Thursday November 30 1995

Countrywide demos say `save the peace process'

ON SUNDAY in Derry's Guildhall Square, Martin McGuinness told a crowd of over 1,000 republicans who had travelled from all over the north that ``the peace process is dead''. The protestors left Free Derry Corner and marched through Derry city centre, a route normally barred to nationalists.

In Guildhall Square Saoirse spokesperson Paula Doherty told the crowd that ``the conflict could not be resolved without dealing with the prisoners issue. Politically motivated prisoners had to released if there was to be a political solution,'' she stressed.

Martin McGuinness told the crowd that the British government had ``sacrificed the peace process on the altar of British expediency. The British Government have run the risk of further conflict because Irish history has always shown that if the issues are not resolved, a return to conflict is inevitable.

``I am not threatening anybody but it is a fact of history which the British can learn now, in one year or in five years' time. They are trying to humiliate not just the IRA but the nationalist community. We are not going to give them that victory.

``Throughout the world people have begun listening. FW De Klerk recognised the need for change, Rabin recognised the need for negotiations. In our situation every political party related to nationalism has accepted the need for change. I am urging the British and the unionists to join us at the negotiating table. Come and join with us in searching for a genuine, honest peace.''

BELFAST

On a cold and wet Tuesday a crowd of 400, led by the Lagan Valley Martyrs Republican Flute Band and surrounded by a large force of RUC jeeps, marched from Ardoyne Avenue to Girdwood British Army Barracks.

Standing beneath a still functional British army sangar the first speaker, recently-released POW Shauneen Baker, was given the warmest greeting of the night before reading a statement from the POWs. Sinn Féin Councillor Joe Austin said that ``some day the people would put up a plaque to mark the site were the barracks used to be, both to symbolise the oppression that existed there and the resistance that met it.

``Republicans will exhaust all avenues to achieve a peaceful, just and dignified resolution to the conflict. However, one avenue we will not travel down is that of a Six-County Orange parliament. There will be no return to Stormont.''

OMAGH

Forty people staged a white line picket in Omagh town centre on Saturday afternoon calling for all-party peace talks. Among the protestors were Tyrone councillor, Seán Clarke and West Tyrone Chairperson, Barry McElduff.

Twenty RUC members were present at the protest which was peaceful throughout.

ROSLEA

``Why will the British not give us justice'' asked the spectre of Julie Livingstone standing below the British army checkpoint at Innishammon on the Fermanagh\Monaghan border outside Roslea.

And with the ghosts of the Bloody Sunday dead, of Kevin McGovern, Seamus McIlwaine, Aidan McAnespie, mother of five Kathleen O'Hagan and Julie Livingstone, the spectres, acting out their pageant, represented the injustices inflicted on the Irish people by the British crown forces and their loyalist counter gangs over the past 25 years.

Speaking at the Roslea Save the Peace Process rally Monaghan Councillor Caoimhghín O Caoláin ``cautioned the British and Dublin governments against cobbling something together that would fail to take on board the concerns of those who had played a substantive role in creating this current climate for peace''.

As he was talking the 500-strong crowd stood under the gaze and the guns of the British army and RUC. ``Not one of their weapons has been decommissioned.''

Sinn Féin representative Brian McCaffrey told the crowd that Roslea had hoped for a visit from Bill Clinton whose relatives, the Cassidys, were traced to Roslea. ``The Cassidys are here tonight - Pat Joe, Luke, Séamus and many more. The Cassidys, by being here, are showing where their allegiances lie. That is their message to Bill Clinton.''