The Orange marching season over the summer has been the occasion for innumerable attacks on nationalist communities throughout the Six Counties, although the media has focused on loyalist violence against the police and British army. This has been the backdrop against which the IRA publicly announced (28 July) that it was ending its armed campaign. Meanwhile, yet another report has been published confirming the sectarian character of the Six County statelet and detailing the level of intimidation and discrimination endured by nationalists in the north.
Paul Mallon reports.
Loyalist violence
The latest round of Orange violence followed a disputed loyalist march through a nationalist area of West Belfast on 10 September. Mobs invaded nationalist areas in the Grosvenor Road in Belfast, Ligoniel and Ahoghill village, attacking churches, schools and businesses. They also turned their attention on the police and British army, using pipe and blast bombs against the state forces and exchanging gunfire.
The graphic TV images of the loyalist gangs throwing petrol bombs at riot police have obscured the nationalist community’s daily experience of sectarian attack. Thus on 10 August, an Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) gang murdered 15-year-old Catholic schoolboy Thomas Devlin as he made his way home after buying sweets in a nearby shop in north Belfast. In a flagrant denial of the facts, the police declared the attack to be ‘not sectarian’. In the last two years, loyalist death squads have carried out 38 murders.
Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) collusion with the UVF is evident: there are photographs of members of the UVF leaning into PSNI military vehicles during recent loyalist attacks on nationalist homes in Ahoghill, County Antrim. Earlier, the PSNI had responded to loyalist arson attacks on nationalist homes by issuing fire blankets to residents. In late August, a number of nationalist families had to abandon their homes and move out of the area. PSNI officers routinely refuse to confront loyalist mobs, preferring instead to remain inside their vehicles.
On 14 September, Northern Ireland minister Peter Hain finally announced that the British government no longer recognised the phony ceasefire of the main loyalist death squad, the Ulster Volunteer Force. But he ignored the activities of the other main loyalist death squad, the Ulster Defence Association, which has played a central role in the recent violence. Hain’s statement will have no effect on the overall crisis since the British government has no sanctions for the loyalist death squads.
A sectarian state
A recently published report on sectarian violence in the north of Ireland confirms the analysis of those who have viewed the peace process as a sham. No longer a problem? Sectarian violence in Northern Ireland by Dr Neil Jaraman details the sectarian violence endemic in the north of Ireland. The report covers the 11 years since the 1994 ceasefire and argues that sectarian violence is now at a higher level than before 1994. More people are being driven out of their homes; on a ten-year average 1,378 people a year are being forced to re-house due to intimidation.
Statistics reveal that north Belfast in particular endures the highest level of sectarianism. Between 1996 and 2004, there were 6,623 incidents of sectarian disorder including 3,883 of criminal damage, 1,343 of assault, 1,021 disturbances and 376 riots. The population of north Belfast is around 86,000. Of the 37 ‘peace walls’ across the north of Ireland, none have been removed since the ceasefire and 18 have actually been reinforced. Jaraman’s report also identifies the appalling response of the PSNI to the sectarian crimes. As FRFI has consistently pointed out, the Six Counties is a sectarian state which is founded on discrimination against the nationalist community. The peace process cannot alter this reality, since Unionist supremacy remains unchanged.
IRA: end of armed struggle
On 28 July the IRA announced a formal end to its armed campaign. It made its decision after Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams called on it in April to pursue its goals exclusively through peaceful political means. Its statement was greeted with claims that it had removed the major obstacle in the peace process – the existence of the IRA. Though the announcement was hardly a surprise, the media still described it as ‘historic’ and ‘ground- breaking’, and Tony Blair claimed it was a ‘step of unparalleled magnitude’. Yet two and half years ago, FRFI wrote that:
‘Despite the IRA’s rejections of what it called “unrealistic ultimatums” in regard to calls for its disbandment…The reality…is that the Ulster Unionist Party and the British government have manoeuvred the IRA into a position where nothing short of a significant statement from the IRA on disbandment will restore the devolved institutions. The Republican movement is once again being compelled to save the peace process.’ (FRFI 171 February/March 2003)
Since that period there has been a stalemate which elections to the dissolved assembly in 2003 and further elections to Westminster in May 2005 have failed to dispel. The 2005 elections in fact reinforced the deadlock as the Unionist community elected the Protestant fundamentalist Ian Paisley as their leader. The IRA’s statement is an acknowledgement that the Unionist veto will remain within the politics of the Six Counties.
Policing the crisis
The PSNI, established in 1999 as part of the present peace deal, is only a re-badged version of the sectarian RUC. Under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement new police boards were established to co-opt nationalists and legitimise the PSNI. The next phase in the political absorption of the Republican movement into the British system will be Republican participation on the policing boards. The logic of Sinn Fein’s political path means it will begin to advance the view that the only way to give nationalists any respite from loyalist attacks will be for Republicans to engage in policing the North.
The IRA was established in order to defend nationalists from sectarian attack from both the loyalist death squads and the British army. The recent violence of the loyalist mobs demonstrates that nothing has fundamentally changed since the 1994 IRA ceasefire. The Unionist veto and Unionist supremacy remains at the heart of the political process – a reality daily enforced by the loyalist mobs. Now that the IRA has chosen to disarm without breaking the Unionist veto, new dangers are opening up for nationalists in the Six Counties. The political leadership of the Republican movement remains entirely dependent upon a political process that only reinforces loyalist reaction. Those forces within the nationalist working class who will inevitably emerge to defend their areas from attack will not only come up against the fascist mobs and the British state, but also against those whose political careers are dependent on the process itself.
FRFI 187 October / November 2005
