Croppies will not lie down
It remains to be seen whether or not loyalists will call off
their campaign against Catholic schoolgirls in Ardoyne in the
wake of Wednesday morning's bomb attack against the children.
For three days this week, the world has watched in horror and
disgust as schoolgirls as young as four have been forced to walk
the gauntlet of a hate-filled sectarian mob screaming abuse and
launching missiles in their direction.
Loyalists demand that the children use the back-door entance to
Holy Cross school. This has been the unionist attitude to the
nationalist population since the foundation of the Six-County
state - Catholics and nationalists should neither be seen nor
heard. Nationalists should use back entrances and back alleys,
keep their heads down and their mouths shut.
The Northern state structure and all of its agencies, including
the police, have held firm to such an ethos for eight decades.
Those who targeted four year-old girls in Ardoyne are merely the
products of a sectarian state-system.
The schoolgirls in Ardoyne were only babies when the Good Friday
Agreement was concluded in 1998. That Agreement was designed to
find a way of moving away from the failures of a sectarian
society. Three years on, as we look at the scenes from Ardoyne,
where is the ``right to equal opportunity in all social and
economic activity, regardless of class, creed, disability, gender
or ethnicity'' guaranteed in the Agreement?
Where is ``the right to freedom from sectarian harassement'', also
guaranteed in the Agreement. Where is the right to education for
nationalist children in Ardoyne?
It is the responsibility of the Dublin and London governments to
uphold the Good Friday Agreement. So far, there has been a
failure, particularly on the part of the British government, to
do so and twice since 1998 the institutions of the Agreement have
been suspended by that government at the behest of unionists, who
wish to frustrate political progress.
The ugly scenes in Ardoyne are a direct result of the failure of
politics and in particular the failure to defend the rights of
the nationalist people. Unionist politicians who are frustrating
political progress and opposing change in the Six Counties are in
league with the mob who are attacking schoolgirls in Ardoyne.
But nationalists will no longer skulk around their own country
kow-towing to neanderthals and fascists. Nationalists will not
accept second-class citizenship, whether in the corridors of
political power on in the narrow streets of Ardoyne. In short,
croppies will not lie down.
In the meatime the question nationalists are asking of both
governments, particularly the British is - where is the promised
new political dispensation?