Republican News · Thursday 18 June 1998

[An Phoblacht]

A strange Orange outrage

by Laura Friel

``Come on you Fenian bastard, I'll fix you now,'' says an Orangeman removing his sash as he confronts a nationalist resident. ``It's payback time, you Fenian bastards,'' shouts a riot-clad RUC officer. In 1996 during the ``Tour of the North'' parade two thousand riot-clad RUC dragged, batoned and kicked several hundred nationalist residents off their own streets to facilitate an Orange march through nationalist areas of North Belfast.

In the wake of the `Tour', a young nationalist, Gareth Parker died after a sectarian attack by a loyalist mob drinking in a bar after attending the parade. RUC officers returning to their barracks after the `Tour' launched an unprovoked attack on nationalist residents walking home after a charity church social in the Short Strand. ``We'll get those Fenian bastards now,'' yelled one RUC officer as 27-year-old Sean Lavery was batoned unconscious, dragged behind a Land Rover, repeatedly kicked and attacked by an RUC Alsatian dog.

In the immediate aftermath of the `Tour' over 40 Catholic families were forced to flee from their North Belfast homes by loyalist mobs wielding petrol bombs and bricks. The `Tour of the North' is organised on a two yearly basis, it is scheduled to take place again this Friday. Since the last `Tour' the Orange Order has refused to engage in any dialogue with nationalist residents. Instead they have insisted on the primacy of Orangemen's `Right to March' while demonising residents as `extremists' and `troublemakers'.

When the Parades Commission announced the decision to re-route this year's `Tour' away from nationalist areas, spokesperson for the Orange Order, Fraser Agnew accused the Commission of `rewarding violence'. ``The right to walk is a right that is universally recognised...it is not dependent on negotiation. Orangemen should not have to obtain the consent of republican agitators,'' says Agnew.

In the tunnel vision of the Loyal Orders, it is not sectarian to force a triumphalist parade through a nationalist area, local residents who object have simply been brainwashed by republican agitators. To Orangeism, the deployment of thousands of riot-clad RUC officers to curfew, corral and confront nationalist residents, is not the armed wing of unionism facilitating an Orange agenda, it is simply a law and order issue. Through the looking glass logic of the Orange Order, Orangemen insisting on marching through nationalist areas, are not sectarian supremacists intent on asserting their authority, they are decent citizens exercising their democratic rights.

In the words of the `Tour of the North' organiser Billy Murdie, responding to the Commission's decision to re route the parade, ``The rule of mob law has again succeeded with the threat of Imported Republican `rent-a-mobs' by the bus load, coming into North Belfast. Loyal citizens have been, as before, denied their lawful right to walk on the roads of this province.''

Just a few hours earlier, three thirteen-year-old school girls from North Belfast's Ardoyne were confronted by a loyalist mob as they made their way to Our Lady of Mercy secondary school. Around a dozen women, describing themselves as ``Orange women'' grabbed the children by the arm and threatened ``If we can't walk down our streets on Friday, youse can't walk down these streets.''

In last month's referenda, over 70% of people in the North and over 90% in the South voted for change. Without doubt all of those unionists who voted for the Good Friday Agreement were voting for the future. ``They know that there is an honoured and honourable place for unionism in the new Ireland,'' says Gerry Adams, ``Tribal unionism and the No camp are against change but they have to face up to the fact that change is coming.'' The Good Friday document very specifically states that people have the ``right to freedom from sectarian harassment''. The British government has the primary responsibility for ensuring this but so also has David Trimble, says Adams. ``The Ulster Unionist Party is inextricably linked to the Orange Order. David Trimble should use his influence to persuade the Orange Order to talk to nationalist residents and he should speak to his constituents on the Garvaghy Road,'' says Adams.

Meanwhile the RUC have served court summonses on seven Garvaghy Road residents, including the younger brother of Robert Hamill, a Catholic murdered by a loyalist mob in Portadown last year. Residents Coalition spokesperson Breandan MacCionnaith said that after the Drumcree crisis of 1996 twenty residents were charged by the RUC and all were subsequently acquitted apart from two minor convictions. ``It now appears the RUC are intent on going through the whole process yet again.'' The Hamill family, who are currently taking a civil action against the RUC for dereliction of duty, have been targeted for particular harassment. The case arose after RUC officers failed to intervene when Robert Hamill was beaten to death by loyalists. Martin Hamill is currently facing three serious charges in connection with disturbances in the aftermath of the Orange parade down Garvaghy Road. ``He will be strenuously denying any crime,'' says his solicitor Rosemary Nelson. Two weeks ago a key witness to the Hamill murder, was singled out during a protest against an Orange march and shot with a plastic bullet by the RUC.


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