myself down,” he said. “I reflected; seems there was a lot of hurt and pain in the Short Strand, the community where I came from in the Troubles. I would do anything to stop that. Protestant and Catholic, I will work with anybody.

“Society needs to move on.”

He added that Street Safe only operated as community support and was not in any way meant to replace the work of the PSNI.

“The police have been very supportive of our group,” he added. “The PSNI are equipped and the professionals.”

Mr Forward said that apart from a few “anti-community elements” he believed the majority of people in Ardglass supported the work of Street Safe.

He added there had been talk that some in the community wanted him to stand as an independent election candidate, which was perhaps behind the recent commentary on his past, but said he had no plans to do so.

DUP councillor Billy Walker confirmed he supported Mr Forward in his work with Street Safe and said he had never personally spoken out against him to any newspaper.

“When I was chair of Down Council and involved with the PCSP I saw the good work Street Safe had done,” he said. “I never said I was red-faced to be photographed with him, and in the recent photograph taken of us at the Killyleagh Youth Forum there were other political parties there.

“I will work with anyone to better this place, particularly people trying to work with young people.”