Loyalist violence in rural areas
Outside of Belfast, there has been and continues to be an active loyalist campaign of violence against nationalists and republicans in many country areas. An Phoblacht's LAURA FRIEL investigates.
Loyalist violence is most often associated with urban settings. The most enduring image is one of interface attacks on the periphery of sprawling nationalist housing estates, particularly in Belfast City. An area like North Belfast is repeatedly described as a 'tinderbox', where trouble is likely to 'flare up', as if the frequency of interaction within an urban population presupposes a level of conflict not found elsewhere.
Of course, such a setting fits nicely into any theory that identifies loyalist violence with inter-community strife rooted in reciprocal sectarian intolerance. Such violence is portrayed as spontaneous, arising out of the minutiae of daily urban life, rather than as orchestrated. It is "sparked off'", "ignited", rather than preordained, planned or part of an ongoing campaign.
In stark contrast to this characterisation, outside of Belfast, there has been and continues to be an active loyalist campaign of violence against nationalists and republicans in many country areas. The nature of the campaign is often obscured as "sporadic" because of the wider geographical arena. But it is misleading to identify an attack as "an isolated incident" simply because the location is remote.
North Antrim and South Derry, a vast rural landscape interrupted by larger towns such as Coleraine and Ballymena, and smaller towns like Ballymoney and Ballycastle, is organised as a single brigade area by the UDA. While in recent years attention has largely been focused on the UDA's campaign of violence in North Belfast, a parallel campaign of loyalist intimidation and terror in this rural area has largely passed unnoticed and unacknowledged.
Within the last year, An Phoblacht has reported around 70 violent loyalist incidents within the North Antrim/South Derry area. In other words, there have been one, and sometimes two, loyalist attacks against the Catholic population in this area every week.
These attacks include petrol, pipe bomb and gun attacks. They also include serious sectarian assaults by loyalist mobs and gangs, abduction attempts and death threats. Around a dozen attacks have taken place within Derry City, another dozen in Ballymena and just less then ten in Coleraine.
But the majority of loyalist attacks have taken place in smaller rural communities, in villages, towns and townlands, both along the coast and within the agricultural heartland. Here, there is no discernable interface. There are no peace walls, no concrete edifice to enshrine the dominant 'tribal' 'tit for tat' mythology of sectarian violence.
The most frequent type of incident has been pipe bomb attacks, over 30 within the last year. The most usual target are the homes of Catholic families, GAA clubs and Catholic owned and frequented pubs. Fortunately, the most frequent epithet attached to the victim is "lucky".
In the village of Armoy, the McClafferty family counted themselves among the fortunate when two pipe bombs were thrown at their home on a summer evening in July. One bomb exploded in the yard outside.
After the first explosion, three of the family's nine children, 12-year-old twins and their 14-year-old sister, ran into the kitchen, where a second bomb had been thrown through the window. The device failed to explode. Harry McClafferty told the media he was "terrified for his family".
But forget the trauma. Ignore the persistent anxiety that accompanies the knowledge that having found their way to your front door once, loyalist killers will most likely return - sometime, anytime, in a week, a month or a year, with a bomb, or a gun, or a bottle of petrol, or a can of paint. The McClafferty family, like hundreds of other Catholic families who have been targeted, had "a lucky escape" from almost certain death or injury.
In a sectarian state, most Catholics spend all their lives hoping to be that 'lucky'. In the north of Ireland, the single most dangerous thing to be is Catholic. Add to that a particular profile, a taxi driver from North Belfast, a teenage boy from West Belfast or Portadown or Antrim town, a family living in an urban interface or an isolated rural area, a worker, like Daniel McColgan, employed in a predominantly Protestant workplace, a high profile nationalist, a republican.
In another incident a seven-year-old was found 'playing' with a pipe bomb that had been planted in the grounds of Swatragh GAA club. The child picked up the device and was swinging it around when he was spotted by an adult. A number of other GAA clubs have also been targeted, including clubs in Ballycastle, Ballerin, Armoy and Kilrea.
As well as pipe bombs, GAA players have often arrived for a match to find the pitch covered in nails or broken glass. Attacks of this nature have become so routine that most clubs no longer report them.
A Bellaghy-based coach hire firm that serviced local GAA clubs was forced to close in September after persistent loyalist death threats. The Catholic owner, Damian Convey, told the media that he had taken the decision because he couldn't put the lives of his passengers at risk.
The company also provided a number of school buses. The firm was one of four threatened by a group calling itself the 'South Londonderry Protestant Volunteers', another cover name for the UDA.
In the Slemish Bar on William Street, Ballymena, customers enjoying a quiet midweek drink ran for their lives when a pipe bomb smashed through a window. A man wearing a green hood had been seen throwing the device. It failed to explode.
other pipe bomb was left on the windowsill of the Diamond Bar in Ahoghill and The Wayside Inn, Cloughmills was petrol bombed. A pipe bomb discovered in the women's toilets of the Anchor Bar, Portstewart, was defused.
Every August, around 250,000 people attend the two-day Lamas Fair in the predominantly nationalist costal town of Ballycastle. Last year, the lives of thousands of fairgoers were targeted when loyalists planted a massive car bomb in the town during the festival. The device was defused.
"We have no doubt they did this because we are Catholics," said Paula Reid after her Cloughmills home was targeted in a loyalist gun attack. The family's two youngest children, Una aged 14 and her 11-year-old brother were being looked after by the eldest son when a loyalist gunman fired a number of shots through the front door.
The two children and their 18-year-old brother were all asleep upstairs at the time. Una described being wakened by a loud bang downstairs. "My brother said there was a hole in the front door and to telephone daddy," she said.
The children's parents rushed to scene. "It was pure luck that none of our children were hurt," said Paula. "My eldest son had gone upstairs only moments before the attack."
The family had lived in Cloughmills for almost 20 years. "Easy" read the graffiti scrawled on the front door by the loyalist gunman. "My children were an easy target," said Paula.
Loyalist gun attacks over the last year were less frequent than pipe bombings in the South Derry/North Antrim area, but the consequences where often more deadly.
It was a summer morning on 4 July, American Independence Day, as Ciaran Cummings, a Catholic teenager from Antrim, was waiting for a lift to work at the Greystones roundabout. According to eyewitnesses, two men on a motorbike drove past him, then got off the bike and appeared to 'fix' something on the machine. As Ciaran walked past, one of the men opened fire with a shotgun. When the injured 19-year-old collapsed on the ground, the gunman stood over him and shot him in the head.
A caller to a Belfast newsroom claimed the killing in the name of the Red Hand Defenders, a cover named used by both the UDA and LVF. The killing was in response to the election of two Sinn Fein councillors to Antrim Borough Council in June, the caller said.
A few weeks earlier, another Catholic man had been shot dead by loyalist gunmen operating in the South Derry/North Antrim area. The 25-year-old father of two, John McCormick was shot several times in the chest and head as he watched television in living room of his Coleraine home.
The killing was witnessed by John's four and six-year-old sons and a nephew and niece. John's partner, Lynn was six months pregnant at the time. The dead man had been a witness to an earlier loyalist killing in which an 11-year-old girl had also been injured.
More recently, a Catholic workman was injured while waiting for a lift to work outside a pub in the village of Clady. Two masked loyalists travelling in a red Vauxhall Nova drove past one man and towards the second before rolling down the window and firing a number of shots.
One of the shots hit the man in the hand. Speaking to the media, the workman said he had lifted his hand to protect his face and that had saved his life. After the first shot, the injured man ran from the scene.
The shooting followed another loyalist gun attack on Catholic workmen in Derry City. A 35-year-old Catholic labourer narrowly escaped injury when a masked loyalist gunman opened fire as he sat in the lorry of his cab at a building site in the Waterside area of Derry.
In an earlier gun attack, a former republican prisoner narrowly escaped injury when a loyalist assassination squad targeted him as he drove home from work along the Ballycastle to Armoy road. The man had been alerted after he noticed someone acting suspiciously at his place of work. As he drove home, a car that was following drew alongside before a loyalist gunman opened fire.
This was not the first time a republican had been targeted. Two months earlier, a Sinn FŽin worker in Ballycastle discovered a booby trap bomb under his car. The vehicle had been parked outside his Stroneshesk Road home.
Following repeated loyalist death threats, the party worker checked his car before driving to work routinely. It was the third time he had been targeted.
Less orchestrated but just as deadly are sectarian mob attacks reminiscent of the attack that killed Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill. In May, a loyalist gang outside the Park Hall Inn near Antrim Town attacked a Catholic man in his early 30s.
Although seriously injured and left for dead, the man survived. During the attack, the mob had repeatedly stamped on their victim's head as he lay stricken on the ground. An Phoblacht has reported ten serious assaults by loyalist mobs in this area within the last twelve months.
There have also been a number of abduction attempts. In Maghera, a loyalist gang attempted to drag a 29-year-old Catholic man into a waiting car. The man had just left Regan's pub.
When targeting Catholic-owned pubs and GAA clubs the loyalist preferred weapon is the pipe bomb but for Catholic chapels, arson is the most often used form of attack. During the last year in the South Derry/North Antrim area, Catholic Chapels in Bushmills, Harryville and Crebilly in Ballymena have been targeted by sectarian arsonists.
At St. Mary's Chapel in Bushmills, loyalists drove a car through the front door of the chapel before setting it alight. In Claudy, loyalist bandsman attacked the local Catholic chapel. The chapel in Harryville was attacked for a second time with paint bombs.
The names and profiles of leading figures within the UDA were recently published in a Sunday newspaper. According to that report, the leading loyalist in charge of the South Derry/North Antrim brigade is Billy McFarland.
More widely known as the 'Mexican', McFarland has convictions for possession of firearms and explosives. According to local people, McFarland, who usually keeps a low profile, has recently been seen on a number of occasions.
Within the UDA, McFarland is known as a virulent anti-Agreement loyalist and it is hardly surprising that the area over which he presides has been one of the most active in terms of sectarian attacks.
Republicans identify current loyalist violence as the military wing of anti-Agreement unionism, playing its part in a strategy to destabilise the peace process and inhibit progressive change. But for most commentators, a loyalist campaign of sectarian violence remains an unthinkable proposition.
In the last year, Catholics living in the rural heartland or in the small villages and towns of South Derry and North Antrim, have been systematically targeted in a loyalist campaign of sectarian terror. Outside an urban context, adherence to notions of inter-community strife and sectarian intolerance are clearly exposed as unsatisfactory.
Lift
Within the last year, An Phoblacht has reported around 70 violent loyalist incidents within the North Antrim/South Derry area. In other words, there have been one, and sometimes two, loyalist attacks against the Catholic population in this area every week
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