Top Issue 1-2024

7 August 1997 Edition

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Loyalists threaten Catholics

A leaflet issued by the previously unheard of Glenarm Loyalist Committee has called on Protestants in the small Antrim village to boycott Catholic owned businesses.

The leaflet came to light last week and links the boycott call to the Six County wide nationalist boycott of businesses run by Orangemen after the Drumcree crisis last year.

Catholics in the area regard the leaflet as a sinister twist to an already tense situation. In the run up to the Twelfth a 25 strong gang of Loyalists attacked Catholic homes in a small estate in the area as the RUC looked on.

``Over the summer loyalists have been gathering around the estate and shouting sectarian abuse, then one night they attacked a local man. Everybody, including the RUC, know who the attackers were, yet nothing has been done,'' a local man told An Phoblacht.

The leaflet identifies Catholics as part of a Pan Republican Front and says that the boycott is a ``Sinn Fein/IRA'' campaign.

``We believe that they should be boycotted immediately and that we should take another firm stand against this Pan Republican campaign which is a very real threat to all the Protestant people of Protestant Ulster. It is now the time for Protestant people to stand united, one with another, in these days when Ulster and the union is under such an attack'', says the leaflet.

The leaflet campaign comes just weeks after An Phoblacht reported on the history of sectarian attacks against Catholics in the neighbouring town of Larne which is predominantly Loyalist. Over the Twelfth period loyalist flags and buntings were put up in Glenarm. One flag was put on a lamp outside the Catholic church and the kerbstones painted red, white and blue.

And An Phoblacht has learned that the Larne night club at the centre of a row over a poster displayed on the premises which warned `No dogs or Fenians' has closed down.

According to local people the nightclub was targeted by UVF members who demanded protection money and free drink from a Catholic barman. The loyalists also demanded that their men carry out security on the club.

``There is no ceasefire for Catholics up here'', the local man told An Phoblacht. ``Right through the Twelfth period and in the build up to Drumcree the tension in Craigyhill in particular was bad. It spread out to Glenarm and I'm not surprised that the loyalists a are now organising this boycott. It's just another anti-Catholic exercise''.

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An Phoblacht
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Ireland