Ardoyne: Nationalist Enclave

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IAN SWINDALE and TIM HAIG visited Northern Ireland in mid-July. Last week we printed Above: the next generation for the struggle? Below: the Ardoyne memorial THE Ardoyne lies to the North of Belfast city centre and together with the Bone forms a small nationalist enclave in a predominantly Loyalist area.

From the city centre we walk up the New Lodge Road where the streets are covered with broken glass and rubble from the previous night's rioting. Al the top of the New Lodge Road we emerge onto the Antrim Road where a large Protestant church has stood untouched through twelve years of war. We cross over and turn left into Cliftonville Road.

This road and the New Lodge. are known as Martyrs' Mile. Being close to the Shankill Road and other Loyalist areas the people of this area were a major target for Loyalist paramilitary groups like the UVF at the height of the sectrarian killings.

A piece of levelled ground marks the spot where a hotel frequented by young Catholics was blown to pieces, killing six.

We take a left turn into Oldpark Avenue, and into the Bone. We pass a burned out house where twelve monts ago petrol bomb attack left two dead.

To our right the small terraced houses are empty -their doors and windows bricked up.

Behind them runs a corrugated iron fence about twenty feet high and topped with another 10-15 feet of wire mesh. This serves to separate the Bone from a neighbouring UVF stronghold.

Long term unemployment is particularly high in this area and brings with it a degree of lumpenness within sections of the local population. Nevertheless, the Hole in the Wall club has H Block posters covering its walls.

Cannon

From the Bone we walk down into the Ardoyne. The housing here is better, with long narrow gardens in front of each house. The area was originally intended for middle class Protestants but was squatted by Catholics in the 1930s and they have been here ever since.

Overlooking the Ardoyne is an army observation post. It was from this high point that the RUC in 1969 fired 50mm cannon down into the streets below.

As we enter the Ardoyne, clambering past two dock containers that make up the barricade for that particular street, the atmosphere is tense. Several days previously the army shot dead a 15 year old boy on his doorstep.

Because it is a small isolated ghetto, the Ardoyne has provided possibly the greatest resistance to the Brits and RUC in the period after 1969. But the people here have also suffered more than in most areas.

The Loyalists terrorised the community back in 1969. All around the edge of the Ardoyne they burnt the Catholics out of their homes.

Today, all that is left in this area are derelict houses and open waste land where whole streets were burned to the ground and bulldozed away.

The number of people killed here in proportion to the population is greater than anywhere else in Belfast A memorial plaque has been mounted on the end wall of a house in their memory• Beside it stands a tall, stone cross and beneath it lie wreaths. Their names listed and one is immediately struck by the fact that the list of civilian dead is longer than the list of fallen IRA volunteers..

We are told that the heaviest fighting between the IRA and the Brits took place here and on occasions it was possible to see up to 50 heavily armed Republicans filing along the streets in the direction of a gun battle already underway against the army. The broke every IRA broke every British regiment sent into the Ardoyne until the Paras went in. They unleashed a reign of terror and indiscriminate killing until they broke the back of the IRA..

But support for the Republican cause remains very strong. Most of the streets are sealed off with permanent barricades -an unusual sight these days in the nationalist areas. In the Saunders club a social club run by the Provos and named after one of their fallen volunteers -the subdued lighting comes from lamps coloured green, white and orange and a tricolour hangs on the wall.

As you pay for your beer you are levied a penny a pint for the H Block prisoners.

As we sit in one of the clubs-its walls covered with pictures of the hunger strikers pinned with notes of the number of days each has been without food -an army foot patrol bursts in.

Four soldiers walk around the bar, looking at faces, stopping to talk to For two individuals one while another soldier stands guard at the door.

Most of the drinkers ignore them and they leave.

A few minutres later someone comes in and tells the doorman that a group of children have assembled and stoned the patrol out of the area.

SIANDS

* HUGHES CREESH HARIA KIERAN DOHERY PADDY AGNEW

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break the rish people Alfred Doherty, father of the dead hunger-striker Kieran Doherty, spoke to Paul White from the Australian , Tories' Humphrey Atkins ish Government.

In the pre-Christmas hunger strike and in the period up to the death of Bobby Sands, there was a mass mobilisation of the nationalist community. Do you not feel that there is some way that mass mobilisation can be used to put pressure on the Government to concede the prisoners' demands? Well, of course we're very happy with the level of mass mobilisation. Unfortunately, I think it's true to say that no matter how many people are mobilised, no matter what peaceful forces can be mobilised against the British, the British government just chooses to completely ignore them.

They ignore the sacrifice of the prisoners themselves; they ignore the thousands upon thousands of people who demonstrate on the streets peacefully; they ignore the ballot box; they ignored the election of Bobby Sands; they also ignore the election of hungerstrike candidates in the local elections.

They ignore the calls of Cardinal O Fiaich, they ignore the moves by the Irish Commission for Peace and Justice. And it's clear the British government is just bloodyminded about it.

Pound of flesh

They want their pound of flesh. They've got it five times over, and it's becoming very difficult for a lot of people in Ireland to see how the British Government can be pressurised in a peaceful way.

And if they won't move under peaceful and reasonable protest on the prison issue, then it's obvious they are not going to make any move on the national question either. The Republican movement's position and tactics - it's becoming clear - are the only thing the British listen to.

So you think that's the only way the problem can be solved?

I'm not saying that violence will resolve the prison issue. But what I am saying is that the inactivity of the British Government in the face of such criticism, election tion where people are beginning to understand more clearly the Republican campaign against the British.

Do you think that the British labour movement has a role to play in trying to force the Government to shift on the question of the hunger strikes? Well, of course they have a role, everyone has a role in trying to force the British Government. But we are beginning to despair that anybody's attempts to make Margaret Thatcher move will succeed. How do you assess the developments in the Labour Party, where it is quite clear that leaders and former leaders of both the Right and Left are...

Well, it's been sad experience over many years that what leaders say out of power and what they actually do when they get power are worlds apart. And that's not only true in the Irish situation, British troops attack Joe of course.

Government leaders make all sorts of election promises, and when they get elected, their promises are not worth the paper they are printed on.

Ireland being the issue it is, we always hope there is some conscience in the labour movement. But it's been our experience that once these people get into power, everything they said before that is meaningless.

Castlereagh

Political status was introduced by the Tories, political status was taken away by the Labour Government, so Labour doesn't hold much promise for us. One of the worst periods of repression was under Roy Mason, a Labour minister.

It was under him that Castlereagh and other interrogation flourished.

So, while we always look to the rank and file of the labour movement, we have had a sad experience of the so-called leadership of the labour movement.

Part of the crisis in the Labour Party on the question of Ireland, certainly as far as the right wing are concerned, flows from the fact that they cannot see a political solution now to Northern Ireland. Speeches like Callaghan's [calling for a 'broadly independent' Northern Ireland] are a sign of desperation.

On the other hand, statements by people like Tony Benn do reflect a growing pressure from the rank and file. And it has certainly created conditions where it is possible to raise the question of Ireland openly in the Labour Party for the first time since the went in in 1969.

Do you not think that under these conditions, the development of the struggle in the Labour Party, with the prospect possibly of eventually breaking the bi-partisan policy...

It would appear that the bi-partisan policy is coming to an end. But we believe that no English government, Labour or Tory, has the capacity to find a solution to the Irish problem.

They have to admit first of all that the Irish people as a whole have the right to decide their Irish political destinies, and that right does not lie with Westminster. They must recognise that the cause of the violence these past ten years and the cause of future violence is the British presence in Ireland.

When someone in England decides to recognise and admit these facts, then and only then can there be a realistic debate on Ireland and the way forward to finding a political solution.

Any English government, irrespective of whether it is socialist or Tory, has the capacity to admit those facts. When they do it is another matter.

We believe that the Tories can do it. We believe that the Labour Party can do it. But we believe that pressure from the rank and file can hasten the day when the Labour government can do it, if and when they are returned to power. paper Socialist Fight.

"My son's been five years in H Block, He was interned for about two years and nine months before that.

Since he was 17 he's had only 8 months of freedom. And in those months he was 'lifted' about 100 times and taken to Castlereagh Holding Centre.

"He's had 5 years of torture, criminalisation and brutalisation. That was the blanket protest. He was also on the dirty protest. Maybe you won't believe this, but it's true; the maggots were crawling through his blankets and his hair.

«The screws forced him to submit to the mirror search. In the mirror search you're naked, and there's, a mirror on the floor.

You bend over and they probe your back passage. They pushed him down on the floor and forced legs open. That was the only way they could do it; he c never agree to that. Screws are a lawless force.

«The men made decision to go on a hunger strike, even though the Irish Republican Army advised them not to.

"I went to visit my son. He said: "Dad and Mum, I want you to support me right through to the end." And we said: "Son, do you know what this entails? It's a slow death. Do you think you can go through with it?" And he said, "Dad and Mum, I'll do it."

"No father and mother like to have their son die. But Kieran asked us to support him on the five simple basic demands. And after a bit of talk, we said we would.

"During the first fortnight, I asked if he was still of same mind. He answered: "Of course, why do you ask?" bring breakfast immand set it morning down in front of him. It sits there until lunchtime, Then they bring in lunch, which stays until tea is brought in. Tea is left there until breakfast next morning.

"During the hunger strike there's always food in front of him - food he said he'd never seen in there before, like meat with 3 potatoes (usually only 1½ potatoes are served) and dessert.

'Things were so bad in that hole, that they couldn't take it any more. So they went on this hunger strike, and they're determined to carry it on. The Brits want to break us. But, as Kieran said to me: "The Brits will never learn; they'l never break the Irish people!..

"This last fortnight is the best fortnight of my life talking to my son, and hin talking to me. l thought, when the hunger strike started that it would be better if he was shot dead in the street - to get it over quickly, instead of this slow death. But I realise now that he's ready to meet his maker.

"1 requested the new Irish Prime Minister, Mr Fitzgerald, and the Labour Party's leader in the coaliand see him. They both refused. I appealed to TDs (MPs) to support the five demands. This got res ponses from nstfew House picketed Leinster (Parliament House) in Dublin. But they haven't done much since.

"My wife went to Paris. She's a granny who has never travelled before in her lite. She met Mr Mitterand. But if the Irish government don't anything, you can't expect other governments to act.

"We had good talks with our son. He explained that the five senses start to go, and that he'd eventually pass into a coma. He also insisted that he didn't want any medication at that point. We promised not to let anyone give him medication.

"The press say that we or Kieran are under pressure from the IRA. That's nonsense. He's had five years to think about this. He's been through the blanket protest and the dirty protest. He knows his own mind.

«The British press and television putting pressure on us, placing our statements in the wrong context.

"A fortnight ago, an American TV crew came to our house, and took a statement from my wife. At one point in the interview • they asked: "Who do you think is to blame for all this?" The exact words she said were: "The British government is to blame. As far as concerned, I don't want my son to die, but I'll support him to the end." But when the Brits got the film off the US TV people, it was cut to simply say "I don't want my son to die." They cut out the first and last sentences."

Kieran Doherty

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Socialist Organiser 6 August 1981 Page 10

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