What loyalist ceasefire?
Ned Kelly looks back at a year of concerted violence and attacks
on the nationalist community of the Six Counties.
THE murder of GAA man Gerry Devlin on 5 December as he pulled up
at the old St Enda's clubhouse in Glengormley, a mainly
Protestant area of North Belfast, brings the number of Catholics
murdered by loyalists in the last 18 months to seven.
The father of two had been part of an ongoing rebuilding
programme at the club, which included a newly laid pitch and a
new clubhouse which opened on the Friday after his death.
His murder came days after David Trimble publicly and falsely
accused GAA followers of halting a Protestant church service in
Pomeroy, County Tyrone.
Earlier in the year, on 11 May, Sean Brown, chair of Bellaghy
GAA, was murdered shortly after Willie McCrea told the people of
Mid-Ulster that they would ``reap a bitter harvest'' for Sinn
Féin's electoral success.
Over the last 18 months five other Catholics were murdered.
Michael McGoldrick was murdered at the height of last year's
Garvaghy Road crisis.
On 14 March this year John Slane from Thames Street off the Falls
Road was murdered by loyalists. The father of 10 was shot five
times. Amid the grief, the British government, by their silence,
colluded with the loyalist tactic of no claim, no blame. The
press was also silent.
On 26 April in Portadown, a gang of 30 loyalists attacked a group
of friends on their way home from a night on the town.
25-year-old Catholic man Robert Hamill was fatally wounded.
Members of an RUC patrol failed to intervene but watched the
incident from their jeep.
In the early hours of 15 July, a gunman murdered 18-year-old
Bernadette Martin. Four shots were fired into her head as she lay
sleeping at the home of her Protestant boyfriend in Aghalee, near
to where Michael McGoldrick was killed the previous summer. Five
days later the IRA suprised the world with a cessation of all
military activity. On 24 July the badly mutilated body of
16-year-old James Morgan from Annesborough, County Down was found
in an animal carcass pit. Loyalists are certainly to blame yet
the RUC has yet to describe the murder as sectarian.
Ironically 1997 had started with David Trimble describing
loyalist violence as somehow ``different''.
Over the year there were bombs at Sinn Fein offices. On 27 March
the Dungannon Sinn Fein office was attacked. Ervine said the CLMC
ceasefire was intact. Three days later a 100lb bomb exploded
across the road from the Sinn Fein office in the New Lodge in
Belfast. No warning, no claim, no blame. British `security'
cameras opposite the office provided no clues.
On 21 April, bomb attacks on Sinn Fein offices in Derry and
Monaghan could have resulted in serious loss of life. No warning,
no claim and no blame.
The British general election was less than two weeks away. Then a
week later a 100lb bomb exploded outside the Sinn Fein office on
the Falls Road.
Throughout the summer churches were burnt out across the Six
Counties, in Randalstown, Co. Antrim and Laurel Vale, County
Armagh. The priest at Harryville, where loyalists preaching
religious tolerance had been picketing the Catholic Church for 36
weeks, was attacked. And hours after Ian Paisley addressed a
loyalist parade in Portadown, St MacNissi's in County Antrim was
totally destroyed and St Comgalls in Antrim town attacked.
In May in North Belfast, a regular flashpoint, the British army
and RUC looked on as loyalists besieged Catholic homes on the
Limestone Road. Over that weekend, 17 Catholic homes were
attacked and eight families forced to leave the Limestone area.
At the end of the month an Orange march was halted in Dunloy. The
Mid-Ulster UVF issued a threat saying GAA officials either side
of the border will be targeted if more Orange marches are
re-routed. Homes were attacked in Lisburn, Larne, Derry and North
Belfast. There were attempted kidnappings on the Lower Falls and
Antrim Road.
These incidents only touch the surface of an insidious campaign
of violence against nationalists that has been on-going despite
the loyalist `ceasefire'. It makes no mention of the broken
windows in schools and homes across the Six Counties, or the
calculated and intense harassment generated in areas like Larne.
But most importantly, it doesn't take into account the combined
impact of the loyalist `ceasefire' and its interaction with the
`loyalist' RUC.
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