BY MARCELLA FITZGERALD AND JEAN-LOUIS SALFATI

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The last weekend of August marked the continued advance of the struggle of the oppressed Catholic population in the British occupied north of Ireland. Unionist marches that were planned to force their way through predominantly Catholic towns and villages, were in every case held back and limited by the organized resistance of residents in each area.

In Strabane, only 11 Royal Black Preceptory (RBP) men attempted to march in face of 300 protesters. In Newry, they made a last minute decision to re-route the march after a standoff with several hundred residents the previous evening. RBP men were turned back from the Lower Ormeau Road by police who banned the march early in the week. In Pomeroy, Dunloy, and Derg the marches were restricted by protests.

According to many people we interviewed, the number of loyalist demonstrations held in the north of Ireland in the marching season - which runs from March to October in Belfast - has tripled in the last few years to 3,000.

These actions are aimed at preserving the caste-type system of domination through which Protestants are treated preferentially to Catholics. This system is the cornerstone to British rule. Several residents said it would be like the Ku Klux Klan marching through Black neighborhoods in the South of the United States at the time of Jim Crow segregation.

Loyalists usually come in buses to a 90-95 percent Catholic area and march through it while the local residents are held in their homes and behind police lines to allow the parade through. The character of the demonstration is illustrated by the regalia, flags, and political songs that are sung.

Shouts celebrating the murders of Catholics in the local area are flung in the face of those held back by the police. Before the protests, the marchers would stay in the area for several hours both morning and evening. This disruption of social life, with shops and businesses staying closed, people being unable to get to work or go about their business is enforced by a massive show of force by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) with roadblocks, armoured vehicles, and batons.

Over this summer, the campaign to re-route the marches away from nationalist areas and establish that demonstrators can only be held with the consent of those living in the area, has grown stronger and more organized. Leading up to the August 31- September 1 weekend, meetings to coordinate resistance were held in many towns the loyalists had targeted for parades.

We were in Bellaghy August 31 where the residents committee had forced the local unit of the Royal Black Preceptory to ask for their consent to the route of their march. John O'Neill of the residents committee explained that this followed a summer where the town's residents had been baton charged off the streets six times since July as they protested against unionist marches through their village. After the last RUC assault on August 10, residents reappeared in even greater numbers the next morning and sat down in the street for 19 hours to prevent the marchers coming through.

On August 28, RBP representatives signed an agreement with the residents that they would only march a restricted route, stay briefly in the Orange Hall, and sing only hymns. No one can recall any signed agreement between unionists and nationalists being made ever before.

On the morning of August 31, residents came out to ensure that the agreement was adhered to by the Royal Black Preceptory. Most of the 50 or so loyalists did in fact come into the village, assemble at the Orange Hall and then march the agreed route back to their buses. They sang only hymns.

One loyalist, however, Herbert Cowan, did come out early and march in full regalia the length of the village. He told Margaret McKenna, another member of the residents committee, that he was part of no agreement. No one from the Preceptory called this individual to order. Residents were so angry at this breach of the agreement, that they demanded the individual be removed from the march that evening. The loyalists usually return in the evening to march again before they go home.

The widespread resistance among Catholics that has spread throughout the province since the unionist riot at Drumcree in July has made the British government and its supporters here desperate to avoid confrontations. The RBP did in fact agree to remove Cowan from the march. Some 200 residents turned out to check, and appointed four "peace observers" from outside the village to stand across the point the unionists were allowed to approach. But when the RBP men arrived at the Orange Hall they played God Save the Queen, the British national anthem, in breach of the agreement. Residents immediately sat down and raised a storm of noise to drown it out.

Speaking the next day in Strabane at a commemoration for those who have died on active service in the Irish Republican Army, Sinn Fein representative Martin McGuiness said that the resistance to the loyalist marches this summer represented a "restoration of the dignity of the nationalist community."  
 
 
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