FRFI 162 August / September 2001
With the re-emergence of organised resistance within nationalist communities against loyalist and RUC attacks, the Good Friday Agreement is now in crisis. On the night of 12 July, nationalist residents of the Ardoyne mobilised to stop loyalist bigots marching through their community after an Orange rally in the centre of Belfast. The RUC supported the loyalists by launching vicious attacks on the nationalist protesters, using water cannon and firing a reported 48 plastic bullets.
These were the most intense street battles seen in Belfast for many years. The RUC later claimed that 263 petrol bombs and two blast bombs were thrown at them by youths defending their area. June Bowes, an Ardoyne resident, said that the RUC attacked women and children who were watching events at the corner of Estoril Park on the day. She described how RUC riot police arrived at 5.30pm – more than two hours before the Orange march was due – and parked Land Rovers outside her gate: ‘I was barricaded into my own home. When I saw the numbers of police I knew there was going to be trouble,’ she said. She described how residents were prevented from getting to their houses and how some had gathered in her garden at the end of Ardoyne Road: ‘They were mostly women and children just standing watching what was happening. The riot police surrounded the railings and the next thing I knew they were in my garden and trying to force their way into my house.’ Ms Bowes continued: ‘The police definitely provoked the riots. It didn’t take much especially after the school standoff. There has been a lot of tension.’
RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan afterwards claimed that ‘people do not spontaneously have to hand acid bombs, blast bombs, and angle grinders to cut down lamp posts to block roads. This was orchestrated. I have little doubt about that’. That Ardoyne residents should have to organise in their own defence cannot surprise anyone. Three weeks before the infamous 12 July, loyalists attacked Catholic children and their parents on their way to Holy Cross primary school on the Ardoyne Road. The trouble started on 19 June when loyalists attacked an Ardoyne man as he collected his daughter from the school. A gang of loyalists were putting up UDA flags at the time and set upon the man, smashing his car windows with a hammer and then assaulting him. For the rest of the week, loyalist thugs aided by the RUC and Army blockaded the entrance to the school and prevented girls aged from 5 to 11 from getting in. The situation was temporarily resolved by the start of the school holidays. These two events show how the sectarian character of the RUC remains completely unchanged.
The Ardoyne events were just one part of an escalating loyalist war against nationalist communities. RUC figures show that in the first 6 months of 2001 there were 181 reported petrol bomb attacks and 76 pipe bomb attacks, almost all of them by loyalists gangs on nationalist homes. This is a threefold increase on the same period last year. Many nationalists are asking who will defend their working class areas while the Provisional IRA remains on ceasefire. Underlining this was the loyalist murder of two Catholics, John Henry McCormick and Ciaran Cummings, who was only 18.
Meanwhile, on 1 July, David Trimble carried out his long-awaited threat to resign as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly over the issue of IRA decommissioning. His move was designed to put pressure on Sinn Fein to secure the surrender of IRA weapons, and comes at a time when Sinn Fein had achieved its objective of becoming the largest nationalist party in the Six Counties, with the election in June of four MPs and 108 councillors. In addition, its standing in the 26 Counties has risen significantly with its prominent role in the successful ‘No to Nice’ referendum result opposing further European integration and militarisation. Sinn Fein has now indicated that its MPs will take up their seats at Westminster and will drop its long standing rejection of imperialist parliaments in Ireland.
Decommissioning is now a major political problem for Sinn Fein. If it doesn’t satisfy British imperialism on the issue, its electoral strategy may start to unravel. On the other hand, it will lose enormous credibility within the nationalist working class if it calls on the IRA to disarm in the face of the loyalist onslaught. With the loyalist paramilitary UFF announcing that it will no longer back the Peace Agreement, and a statement on 26 July from two loyalist MPs, Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside, that they will no longer support the power sharing Stormont administration, negotiations have effectively stalled. The crisis is set to continue.
Bob Shepherd and Jim O’Rourke
