wfn.org | [PCUSANEWS] In wake of historic IRA peace pact,

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Note #8914 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

05492
Sept. 20, 2005

Tables turned in Northern Ireland

In wake of historic IRA peace pact,
Protestants take to streets, battle police

by Alexa Smith
 
LOUISVILLE - As helicopters with searchlights throbbed overhead, the Rev.
Norman Hamilton stood in his north Belfast garden, talking on a cordless
phone.

     "We've spent the last week, all of it, watching mayhem," he says, his
voice straining to be heard over the rumble of armored land rovers and water
cannons rolling up the Crumlin Road, the heart of Belfast's staunchest and
poorest loyalist neighborhoods, the home of the Protestant population that
remains loyal to the British crown.

     Unionists - who come in many stripes - are often less enthralled with
the monarchy, but  stay tied to Britain for cultural and economic reasons.

     "Ah, there's a petrol bomb (Ulster's version of a Molotov cocktail),"
Hamilton says just after a blast shatters the night. It is followed by
another. And another.

     "It's all reminiscent of scenes 20 years ago ... where there was
significant civil unrest, where the both the police and the army were brought
in to deal with the rioting," Hamilton says. "It's not on the same scale, but
it's as vicious."

     He describes the military hardware lurching toward street mobs throwing
paint-filled balloons and bombs made of firecrackers and nails, as well as
the gasoline ones.

     Three nights of rioting in Protestant sectors of the city left 81 police
officers injured. In the uneasy quiet of the morning of Sept. 14, police
found 116 torched cars and city buses with more than one million pounds of
damage, according to The Belfast Telegraph.

     Roadblocks are still snarling traffic in some areas.

     The rioting spread to nearby towns, including Newtownabbey,
Carrickfergus, Lisburn, Larne, north Down and Ards, mostly in Protestant
sectors.

     In 1969, when the province slid into sectarian violence, the
unionist-dominated state resisted demands from Catholics for civil rights and
economic equality, while republican paramilitaries raged against the British
presence in Northern Ireland. Now it is the unionists who are angry; they
fear that now, the Protestant majority may be left behind.

     Ulster once was the most prosperous, industrialized province in Ireland
- the Titanic was built in Belfast's huge dockyards - but Ulster loyalists
now complain that their neighborhoods are plagued by unemployment, lack a
strong political voice and feel that the British government has sold them
out.

     Ironically, frustrated loyalist rioters trashed their own shops, cars
and streets.

     Resentment flared in early August when British Prime Minister Tony Blair
defended the British government's decision to dismantle border watchtowers
and disband three battalions in response to the Irish Republican Army's
announcement that it is ending its armed campaign.

     Troop levels in the province will drop from 10,500 to 5,000 over the
next two years.

     The last straw was a government decision to forbid marchers to follow a
traditional route of a loyalist parade last weekend.

     "The level of anxiety is high," says the Rev. Lesley Carroll, moderator
of the Church and Society Committee of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland.

     Carroll said hard-liners taking to the streets in areas where
paramilitaries are strong are saying: "'We're going down. We may as well go
out with a bang ... at least they'll know we're here.'" More moderate,
middle-class unionists who abhor paramilitary violence - whether from the IRA
or from various loyalist ones - say more politely, "Being a good citizen
doesn't count for anything. Being a terrorist counts for everything."

    "It is deeply depressing," says Hamilton. "Significant aspects of
government policy have fallen apart."

     The Unionists have long argued that Britain's political process is more
about stopping the IRA campaign than about relieving the deprivation in
Protestant areas. They think the republicans are treated better because they
have used terror and violence to gain political clout; and they think
nationalists face few political consequences when they violate terms of
agreements they've signed.

     "Even with all the good stuff (like the potential end to the IRA's armed
campaign), a lot of folks are still aggrieved," says Doug Baker, a
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missionary who has been doing reconciliation
work in Belfast for years. "A lot of folks still feel the IRA is being
rewarded for violence, for something they shouldn't be doing anyway."

     The IRA claims the more than 1,800 British and Ulster dead are war
casualties. Unionists say they were murdered by terrorists, and are outraged
that some bombers are not considered criminals.

     "Dealing with the past is a huge, huge issue," Baker says, citing the
case of Jean McConville, a Belfast Catholic and mother of 10 who was abducted
by the IRA in the 1970s and killed as a traitor for having helped an injured
British soldier outside of her house. Her body was recovered in 2003 and
given a proper burial.

     Hundreds of gravestones in tiny Protestant cemeteries throughout the
country bear carved epitaphs reading simply, "Shot dead by terrorists."

     Many feel that the IRA cannot be trusted to do what it says.

     In its July 28 statement, the IRA said it had formally ordered an end to
its armed campaign, told its units to lay down their arms and urged its
volunteers to use only democratic and peaceful means. It forbade volunteers
to "engage in any other activities whatsoever," and pledged to establish a
process to "put its arms beyond use."

     Although optimists in the unionist community, like Ken Newell, a former
moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, see the IRA's statement as
the beginning of the end - "The IRA's gone home to have their tea now; its
all over," Newell said - others are cynical.

     Still others are cautiously hopeful.

     The PCI issued a hopeful statement, welcoming the IRA's change of
position and saying that it has always "encouraged actions that would enable
our society to move forward in the process of building peace with one
another."

     But questions still loom: What is the meaning of "other activities
whatsoever"? Does it mean an end to extortion? And money-laundering? And
smuggling cigarettes and gasoline? Those activities have been sources of
revenue for the IRA. Does it mean there will be no more punishment beatings?
How can the IRA be held accountable for its criminal acts if it won't admit
to any crimes? And, finally, when will the IRA take formal steps to disarm,
now that the Brits are pulling back? What about dissidents?
 
     In Protestant culture, where a deal is a deal, the IRA's dubious actions
in recent months alarm unionists and enrage loyalists.

     The IRA's involvement in the murder of Robert McCartney, a Catholic,
became an embarrassment when his sisters launched a high-profile campaign to
bring his killers to justice. This summer's theft of 26 million pounds from a
Northern Ireland bank - also attributed to the IRA - created new anxiety
about the group's sincerity. Anxiety was already high since three suspected
IRA members were arrested in Colombia last year, where they allegedly were
training fighters from the left-wing paramilitary group, the FARC (the
Revolutionary Army of Colombia), in the use of explosives.

     "Even if the IRA calls upon all of its volunteers to cease any activity
... it will leave a lot of (unionists) feeling dissatisfied," says Baker,
"because they still feel that the IRA is not making any restitution for the
harm it has caused. They're not making any apology, not acknowledging that
they've done anything wrong."

     The Rev. Ken Doherty has worked for 20 years in Protestant neighborhoods
along the Shankhill Road, which includes public housing and private
residences.

     "We knew weeks ago there was trouble coming," he says, describing the
tension created when a government commission delayed a loyalist parade that
was to pass through a short stretch of roadway shared by republicans and
unionists - then re-routed it.

     That was perceived as one more concession to the IRA, Doherty says, at a
time when there already was a "general anger at the government" for allegedly
coddling the IRA to keep the peace process on track.

     Protestants also are acutely aware of government money and development
in Catholic sectors. According to the British Broadcasting Co., the Peace II
Initiative has invested 14 million pounds in 72 projects, and there are plans
to regenerate the dockyard areas.

    Meanwhile, in his end of town, Doherty says, it can be "very difficult to
get the ear of government."

     "Very few of our people understood why people are (rioting) within their
own areas," Doherty says. "Why not make a peaceful protest? ... There has
been tension over this disputed Orange Order parade, but it all goes much
deeper than that."

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