BY PAUL DAVIES
MANCHESTER, England - The assassination of Rosemary Nelson
has become a flashpoint in the struggle against British rule in
Northern Ireland. Nelson, a prominent lawyer known for
defending Irish nationalists and exposing the sectarian and
oppressive policing of Northern Ireland by the Royal Ulster
Constabulary (RUC), was killed in a car bombing March 15 in
Lurgan, near Belfast. A pro-British loyalist death squad, The
Red Hand Defenders, claimed responsibility.
Nelson had represented residents of the Garvaghy Road community in the town of Portadown in their struggle to reroute sectarian Orange Order marches and to defend their community from an ongoing siege by pro-British loyalist thugs. Following her funeral, nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road resisted attacks by rightists and RUC cops.
Nelson's funeral cortege began 500 strong as it left her home in Lurgan, and grew to more than 5,000 by the time it reached St. Peter's Church where she was buried. The funeral march passed large notices demanding "Disband the RUC."
In an attempt to take some of the heat off the RUC, Chief Constable Ronald Flanagan announced that a cop from another force, David Phillips from Kent, would head up the police inquiry into the death. Flanagan also announced that he would be calling on Louis Freeh of the FBI to help with the inquiry.
Leaders of Sinn Fein, the party leading the struggle for a free, united Ireland, have pointed to this as an unacceptable attempt to whitewash the killing.
Nationalists resist rightist provocations
Following the funeral, nationalist resistance was sparked in
Portadown when crowds of loyalists taunted, "Where's Rosemary?"
just outside the Garvaghy Road. The rightists have laid siege
to the nationalist community since May 1998. The RUC arrested a
number of the Catholic residents and then assaulted Breandan
MacCionnaith, a spokesperson for the residents, as he asked to
speak to a senior cop.
Tens of thousands of Irish nationalists converged on Belfast, in the north of Ireland, two days after Nelson's murder to celebrate St. Patrick's Day. This was only the second year that the parade had passed through the city. Unionist (pro- British) politicians on the Belfast City Council had withdrawn funding from the event because of the presence of Irish tricolor flags, an emblem of Irish nationalism.
It is the continuing actions of Irish nationalists in their thousands and their irrepressible determination that is driving the process of political change, and weakening British rule. Following Nelson's murder much public attention has been focused on the RUC. It emerged that the British government's own "Independent Commission for Police Complaints" had registered opposition to the RUC's handling of previous death threats against Nelson with the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Marjorie Mowlam. Last year Nelson had lodged a statement with a U.S. Congress subcommittee on international relations detailing death threats made against her by members of the RUC, and recounting how she was assaulted by RUC officers in 1996 as the RUC forced a sectarian and triumphalist Orange Order march along the Garvaghy Road.
Following Nelson's murder, publicity has been given to the British-Irish Rights Watch report into RUC collusion with the loyalist thugs who assassinated another nationalist lawyer, Pat Finucane, in 1989. Finucane was allegedly killed by the Ulster Freedom Fighters, another loyalist paramilitary group. Pressure continues to mount as over a 1,000 lawyers signed a call by Finucane's family for an international, independent inquiry into his death.
In a sign of the growing fragmentation of Unionist forces, Frank Curry, a leading loyalist who press reports say was linked to The Red Hand Defenders, was gunned down in Belfast. That organization said they believed another loyalist group, the Ulster Volunteer Force, executed Curry.
In the wake of the protests that followed Nelson's death, the British government began to weaken on its insistence that there must be "decommissioning" - that is, handing over weapons - by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) prior to Sinn Fein's participation in the new Northern Ireland Assembly Executive. For several months the government had been trying to isolate Sinn Fein, and undercut the struggle that it leads for end to British rule in Ireland, by acquiescing to demands of the Ulster Unionists for IRA decommissioning. For the first time, a joint statement in mid-March by U.S. president William Clinton, British prime minister Anthony Blair, and Irish prime minister Bartholomew Ahern makes a tacit acknowledgment that the agreement signed between political parties last year does not set decommissioning as a precondition for Sinn Fein's participation in the new government bodies.
A March 19 article in the right-wing Daily Telegraph was headlined "Blair gives ground on IRA arms handover."
An article in the Irish Times reflected the nervousness in circles of bourgeois public opinion, while also violence- baiting Irish nationalists. It stated that "the `unaccountability' of events is much underestimated by politicians.... We simply do not know what the outcome may be of the murder of Rosemary Nelson, of the escalated schedule of Orange marches at Drumcree over the coming months...of a `tactical' deployment of `armed strugglé by the IRA to `nudgé things along."
Commenting on the stance of forces in Ireland towards decommissioning, the west Belfast publication Andersonstown News argued, "Where was a sizable body of opinion that found it hard to understand why the IRA couldn't hand over a small amount of weaponry in order to kick start the executive, the murder of Rosemary Nelson has crystallized thinking.... It's now widely accepted that to continue to insist on the IRA handing over weapons to a David Trimble-inspired timescale is a serious retrograde step."
Speaking at an event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness explained that Unionist leaders "oppose these changes because they want to hold onto power, or the perception of power.... They cannot tolerate the idea of shared power or equality."
Following March 17 discussions with Ulster Unionist Party leader and first minister designate of the new Northern Ireland Executive, David Trimble, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams commented on requests that the IRA decommission: "I cannot deliver from the IRA what the British government couldn't achieve in the last 30 years."
Paul Davies is a member of the TGWU.