BY ANNE HOWIE AND PAUL GALLOWAY
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - A siren wailed over the Lower
Ormeau Road in south Belfast early in the morning August 14.
It was the signal for residents of the area and their
supporters who had gathered that the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC) was moving in to seal off the area in
preparation for a sectarian rightist Apprentice Boys parade
later that morning.
Although many people found themselves blocked into side streets by rows of armored cars and police in riot gear, around 200 people sat down in the road to protest the reactionary march. They were soon hemmed in by dozens more armored cars and police. As the crowd chanted "SS-RUC" and sang, the police read the Riot Act, a legal instruction to disperse. The demonstrators held their ground, and police started forcibly removing people, driving two columns of armored cars through the center of the crowd. As the cops inched forward, shouting "Fenian scum" and other anti- Catholic abuse, protesters were dragged and thrown onto the pavement, beaten with batons, kicked, and punched.
Having been pushed off the main road, protesters made their way through houses and gardens to a side street near the Sean Graham betting shop, where five nationalists were shot dead by loyalist (pro-British) gunmen in 1992. The protest continued there, with chants of, "What do we want? Civil rights! When do we want them? Now!" and "Disband the RUC," drowning out the sound of the band that led 19 Apprentice Boys in their parade.
In the two and a half hours it took the cops to beat residents off their street, 27 protesters and one international observer suffered injuries, including broken bones and head injuries. Gerard Rice, spokesperson for the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community (LOCC), which called the protest, said, "The police were brutal. It was the worst I've ever seen, but I'm relieved no one in my community is dead." Rice was thrown to the ground while attempting to address the protest when the armoured car he was standing on suddenly reversed. He was also kicked by the cops.
The Apprentice Boys parade was the first anti-Catholic, rightist march to go down the Lower Ormeau Road, a small Catholic area in south Belfast, in four years. Pro-British groups carry out thousands of these intimidatory parades every year, reinforcing the anti-Catholic discrimination that is a pillar of maintaining London's rule over Northern Ireland.
The August 14 march had been approved by the Parades Commission, a body set up by the British government, despite the fact that the LOCC had suggested a compromise route that would have allowed the Apprentice Boys to march over the bridge at the bottom of the road, then turn off. Alistair Graham, chairman of the commission, rejected the compromise on the basis that this route did not pass any houses. A local parish priest Anthony Curran, who attended the commission hearings, said, "The clear implication is that the Apprentice Boys had to be permitted to cause offense to someone living in a house close to their march before the commission would consider a concession had been made."
The Apprentice Boys who marched in Belfast were on their way to join the annual Apprentice Boys commemoration in Derry, where 10,000 paraded later on the same day, protected by a heavy presence of RUC and British army troops. This parade was approved by the Parades Commission, while a protest march organized by the Bogside Residents Group (BRG) was blocked by riot cops.
The media had been predicting "Republican-orchestrated violence" in Derry. BRG spokesperson Donncha MacNiallais responded, "The ultimate responsibility for any trouble rests solely and squarely on the shoulders of the RUC and behind that decision to force parades through here and through the Ormeau Road."
RUC forces the same day attacked another protest against an Apprentice Boys march in Lurgan. After sealing off the nationalist Williams Street area - and arresting one local resident for trying to go home - the cops fired plastic bullets at protesters, injuring two.
The decision of the Parades Commission to allow the marches in Belfast and Derry is part of a push by the British government against the nationalist resistance in Ireland. It came at the same time as Marjorie Mowlam, the British government's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, is considering claims by pro-British Unionist politicians that the Irish Republican Army (IRA) has broken its cease-fire and that therefore the release of IRA prisoners should be halted. Unionists - those who favor the "union" of Northern Ireland with Britain -claim also that Sinn Fein, the party that leads the fight against British rule, should be excluded from the Assembly set up under last year's Good Friday Agreement.
Another report pending is that of the Patten commission, set up to review the future of the RUC. One possible proposal leaked is to increase the size of the RUC considerably, under the pretext of allowing space for the recruitment of Catholics to the currently 95 percent Protestant force.
On August 19 the RUC followed up their assault on south Belfast residents when nine people were arrested in early morning raids, including Rice and two other members of the LOCC. They were charged with public order offenses.
Rice was singled out for special humiliation, being taken into the street in his underwear and made to dress himself in public. Although he did not take part in the sit-down protest, Rice has been charged with causing disruption and disorderly conduct, on the basis that he led protesters in chanting and singing.
Speaking on behalf of the LOCC, John Gormley said that the RUC's speed in moving against people who took part in a peaceful protest was "in sharp contrast to its complete inactivity in the face of 15 months of violent Orange protests in Portadown." He said the nine who were arrested would be strenuously denying the charges, and that Rice was "only asking for his civil rights."
The determination of broad layers of nationalists like Rice is not lost on the British government. Three days after the arrests in Belfast, the Parades Commission announced it had banned another rightist march, of the Black Preceptory, which was due to go down the Lower Ormeau Road August 28.