The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.61/No.27           August 11, 1997 
 
 
Irish Freedom Struggle Makes Gains  

BY TIM RIGBY AND PAUL DAVIES
BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The Irish Republican Army (IRA) restored its cease-fire on July 20, following several important gains won by Irish nationalists. These include the British government backing down from its previous insistence that decommissioning of weapons take place before "substantive" all party talks, and the rightist Orange Order agreeing to reroute its sectarian marches through Catholic neighborhoods in Northern Ireland.

In June, London shifted its position to say that the nationalist party Sinn Fein would be allowed into talks on the future of Ireland after six weeks of an IRA cease-fire. Previously, the government had insisted on stalling Sinn Fein's participation.

London also established that the talks would take place within a stated time frame, something that Sinn Fein had been pressing for. In response to a letter from Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness, the government's Northern Ireland Office established that decommissioning of weapons would not have to take place until all-party talks had begun.

In May, British prime minister Anthony Blair had threatened, "The settlement train is leaving. I want you [Sinn Fein] on that train. But it is leaving anyway, and I will not allow it to wait for you." But wait is what the British government did. While claiming to have ended all contact with Sinn Fein the government made numerous attempts to "clarify" its proposals for entry into all-party talks.

A Sinn Fein national leadership meeting on July 18 urged the IRA to restore the cease-fire of 1994. In a statement following the meeting Gerry Adams outlined the party's position going into the talks. "There will be no return to Unionist domination," he declared. The Unionist parties favor continued British rule over Northern Ireland. "As an Irish republican party, Sinn Fein will be guided by our aim of a united Ireland. We will be seeking an end to British rule in Ireland." The proposed entry of Sinn Fein into all- party talks following the IRA's cease-fire has deepened divisions among the Unionists. The Democratic Unionist Party has insisted that it will walk out of talks if Sinn Fein is allowed in. However the larger Ulster Unionist Party has been careful to distance itself from the proposed walkout.

Mass actions push back Orange Order
In early July, nationalist protest actions exploded across Northern Ireland in the wake of the British government's decision to force a rightist Orange Order march along the Catholic Garvaghy Road, in the city of Portadown. After seeing this resistance, the group canceled its marches through Catholic areas on July 12.

It was an unprecedented step by the Orange Order, which organizes triumphalist marches through Catholic areas from May to September every year. It canceled planned marches in Belfast, Derry, and Bellaghy. At Newtownbutler, nationalist residents forced the Orange Order to negotiate an agreement for the first time. The sectarian march was rerouted away from that town, whose population is 87 percent Catholic.

The one place where the Orange Order made no decision to reroute was the Catholic village of Dunloy. There the Orange Order marched past the village, choosing at the last minutes not to march through it, as 200 residents mobilized.

The Orange Order is an all Protestant, all male secret organization, whose constitution makes marriage to a Catholic an expellable offense. Its rules also discourage social or sporting activity with Catholics.

The parades that were rerouted on July 12 were to celebrate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, when Protestant forces loyal to William of Orange of England defeated Catholic forces loyal to English King James. Then William's forces took the land owned by Catholics and gave it to Protestant Scottish and English landlords, who in turn created plantations and forced more than 85 percent of the Irish population off their land.

"The Orange Order parades have nothing to do with religion; they're to put nationalists in their place," Turlough Martin, a resident of Dunloy, explained to Militant reporters. "They don't just sing hymns, they sing God Save the Queen, and as they pass the RUC [Royal Ulster Constabulary] pen us in our homes."

Hours after the Orange Order's July 6 march down the Garvaghy Road, nationalists in west Belfast staged a demonstration of 15,000 in protest at the decision of Marjorie Mowlam, London's Secretary for Northern Ireland, to allow the rightist march to proceed. Feeder demonstrations streamed off the Catholic estates along the Falls Road to the Andersonstowns army barracks to hear Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams urge peaceful protests to ensure that the focus remained on the British government.

In the three days that followed the Garvaghy Road march, west Belfast witnessed the most sustained rioting since the 1981 hunger strike by nationalist prisoners. In Poleglass hundreds of youths fought pitched battles with the RUC cops and the British army. Barricades were erected to block the British occupying forces in several nationalist communities.

After two nights of widespread rioting in the Short Strand, a small Catholic area in predominantly Protestant east Belfast, police organized raids on houses and were met by local women banging garbage can lids and blowing whistles to warn other residents and to shame the RUC for their actions. In the Oldpark area of north Belfast the RUC and British army were forced to abandon the streets after petrol bombing. Sinn Fein activists urged young people not to riot, noting that it suited the British to contain the youths in their own areas and do damage to their own communities.

On July 9 thousands came from across Northern Ireland to the Garvaghy Road to show solidarity with the residents. The following night over a thousand nationalists responded to a call from the residents of the Lower Ormeau Road to join protests in the tiny Catholic enclave in Belfast against the scheduled July 12 Orange Order.

"We want to send a message to Mo Mowlam that we're not alone and the days of walking all over us are over," explained resident Lucy Rice.

Cops fire thousands of rounds
During the three days of street battles, the RUC fired thousands of rounds of plastic bullets at nationalist protesters. In Derry nine people were admitted to the hospital with injuries from plastic bullets. Some 400 young people demonstrated outside Belfast City Hall July 15 calling for the immediate end to the use of plastic bullets.

Meanwhile, loyalist paramilitaries have terrorized the nationalist community, including breaking into people's homes in west Belfast.

Activists from west Belfast, told Militant reporters how the bus that they traveled on from the Garvaghy Road was stoned as it drove through a loyalist area, leaving five passengers injured. As the nationalists got off the bus to tend the wounded, they noticed RUC members laughing.

Sinn Fein president Adams commented that the Orange Order decision to cancel the marches "created a significant breathing space."

Following the mobilizations in Dunloy, Jimmy Gaston, a member of the committee of the Resident's and Parents Association, explained that "the issues of the parades has done as much to unite us and to point the spotlight on the British as anything else in the past 25 years."

The decision to reroute the parades has also deepened fissures among Unionist forces, with the deputy grand master of the Orange Order, William Thompson, openly predicting that the Grand Master Robert Saulters would be deposed for his role in calling the parades off.

In calling off their march through the Lower Ormeau Road, the Ballynafeigh Orange Lodge said it "reserved the right to parade."

Violence by loyalist forces remains a part of the attempts to break the national struggle and maintain the sectarian state.

"The British must acknowledge that the loyalist cease- fire is over," Sinn Fein councilor for the Moyle District James McCarry said. McCarry had a bomb planted underneath his car, by loyalists in June. On July 15, loyalist terrorists broke into a Belfast home and killed Bernadette Martin, an 18-year-old Catholic, as she slept with her Protestant boyfriend.

Lisa Rottach contributed to this article. Reporters Harassed By Cops Upon Return

Upon our return to Manchester from Belfast these Militant reporters were questioned by a special branch cop at Manchester airport. Immediately on arriving, the cop asked us who we had been staying with, where we lived, and where we worked.

These cops are deployed under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) to harass, probe, and gather information. This law allows the police to make arrests without warrant and detain people for up to a week without charges. The great majority of those arrested are never charged.

We are contacting a solicitor and our MPs to protest this harassment and attack on the democratic right to travel and carry out news reportage.

- P.D. AND T.R.  
 
 
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