City Comptroller's Influence Reaches Northern Ireland

The long arm of the city comptroller's office has reached out over the Atlantic to attempt to quell the sectarian struggle in Northern Ireland — at least the one being played out on a wall of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.

When a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise in Belfast allowed a mural depicting hooded gunmen from the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Freedom Fighters to be painted on the exterior of the restaurant in 2002, "the Comptroller's office brought strong and swift pressure to bear," according to a new report.

The office of the city's comptroller, William Thompson, pressured corporate leaders of Kentucky Fried Chicken to have the illegal and divisive mural removed from the restaurant, according to the comptroller's 29-page report.

By contacting executives at the company's headquarters and reminding them that the city's pension funds owned more than 1 million Kentucky Fried Chicken shares totaling more than $30 million, the comptroller was able to effect immediate removal of the offending mural, the report says. The wall was painted over within 24 hours.

There is, however, still a mural of paramilitary fighters on a wall across the street from the Kentucky Fried Chicken on Shankill Road in Belfast, a Belfast city council member, Diane Dodds, a member of the Democratic Unionist Party, said in a telephone interview with The New York Sun.

Shankill Road is the main road leading through a predominantly Protestant working-class area of Belfast, known as the Shankill.

The report details the willingness of corporations in Northern Ireland to comply with 1984 MacBride Principles, a set of anti-discrimination policies for companies doing business in Northern Ireland.

With about $9 billion invested in about 260 companies in Northern Ireland, the city has been very influential in the implementation of the MacBride Principles, the president of the Irish National Caucus, Father Sean McManus, said. "I can't say enough about the dedication of Mr. Thompson," he said.

More than two-thirds of American-based companies operating in Northern Ireland that are in the city's portfolio have adopted and complied with the principles, the report says.

The report comes on the heels of a visit to Ireland by members of Mr. Thompson's office in September, during which they met with trade union representatives from two companies that the pension funds have had a history of engagement with on fair employment issues.

Although working conditions and employment equality have improved for Catholics in Northern Ireland, the report says there are still challenges.