FRFI 163 October / November 2001
The week before the attack on the US the world’s media was filled with images of loyalist mobs viciously attacking Catholic children as they returned to Holy Cross School in Ardoyne, north Belfast after the summer holidays. Nothing could expose more clearly the fascist, racist ideology of loyalism than these cowardly attacks.
The school entrance is off the Ardoyne Road by the loyalist Glenbryn estate. The attacks on school kids had begun before the summer holidays (FRFI 162). But they restarted on Monday 3 September, the first day of term. Children aged from 4 to 11 and their parents had to walk up the Ardoyne Road through a corridor of sectarian hate and abuse. They faced chants of ‘scum, scum, scum’, calls of ‘dirty tramp’, ‘get that fenian bastard out of here’ and ‘your kids are animals’ and a barrage of spit, bottles, bricks and fireworks.
Billy Hutchinson, the Progressive Unionist Party’s Assembly member for North Belfast and friend of the Scottish Socialist Party, declared the loyalist mob would maintain their opposition ‘tomorrow, the day after, and the day after’. Blast bombs were thrown on the Tuesday morning and an attempted bomb attack on the children took place on Wednesday morning. The pipe bomb, packed with shrapnel, missed the children but injured four RUC members. The attack was claimed by the Red Hand Defenders (RHD), a cover for the UDA. They also threatened to assassinate three named parents, members of the Right to Education Group. Exposure of the true fascist nature of loyalism caused the ‘protesters’ to change tactics after the bomb attack, but the ‘demonstrations’ have continued.
The Ardoyne events reflect an escalating loyalist campaign against the nationalist working class. On 29 July, 18 year old Gavin Brett, a Protestant, was murdered while out celebrating the birthday of his best friend Michael Farrell, a Catholic, who was seriously wounded in the attack. The attack was ‘claimed’ by the RHD, who described ‘all nationalist people as hostile and legitimate targets’. On 30 July the same gang threw two pipe bombs and fired shots at a building where a play was being performed as part of the Ardoyne Fleadh.
An Phoblacht on 9 August listed the 220 loyalist attacks on the nationalist community reported in its pages from January to July 2001. These included over 75 bomb attacks, 20-plus gun attacks in which three people have been murdered, over 30 petrol bomb and arson attacks on Catholic homes and over 50 attacks by organised loyalist mobs on individual Catholics and nationalist estates. One of these attacks left a man beaten to death. Over 50 per cent of the reported attacks have been in Belfast.
Such attacks on Catholics continued throughout August and September. On 28 August the RHD admitted planting a massive incendiary bomb at the Auld Lammas Fair in Ballycastle, luckily found before it exploded. Pipe bomb and petrol bomb attacks have continued with Sinn Fein describing attacks in the Whitewell area of north Belfast as ‘a pogrom designed to drive nationalists out of their homes’.
‘Peace process’ deadlocked
The ‘peace process’ is still deadlocked following Trimble’s 1 July resignation as First Minister. As the first six weeks ‘grace’ neared an end, and as pressure mounted on Sinn Fein, the IRA issued a historic statement on 8 August which agreed to the destruction of their weapons: ‘The IRA leadership has agreed a scheme with the IICD [Independent International Commission on Decommissioning] which will put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use.’
The British and Irish governments welcomed the statement but Trimble and the Ulster Unionist Party rejected it. The British government suspended the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement for one day on 12 August giving them six more weeks to come to an ‘arrangement’ with Sinn Fein and the UUP over decommissioning and police reform. The suspension prompted the IRA to withdraw its offer to the decommissioning body, but Sinn Fein Chairperson, Mitchel McLaughlin, confirmed that it remained ‘wedded to the Good Friday Agreement’ and that it ‘will continue to work with both governments to ensure its full implementation.’
As the third six-week period of the Assembly minus a First Minister is declared, the IRA have again issued a statement promising detailed discussions with the IICD and unsurprisingly Trimble and the UUP have rejected it. However, it now seems that the IRA is ready to destroy weapons in two of its secret arms dumps.
- Sinn Fein has distanced itself from three Republicans arrested in Colombia at the beginning of August. They were trying to leave the country following a visit to the demilitarised zone under the control of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Richard Haass, George Bush’s special advisor on the North of Ireland, warned Sinn Fein that there would be serious consequences if it did not sever all links with the FARC. Meanwhile, Sinn Fein’s supporters in the US Congress have been pressurising Gerry Adams to pull out of a proposed trip to Cuba to visit Fidel Castro. There is talk that he will bow to their demands; he has anyway reiterated that the three arrested Irishmen were not on any official Sinn Fein business in Colombia.
Bob Shepherd
