A variation of the same old history
By Mary Nelis
The essayist Robert Lynd once wrote that all history is but a
repetition of the same story, with variations.
I remembered this, as I listened to a Housing Executive official
recount the difficulties of rehousing Catholic families, expelled
from their homes in what is termed as mixed areas, by the annual
pogroms surrounding the marching season. The Belfast Newsletter
carried a description of such a situation:
``In Donegall Street yesterday, about 7 o'clock, and we can assure
readers that this is no isolated instance, but one typical of the
scenes all over the City, vast numbers of people were expelled
from houses. A poor man, was going along with a handcart with
some miserable furniture, a friend trudged behind carrying a
clock, while the man's wife carried a child in one arm and a
looking glass in the other''.
The Newsletter was reporting events in Belfast in 1872, when
Catholic families were terrorised out of their homes by Orange
mobs led by Rev Hugh Hanna.
The paper could be talking of events this week, when Orange mobs,
no doubt under the influence of another Reverend, are once again
rearranging housing estates to reflect the sectarian mindset of
extreme Unionism.
As Robert Lynd wrote, it is the same story with variations. The
tragedy of the deaths of the Quinn children was a tragedy waiting
to happen. Once again Catholic families had their homes attacked,
petrol bombed, windows broken; bullets were sent through the post
to the Catholics living in the Carnany estate in Ballymoney. It's
not the first time, nor will it be the last, when the petrol bomb
has been used as a form of ethnic cleansing, for the history of
the segregated housing estates in the North is the history of the
creation of the ghetto, where the Orange rules of exclusion - No
Catholics here - keeps alive the notion of the Protestant State
for a Protestant people.
Fr Des Wilson wrote some time ago of his heartbreak and
frustration as he watched those with vested interests drive apart
the community groups which came together spontaneously to create
a better life for all. As he pointed out, Catholic and Protestant
people had always found ways of coming together, whether in their
own homes, through socialism or campaigning on issues of
political vetting, lack of work, or resousces.
In the 60s in Derry, Protestant and Catholic set up the first
integrated community groups and indeed raised money for the first
cardiac ambulance. Despite the best efforts of Unionist
politicians to divide them, the Tenants Associations in Creggan,
The Fountain and Irish Street began to challenge the status quo
in a way never done before. It was not to last as the various
institutions of the Stormont regime, backed up by the RUC and B
Specials, ensured that peaceful agitation for social and economic
change would be crushed and the apartheid system of Government
would once again create divisions between the people.
In the Creggan Estate in Derry, Rev Clergymen from various
denominations visited, some for the first time, the Protestant
residents of the estate and exhorted them to leave. Many did, and
Creggan became a British prison camp for its Catholic
inhabitants, surrounded on all sides by military checkpoints and
camps.
The unholy alliance, of church and state, the Government
Ministers of the Stormont regime, the puppets of Westminster once
again overruled the wishes of the people.
If polarisation of the Protestant and Catholic communities has
been the norm for the past 30 years, the people are not to blame.
Drumcree is the last stand of those with vested interests to
prevent the people of no property, the Catholic, Protestant and
Dissenter, from coming together in a national and social
revolutionary movement. In such a situation of change, there
should be no need for secret organisations, marching through
Catholic areas, symbolic of dogs marking territory and beating
drums which proclaim that they are the conquerors.
Sectarianism has to be confronted and so has the Orange and Loyal
Institutions for there is no place in a New Ireland - and that's
what's coming - for those who still think they are a majority
lauding it over a frghtened minority. Stop beating drums and
listen to the people.
The times are a changing, and instead of the Housing Executive
creating more ghettoes, they should be demanding protection for
their tenants and evicting the bigots. They could start with some
of their employees who appear daily on television advocating
violence and hatred.
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