Sectarian thugs target primary school children

BY LAURA FRIEL

Unionism historically has had no problem with northern nationalists, as long as they have been prepared to go by the back door, accept their status as second class and all the accompanying deprivation and discrimination without raising so much as a word of complaint. It's only when nationalists start demanding to be treated as equals, knocking at the front door to full citizenship, that unionists have seen red, or more specifically, orange.

     
Catholic children and their mothers should neither be seen nor heard. Never mind the rights and wrongs of the situation, everything would be all right if only Catholics would keep using the back door
In the late 1960s Irish nationalists, inspired by the civil rights movement of Black Americans, demanded the right to vote, the right to work and decent housing for all. Unionists was outraged and soon loyalist mobs were burning families out in North Belfast and the Lower Falls and the RUC were bringing their particular brand of law and Orange order to the Bogside in Derry.

Last week, children in Ardoyne were prevented from going to Holy Cross primary school by loyalists who could no longer tolerate a couple of hundred Catholic five- to eleven-year-old girls accompanied by their parents passing their front doors on the way to school.

     
By the weekend, the fact that members of the UDA, more specifically close associates of jailed UDA leader Johnny Adair, were clearly orchestrating loyalist violence in North Belfast could no longer be ignored
On the afternoon of Tuesday 20 July, as parents came to collect their children from school, they were pelted with stones by loyalists who had been challenged while erecting sectarian flags outside the Catholic primary school. One parent, who had to abandon an attempt to collect his child, was attacked and the windows of his car were smashed by loyalists armed with baseball bats.

The board of governors, who were holding a meeting in the school at the time, helped evacuate frightened and tearful children who could not be safely reunited with their parents. The children were escorted through the rear entrance and into the grounds of St. Gabriel's College and made their way home via the Crumlin Road.

The following morning on their way to school, parents and pupils were confronted by a crowd of protesting loyalists who were blockading the Ardoyne Road. A line of heavily armed RUC officers in full riot gear ``advised'' parents that they could not proceed and the children were turned away.

``We are sick of them coming into our area, wearing Celtic shirts and blasting republican music out of their cars,'' a resident of the loyalist Glenbryn estate told the Newsletter. The children, of course, all wear red and grey school uniforms and the majority walk to school.

The sectarian stereotype the Glenbryn resident had evoked, by way of retrospective justification, was reported unchallenged by the media, as was her solution. ``They can go into the school from the Crumlin Road through Saint Gabriel's and stop trying to create more tension here,'' said the resident.

Instead of walking the short distance from their Ardoyne homes along Alliance Avenue and onto the Ardoyne Road, Catholic girls attending their local primary school should walk twice the distance, through the grounds of another school, cross a large football pitch and gain access to Holy Cross School by the back door.

``It is very sad when you think that young children were unable to get home from their school yesterday,'' said Holy Cross Principle Anne Tanney. ``Over the years we have kept things calm here and we have a good relationship with the local Protestant schools. The important thing is that the children should not be frightened or live in fear.'' The school stayed closed for the day.

Parents, anxious to enable their children to return to school unmolested and hopeful of a resolution through dialogue, asked for mediation with a spokesperson from Glenbryn. Loyalists agreed to allow Catholic parents to escort their children to school but only if they all walked on the left hand side.

Nationalists agreed to consider the proposal if their safety and the safety of their children could be guaranteed. It was suggested that such an assurance would be given by a telephone call to the local community centre. Parents waited and waited but no call came.

Meanwhile, known loyalists from other areas were seen arriving in Glenbryn by the car load. Soon it became clear that behind the promise of dialogue, the UDA had reinforced their control of the Glenbryn area. As a BBC reporter was informed by loyalists, they were now ``in no mood for talks''.

The UDA's response to nationalist parents' request for reassurance came around tea time when a pipe bomb thrown at Catholic homes exploded in a garden shed. No one was injured but the message couldn't have been clearer. By early evening crowds of loyalists were gathering at the edge of nationalist Ardoyne.

Fearing that their homes and families were about to be attacked and having no faith in the RUC's willingness to protect them, nationalist residents gathered at the adjacent corner. For several hours, nationalist residents resisted persistent provocation.

Their patience finally broke when three local republicans who had been urging restraint were singled out by the RUC and attacked. In the ensuing rioting, the RUC fired eight plastic bullets. The newly deployed L21A1 had claimed its first victims and all four of them were nationalists. No plastic bullets were fired at loyalists.

On Thursday morning at 8.30am parents, accompanied by their children dressed in school uniforms, assembled outside a local grocery store. Amidst the debris of confrontation parents walked their children towards the line of RUC vehicles and personnel barring their way to school. Further off, a loyalist crowd maintained the blockade.

Television crews captured film of distressed, often tearful and obviously frightened young children clinging onto mothers as their parents remonstrated with the RUC while the loyalist mob taunted and shouted sectarian abuse. One loyalist shouted ``Fenian scum'' another chanted, ``Bye bye,'' someone shouted, ``you'll never be able to use this school again''. After a token protest, parents and pupils dispersed.

``The naked terror on the face of little Laura Hallam graphically showed the true cost of last week's sectarian violence in North Belfast,'' wrote Stephanie Bell of the Sunday Life... ``confronted by an RUC barricade of officers in full riot gear, blocking her way to school the child's usual carefree walk to class suddenly turned into a nightmare journey.''

But for Bell, loyalist violence, RUC intimidation and a Catholic mother trying to walk her child to school were all dumped into the same blame category. ``While leaders on both sides squabble like playground children over who started the trouble in Ardoyne, innocents like Laura are the real losers,'' she wrote.

Bell's colleague Lynda Gilby went even further. ``Mothers lose my sympathy'' trumpeted the `straight talking' headline. ``Of course it is absolutely outrageous that small children should be stoned, intimidated and prevented from getting to their primary school,'' admitted Gilby. ``But a few of those wronged mothers at Holy Cross school lost my sympathy last week, when I looked at press photographs and TV footage of their terrified and sobbing kids,'' she continued.

``This was the handful of mums who, when told by police that they could nip round the back way and get their children into school out of reach of the trouble, insisted upon the principle of the thing.''

The media was matching the loyalist agenda and the message was increasingly the same. Catholic children and their mothers should neither be seen nor heard. Never mind the rights and wrongs of the situation, everything would be all right if only Catholics would keep using the back door.

A few children did make it into school on Thursday via Crumlin Road and through St. Gabriel's, but no one was sure if they would be allowed to return home safely by either route. Mindful of their children's safety, a number of mothers stayed in the school throughout the day. Sinn Féin Assembly member Gerry Kelly described children being forced to use a rear entrance as ``like something out of Alabama in the 1960s''.

At 3pm, Holy Cross parents and children joined Catholic pupils leaving St Gabriel's College to return home via Crumlin Road only to be forced to run the gauntlet of more loyalist crowds and heavily armed RUC riot squads. The myth that there was an alternative `safe' route was exposed as a lie but that didn't deter Bell and Gilby peddling it three days later.

Back in Ardoyne and the loyalist onslaught continued. A second pipe bomb thrown at Catholic homes within two days exploded, throwing a young boy against a fence and blasting a brick wall. It was 4pm and rumours of a second device cleared the street. ``Everybody is shaken up and terrified,'' said the mother of the child caught in the blast. ``It's only a matter of time before someone is seriously injured or killed.''

In Ardoyne, republicans were determined that no one from the nationalist estate would become caught up in rioting for a second night. Denied their quarry, loyalists vented their anger by attacking the RUC and setting fire to a Catholic school on the Ballysillan Road.

Friday morning and children attending Holy Cross had now been unable to go to and from school unmolested for almost a week. Acting as spokesperson for other parents, Elaine Burns and her seven-year-old daughter Leona approached the RUC cordon blocking their way to school. ``We just want to ask, are you going to let us take our children to school?'' Elaine asked the RUC officer in charge.

There were less than 20 loyalists blocking the way, but the RUC refused to move them. Instead, a scheduled sports day and annual prize giving at Holy Cross was cancelled as parents and pupils were prevented from attending.

By the weekend, the fact that members of the UDA, more specifically close associates of jailed UDA leader Johnny Adair, were clearly orchestrating loyalist violence in North Belfast could no longer be ignored by either the media or the authorities. On Friday night, reports of shots being fired from Hopewell Avenue in the Lower Shankill were believed to be a part of a UDA show of strength.

Less than a week earlier, Johnny Adair had offered to `help' avert loyalist violence in the run up to Drumcree but only if he was released from jail. Days later, Adair's associates were identified as central to sectarian violence in the north of the city. Even the British crown forces had to admit a coincidence was extremely unlikely.

``There is clear evidence that the UDA is orchestrating the violence and members of C company are heavily involved,'' said a `security source'. ``Those units don't do anything without Johnny Adair's approval.''

With Holy Cross school closed for the weekend, loyalists turned their attention towards vulnerable Catholic residential areas in North Belfast. On Sunday evening, a loyalist mob broke through security fencing dividing Tiger's Bay from nationalists living in Duncairn Gardens.

A mob of around 20 men attacked Catholic-owned cars and homes, smashing windows with bricks before hurling paint and blast bombs into the front living rooms of three houses, wrecking two vehicles, destroying property and shattering nerves. ``I don't know why these people are doing this,'' said a resident whose home had been attacked. ``People here don't bother anyone. We were just an easy target.'' In another incident, a loyalist bomb alert near Carnmoney cemetery targeted a Catholic religious ceremony due to take place on Sunday afternoon.

But by Monday morning, the focus had returned to Holy Cross Primary School and a device found strapped to the school railings. In Ardoyne, the nationalist community woke to the news of a bomb alert at their local school. The device was later declared as a hoax but many parents and pupils had already been deterred. Parents seeking to walk their children to school along Ardoyne Road were again prevented by the RUC and loyalist protesters.

The pattern was repeated on Tuesday, when parents and pupils carrying placards calling for the right to education stood in the pouring rain for over an hour, and again on Wednesday. There seems little hope of a resolution before the end of the week, when the school is scheduled to close for the summer vacation. ``It will hang over us like a dark cloud all summer,'' says one parent.