Posted by admin on July 20, 2013
By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)
Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 19th century English historian, politician and writer. In the 1840s he was MP for Edinburgh. In 1847, after he had made a speech supporting an increase in the annual grant to Maynooth, the Tories whipped up Orangemen into a campaign of sectarian hatred against him and he lost his seat. The campaign degenerated into violence against Catholics fleeing the Famine to Scotland. The Tories washed their hands of it.
Plus ca change.
Macaulay said: “The natural consequences follow. All those fierce spirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin to worry you. The Orangeman raises his war-whoop… But what did you expect? Did you think, when, to serve your turn, you called the Devil up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him? Did you think, when you went on flattering all the worse passions of those whom you knew to be in the wrong, that the day of reckoning would never come?”
The day of reckoning has certainly come for the Orange Order. They have been exposed as never before after the inflammatory speeches of their leaders threatening days of demonstrations and “fighting the war on today’s battleground” blew up in their faces. They were isolated as the thugs their emotive language unleashed proceeded to wreck the gardens, walls and fences of neat houses on the Woodvale Road. To add to their disgrace semi-naked men and women full of cheap drink performed acts of debauchery in public. Men wearing Orange Order collarettes and uniformed bandsmen tried to kill police with swords, ball-bearings fired from hunting catapults and petrol bombs. Orange culture on fulldisplay for the world’s media.
Like Macauley’s Tories the cowardly unionist politicians who only days before had signed an appeal calling for decisionsof the Parades Commission to be obeyedran for cover after immediately attacking any decision they didn’t like whether at Carrick Hill or Ardoyne, Besashed Nigel Dodds and his little Sir Echo, nodding dog McCausland, tried on Friday morning to persuade the police to breach the ruling that only 100 blue-bag yahoos be permitted past Ardoyne. Rather than starting the day with a riot the police agreed to the raucous jeers of said blue-bag brigade.
You’d think that even the ancient dopes who lead the Orange Order must realise the game is up. They don’t. When Richard Haass arrives to try to square the circle he will need to realise that the only way to bring them to heel is to hit them where ithurts – in their pockets.
If you were to try to organise a public function ina park or square you would need to acquire public liability insurance. Every Orange march declared contentious should be required to lodge a bond of 10,000 pounds and provide an insurance certificate for 10 million pounds. The Orange Order should be required to pay for policing justas football clubs do.
ACC Will Kerr has said the cost of the weekend disturbances is already into “multiple millions”. We all have to pay for that in money diverted from schools, hospitals and roads. That’s outrageous. The people who cause the damage should be liable and that’s the Orange Order.
Just as the Football Association penalises clubs that transgress so the order should be made to fine lodges who hire paramilitaries masquerading as bands and who breach Parades Commission rulings.
The executive will never agree to any of this. However, the Public Processions Act 1998 is Westminster legislation that Westminster can amend overnight. It’s long past time to stop concentrating efforts to regulate Orange marches on criminal sanctions for policing their routes and behaviour. The only way to proceed is to cripple the order financially if theyrefuse to behave decently and lawfully. Hurting the clubs was the only way football thuggery was brought to heel.
For a start there should be a review of conditions for all government grants and certainly of any EU money promised to the Orange Order. They cannot continue to receive public money yet tell their members to disobey the law, encourage them onto the streets and then collect the next tranche of cash after their antics have cost millions of pounds.
Posted by Jim on
After a week of the most intense loyalist violence, a decision by the Parades Commission to reroute another planned march by the anti-Catholic Orange Order has been welcomed as good news.
Orangemen have said they will attempt to march through the republican Ardoyne and surrounding areas of north Belfast this Saturday, July 20th, to ‘complete’ their July 12th parade.
For several nights this week, Orangemen and their loyalist supporters have engaged in heavy rioting — wielding swords, bricks, masonry, petrol bombs, blast bombs, fireworks and other missiles — in their determination to march down the Crumlin Road and into a series of nationalist communities.
Rioting quickly spread to loyalist east Belfast, and roadblocks and barricades created disturbances across the North.
But while the violence was at its most intense on Friday night, it continued in a more localised manner every night since with diminishing intensity.
Widely blamed for encouraging the riots with militaristic speeches and statements, the Protestant masonic order initially appeared to back down before announcing this weekend’s parade plan.
Their stated reason is to “escort our fellow brethren home to their Orange Hall and therefore complete the Twelfth of July parade”.
Tomorrow’s march – involving 500 participants, three bands and an undisclosed number of supporters – will again be blocked at the junction of Woodvale Road and Woodvale Parade and banned from passing through the Ardoyne area.
It is expected that the Orangemen will now stage weekly ‘Drumcree-style’ parades to the north Belfast flashpoint, recalling the prolonged loyalist siege of the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown in the late nineties.
MEDIEVAL-STYLE BATTLE
On Friday, and for three successive days, the intersection saw serious confrontations between sword-wielding Orangemen and the shield-bearing PSNI riot police.
Each side had its reinforcements: the Orangemen enjoyed the support of over a thousand loyalist supporters, many intoxicated by the alcohol and heat. The PSNI fought back with the support of over a thousand riot police, hundreds specially drafted in from London and other British cities.
While an Orange Order spokesman appealed today for calm, it is widely feared that Saturday’s stand-off will see the full venom of the loyalist battle gangs directed against Ardoyne with the growing involvement of the murder gangs of the unionist paramilitary UVF.
At the eye of the Orange storm on Friday, Sinn Fein Assembly member Gerry Kelly was among those who helped to ensure republican Ardoyne remained peaceful, addressing a crowd from his favourite position, the hood of a PSNI Landrover.
Today, he denounced the plan for a new parade.
“Whoever in the Orange Order thought this was a good move needs to reflect on how it has increased tensions and done absolutely nothing to point towards a resolution of the situation,” he said.
A spokesman for the Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective said: “This has been the most peaceful July in Ardoyne for many years, confirming what GARC has being saying for a long time now – that it is these unwanted coat trailing exercises that were the basis of trouble that plagued our community for generations.”
It said it would not hold a protest on Saturday in a bid to lower tension in the area, but added that “all attempts by the Orange Order to provoke our community will fail and are futile.”
SWORDS AND SHIELDS
The cost of the disorder has yet to be measured, but the PSNI has said 72 of its members had been injured. Riot police fired 49 plastic bullets.
It was also revealed British Army Land Rovers are back on the streets to cope with the increased involvement of the UVF and UDA. So-called ‘snatch’ vehicles have also been spotted outside nationalist estates across the city in recent days.
The PSNI admitted 140 British Army Land Rovers ‘loaned’ to them for the G8 have been ‘retained’. Repainted the same white as PSNI Land Rovers, the British Army vehicles have had the word ‘police’ roughly painted on their sides.
A significant feature of the current wave of violence is the involvement of a broad cross-section of unionist society, including older man and women and the middle classes.
Elderly men have been seen to attack police lines with everything they can lay their hands on, and cheering as the PSNI suffered injuries. Some appeared so drunk that they could barely stand, while others strutted around in a state of undress or performed lewd actions for the entertainment of the baying mob.
Orangemen in sashes and bowler hats were often to the fore, swiping viciously at the PSNI with their ‘commemorative’ Battle of the Boyne swords. They were assisted by loyalist bandsmen, some wearing official Royal Navy ‘Help for Heroes’ T-shirts, as well as masked and hooded youths-
By Tuesday, the small nationalist Short Strand enclave had once again become the main focus of loyalist violence — as it had been at the start of the year.
EASY TARGETS
Although initially overshadowed by the scenes in Woodvale, the rioters in east Belfast also swaggered around drunkenly before the cameras between launching themselves wildly at riot police, feeling protected by the domination of the area by the UVF.
Seventy-eight-year old Short Strand resident Tommy McNulty, whose home was targeted several times in recent days, says he felt let down by those political leaders who had come to reassure him before. The attacks have forced Mr McNulty’s 81-year-old wife Kathleen to leave their home.
“We have lost count of how many times our house has been attacked,” he said.
“I have had [British Direct Ruler] Theresa Villiers sitting on my couch.
I have met TDs and politicians and nothing has been done.”
As the week wore on, the rioting appears to have become more centred in the areas controlled by UVF murder gangs.
Violence spread to strongholds such as Mount Vernon in north Belfast and the Village area of west Belfast. There were also disturbances in Portadown, County Armagh, and in Newtownabbey, County Antrim.
But nationalist communities were living in fear across the North. A Catholic woman in Coleraine escaped injury after flammable liquid was poured through her letterbox on the Twelfth night – the third attack on her home in a week. The woman, who is ill and awaiting major surgery, lives alone in a predominantly loyalist area of Coleraine. Although she was not hurt in the attack, she has been left badly shaken.
Last week, she was treated for an injury to her eye after a brick was thrown though her kitchen window. Bricks were thrown into her back garden in a separate attack.
SUICIDE MOCKED
But the trouble began, as every year, with the sectarian bonfires of the ‘Eleventh Night’, the eve of the Twelfth parades.
While a statue of the Virgin Mary placed on once bonfire caused, an effigy placed on another also caused considerable anger. It was intended to depict a popular west Belfast priest who died by suicide last month, it has emerged.
Fr Matt Wallace, originally from Templetown in Co Wexford, was dubbed “the people’s priest” after having served communities in west Belfast for almost four decades. The parish priest of Holy Trinity Church in Turf Lodge was found dead in the parochial house.
For some the burning of the effigy brought back memories of their own tragedies.
Margaret McCartney said she was horrified when she was shown a picture of the bonfire in Rathcoole, Newtownabbey.
“My little nephew is 11 years dead and he [killed] himself,” she said.
“It’s very, very sick. Honestly, when these people do die, they will have to meet their maker knowing they did this.”
Posted by admin on July 17, 2013
Loyalists rioted for a fifth evening in a row last night over the failure to permit a sectarian march through the nationalist Ardoyne area on north Belfast.
Petrol bombs and other missiles were thrown at the PSNI police on lower Newtownards Road, and four cars were hijacked and burned out.
A French press photographer was assaulted by rioters and had his camera stolen.
The violence also reached to North Queen Street, Woodvale Road and Mount Vernon in north Belfast.
Fires were lit on North Queen Street and on Woodvale Road, where the anti-Catholic Orange Order and their loyalist supporters continue to seek to march down the Crumlin Road into nationalist and republican estates. The Orangemen consider the area to be a key part of their “traditional” anti-Catholic march.
For the first time this week, the PSNI deployed water cannon to the nearby Mount Vernon area, where UVF paramilitary figures have been blamed for orchestrating riots.
There were also disturbances in the past 48 hours in Portadown, County Armagh; Newtownabbey, County Antrim; and in PittPark, close to the nationalist Short Strand in east Belfast, where a blast bomb was thrown.
Loyalist paramilitary leaders continue to be blamed for organising the disorder. The same areas were assiduously targeted by the same organisations earlier this year during the ‘flag protests’, in an attempt to overturn a Belfast council decision to reduce the flying of the British Union Jack flag over City Hall.
The PSNI also said that on Monday night, a device was thrown at one of their Landrovers from the nationalist Brompton Park in north Belfast, drawing strong condemnation from nationalist politicians.
STORMONT BACKS ORANGEMEN
On Tuesday the Six-County Assembly in Belfast backed a unionist motion in support of the protests and condemning the decision by the Parades Commission to reroute the Orange march away from Ardoyne.
DUP leader and the Six-County First Minister Peter Robinson said a new Stormont group chaired by returned US envoy Richard Haass offered an “alternative”.
He indicated that the Orange Order could now support proposals to replace the Parades Commisssion, such as a two-tier adjudication system on parades to facilitate his own involvement in parade decisions alongside Sinn Fein’s Deputy Firat Minister, Martin McGuinness.
“I put it to the Orange institution,as I do to every party in the House, that there is now an all-party groupset up with the purpose of agreeing an alternative to the Parades Commission,” he said.
Supporting the DUP, Ulster Unionist leader MikeNesbitt said that “Proddies lie down” would not work, and that ‘mutual respect’ was needed
— paraphrasing the usual anti-Catholic phrase, ‘Croppies liedown’.
In an unusual departure, Basil McCrea, leader of the tiny new breakaway unionist NI21 party, openly criticised the Orange Order. It was the first time the leader of any Unionist party, however small, has criticised the quasi-religious body.
McCrea, who defected from the Ulster Unionist Party earlier this year, described the events of recent days as a “PR disaster” for Orangeism.
“It was sickening, it was disgusting and it was not in my name,” he said, resulting in strong condemnation from loyalist extremists.
Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness told the same debate that sectarian parades were no longer a problem in his own home town, the overwhelmingly nationalist city of Derry.
“Last weekend was a tale of two cities — in the city that I come from, we had a totally peaceful weekend,” he said.
“That came about as a result of a recognition many years ago by all the stakeholders in the city of Derry, including the loyal orders, of the importance of resolving the contention around parades.”
His appeal for talks between parade organisers and nationalist residents was narrowly rejected, however, and the Sinn Fein amendment fell three votes short of a majority.
Posted by Jim on July 15, 2013
There has been a third consecutive night of disorder and violence in Belfast and in other locations.
A large mob again gathered tonight in the loyalist Woodvale area of north Belfast to force a sectarian parade through Ardoyne and other nationalist areas.
Masked gangs of loyalist youths also appeared throughout the day at sectarian interfaces and across main roads around the city after organisers placed rallying messages on internet sites.
Some of the worst violence tonight took place when the PSNI entered a narrow alleyway in the Woodvale area, and were attacked with barrages of bricks and petrol bombs.
A hijacked car was burned out in the Mount Vernon estate in north Belfast, where UVF paramilitaries set up burning barricades.
Earlier, at least one car was burnt out in Newtownabbey, County Antrim, amid reports of other hijackings. Rioters also gathered at the square in Ballyclare, County Antrim. Trouble was also reported for a second night in parts of Derry and for a third night in east Belfast.
In many of their public comments leading up to Friday, the Orange Order appeared to encourage violence protest against the refusal to allow the parade. But on Saturday morning, after six hours of rioting and after coming under severe criticism from churchmen and nationalist politicians, they said they would suspend their protest.
That appeal may have reduced the scale of the violence on Saturday night, although volleys of petrol bombs were still thrown in Woodvale by over a hundred masked youths, while men carrying Orange Order banners and wearing collarettes were also present.
The PSNI said seven of its members were injured on Saturday night, down from the more than thirty it said were injured on Friday night, at the height of the trouble. Several dozen plastic bullets were fired in both north and east Belfast, angering human rights groups who have long campaigned for the deadly weapon to be banned.
The PSNI has revealed that more than a thousand additional police have now been brought in to the North from Britain amid official expectations of continuing disorder.
But in nationalist Ardoyne, the focus of the loyalists hate and provocation, residents have heeded appeals by community leaders and the area remains calm.
Meanwhile, the DUP has recalled the Stormont Assembly tomorrow [Monday] to express its anger over the rerouting of Fridays parade, and is expected to see a difficult debate. The party also said its north Belfast MP, Nigel Dodds, continues to recover after being hit by a loyalist brick while protesting on Friday night.
Speaking at a Sinn Fein event in Sligo, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said that while the events in Belfast were deplorable, hundreds of Orange marches had also passed off without incident.
The root of the violence in Belfast by people who claim to be loyal, lies in the refusal of the Orange leadership to talk to their neighbours and in the inflammatory speeches in the lead up to the Twelfth, he said.
Orange is one of our national colours. We are committed to respect and tolerance of the Orange tradition but sectarianism and incitement to hatred cannot be tolerated.
As usual, when those who incited the trouble have left the scene, the burden is carried by poor, working class neighbourhoods and communities.
He also praised those across Belfast who bravely used their energies to protect young people and to keep the situation as calm as possible.
Posted by Jim on
Police injured during third night of violence in Belfast
Chief Constable felt compelled to draft in more than 1,000 British officers to assist PSNI deal with parading violence
PSNI Chief Constable Matt Baggott. Picture: Kelvin Boyes / Press Eye
PSNI chief constable Matt Baggott has described the actions of some
Orange Order leaders as “reckless” after a
Twelfth of July weekend that resulted in scores of his officers being injured in mainly loyalist violence.
Police came under attack in the Woodvale area in a third night of violence in north Belfast last night. PSNI officers were attacked with petrol bombs and other missiles while police responded by firing a number of plastic bullets. At least one officer was injured. There was also rioting in Newtownabbey on the outskirts of north Belfast last night where police arrested five men.
Fierce rioting on Friday night left 32 officers injured, some of them seriously, while more sporadic violence in the Woodvale area on Saturday injured seven officers.
- bottles, ceremonial swords, golf balls and fireworks. On Saturday night at Woodvale, a police officer was hit by a petrol bomb.
The North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds, who was knocked unconscious when struck by a brick fired by a loyalist on the Woodvale Road on Friday night, was released on Saturday from the Royal Victoria Hospital.
Mr Baggott felt compelled to draft in an additional 400 British officers on Saturday, in addition to the 630 already called in from England, Scotland and Wales to help his officers. At least two of the British officers were injured in the violence, with one suffering a broken leg.
Chairman of the North’s Police Federation, Terry Spence said the PSNI might not have been able to cope but for the visiting officers. He said they had been dealing with “disorder on a magnitude and degree of viciousness they would rarely have seen” and “without their help . . . we may well have been overwhelmed”.
Political recrimination continued over the weekend with Sinn Féin and the SDLP blaming the Orange Order for inflaming passions while unionist politicians responded that the Parades Commission must bear some of the responsibility for the violence by its decision to ban north Belfast Orangemen marching by the shops in the nationalist Ardoyne on Friday night.
‘Crisis’
The Assembly has been recalled from its summer recess at the request of the DUP to discuss the Parades Commission determination.
Early on Saturday following the Twelfth night violence, the Orange Order “suspended” its protests. It had said last week that widespread protests would ensue from the Commission ruling while the Twelfth would not conclude until the Orangemen were allowed past the Ardoyne shops.
On Saturday Mr Baggott said the violence was “shameful and disgraceful”. He was also directly critical of some Orange leaders. He said they must “reflect on whether they provided the responsible leadership asked for by myself and by the party leaders”.
“Some of their language was emotive and having called thousands of people to protest they had no plan and no control and, rather than being responsible, I think the word for that is reckless,” he said.
Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore praised the PSNI and said the violence was “an affront to the decent people” of Belfast and Ireland.
The North’s Minister of Justice David Ford has warned rioters “that they will be brought to justice quickly”.