After a series of UDA attacks on Alliance Avenue in North Belfast over the weekend, Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams visited the area on Wednesday 7 August to talk with the residents who have been affected. He was accompanied by local Assembly member Gerry Kelly and Dublin TD Aengus ó Snodaigh.
Gerry Kelly told reporters that there had been an enormous number of attacks on the nationalist residents in Alliance Avenue over the preceeding two weeks.
"Last night, one house was hit by at least five petrol bombs, and an old age pensioner had to be taken to hospital," he said. "Two pipe bombs, one a very large one, were thrown over the peace line into these back gardens."
He pointed out that the intensity of the attacks over the weekend was in all probability an attack on the West Belfast festival, currently taking place in the city. "The purpose of the festival has always been to give people some sort of respite from the interface violence that was going on. Obviously that festival is now being attacked."
Gerry Adams said that the Sinn Féin message was very straightforward: "These sectarian attacks have to stop.
"I think there is a collective responsibility here; we are trying to fulfill our responsibilities - and I think civic society has responded positively, generally speaking. I think it is fair to say that the community, places like the Short Strand and other beleaguered communities have responded in a very disciplined and calm way."
He acknowledged that within the broader unionist and Protestant communities, people wanted the attacks on nationalists to stop, but he added, there was a failure of political leadership.
"There is also," he continued, "within the British agencies, the police service and the other military and intelligence agencies, a view which ranges from tolerance of loyalist violence right through to an involvement of British agents in some of the organisations. For example, it is publicly known that the UDA is heavily infiltrated by Special Branch and other agents.
"So it cannot be left to the community or civic society. The British state has a responsibility to sort this out. And those on the Executive, particularly the First Minister and the Ulster Unionist Party, also have a responsibility to sort this out."
Dismissing Nelson McCausland's accusation that Sinn Féin was promoting a "vision for a unionist-free North Belfast," Adams said: "If Nelson McCausland is trying to justify these attacks or provide excuses for them, he could have picked a more credible argument. There's no such thing as a unionist-free North Belfast, or a unionist-free Ireland. No one in Sinn Féin wants that. What we want is this city, in particular, to be a shared city. We want all sections of the community to be able to live in peace and equality."
"Nelson McCauseland and his party will not talk to members of Sinn Féin. They will sit in an Assembly with us, in councils and in a range of other institutions. But when it comes to facing up to the real problems, the DUP hide. They don't have the moral courage to come forward to talk to Gerry Kelly and other representatives about these matters.
"How can you blame a 17-year-old who has been wound up by some drug pusher in the UDA when he throws petrol bombs or blast bombs, when his political leadership won't even talk to the people who are on the receiving end of all this."
Adams said that leaders of the nationalist community in north Belfast and elsewhere in the city were totally committed to ending sectarianism. He pointed out that members of the Short Strand community were hosting a debate on sectarianism on Saturday evening to try and talk through the issues.
"There may have been failures at times," he acknowledged. "Protestant people may have been on the receiving end of violence from others, and we have repudiated that very strongly." But, he continued, on the part of Sinn Féin, "there is no failure of leadership, no failure of a willingness to confront this and sort it out".
He said that, confronted with the the ongoing and concerted UDA campaign, nationalists had been angered by the "almost daily stories about the IRA while the loyalist campaign was being presented as a tit-for-tat campaign and people within the RUC/PSNI were feeding stories to the media. Have no doubt, there are elements who don't want this peace process to work."
The experience of nationalists, particularly those living in interface areas, said Adams, meant that there is no possibility of Sinn Féin signing up to the policing board as things presently stand.
"Our position on this is very clear," he said. "The last time I spoke to the British govenment I said to them 'don't even bother to talk about policing unless you are prepared to bring forward the proposals'. The problem for them is tactical. They have a policing board, the SDLP is on it so they don't want to offend them. The UUP's on it, so they don't want to offend them. They know they have to move forward on the Patten recommendations, because that is the basis on which the SDLP is involved.
"So there is no point in us playing footsie around the issue of policing. I want our people to be involved in a police service, but I want it to be a police service they can be involved in. And once the British government moves, we are quite prepared to go to an Ard Fheis and to put those propositions to our membership.
"But bear in mind that, broadly, nationalist people are judging the police on their conduct in the situation around these interfaces. They are judging them on the unwillingness of police officers to come out of Land Rovers, on the way they tell women to 'fuck off' - that is the type of response a number of people who have intervened with police officers have got. It is just the same old agenda and those stories feed through the broad nationalist constituency.
"So it is a British government matter, it hasn't got to do with anyone else but them and they need to sort it out. If they sort it out, we'll come forward in a leaderly way."
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)
