A surreal scene greeted those at Drumcree last Saturday night.
Across the barbed wire, water-filled moat and barricades the two
sides faced each other. The RUC, in futuristic riot gear, looked
down on the baying Orangemen. Each side shone floodlights on the
other as fireworks exploded all around. It was an incredible
scene.
A journalist, on the residents' side of the action, glanced over
to a nearby house. Through the window, he could see a young boy
watching Terminator 2 on the television. He couldn't help
thinking about the unreality of it all - the scene just fifty
yards from the young boy's house was even more dramatic than the
big-budget science fiction classic he was watching.
A caller to Pat Kenny's radio show on RTE may have come up with a
solution to the Drumcree crisis. Why not rename the Garvaghy Road
`The Road to a United Ireland''. The Orangemen would then abandon
that particular traditional route.
The right-wing US publication, The New American, recently carried
a jaunty little piece about Gerry Adams. It was headed `Guerrilla
Glamour Boy' and described him as ``the political front man for
the murderous Marxist Irish Republican Army''. He is, it says,
``the most recent fashion in radical chic'' and if he takes a seat
in the Assembly's Executive he will be ``joining the malignant
likes of Yasir Arafat and Nelson Mandela who have made the
transition from Marxist terrorists to `world statesmen'''.
But watch out, The New American tells us that ``the IRA's
frequently reiterated prediction'' is that ``the real war will
begin once Ireland is unified under their control - and the task
of imposing radical socialism upon that tragic island can
proceed.''
Among the people arrested and charged during the Drumcree
stand-off was Richard Monteith, Portadown solicitor and
Orangeman. Richard, whose fame grows by the day, was remanded in
custody to Long Kesh when he appeared in a special court in
Craigavon last Friday charged, along with eight others, with
being involved in an illegal roadblock in Lurgan earlier the same
day. The incident involved a car being damaged and a tree being
felled and placed across the road.
Also remanded in custody was RIR member William Jackson who was
in Derry's Magistrate's court on Monday 6 July charged with
riotous behaviour on the loyalist Tullyally estate the previous
day. Apparently some loyalists were objecting to the Parades'
Commission's decision to reroute the Orange Order's march at
Drumcree.
SDLP Assembly member Alisdair McDonnell joined the nationalist
protest on the Ormeau Road on Monday morning. Well, he sort of
joined it. Unfortunately, none of the residents would stand
within ten feet of him. One RUC man walked up and asked if he had
put on the wrong deodorant. But I think the problem was more
political than personal.
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