Sectarian hate targets Holy Cross schoolchildren – This week in 2001

An Phoblacht/Republican News, Thursday 6 September 2001

THE UGLY NATURE of loyalism was exposed on Ardoyne Road in north Belfast this week when Catholic schoolchildren, some as young as four, were attacked as they returned to school for the new term.

On Monday, shocked TV audiences witnessed a middle-aged man – just one of many furious loyalists – screaming “Scum! Scum! Scum!” repeatedly at clearly terrified mothers and children.

On Wednesday 5 September, as the children were running the gauntlet of hate along Ardoyne Road for the third day, a pipe-bomb was hurled at them. It exploded, injuring four RUC officers.

Loyalists want to prevent pupils from the Holy Cross School walking along the Ardoyne Road, past the loyalist Glenbryn Estate, and entering their school by its front gate. Their ‘protest’ has been nothing other than an organised sectarian assault on the children and their parents.

On Monday morning 3 September, with tension in the area at its highest level in weeks, loyalist mobs in Glenbryn bombarded them with bricks and bottles.

The 400-yard walk along Ardoyne Road through a tunnel of hate-filled sectarian and even sexual verbal abuse revealed to the world the nature of loyalism — a racist ideology portraying nationalists as subhuman.

Known UDA figures were among the crowd screaming abuse at the children, while DUP Councillor Nelson McCausland, who was in the area, had no words of condemnation.

The area’s MP, the DUP’s Nigel Dodds, could only call for a “cooling off” period and refused to condemn the verbal violence against innocent children.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams said the blockade of the school and the loyalist protest should end now.

“There can be no excuse or justification for the sectarian abuse and violence directed at the children and their parents as they try to make their way to school,” he said.

“Children have a right to education and a right to travel to and from their school free from threat and intimidation.

“The picket is being fuelled by elements of the DUP and the violence is from the UDA and is based on pure sectarian hatred. Sections of the media have sought to present this issue as one of ‘each side as bad as the other’. This is not true.”