On October 5, 1968, a peaceful civil rights demonstration, declared illegal by the authorities, was brutally attacked by the Royal Ulster Constabulary and its 2000 participants clubbed down on the streets of the nationalist city of Derry, in the north of Ireland. It was this event that alerted the world to the injustices prevailing in the British-occupied six counties of Ireland.
Twenty-five years on from that beginning of what is commonly known as the Troubles, with more than 3000 lives lost, and with 700 republican prisoners languishing in the jails of many countries, the struggle for a free Ireland continues. CATHERINE BROWN, reporting from Belfast, finds a spirit of optimism among republican activists and the community alike despite escalated attacks on the nationalist community by loyalist death squads. Photos by Frank Noakes.
"We are a risen people and we will not be still. We have come here today to demand nationalist rights and to demand back our country." — Sinn Fein councillor Martin McGuinness, August 8, 1993.
Following in the tradition of the early civil rights protests, 20,000 people from the nationalist ghettos of Belfast marched on City Hall on August 8; many thousands more lined the streets of West Belfast to cheer on this first march ever by the nationalist community into their city centre: Our City Also proclaimed the elated demonstration.
Behind pipe bands and banners, with army helicopters flying overhead and army vehicles blocking off side streets, the march snaked its way into the centre of Belfast. As City Hall came into view of the procession, the mood turned electric: people danced and hugged their fellows as tears of joy flowed. One elderly republican woman, Sadie Magill, told Green Left Weekly that she now believed she would see a united Ireland. As Republican News was sold on the footpath outside City Hall, everybody knew that history was being made.
Derry Sinn Fein councillor Mitchell McLaughlin, speaking at the end of the rally, commented that the people marching on Belfast City Hall after years of suffering and pain was the clearest evidence that the republican struggle will ultimately succeed. "You can see by the morale of the people here and their strength and commitment that victory is inevitable. It will be a victory for democracy and a victory for all of the Irish people when those democratic structures, that need now to come at the end of this great occasion, finally arrive.
"We know that 25 years ago people would have been batoned off the streets, as they were in Derry when they attempted to march, in a nationalist city, for their civil rights. So it's been one slow step after another, but based on an unswerving commitment from the Irish people that they will overcome."
The march and rally, organised by the Nationalist Rights Committee, an umbrella organisation of community groups, was the 22nd in commemoration of internment (imprisonment without trial), but the annual gathering has always taken on a broader agenda and has been viewed as part of the struggle for equal political and civil rights.
In the week leading up to August 8, the Royal Ulster Constabulary stalled on granting permission for the rally. The previous year, an International Women's Day rally marched from the nationalist ghetto to the city centre. This year's IWD march was stopped by the RUC on the pretext of the illegality of Irish-language banners in the crowd.
"This is the first time that the big internment demonstrations have been into the city centre of Belfast", said Tom Hartley, chair of Sinn Fein. "I think that there is a growing sense that nationalists are more and more demanding their political rights — the right to march and the right to be in the city centre is just one part of it.
"Today has been a very important day for us. Today we came out of the ghetto."
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams commended the people: "After decades of people being kept out of their own city centre, they've exercised the right to be here, and they did so with dignity and good humour. I think it is a tribute to the people of nationalist Belfast that they did so."
Adams, who lost the seat of West Belfast to the Social Democratic Labour Party due to a secret deal between the SDLP and loyalists keen to see Sinn Fein defeated, told the gathering that they were not being triumphalist, but merely claiming their rights. "I think the tide of history is flowing behind the nationalist cause. I hope that the unionists, our fellow Irish men and women, will realise that and join with us. We don't want to be pulling them down. We want them to join with us in equality", Adams told Green Left Weekly.
The rally's chair, Annie Armstrong, recently elected Sinn Fein councillor and equally recent loyalist death squad target, told Green Left that there was a shift in the political situation: "There's a real sense of nationalism, for want of a better word. There's no stopping us on the road to freedom, people here today believe that we are nearly there."
Unionist politicians (those favouring the continued British occupation of Ireland, such as the Reverend Ian Paisley: "I'd rather be British than just") were outraged that the march had been granted permission from the authorities. "I am angry that these scum were allowed to go to the City Hall in the first place", said councillor Jim Rodgers, one of their more moderate members.
That night an Ulster Defence Association death squad murdered Sinn Fein councillor Bobby Lavery's 21-year-old son, Sean, in a hail of bullets at the family home.
British strategy in tatters
The latest phase in the struggle for a united Ireland has passed many tragic landmarks on the way to its 25th anniversary; but at last a chance appears for the resolution of the 800-year war between the British government and the Irish people, which has benefited so few and created generations of mass misery.
The government-sponsored talks between the parties of the north of Ireland (with the exclusion of Sinn Fein), intended to find a political solution to the problems of the six counties, broke up in acrimony last November; since then the British government has been unable to restart the talks. It is this failure and Sinn Fein's strong and improved showing in May's local government elections, achieving its best ever local government election result, that offer the hope of a major breakthrough on the national question.
"The election results in May were a major reversal for the British government", explained Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein national executive member, to Green Left Weekly. "For the last 10 years the British government has being try to bring about a situation where Sinn Fein's support would fall away. In May our support spectacularly increased.
"There's a sense now that the British government are going to be forced in the future to bring about new initiatives to resolve the conflict in the six counties."
Frustration has increased within both British and Irish government circles at yet another failure of the talks process and the inability of the so-called security forces (which include 20,000 British soldiers), armed with a host of draconian laws, to defeat the IRA, or to normalise the political situation in the north.
This has led to a reluctant, and much denied, recognition by the authorities that any settlement must ultimately included the representatives of the republican community: Sinn Fein. Opinion polls suggest that 71% of the Irish people and 51% of British people believe the British government should negotiate with Sinn Fein.
Recent comments by former Tory prime minister Sir Edward Heath, in which he urged the government to talk to Sinn Fein, adding "During my government, Lord Whitelaw had direct talks with the IRA ...", have added weight to those of former Northern Ireland security minister Michael Mates, who supports the discussions between the moderate nationalist Social Democratic Labour Party and Sinn Fein.
McGuinness told demonstrators outside Belfast City Hall on August 8 that the British government's "worst efforts to defeat the republican struggle have failed. They will not resolve anything without you [the nationalist people], they will not resolve anything without Sinn Fein, they will not resolve anything unless they recognise that the only solution to the problems of this country is the reunification of Ireland and the end of British rule."
Britain's "worst attempts" to marginalise Sinn Fein have included harassment, banning its members from speaking on air and intimidation through the use of death squads (13 Sinn Fein members have been murdered in the past four years). These attempts have failed to separate it from its base in the community. The British strategy is in tatters.
The meetings between SDLP leader John Hume and Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams are a result of this reality; their ongoing meetings have resolved already that there can be no purely six county solution to the problems of the north. In a joint communique the two leaders state: "We see the challenge of reaching agreement on a peaceful and democratic accord for all on this island as our primary challenge".
Dick Spring, Irish foreign minister and leader of the Irish Labour Party, recently outraged unionist politicians and angered the British government with his statement: "If it is not possible to restart the talks, then the British and Irish governments themselves must act. Ultimately an agreement [between London and Dublin] might have to be put directly to the people."
This would bypass the elected parties in the north. Unionist politicians see Spring's position as the logical outcome of the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement, which they viewed as a sell-out by the then Thatcher government. Irish President Mary Robinson's now famous, but unrecorded, handshake with Gerry Adams is seen as further evidence of a papist plot.
Kevin McNamara, the British Labour Party's spokesperson on Northern Ireland, also bought into the fray with his proposal for joint sovereignty over the north between the Irish and British governments and involvement of the European Community in the process. Dick Spring described this proposal as "interesting" and worthy of further study. A document produced by the British Labour Party Irish Societies entitled Ireland — Time for peace urges the British government to disengage from Ireland over a 20-year period.
The republican movement recognises itself that there must be room for compromise. "We want a consensus agreement in which all sides will have to compromise, and part of which will be a commitment by the British to disengage", said Sinn Fein spokesperson Richard McAuley.
The need to recognise past mistakes and to resolve the differences with the Protestant community are outlined in an important contribution to the debate by Derry Sinn Fein councillor Mitchell McLaughlin when he says, "If we are ever to resolve the situation in Ireland, we, as republicans, must seek to understand and empathise with the Protestant community ... We, as republicans, have choices to make; we can continue paying lip-service to anti-sectarianism while denying the reality of sectarian elements in our movement, or we can actively seek to connect with Protestantism at every level.
"There is great animosity and misunderstanding on both sides, and our joint histories are littered with atrocity and shame. While we offer the hand of friendship to our Protestant neighbours, we cannot expect them to read our palms to discover our intentions. We, as they, must be ready to talk and apologise and unite, and the only way that can be achieved is through understanding."
McLaughlin ends with the question: "Are we ready for that painful experience?", and answers that if the answer is no, then the people of the island will be consigned to an endless war.
These words notwithstanding, recent developments, including the Royal Ulster Constabulary's permission for the August 8 march, have increased the sense of insecurity within the unionist community, as evidenced by the July riots in Protestant districts of Belfast.
These fears centre on a suspicion that the British government is looking for a way out of Ireland. A recent, and undisclosed, deal between Tory Prime Minister John Major and nine unionist MPs at Westminster (parliament) for their support in voting through a bill on the Maastricht Treaty, will only temporarily quell these fears.
These fears are increased by the findings of a new demographic survey which indicates that within two generations the Catholic community will become a majority within the six counties (Catholics, 1973 34%, 1993 41% of the population), thus ending the unionists' veto over reunification with the south.
As for the understanding between Major and the unionists, and reports that he expressed support and sympathy for their cause, Mitchell McLaughlin told Green Left Weekly that this was nothing out of the ordinary. After all, "the history of the six counties is based on a deal with unionism and the British government, and it's just more of the same. It will be overcome as all the other deals have been overcome."
Attacks on Sinn Fein
In recent months, loyalist death squads have stepped up attacks on the so-called "pan-nationalist alliance" of Sinn Fein and the Social Democratic Labour Party. Thirteen Sinn Fein members have been killed in the last four years. This year eight Sinn Fein homes have been attacked with guns, incendiaries and grenades. Unlike SDLP members, Sinn Fein members are the subject of a blanket RUC ban on weapons for personal protection.
On July 27 Annie Armstrong, the newly elected Sinn Fein Lisburn councillor, and her family survived an attack by the Ulster Defence Association. In an interview with Green Left Weekly before the attempt on her life, Armstrong commented on the increased harassment of women by both the security forces and loyalist death squads.
"They are not only imprisoning women for something they have done but they are killing women like Sheena Campbell (a leading Sinn Fein activist gunned down last October). We are seen as a big threat to them, and I promise we always will be."
Armstrong, like many Sinn Fein activists, became involved in politics first at a community level. She has been involved in the Twinbrook Tenants' Association and the Links Project for young people.
Most community groups in the nationalist areas face an ongoing battle to get funds from the government, explained Armstrong. After seven years of working for Sinn Fein, Armstrong joined the party four years ago. It isn't an easy choice to become a candidate for Sinn Fein knowing her life and her family's would be at risk. Nevertheless, it was a decision Armstrong took with enthusiasm.
The night of the attack Armstrong had attended a particularly acrimonious meeting of Lisburn Council. "For the first time in several years, there was a large contingent of loyalists who heckled Sinn Fein speakers during the meeting", said Pat Rice, a Sinn Fein councillor. Rice said that he and Armstrong were tailed by a car on the way home. Armstrong and her three children were in the house when 11 high-velocity shots were fired.
"In our mind, there is no doubt that these attacks on our members are fuelled by the statements and behaviour of unionists on councils like Lisburn. Loyalist death squads and unionist politicians are pursuing a dual strategy which involves the politicians providing the public justification for attacks on Sinn Fein activists, as well as members of the SDLP and ordinary nationalists.
These attacks, which are clearly aimed at our families as well as ourselves, are intended to frighten and terrorise. They will not succeed", concluded Rice — only days before the RUC told him he was being targeted by loyalists.
Armstrong said the attack "has made me more determined than ever". She saw this determination reflected in the thousands of people who poured into the street on August 8. "There was always the threat that we were going to be stopped, but people weren't afraid. That's why today was so significant."