During the first week of school, Catholic children from the Ardoyne neighborhood and their parents were harassed and violently attacked by a loyalist mob as they walked to class at the Holy Cross School for girls. The thugs yelled "scum" and "Fenian bastards" at the children, and assaulted them and their parents with stones and bottles.

Parents have received death threats from the Red Hand Defenders, who have claimed responsibility for terrorizing the school children. The name is generally considered an alias for the loyalist paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA), one of the largest groups that organizes violence against Catholics.

The terms "loyalist" or "unionist" describe people who support British rule over the six northeastern Irish counties that make up Northern Ireland. Those who defend the struggle for a united, democratic Ireland are called "nationalists." For historical reasons, most nationalists belong to the Catholic religion. "Fenian," used as a term of abuse against nationalists, refers to an Irish peasant movement against British landlordism in the late nineteenth century.  
 
'We are not second-class citizens'
Participants at the Dunville Park rally held signs reading "Little Rock High School 1957--Holy Cross School 2001," a reference to attacks on Black students by white racist mobs at the Little Rock, Arkansas, Central High School in the United States in 1957. Other signs read "Holy Cross--Britain's Alabama" and "Our children are not second-class citizens." Besides Liz Groves, two Ardoyne mothers spoke.

Earlier that day, about 300 people attended a brief protest called by the Ardoyne Right to Education Group. The rally leaflet called for "a public demonstration in support of their children's right to attend school."

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams addressed the action. "There can be no excuse or justification for the sectarian abuse and violence directed at the children and their parents as they try to make their way to school," he said. "Children have a right to education and a right to travel to and from their school free from threat and intimidation.... The picket...is being fuelled by elements of the DUP [Democratic Unionist Party--the party of ultrarightist Ian Paisley] and the violence is from the UDA and is based on pure sectarian hatred. Sections of the media have sought to present this issue as one of 'each side as bad as the other.' This is not true," Adams said.  
 
A working-class neighborhood
The Ardoyne is a working-class neighborhood where the green, white, and orange flag of the Irish Republic is everywhere to be seen. There are memorials to the martyrs of the 1980-81 hunger strike and murals depicting scenes from Irish history. One deals with the subject of hedge schools, which were secret, outdoor schools where children were educated in the 18th and 19th centuries, when British laws forbade the education of Catholics.

Loyalists began the attacks at the end of the last school year in June, claiming that nationalists had knocked ladders out from under people hanging British Union Jack and unionist flags along Ardoyne Road. The loyalists called their assault a "protest" and demanded that the children enter the school from the Crumlin Road back door.

On September 3, on the morning and afternoon of the first day of the new school year, the girls and their parents were surrounded by a mob of some 200 loyalists who screamed obscenities and threw rocks and bottles. This assault continued the next day. One mother required four staples to close a head wound. On September 5 the rightists exploded a pipe bomb, injuring four RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) police members and a police dog. Nationalists said that they were the intended target.

At the intersection of Ardoyne Road and Alliance Avenue on September 7, where parents went to pick up their children, two British Army armored cars were parked on either side of the road. This reporter was ordered to leave by an RUC constable after attempting to join the parents. The RUC and British Army allow only parents, children, and a handful of community observers to walk up the road past the intersection. Ardoyne neighbors of the parents were also not allowed to accompany them to the school.

Capitalist politicians and the big-business media have portrayed these events as a confrontation between extreme positions. According to Liz Groves, London's Northern Ireland secretary John Reid was quoted in the press as having asked both sides to take a step back from "this bigotry and savagery."

"Savagery? Where's that coming from?" asked Groves in her speech to the Dunville Park rally. "The only savagery that was portrayed this week was from the UDA protest against young children and their mothers going into the Holy Cross School. The bomb blast didn't come from Catholics. It came from UDA residents who are protesting simply because there are Catholic children wanting an education. Our children are entitled to this education, and there's no way the Catholic community and the nationalist community are going back to the hedge schools."

In response to a suggestion from school governors that the children use the backdoor entrance demanded by the loyalist thugs, local broadcaster Brian Feeney noted the determination of nationalist supporters. "The very phrase backdoor entrance means Catholics will not accept it," he told the Financial Times. "They say Catholics will no longer go through back doors, up back streets, or second class anything. They are determined to go up the main road."  
 
 
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