Loyalist Attacks

Loyalist Attacks and Ethnic Cleansing

(For the latest updates on the ongoing Loyalist attacks, go to the Action Alerts section.)

The Current Phase
The 6-Counties of north east Ireland are not quite Bosnia, but the effect may be ultimately the same. Perhaps the motivation is the same as well. Periodically over the past 80 years since the partition of Ireland by the British in the early 1920s, there have been regular and coordinated violent attacks and sustained pogroms against Catholic families and homes, roughly every decade.

The result has always been the re-shifting of the Catholic/nationalist population into areas of the 6-Counties [or abroad] where their economic influence could be constrained, their aspirations frustrated, and political will broken. The north was grotesquely gerrymandered throughout this period.

The current phase of ethnic cleansing of Catholics has been almost continuous month after month over the past ten years, or roughly simultaneous with the beginning of the “Peace Process” in the early 1990s.

A Thirty Year Rolling Pogrom
There have been many such “pogroms” over the past thirty years. From the inception of the civil rights movement in the late 1960’s through the republican armed and political struggle against British rule, and the current peace process, they have occurred much more frequently than on the ten years average.

Ten thousand Catholic refugees were burned out of their homes in Belfast alone in the early 1970s and forced into the “ghetto’ of West Belfast. Every few years since then, there have been sustained attacks against the Catholic community.

The present phase of “ethnic cleansing” of Catholics began roughly at the start of the Peace Process in the early 1990s and has continued unabated and without interruption ever since.

Fear and Terror
In order to establish Protestant, but really unionist/loyalist control, an atmosphere of fear and terror on a large scale was visited upon the Catholic population. Catholics in mixed or predominately Protestant areas are particularly vulnerable, even if they have lived among their neighbors for many years. Mixed marriages are also targets, whether or not the family has political leanings one way or the other.

Spurred on by unionist/loyalist political leaders and paramilitary groups who feared loosing political and economic control, there never was a shortage of those willing to commit crimes and murder to accomplish domination over the ethnic minority. Often it was motivated by petty defending of small enclaves and fiefdoms. Recently, protecting drug revenues and paramilitary control have lead to a bloody feud within loyalism itself.

The irony is, of course, that the ethnic minority in the partitioned 6-Counties is in fact the majority on the island of Ireland. Commentators have attributed a paranoid,“Afrikaner” mentality among northern unionists/loyalists, dug in their very own “Ulster” surrounded by disloyal “fenians” and idolatrous “papists”.

Entire Catholic Populations All But Gone
Brian Feeney in a 1998 Irish News article depicted the plight of Catholics in certain areas of the north: “Catholics in isolated Catholic communities have been badly rattled in recent days, but at least they are still there. Isolated Catholics in Protestant communities are not so lucky. Soon there will be no Catholics left in Carrickfergus or Dromore. Another couple of Drumcrees and Orange mobs will have burt, intimidated or found a variety of other means to display their contempt to religious and civil liberty to Catholics.

“The terror for isolated Catholics in Protestant districts ... means at the very least they won’t get out to buy food for themselves or their children and if they do, they won’t get back to their houses. At worst they could be injured or killed running a gauntlet of Orange thugs. McNarry’s threat [an Orange Order leader who threatened to paralyze the north if the Order were not allowed to march down the Catholic neighborhood of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown] means to be able to travel freely you have to be a member of a secret, oath bound anti-Catholic society.”

At the start of the civil rights movement in the late 1960s, for example, there were 400 Catholic families in the parish of Harryville, near Ballymena. Today there are less than 20, mostly elderly, families left. The Catholic Church there is under constant assault and arson attack, and the parishioners picketed by loyalist bigots each Sunday as they attend mass. Ballymena is the headquarters of Ian Paisley’s Free Presbyterian Church.

One of the worst examples of the eradication of a Catholic community is in east Antrim, where there were 40,000 Catholics in 1970. Today in east Antrim, there are now less than 2,000 Catholics in Carrickfergus and very few in the large swath of land between it and north Belfast. One of the families to be intimidated out of its home in east Antrim in the early 1970s was the Sands family. Bobby Sands became the first H-Block hunger striker to die in 1981. He was only 27 seven when he died for his comrades.

Marching Season and Sectarian Violence
There is increased tension and loyalist violence during the build-up to the 12th of July “celebration” commemorating the victory of William of Orange in 1690, the height of the Orange "Marching Season". Each year there are thousands of loyalist marches throughout the north. Many of these are "contentious" because they are anti-Catholic in content and triumphalist in nature -- meant to be demonstrations of Protestant/loyalist domination, and unnecessary violations of nationalist neighborhoods.

Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road
Over the past several years, the Orange Order has demanded to march from the Protestant Church on Drumcree hill into the town of Portadown through the nationalist housing estate off the Garvaghy Road, rather than march directly into town. This sectarian march has caused outbreaks of violence throughout the north each year, focused on the besieged Catholic community off the Garvaghy Road. The nationalist residents are totally opposed to a loyalist march through their neighborhood. Three years ago, an Orange march was violently forced down the Garvaghy Road by the RUC/British army which lead to widespread riot and injury to the community. Many observers called it an "RUC riot" as non-violent nationalist protesters where viciously attacked. Over 6,000 deadly plastic bullets were fired by crown forces over the next several weeks as violence spread throughout the north, the vast majority fired at nationalists.

The Orange march through the nationalist neighborhood was banned by the newly appointed Parades Commission in '98, '99 and 2000, which caused violent reaction from loyalist supporters leading to sectarian violence, civil unrest and intimidation of Catholics out of their homes through fire and pipe bomb attacks. In 1998, an arson attack on a Catholic home in a predominantly Protestant housing estate caused the death of three young Catholic boys, the Quinn brothers.
The residents of Garvaghy Road have been under a virtual state of siege for almost three years as Orangemen hector and stage attacks from Drumcree hill which overlooks the estate.

The Garvaghy Road community is not the only Nationalist area that suffers through the Loyalist marching season. Other flash points, such as the Lower Ormeau Road and Derry City, and scores of other areas are thrown into “neighborhood arrest” by the RUC whenever the Orange Order or another sectarian group wants to strut their fading dominion over a Catholic area.

The RUC Collusion with Loyalists
Tension between the nationalist community and the RUC is a major factor in the equation of sectarian abuse. The area around Portadown is notorious for the murder of innocent Catholics by loyalist murder squads and the town center just yards from the Garvaghy Road estate has become a virtual "no-go" area for Catholics. In 1997, a Catholic man, Robert Hamill, was stomped to death by a loyalist mob in Portadown as RUC men watched idly nearby.

In 1999, civil rights attorney Rosemary Nelson, who represented the Hamill family and Garvaghy Road residents in legal matters, was murdered by loyalists in a bomb attack within earshot of her daughter's elementary school. There are significant and documented allegations of RUC collusion with the murderers. The RUC openly threatened her life on many occasions.

Collusion by the RUC with loyalist murder squads, over the RUC’s 80 year history, has been noted and condemned by human and civil rights organizations throughout the world.

Police Sectarian Incidents
The continued existence of a sectarian, partisan "police force" is a consistent source of mistrust and is inconsistent within a non-sectarian and democratic state. The RUC was over 93% Protestant with a long disgraceful history of covert and overt military operations and collusion with loyalisist murder squads. The newly re-naned “Police Service Northern Ireland” falls far short in theory and practice of the GFA’s Patten Commission’s recommendations aimed at reform. Both Unionist parties are against a new, non-sectarian, non-partisan policing service.

Sectarian incidents concerning the RUC and now the PSNI, most commonly in recent months their failure to act on behalf of the Catholic community when under attack, are italicized in the reports. The RUC/PSNI also tend to turn a blind eye to illegal loyalist protests and attacks. If nationalists or republicans had been the perpetrators, the RUC would have acted with violent force and with considerable enthusiasm.

Loyalist Feuds
While the various factions within violent loyalist organizations have been primarily killing each other, a major avenue for establishing leadership of one group over another is to inflict as much fear and violence upon the Catholic community as possible. We see this clearly in the Catholic enclave of the Short Strand in east Belfast where rival loyalist paramilitary groups are vying to inflict the most terror.

Power, the destruction of the Good Friday Agreement, and drug money seems to be the driving forces behind this feud, but the control, distress and ethnic cleansing of Catholics has always been the staple of Loyalist associations and murder gangs.
“Burn The Catholics Out”

One Orangeman, who admitted being a loyalist paramilitary member, told a reporter for the Sunday Mail on 12 July, as both men stood by Drumcree church looking down the hill high above the besieged Catholic neighborhood off the Garvaghy Road,“We have to burn the Catholics out and kill their children with swords. All of them. You think I’m joking. Well I’m not.”

The mentality of extreme loyalism can perhaps be seen as existing on the fringe of the unionist community. Yet it thrives. Even those in the broader community who are critical of the racist, sectarian actions of these people, gain from their perverted behavior. Protestants are still well over twice less likely to be unemployed as Catholics. Statistically, the best farming land and the best housing are owned by Protestants. The best of everything, even if inferior, is Protestant. The majority of Protestant people voted for the Good Friday Agreement, and then let their leaders slowly tear it apart. Ultimately, people are responsible for those that act on their behalf.

A community which tolerates sectarian progroms and attacks, and in fact directly and indirectly benefits from them, shares collective guilt for the consequences. A community, a government, and a “police” that allows a man like the one quoted above to thrive among them is as sick as he is.

What It All Means
These events are of serious political importance as we monitor the implementation or lack of implementation of the Good Friday Agreement. Much needs to be done, particularly in relation to equality, universal civil rights, British demilitarization, the consequences of constant Unionist obstructionism, and the entire policing situation as the British parliament’s policing bill fell far short of the GFA created Patten Commission's recommendations.