I’ve never been sure why American leftist and progressives seem so little concerned with the long struggle in Northern Ireland. It baffles me. Anyway, the Oread Daily, which has always kept an eye on the situation in Northern Ireland, will continue to follow the current crisis as it develops.
The latest outbreak of loyalist violence has been mostly described by the mainstream media as an attack on the police and as a result anger over over too many concessions to republicans and the deprived condition of the loyalist and Protestant community. Neither of the assertions deals with the facts on the ground however.
The media has basically ignored the loyalist attacks on the republican (or nationalist) and Catholic communities (which as the OD has reported have actually been going on all summer and have just simmered over the top in the last week).
As Sinn Fein News reports in just the first few days of the current spree of loyalist violence which began last Saturday some of these incidents included:
***nationalist community workers, seeking to calm interface tensions on the Springfield Road were set upon by a 50-strong loyalist mob (two men were kicked to the ground and attacked with beer bottles while were beaten about the head and sustaining other injuries to their arms, shoulders and backs), while homes in the area were targeted
***a three-year-old child was hit by a brick and suffered a fractured skull after his father's car was attacked
***across Belfast unionist gangs attacked nationalist homes with petrol and paint bombs
***North Belfast Catholic churches were paint bombed and homes in Ahoghill, County Antrim again come under attack
***in Magherafelt, County Derry up to 20 graves were desecrated at St John's Church
***29-year-old John McKay was set upon as he walked home along a river path on Saturday and severly beaten by a loyalist gang
***as rioting erupted on the West Circular Road, a 100-strong unionist mob from Sandy Row invaded the nationalist Grosvenor Road and were eventually beaten back by local residents
*** In North Belfast a Catholic family had a lucky escape after their car was hi-jacked by unionist gunmen at a slip road on the Shore Road at around 7pm. Margaret Holland, who is in a women in her 70s, traveling with her two sons and eleven-year-old grandson were confronted by loyalist gunmen who stopped and dragged her from the car. "We all thought we were going to be shot. They just started shouting at us 'get out, get out, we want your fucking car', it was very frightening." Margaret, who suffers from a heart condition, said a crowd of about 30 men, all in balaclavas and scarves ran towards the car and her two sons and grandson were then dragged from the car while the PSNI stood idly by and watched their car being set on fire. "The PSNI were about 150 yards away but told us they couldn't leave their position."
*** as a third night of unionist violence erupted across Belfast on Monday around 300 loyalists invaded side streets off the Springfield Road and attacked nationalist homes. A number of windows were broken in the homes before residents drove the unionists back. One resident Louise O'Prey said the attackers were waving swords and machetes and shouting "Kill the Taigs".
*** a busload of pensioners returning to Bangor from a church event in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast was hi-jacked and the pensioners robbed by the unionist thugs involved
***nationalist homes in Ahoghill's mainly loyalist Brookfield Gardens Estate were targeted by on Sunday 11 September
And already today, UTV is reporting traffic disruptions caused by loyalist activities across Belfast. Also reported is the purposeful spreading of rumors by “false” police that business should shut down. All this is an attempt to recreate the chaos on the streets of Belfast this past Monday.
And now as to the Loyalist complaints of economic bias against them, Daily Ireland reports that while some recently published official British government statistics have show that certain unionist areas experience deprivation and unemployment, “…the same statistics have consistently highlighted higher and more widespread levels of deprivation against nationalist communities across the North.”
Those reports clearly show that overall, “Catholics remain at least twice as likely as Protestants to be unemployed – a ratio that has remained virtually unchanged in three decades. Yet both the Irish and British government have utterly failed to implement commitments in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the April 2003 Joint Declaration of “progressively eliminating the differential in unemployment rates between the two communities by targeting objective need”.
As to the British government this week deciding that perhaps the loyalist paramilitaries were violating their own ceasefire, Social Democratic Labor Party (SDLP) leader Mark Durkan MP is quoted on the SDLP web site:
“We have to ask ‘why only now’? The Secretary of State refused to move against the UVF for murders which they were admitting and threatening more. He failed to use his powers against loyalist paramilitaries for their sectarian violence. We said this was wrong and sending a dangerous signal. The message should not go out that attacks on others in the community are allowed, but government only draws the line at attacks on police or army. Is it all right to attack nationalists but too much to affront unionists?” Sources: Andersontown News, SDLP, Sinn Fein News, UTV, Daily Ireland
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