BBC

Monday, 3 September, 2001, 23:29 GMT 00:29 UK Fresh violence in Belfast

Trouble flared in several parts of the city

Disorder has broken out in north Belfast after a day of heightened sectarian tension in the area.

Petrol bombs have been thrown in the Ardoyne area and police reported hearing shots at around 2200 BST on Monday.

An RUC spokeswoman said several officers had been injured in the trouble but none is believed to be seriously hurt.

Earlier in the day, loyalist demonstrators blocked the route of Catholic children trying to reach their school through a mainly Protestant area.

The children, some as young as four, came under a hail of abuse from placard-waving protesters as they started the first day of the new term at Holy Cross girls primary school.

On Monday evening a crowd of about 200 people gathered and police said there was stone throwing and incidents of serious disorder in several parts of the city.

In Ardoyne, trouble began at about 1800 and loyalist protestors threw a number of petrol bombs at the security forces

Stones were thrown for more than an hour by both nationalists and loyalists at the junction of Ardoyne Road and Alliance Avenue.

Pipe bomb

Violence also flared around North Queen Street and in Limestone Road.

Police confirmed that a pipe bomb exploded in the garden of a house in the White City area.

Loyalists said their homes in the Glenbryn estate were attacked.

Unionist politicians blamed republicans for orchestrating the violence, but Sinn Fein blamed the largest loyalist paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association (UDA).

Billy Hutchinson, an Assembly member for north Belfast who represents the loyalist Progressive Unionist Party, claimed the trouble began when nationalists attacked a community centre, causing a full scale riot.

"The police are allowing republicans to carry out attack after attack on the Protestant community," he said.

North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds of the Democratic Unionist Party said he saw petrol bombs and blast bombs being thrown by nationalist mobs into the loyalist White City Estate.

Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness said attacks on the Catholic community, which it claims are being carried out by the UDA, are designed to provoke the IRA into retaliation and accused unionist politicians of fuelling its campaign.

"It is no coincidence that the upsurge in loyalist attacks and threats directed at republicans and nationalists has coincided with David Trimble's agenda to collapse the political institutions," he said.

Alternative route

The trouble follows loyalists attempts to block Catholic children from getting to a school in the loyalist Glenbryn area on Monday morning.

The police and army moved about 200 residents from area who were blocking the Ardoyne Road near the school.

The security forces put up barriers to keep a corridor open for the Catholic pupils who were able to get to school at about 0900 BST.

As they passed, the protesters hurled abuse and there were some heated exchanges.

On Monday afternoon, the younger classes were brought out of the school by a back way through another school.

The governors of the primary school have urged parents to take their children by an alternative route on Tuesday in a bid to avoid a repeat of the violence.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 2001

Answers

Here in the US we went through a very bloody civil war in order to determine whether the nation would be ruled by the North or the South. A few years ago we injected ourselves into Viet Nam in order to try to stop their own civil war and have the South rule the country. We got creamed there and accomplished nothing of value. In the end we had to get out and just let the Vietnamese sort it all out as best they could, which is exactly what then happened.

Why don't the British just leave Ireland and let them sort it all out on their own? How many years has this problem been going on now with no end in sight? Surely it would have been over long ago if they had just been allowed to determine who was going rule there, the Catholics or the Protestants, the North or the South. I really don't comprehend why this thing is continuing to be fueled year after year. Maybe Old Git has a good British explanation for it. For myself, being partly Irish, I truly don't get it. I don't like civil wars, but that's the way humans have always decided who will rule their lives.

-- Anonymous, September 03, 2001

Well, let's see--I can give you the argument from my Irish Catholic mother's side of the family or the one from my Protestant father's side! Very simply, Irelanad was legally partitioned back in the 1920s, with the southern Irish voting to let six of the thirty-two counties remain British while the rest would be "free Ireland." Consistently, those six counties (Northern Ireland) have voted to remain British. As long as they do, the British government has an unwanted obligation to support them.

This latest round of trouble, from the Protestant extremist side, stems in large part from the recent revelations about the duplicity of the IRA and Sinn Fein, although the Iain Paisley bunch doesn't need much encouragement. If you can imagine the Protestants as white Americans and the Catholics as black Americans, you can get a pretty good handle on the problem. There are lots of similarities.

If the British were to leave them all to their own devices, not only would there be a terrible bloodbath (far worse than anything we've seen to date), the IRA would also overthrow the elected government in "free" Ireland, Southern Ireland or Eire. They are Marxist thugs and neither side wants them in power. I wish they'd just walk away from it too but then there'd be a flood of refugees from North and South and then the problems would just start anew in mainland Britain.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

I understand what you are saying, but sometimes we need to select the lesser of two evils, so to speak. They tried the "occupation" game and it hasn't worked, for many, many years now. We got forced out of Viet Nam and that country got itself back together very quickly. In fact they even want us to return now, with money and technology, and make some solid investments there. Korea, on the other hand, is still a divided country with the North a constant threat to the South. And it's never going to end, the way I see it, until we leave the South.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

Um, I don't think the UK wants a Cuba 12 miles from its shores, Gordon. Not even Blair would want that :)

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

Well, nobody listens to me anyway, but I am under the impression that Britain has had a "Cuba" going on right in merry ole downtown London for a number of years now, due to the Irish problem. By choosing the lesser of two evils (for the Brits) they could move the problem from London to 12 miles offshore. Just takes a different viewpoint for that.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

In other words, order the Brits out of that Irish "Pub" and let the McHatfields and the McCoys duke it out until they determine just who is to become the "designated" driver there. Without any outside "enemy" to direct their angers at, they would soon resolve it. Here in the US we consider the Civil War to be a very honerable event in our history, with many battlefield sites being maintained for public viewing. Well, at least the *Yankee* faction considers it honerable. But, heck, losers rarely are gracious about their defeat.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

Well, as you know, the Colombians--the Colonmbians!--have imported IRA officials to teach them how to better fight a guerilla war and how to make better bombs. Once the IRA takes over Ireland, then their old friends Libya and the PLO will kick in again, and they'll be lobbing Scuds over to the mainland. Nah, I don't think so!

Sometimes there's really no answer to a problem and you just have to keep doing what you can. Still, Clinton is buying a house there and I'm sure he can solve the whole problem--just like he solved the problem of the Israelis and the Palestinians ;)

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

BBC Tuesday, 4 September, 2001, 22:08 GMT 23:08 UK Police attacked in Belfast clashes
Cars were rammed into police vehicles and set on fire

The security forces in north Belfast have come under sustained attack during the second night of rioting at a sectarian flashpoint in the city.

A crowd of loyalists in Glenbryn attacked the security forces with bricks, bottles, stones, fireworks and ballbearings.

In the most serious incident, six or seven shots were heard - apparently fired by loyalists attacking police on the Ardoyne Road.

It followed another day of loyalist protests outside a Catholic school in Ardoyne.

Nationalist youths also attacked police vehicles on the Crumlin Road on Tuesday night.

A nail bomb and blast and petrol bombs were thrown at police during disturbances in the Ardoyne Road area.

An RUC spokeswoman said two officers sustained minor injuries.

Several large fireworks landed in the middle of a crowd of nationalists who were watching the rioting.

Nationalists also stoned the police and fired a large firework into the police lines.

An SDLP councillor in Ardoyne, Martin Morgan, has blamed loyalists for much of the unrest and claimed there was paramilitary involvement.

"I think all the violence that's come from the loyalist district is clearly orchestrated," he said. "It is organised."

He claimed people were being brought from outside the Glenbryn area to take part in such activities.

The trouble flared after the security forces escorted children to and from the Holy Cross Girls' Primary School on the Ardoyne Road on Tuesday.

Riot

However, apart from some verbal abuse, the trouble around the school on Tuesday afternoon did not reach the level seen in the area in the previous 24 hours.

Holy Cross Girls' Primary School is situated near the small Protestant Glenbryn enclave in the mainly nationalist Ardoyne area.

Scores of police in riot gear ensured the girls could leave the school through the front gates - taking them through the Protestant area.

But some parents chose to take an alternative route back home through the grounds of the nearby St Gabriel's Secondary School.

On Tuesday night, Northern Ireland Security Minister Jane Kennedy said the situation could not continue.

"Our priority must be those children, the safety of the children and the importance of creating an environment in which those children can go to school unmolested, without fear, without having to go through the kind of disgraceful scenes and level of abuse we've seen this week" she said.

The RUC chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said despite a shortage of police resources, his officers would remain in the area "as long as it takes".

Sir Ronnie said an officer who sustained a broken collar bone after being struck by a pipe bomb near the school had a lucky escape.

However, he emphasised such attacks would not deter the RUC from doing their job.

"We will do whatever it takes to get these children safely to school," he said.

He told the BBC there was no justification in blocking the road adding that children should be able to walk to school in peace.

The school dispute is expected to be debated in the Northern Ireland Assembly next week, possibly Monday.

Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly has put down a motion calling for support for "the right to education of schoolchildren attending Holy Cross Primary School".

A series of similar protests by loyalists were held in June because of alleged attacks on the Protestant community in the area.

Nationalist and loyalist residents were involved in fierce rioting in July during tensions raised by the protests.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

Jewish World Review

Chris Matthews

'Michael Collins': still fighting words

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- BALLYVAUGHAN, IRELAND --- Michael Collins is my personal hero. As the Irish Republican Army leader in the Irish revolution, he beat the British at their own game: intelligence.

When London sent in a ruthless gang of agents known as the Cairo Gang, Collins finished the thugs off in one swift Sunday morning. He ordered every one of them killed in his bed. With one bold act, he convinced the British Empire, on which the sun never set, that it needed to free Ireland to rule itself.

But I love Collins less for his brutal tactics as a warrior than his historic guts as a peacemaker.

Collins is the Irishman who signed the treaty, made final in 1922, that created the Irish Free State. Collins, who became chief of staff of the Free State Army, knew there would be die-hards unhappy with any deal that left six counties of Ulster in British hands. He knew those die-hards would have guns and the republican passions to use them.

But he also knew that most Irish people would see it as the best deal possible, given Britain's power and resolve.

On that important score, Collins was right. The pro-treaty forces won the ensuing Irish Civil War - but at a price. Ambushed on a rural country road in County Cork, Michael Collins became the most famous casualty of the Irish Civil War. And the most embarrassing.

That was especially the case for Fianna Fail, the political party born of those who opposed the treaty and the one that currently leads Ireland's governing coalition.

In the 1930s, a Fianna Fail government opposed building a monument to Collins at Beal na Blath, the roadside spot where he was killed.

In the 1960s, another Fianna Fail-led government refused to include a photograph of Collins in the first edition of an official government handbook, "Facts About Ireland."

Last week, Michael Noonan, leader of the political party loyal to the Collins legacy, pointed to this historic "pettiness" on the part of Fianna Fail.

But Noonan had tougher words for Sinn Fein, the current IRA's political arm. Citing the Collins legacy in creating civil order after the revolution, Noonan insisted that the Gerry Adams-led party accept the Irish Army as the only military force permitted in the country.

Otherwise, he said, Sinn Fein should not be considered a legitimate political party in the Irish Republic.

"The positions on public order taken by Michael Collins over 80 years ago are as relevant today as they were when he articulated them," Noonan said at the very spot where Collins was killed.

"If democracy is to function properly, and political parties are to play their part in the functioning of that democracy, they must do so on a clear and unequivocal commitment to one army.

"Until they recognize that in our democracy there is only one army, their participation in our democratic institutions here will inevitably be a qualified one for those of us whose commitment to democracy is unqualified and unequivocal."

The division over the role of the IRA continues the struggle in Irish politics that goes back to those first days after the treaty of '22.

It separates those who want to see unity achieved step by step from the hard-liners who insist on total victory over loyalists in the North.

The Collins idea was for the Irish to get what they could from the world's most powerful colonial power as a "steppingstone" to (a) sovereignty and (b) union with the North.

Last week, the leader of Fine Gael, the Irish party loyal to the Collins legacy, paid tribute to his historic strategy.

Speaking at the place in Beal na Blath where Collins was killed by anti-treaty die-hards, Noonan pointed to the successive "steppingstones" Ireland has exploited since 1922.

The first was the declaration of the Irish Republic in 1948, which made Ireland a sovereign nation. He pointed to the Sunningdale agreement of 1973 and the Anglo-Irish agreement of 1985 as progress toward full unification of the island.

Both forces - moderate and radical - were at work in Northern Ireland last week. John Hume and Seamus Mallen, leaders of the moderate Social Democratic and Labor parties, agreed to proposed reforms in the Royal Ulster Constabulary. So did the Catholic bishops.

Sinn Fein rejected them.

The debate over the role of the IRA and the disagreement over the latest Royal Ulster Constabulary reform proposal both pivot on the familiar tragic question on the long road to Irish unity: When do you fight? When do you deal?

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

www.dailytelegraph.com/leaders

Children in the middle

NORTHERN Ireland has yet again shown the world its Gorgon-face of bigotry.

Few will forget the hideous spectacle of Catholic children forced to walk to Holy Cross Primary School in Belfast through a barrage of missiles and abuse from their Protestant neighbours. Rarely has Christ's injunction to love thy neighbour been so viciously repudiated in the name of Christianity. The loyalist Red Hand Defenders, who are responsible for much of the violence, have dishonoured their cause, as ever.

Yet all is not quite as it seems, and many questions remain unanswered. Who, after all, encouraged these children to walk to school by a route that took them through a small Protestant enclave, Glenbryn, surrounded by the overwhelmingly republican Ardoyne district? What part was played by Gerry Kelly, the local Sinn Fein representative and former IRA bomber, who was yesterday fulminating against the Protestants?

Were known members of the Provisional IRA present on Monday among the parents and children, and, if so, was this conducive to the latter's safety? Had not Glenbryn residents been repeatedly attacked by republicans ever since the marching season and had a campaign not been waged over a much longer period to complete the "ethnic cleansing" of Protestants from the area? Only yesterday, a local Protestant teenager was run down and killed after an alleged incident of stone-throwing; so far, he is the only child to die in this dispute.

With so much bad feeling between the communities, one is bound to ask whether it was wise for Catholic parents to expose children to a possible ordeal, and for the authorities to sanction the route, if necessary by force, before the children's safe conduct had been agreed. Was political pressure brought to bear on the Royal Ulster Constabulary? What has been the role of Martin McGuinness, the Sinn Fein education minister? Even if, as he claims, he did not provoke the loyalists, he has sought to make political capital out of the plight of a school for which he is supposedly responsible.

The loyalists have fallen into the trap that republicans had prepared for them. Though Unionist politicians such as David Trimble do not condone the loyalist protest, they, too, have been damaged by scenes which, for the American audience that matters so much to Irish republicans, may well recall racial segregation in Alabama. The brutality of the Belfast mob is, alas, made possible only by bigotry in both camps. As usual, however, only the Protestants are being blamed. Despite the claims made for the peace process, sectarian hatred still thrives in Ulster, and there is no end in sight.

-- Anonymous, September 04, 2001

In some ways this all reminds me of our own drug problems. Most people support a stiff anti-drug policy, making virually every drug (except alcohol) illegal. Does that work? Nope. It only drives the drug trade underground, putting it in the hands of organized crime. It further corrupts the police and governments in every area. Even our school systems are corrupted by it. If it was legalized (like alcohol) it could then be controlled better and while there might be additional users (no certainty about that) it would stop all the crime associated with it, and the corruption. There is virtually no crime or corruption attached to alcohol now, since prohibition ended. That's the meaning of "lesser of two evils".

-- Anonymous, September 05, 2001