An Examination of the Holy Cross Protest and its Causes

Ardoyne: a convenient cover?

By now there can be few, right across the world, who have not heard of the protracted protest involving the embattled Protestant residents of Ardoyne and the parents of those children who attend the nearby Holy Cross school. It has been a major propaganda coup for Sinn Fein and the IRA aided and abetted by sympathetic elements within the international media system. The images shown in homes across Northern Ireland have been replicated in country after country throughout the world. The framing of this dispute by the media leaves those who do not have any knowledge of the situation that the Protestant residents of Ardoyne find themselves with no doubt that Protestants are once again bad and Catholics good. It is a simple message rammed home time and time again by the media, and by those who the media court within the republican community in order to give "informed opinions". Like a great many situations that have arisen in the course of the troubles there is, however, another side to the story. Let us now hear the other side.

From the perspective of the IRA and Sinn Fein the timing of this dispute in North Belfast could not have come at a better time. I refer of course to that incident, now buried beneath the scenes unfolding day by day in Ardoyne, involving high-ranking members of the IRA and a Sinn Fein election coordinator caught in a region of Columbia under the control of the terrorist organization the FARC. The term terrorist is perhaps not a descriptive enough title for what the FARC engage in, as their chief concern is actually narcotics, hence they are really narco-terrorists. The three men arrested in Columbia, each carrying false passports the trade mark of any good international terrorist, were found not only to have traces of explosives on their person but also traces of narcotics. The IRA and Sinn Fein like to portray themselves as anti drugs, and are involved in various so-called initiatives to combat drugs. The best known "initiative" to come from the IRA and Sinn Fein has been: DAD or Direct Action Against Drugs. This cover name for the IRA was used for a time in the 1990s to assassinate known drug dealers and let the IRA portray themselves to many naïve people within the Catholic community as being hard on drug dealing. The reality was somewhat less principled, those killed where in fact independent drug dealers who had cut themselves off from the protection of the IRA. It is well known that while the IRA does not get its own hands dirty it allows drug dealing in return for a cut of the profits made from this lucrative racket.

The arrest of three IRA men, one of whom was a Sinn Fein election coordinator, could not have been more embarrassing and damaging for Sinn Fein as they strive to become the dominant nationalist political party and court American support. The incident highlighted that the IRA is far from sincere in its commitment to the peace process and worse than that it highlighted links with organizations that have been a constant thorn in the side for countless American administrations. It must be galling for many in America to think that so much tax payers money has went on combating the trafficking of drugs from Columbia only to find that Sinn Fein, a supposed friend of America, has established links with the very organization that is responsible for spreading the poison of narcotics to America. What is perhaps even more worrying is that one of the men arrested was an explosives expert in the IRA and may have been exchanging knowledge with the FARC who whilst well equipped with the latest weapons of terrorism are not yet as sophisticated in terms of fabricating detonating devices. Over the years, in a cat and mouse game with the British security forces, the IRA have developed highly sophisticated means of detonating their lethal bombs, This knowledge and skill has more than likely been passed on to their comrades within the FARC. It is not inconceivable that American citizens, or military personnel, may end up on the receiving end of this new deadly skill acquired by the FARC.

Why the Protest against children?

The media system and Sinn Fein like to portray the protest at Ardoyne as one against children attending a nearby school situated close to a small Protestant enclave. They like to make it out that the Protestants in the area are simply bigots intent upon causing as much harm to these young children as possible. Many people who are not fully aware of the situation that Protestants in this small enclave find themselves in will be highly susceptible to such an interpretation of events. The media have concentrated almost exclusively on either the events of the protest itself or upon the childrens parents and their reasons for dragging their children down that road into what is, so they say, a cacophony of hate. Are we really to believe that one day the Protestants in this area awoke from bed and thought: that Catholic school that’s down the road there I think we should have a protest and stop children going to it and give the republican movement a propaganda coup? Are we also to believe that the Protestants of the area wish to be hemmed in like animals by the uniformed thugs of the security forces? The greatest irony of this whole conflict is that with the police presence and its heavy-handed nature against Protestants many Protestant parents will not risk letting their own children go to school. It seems there are two sets of children not going to school, not getting their education and having a childhood cruelly cut short.

One of the main motivating factors is a complete and utter wretchedness felt on the part of the Protestant community living in Ardoyne. They live their lives in fear, not just for their own lives but also for the lives of their children. They also feel that no one wants to know their plight and that no one really cares. Night after night their homes are attacked by catholic youths from just down the road. The area is overwhelmingly Catholic and also a republican stronghold. The Protestant community has largely been ethnically cleansed from the area so that now there are only approximately 1,000 Protestants left in the area. There are, however, some 10,000 Catholics living in the area and their numbers are increasing. Why is this? The Protestant people no longer feel welcome in the area and are made known that their presence is no longer welcome. The parents of the school children complain that they cannot use the road of their choosing to go to school. They at least have an alternative route by which they can to school the Protestant people are not allowed to use the local shops or the post office both offering essential services:

"No one knew until all this started happening at the school that we couldn't even go past those Catholics to the shop. Now the whole world sees. I don't care what they think of us - we're damned anyway" (A Protestant Resident of Ardoyne)

The Protestant people increasingly find that they are the new "niggers"; indeed Catholics have their own vernacular of racist insults fully developed with Protestants referred to as "Huns" and "orange bastards". The term orange bastard is not only a reference to Protestant culture, the term bastard is also used as officially the Catholic Church does not consider Protestants who are married in a Protestant church to actually be married hence they are illegitimate or bastards.

Many local Protestants see the protest as their last stand and they know that the media portrayal of their protest will not cast them in a good light. They have been reduced to the point, however, that they simply no longer care what the world thinks of them they just want to highlight their horrendous situation:

"We know we've lost the PR battle, but people are so desperate they've gone beyond that."

They are being driven from their homes one after the other, street after street, and yet the ears of the world are deaf to their suffering. One of the few newspapers, a local paper, to afford any coverage to this despicable ethnic cleansing of Protestants is the News Letter and it should be praised but it is unfortunately a voice lost amongst the multitude of voices who have either turned a blind eye or agree with Protestants being forced from their homes. Here is an extract of an interview carried in the News Letter of a Protestant family recently forced from their home in Ardoyne:

"One night, a man tried to kick the door in and when he couldn’t he lifted the plant pots and threw them through the windows. Another time, something smashed the downstairs window and broken glass landed just where my baby had been lying at the time."

This story is one of many similar stories coming from the area and the RUC remain either unwilling or unable to contain the gangs of Catholics who are forcing terrified Protestant families to flee the area. They are, however, able to police a dispute and force a procession through a Protestant area where it is simply not wanted.

Many Protestant families will be considering leaving the area particularly those with young children. Their minds may well have been made for them after the shocking and grisly murder of a young Protestant boy, Thomas McDonald, as he cycled his BMX bike outside the Protestant White City Estate. Eyewitnesses report that the car, which had just come from the catholic area of Ardoyne upon seeing that Thomas was a Protestant child, mounted the pavement and drove over him injuring him fatally. Much has been heard of the damage caused to the school children attending the Holy Cross School but none of them has, and hopefully never will, been physically harmed or murdered. Just as we saw images of young children clutching the hands of their mothers and fathers so the mother of Thomas rushed upon the scene in time to cradle her dying son as he slipped away. How many tears have been shed behind closed doors not just for a young Protestant child so callously murdered but for the local taxi driver shot dead by the IRA last Christmas? How many tears are shed behind closed doors as Protestant families are forced to leave what for many has been the area in which they grew up in and which their own parents grew up in? Are their tears any less poignant or real than those shed in front of television cameras?

The Protestant community in Ardoyne is well aware of the importance of children to our society and knows the hurt that comes from seeing them in distress or in the case of young Thomas McDonald, brutally murdered. The protests were never aimed at the children but at their parents who use their children as a cover to raise sectarian tensions in the area. Many of the people accompanying the children on their morning run to school were not actually parents and simply went along, even before the protest started, in order to verbally and physically abuse the residents of the area. How long can any person endure every morning being spat upon as them come out their front door? How long can anyone endure threats and verbal abuse directed against them? How long can anyone stand to have their doors kicked in and their windows broken? The Protestant people, rightly or wrongly, have chosen to highlight their grievances in the only way they can because they see no other way. Unlike the Catholic community in Larne, who upon forcing Protestants out of a mixed housing estate found that some Protestants were of the mind to retaliate, the Protestant community in Ardoyne has not had government ministers calling with them on the ground to offer wholehearted support, nor leading officers within the security forces to reassure them. Unlike their Catholic counterparts who enjoy the full backing of their Church the Protestant Churches have played a most rueful role in the whole affair. They have consistently and most abjectly failed to put across the causes of the protest and thus have done little to address how these causes of conflict might be removed.

The Right Road Forward

If the Catholic community in Ardoyne, and more specifically those parents involved in the Holy Cross dispute and their pressure group, the Right to Education, are sincere in their desires to see a peaceful outcome, involving dialogue and compromise then they will for the duration of the negotiating period refrain from processing down their chosen route to school. Only this action can provide the necessary breathing space for the embattled Protestant community to begin to engage in meaningful dialogue of any sort with the parents. It has to be noted, however, in line with Sinn Fein policy on resident groups the chosen spokesman for the Right to Education group has a conviction for the murder of two policemen. A fact that also went largely unreported by the media and when it was broached was brushed aside with a contemptuous shrug and was mentioned no more. It is somewhat ironic that the man chosen to represent young children and their right to education has in the course of his life taken life and made orphans of children causing them very real psychological damage. Would it not be fair to assume that the death of a parent or love one has a much greater psychological impact than the sight of protestors waving flags and blowing whistles?

Many people, not just within the Protestant community but also across the world, have in part seen through the charade of Holy Cross, the parents and their actions. The point being made by those not completely blind to reason has been: if this protest is really so damaging to children and there is indeed an alternative route that causes no tension then why would any parent who truly loves their children force them to make this journey to school? The reply thus far to this question when posed to those who daily parade, for it is a parade in all but name, their children down the road has been that it is a point of principle. That it is a point of principle for the parents to walk a chosen road is valid from their perspective but it is equally valid as point of principle that Protestants living in the area should not have to endure the daily violence perpetrated against them and having their freedom of movement restricted by the baton welding thugs of the security forces. With respect to the parents what sort of parent makes a point of principle by putting their own child in supposed danger? What sort of parent would willingly inflict apparent psychological damage upon their own child just so that they might walk the route of choice rather than the route that is agreeable to their Protestant neighbours who are living in a state of fear after the killing of one of their own children by Catholics?

When we strip away the emotional aspect of the dispute, the image of children crying and in distress, and look at the argument and rationale for continuing to process down this road to school it does not stand up to scrutiny. To put it simply, many Protestants cannot understand, that when faced with a choice of walking a route that takes them through a Protestant area and walking a route that takes them through a neutral area they choose to take the path of conflict. Perhaps the best parallel that can be drawn, in the mid-Ulster area, is that of the Protestant school, Lurgan College, situated in the middle of what is now a Catholic area. The area at one time had a substantial Protestant population with Protestants living in estates such as Wakehurst. The area is now almost completely Catholic, as Protestants have been ethnically cleansed from what republicans view as their territory. The school is one of the few Protestant manifestations left on the road but the children, increasingly few in number, have not in recent decades ever attempted to walk from the centre of Lurgan to their school a short distance down that road. Instead they must either be brought there by car, taxi or by bus and even then they run a gauntlet of hate as bricks rain down upon them. The school itself is vandalized so often that it is no longer reported and indeed many believe reporting it only makes the situation even worse for the pupils. Increasingly parents are sending their children to either Portadown or to Banbridge rather than risk their lives by allowing them to attend the school. No Protestant parent would even consider making their children walk to that school, no matter what the principle. It is also highly unlikely that the police would even contemplate enforcing such a foolhardy action even if the parents did ever decide to place their children in such a dangerous situation.

We call upon commonsense to prevail in this dispute, particularly on the part of the Catholic parents and their associated leaders. The conduct of Father Troy in recent days with his threats to take a legal course of action with regard to "abuse" of children can only serve entrench the position of the local residents. As a Priest in the Catholic Church Father Troy may feel himself in a position that allows him to be able to recognize child abuse but ultimately the authorities may well take a less than sympathetic view of not only the role he has played but also the role of the parents in this dispute. How could forcing your children to walk down a particular route, knowing fine well that a noisy and robust protest was waiting, just to prove a principle can be justified is something that only Father Troy and the parents involved must be privy to. Also, when it is considered that an alternative route was open to the parents and the children and that this route caused no heightening of sectarian tensions it will surely become apparent, to even the least perceptive, that the charge of abuse is a double edged sword with ultimate responsibility for ones actions residing not with the protestors but with those who have the responsibility for ensuring the safety of their own children. It is not the duty of the protestors to ensure that no harm comes to the children, although it is a moral imperative that none should come to them, but it is the legal responsibility of the parent not to place their own child in a situation that they know will cause them harm, be it physical or emotional. If you left your child to have a picnic upon a railway track to whom would you apportion blame and responsibility: would you blame the train driver for running over the child or would you blame the parent for placing their child in such a situation?

We call once again upon the Catholic community to stop this action, no principle can be worth the life of a young child, we already have one dead Protestant child killed as a result of this dispute, and the hatred that has been stirred up by the actions of the parents and their leaders have directly lead to two elderly Protestant pensioners receiving death threats. One of those threatened, a 76 year old woman, talked of her fear to a local newspaper:

"I am afraid and really scared. I just don’t know why they have done this to me. I am so nervous and upset. I’ve had to get tablets to settle my nerves. I have lived here for 76 years and I have never gone to the picket, so why are they doing this to me?"

A shadowy group calling itself the North Belfast Catholic Reaction Force, although it should be noted that similar pseudonyms have been used by mainstream republican organizations to claim their most heinous sectarian killings and threats, issued the threat against two elderly pensioners and two other households. We call upon all those considering the human rights at the centre of the dispute to consider carefully if the right to walk a given road is of equal value to the right to live a life free from harassment, fear and ultimately the right of the most fundamental nature, as in the case of young Thomas McDonald: the right to life.