Republican News · Thursday 17 January 2002

The death of a postal worker

BY LAURA FRIEL

Within the last year, loyalists have killed four Catholics, including Daniel McColgan just a few days ago, and a further two people killed in the mistaken belief they were Catholics

It was shortly after 4.30am in the early hours of Saturday morning when 20-year-old Catholic Daniel McColgan drove his Ford Fiesta into the Barna Square postal depot in Rathcoole, a loyalist area of North Belfast. Daniel, a postal worker based at the sorting office, lived with his partner Lyndsay Milliken in the nearby Catholic Longlands Court estate. The couple have a one-year-old daughter.

A child from a mixed marriage, Daniel was well known at the local British Legion club, where his Protestant grandfather was a member and Daniel often worked as a Disc Jockey. In the sorting office in Rathcoole, Daniel was one of only two Catholic postal workers stationed at the depot but he seems to have been unaware of the risk he was taking.

As he stepped out of his car, two masked men approached him and opened fire. Daniel was shot seven times at close range and died a short time later at the nearby Mater Hospital. His assailants' getaway car, a silver Renault, was later discovered burnt out in the nearby loyalist White City area.

The loyalist Red Hand Defenders, a cover name used by both the UDA and LVF, claimed responsibility for Daniel McColgan's death. A few hours before the killing, a caller to a Belfast newspaper had threatened Catholic postal workers and Catholic school staff, including "all teachers, cleaning staff, principals, and any Catholic who works in these schools."

The loyalist caller claimed that these groups were "antagonising" the loyalist community. "We will shoot them," he said. During a follow up call after the killing, the caller reiterated threats against all Catholic postal workers who were described as "legitimate targets".

In mathematics, problem solving is based on the adoption of the most 'elegant' resolution. There may be a number of routes to resolution but the simplest overrides the rest. Last week, listening to the convoluted nonsense that passes as explanation in the wake of loyalist violence, it was clear that similar discerning principles have yet to be applied to the understanding of social phenomena.

Interviewed on Radio Ulster's midday 'Talkback' programme, a psychiatrist added to the litany of explanations of recent loyalist violence - specifically around the Catholic Holy Cross School - to have been proferred by commentators.

The loyalist blockade of Holy Cross and rioting in North Belfast could be understood as an 'addiction to the limelight', a form of 'attention seeking', the psychiatrist told the BBC's David Dunseith.

During this sustained campaign of sectarian violence, there have been hundreds of loyalist pipe and petrol bombings and numerous gun attacks. Within the last year, loyalists have killed four Catholics, including Daniel McColgan just a few days ago, and a further two people killed in the mistaken belief they were Catholics.

Last July, 19-year-old Catholic Ciaran Cummings was shot dead as he waited for a lift to work. A few days later 18-year-old Gavin Brett was shot dead as he talked to Catholic friends outside a GAA club in North Belfast. Earlier in June, 25-year-old John McCormack, a witness to a shooting during the loyalist feud, was shot dead. In Septemeber, journalist Martin O Hagan was shot dead outside his Lurgan home.

During the blockade of Holy Cross Primary School, Catholic schoolchildren, some as young as four, and their parents have been subjected to months of sectarian abuse and attack.

The short reprieve following the lifting of the blockade just before Christmas ended just a few days into the new term, with a comprehensive threat against Catholic education. This week, Catholic teachers and other school staff have joined pupils and parents on the loyalist death list.

The threat of loyalist violence during the journey to and from school has now been extended to the school grounds and the classroom and the entire school day. In the words of local priest, Fr Aiden Troy, "we're not just back to square one, this is much worse."

During an armed attack on North Belfast's Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School for Girls, masked loyalists carrying crowbars smashed teachers' cars parked in the school grounds. Gunmen armed with a rifle and handgun accompanied the assailants.

During the attack, terrified pupils and their teachers feared armed loyalists were about to break into the school and frantically telephoned for help. As Tom Gillen of the ICTU pointed out, the attack was "just one pull of the trigger away from murder". Tragically, Gillen's comment proved prophetic.

Meanwhile, the loyalist campaign of hate spread to other areas with sectarian arson attacks at St. Brides Primary School in South Belfast and St Patrick's High School in Lisburn caused extensive fire damage.

Against this backdrop, commentators have consistently argued that loyalist violence can be attributed to a 'pick and mix' range of grievances around employment, education, public housing and community development. Loyalist attacks on their Catholic neighbours, we are told, stem from social problems exacerbated by an inability or unwillingness to air their grievances.

But if the main preoccupations of loyalism are employment, housing and education, where are the folk songs, wall murals, right to work campaigns, claimants unions, and tenants' rights groups? Evidence points to an entirely different loyalist preoccupation.

The campaign of anti-Catholic sectarian violence, the vile abuse and brutal attacks reflects the deeply reactionary, racist and sectarian ethos that has dominated the loyalist agenda since the imposition of partition

In the wake of the latest killing, it was even suggested that a Protestant reluctance to "ask for charity" lies at the root of the problem. (In itself a sectarian comment, presumably as opposed to Catholic scroungers).

Are we really being called upon to accept that the current murderous violence visited on Catholic families, schoolchildren and workers, is a result of a virtuous adherence to self-reliance? Catch yourself on, Alistair Dunlop.

d all the time the simple truth is staring us in the face. The campaign of anti-Catholic sectarian violence, the vile abuse and brutal attacks reflects the deeply reactionary, racist and sectarian ethos that has dominated the loyalist agenda since the imposition of partition.

That simple truth is reflected not only in what loyalists do but also in what they say. "All taigs are targets," reads the street graffiti accompanying the latest killing of a Catholic in Rathcoole. Loyalism is up to its neck in Fenian blood; Orangemen are anti-Catholic, not anti-capitalist.

The truth might be as clear as the writing on the wall but for some it is also the most difficult to acknowledge. Prior to the peace process, loyalist violence against the northern nationalist community had been routinely portrayed as a 'tit for tat' reciprocal response to the IRA's campaign. It wasn't even true then but at least it was plausible.

Within the present context of the peace process and IRA cessation, loyalist violence continues to be portrayed in the same manner, no matter how bizarre.

Following the UDA killing of Catholic postal worker Daniel McColgan, the media repeatedly called for "no retaliation", as if a republican counterplot existed.

Accompanying a full front-page picture of the murdered postal worker and his girlfriend, the Sunday Life ran the caption, "Slain man's partner pleads for no revenge". The call was repeated throughout the weekend on radio and television.

At one point it was even suggested that McColgan had been killed by loyalists in 'retaliation' for the death of a Protestant teenager who died in a car accident involving a Catholic driver over four months ago.

It has been universally acknowledged, even by the British government, that the UDA's ceasefire is over and has been for many months. Despite deliberate provocation, the IRA ceasefire remains intact.

But these facts are conveniently fudged in 'cycle of violence' commentaries in which loyalist violence, demonstrably real, is ipso facto represented as underpinned by republican violence, however fictitious.

This persistent state of denial, reflected in the media and perpetuated within the wider political arena, can be easily explained. For what the British government and its institutions have sought to excuse, the British military have sought to harness, recruiting, organising and arming violent loyalism in the interests of British occupation.

The present reluctance of the British government to act decisively against loyalists currently engaged in a sustained anti-Catholic pogrom is indicative of that relationship. But it isn't just a case of a government loath to move against former allies. It's much worst than that.

The British established the UDA and as an organisation it is riddled with British agents, either working for Special Branch or other intelligence agencies.

Northern nationalists fear that anti-Agreement securocrats within British rule may be orchestrating the UDA's campaign. The apparent 'inability' of the PSNI/RUC to arrest and charge the perpetrators of loyalist violence further fuels this suspicion.

"How the British government responds to the threat from the UDA and from its securocrats who are involved with that organisation, is a test for the British government," Sinn Féin's Gerry Adams recently told a Belfast press conference. "Nationalists and republicans see the British response to the UDA as a measure of its seriousness about the peace process."

Unfortunately, the British Secretary of State's response to the brutal sectarian killing of Daniel McColgan dispelled none of the myths. The killing had been carried out by "evil people", said John Reid. And if evil people get their way Protestants and Catholics would be at risk.

There was no such ambiguity in the Bishop's address to thousands of mourners who attended the postal worker's funeral mass at the Star of the Sea Church at Whitehouse.

"Daniel was singled out for murder for one reason and one reason only. He was a Catholic," said the Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Patrick Walsh.

"He was murdered by members of an organisation which has been specified by the Secretary of State, an organisation which is driven by a single agenda of sectarian hatred of Catholics."