Democracy and loyalism are irreconcilable
BY MÍCHEÁL MacDONNCHA
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There can be reconciliation between people in Ireland. But there
cannot be reconciliation between Irish democracy and the scourge
of loyalism, whether it masquerades as a `cultural tradition' or
shows its true face as it did in North Belfast this week
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In his book, `Travels with Charley', the great American writer
John Steinbeck described the naked hatred of Southern white
racists as they screamed obscenities at a little black girl whose
parents dared to send her to a formerly `whites only' school in
New Orleans in 1960:
``The big marshals stood her on the curb and a jangle of jeering
shrieks went up from behind the barricades. The little girl did
not look at the howling crowd but from the side the whites of her
eyes showed like those of a frightened fawn. The men turned her
around like a doll, and then the strange procession moved up the
broad walk toward the school, and the child was even more a mite
because the men were so big.''
I was reminded of these words when I saw and heard the sickening
assault on children in North Belfast this week. Their faces
distorted with hate, their lips dripping with foul abuse, a
loyalist mob reduced primary school pupils to tears as their
parents brought them to school.
If this were not enough, it was compounded by some of the initial
media coverage. The line from Sky News was that the children were
``caught in the middle of a row between Catholics and
Protestants''. We were told it was an ``inter-community conflict''
and there were people ``on both sides'' who did not want
negotiations.
Then from Montrose came the News at One on RTE Radio. Billy
Hutchinson of the PUP was given the softest of interviews by
presenter Seán O'Rourke and went unchallenged when he declared
that what they had seen that morning was a ``display of
republicanism''! Republicans were to blame again. Not once did
Hutchinson offer criticism or condemnation of the bigots - his
constituents - who taunted children and, much worse, Seán
O'Rourke did not ask him to offer any.
The Ardoyne children's tears were tears of fear but the cry of
that mob was a cry from the rotten heart of loyalism. Let us put
all the nonsense aside. It is not sectarian to tell the truth.
And the truth is that loyalism is sectarianism and unionism is
its political expression. This is not a culture or a tradition;
it is a reactionary political force, a force which must be
defeated if democracy is to flourish.
As the children ran the sectarian gauntlet, Paisley and Trimble
were meeting to coordinate their opposition to changes in
policing. The British government's policing plan falls short of
Patten but it is still too much for the unionist leadership. The
London and Dublin governments have allowed unionism to reduce the
tide of change to a trickle and the politics of progress is mired
in a swamp.
Both governments should remember that the white racists who ruled
the Southern states, their brethren in South Africa, and the
landlord class who once ruled all Ireland did not give up their
privileges willingly. They had to be forced one way or another.
There can be reconciliation between people in Ireland. But there
cannot be reconciliation between Irish democracy and the scourge
of loyalism, whether it masquerades as a `cultural tradition' or
shows its true face as it did in North Belfast this week. The
bigots must be shown that change is not only inevitable and
irreversible but rapid and irresistible.
The foulest abuse outside that school in New Orleans in 1960 was
reserved for the white parent who dared to break the racist
boycott and send his child to class with `niggers'. The words of
the mob were ``bestial and filthy and degenerate''. They filled
Steinbeck with ``a shocked and sickened sorrow''.
When will ordinary people and leaders from the unionist community
come out and stand with the children of Holy Cross School?
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)