'On the Edge' edited by Neil Jarman (1996)

WEEK of 12th July

TORRENS AREA

The events in Torrens, in the week of 12th July probably attracted more media coverage than elsewhere in North Belfast, not least because they began so early in the week, on Monday 8 July, the day after the Drumcree church parade was stopped. Much of the pattern of events in Torrens was subsequently repeated elsewhere later in the week (for example, in Skegoneill) and it is worth looking in some detail at local people’s understanding of how and why the events played themselves out.

The events in Torrens involved a large number of individuals, Protestant and Catholic residents of the area, but also people from outside who were drawn in or chose to involve themselves in the unfolding trouble. We begin with the personal accounts of local residents who were involved at the very beginning of the violence, around 8pm on Monday evening.

A number of long standing Protestant residents of the Torrens estate felt that their community had been poorly treated last Summer because they were blamed for forcing Catholic neighbours to move out of the area. They, however did not feel that they were to blame for the beginning of the trouble in the area.

This verbal exchange attracted the attention of other people who had been part of the protest. And this led to the initial act of violence.

Everything had passed off peacefully, there was nothing happening at all, no trouble, no nothing, and when the other people who had been at the protest heard us being insulted they came hack. She did not see the crowd coming round - it wasn’t a crowd, it was just a few. When she realised that they were coming round, that she wasn’t only shouting at us, she ran in and slammed her door.

Another local resident gave a similar version of these events.

The people who were on the road blockade were local people. They had come up Torrens Drive and they were singing, and these three girls were standing at Torrens Drive - they were a bit under the weather; Roman Catholic people you know, and people walked on, singing away there. They went round until the entry beside the community centre on their way round to the other part of the district, where they lived. We heard yelling and shouting and it was these girls were shouting at these two elderly people on the other side of the road.

We went back again and there was a bit of hassle with the women and one of the fellows lost the bap and jumped over the garden gate, run up the path and there was a bike sitting here - he put it through the window (Protestant, Torrens).

Protestants from Torrens were willing to acknowledge that one of those on the protest had physically attacked the Catholic Resident’s house, but they felt the initial provocation had been from the Catholic woman. They did not attempt to justify the act of throwing a child’s bike through a window but put the violence that followed it into a wider context in which Protestants more generally felt under threat in North Belfast.

The Catholic woman who was at the centre of this initial conflict recounted her understanding of the events. She felt that tension had been building in the area for a few days prior to the night of the protest.

On 8 July they were demonstrating at the top of my street, beside the police barracks, about the Drumcree stand-off. As the demonstration dispersed and they were coming away from it I was out closing a gate and the neighhour facing me shouted over something. I says 'It's ridiculous, I wouldn’t let my kids play ball here because of you. I respect you because you are an old person, but this is ridiculous. And the woman with her started shouting over to me - ‘Can we not defend our Loyalist son’s’ - and started heating her chest. That’s when the whole demonstration came running back again. They all run up my path and attacked my house and tried to put the front door in and there was me and a couple of other girls in the house, because it was my birthday that day. There must have been fifty people at the demonstration - they were climbing over railings, running up my path, to me there would have been more than thirty people came up the path. We had to lie on the floor and hold the second door; next to the front door; closed, push a chair over and hold it and my wee boy's hike was sitting outside the door and they lifted it and put it, and then a plank of wood, through the window.

But the police came on the scene really quickly - we were still lying holding the door They said they watched it from the barracks on camera. They expected the demonstrators to wreck the cars as they were going down the street, but instead they attacked my house.

The initial dispute between these women seems to have been the result of at least two factors. First, there appears to have been some past antagonism between them, as neighbours, over the issue of children playing in the street. Second, the Catholic resident’s reaction to the road blockade itself, and to some of her neighbours involvement in it, was shaped by her experience of harassment from unknown individuals in the immediate days and weeks before the 8 July. In contrast her Protestant neighbours could not see the road blockade as being in any way threatening to the small number of Catholic residents of the estate.

These are very different starting points for understanding the beginning of the trouble the Catholic resident saw all of those people in the street that evening as threatening her and involved in some way in the violence, while Protestant residents understood the incident in terms of the ‘two or three’ individuals who (wrongly) broke her window.

The Trouble Escalates

Differences in opinion about the scale and nature of the intimidation, and about who was intimidated by whom, dominated the accounts presented to the Inquiry in many ways. The very fear of intimidation seems to have been sufficient to make some Catholic residents decide to move out.

My sister-in-law has a car so she was doing runs, and they tried to take her car off her; she had to just lock the doors and go quick, they tried to hijack her car - this is the Protestants - and then we were told there was ones with guns behind the houses, so it was frightening, you had to get out. And then as time went on, panic broke out and all the Catholic families in the street were told to leave. So everybody started getting their own vans and leaving. The people in Ardoyne all came up and stood and helped the people move out.

Besides being frightened by the threats this woman was also surprised by the way some of her neighbours had turned on her.

Protestant residents were similarly surprised by the rapid escalation of the trouble, and by the sudden appearance of large numbers of people from outside of the area who gathered on the streets and made them feel threatened.

These other two Catholic girls on either side of me - I said ‘Look leave the kids in my house, put them in my bedroom if you're scared, and sit in your house’. We stood at the door and kept on watching. The lady at the end of the Drive was moving out, but it was fellows from Ardoyne and that was that came up and started moving her out. The next thing, they started moving down to a house further down the street and they started moving things out (Protestant, Torrens).

Individuals from Ardoyne who were on the scene at an early stage presented their actions as driven purely by the concern to help fellow Catholics who they considered to be under threat and intimidated by Protestants in Torrens, as one of the van drivers explains.

Catholics living in other nearby areas were also concerned at the developments in Torrens, as a woman from the Oldpark Road recounts.

A friend of mine, her husband, I saw him across the street. He was holding his head and I called him over - his sister-in-law lives in the middle of Torrens, or lived I should say. He went there to help her move her stuff out and be was set upon by the police that were there. He went in and said ‘Look mate I’m going in to get my sister-in-law out’ and they told him to go down the alley and, this is his word, the next thing he heard was ‘Get him’, and he was batoned about the head and shoulder (Catholic, Oldpark).

Catholic perceptions that the police were, either passively or actively, supporting intimidation of Catholic residents of Torrens, included a belief that the police were facilitating, or involved in, the arrival of Protestants from other parts of North Belfast into the estate.

The police had, what I call war wagons blocking off the entrances to Torrens, and this is what actually happened. They moved their Land Rovers away a white car came out, headed up towards Ballysillan, came back from Ballysillan full of people dressed in camouflage gear; back into Torrens and the police moved their Land Rover back. Then a red car came out and they headed down towards Westland, came back, another load of people in the car; headed in to Torrens. And this was going on the whole evening, but the Land Rovers were moving back and forth to allow these cars to go in and out. Needless to say they were bringing reinforcements into Torrens to intimidate the Catholic families that were living there. It was just constant - those two particular cars, the white car and the red car going up and down, and up and down, and the speed that they were going at and the hand gestures and the yelling ‘Up the UVF Up the UFF’ it was constant. A very good friend of mine lives on Wyndham, she had just moved in there and I rang her up and said to her ‘At least come to my house, we have a huge back garden and at least we have an escape route into Ardoyne’. That’s the way I was thinking, truthfully. I planned our escape route (Catholic, Oldpark).

Residents in the Wyndham area saw similar vehicle movements in and out of Torrens, and they also became afraid that they too would become a target of attacks.

By 10 - 11 pm a large number of Protestant men had gathered at the far end of the Torrens estate and a large number of Catholic men were in Torrens Drive at the front of the estate. The presence of these crowds were interpreted by each side as deliberate and planned intimidation of the other community. The RUC were positioned between the two groups and seemed to have concentrated on ensuring they were kept apart rather than trying to disperse people.

There was a recognition of the difficulties the police were under from people in the Protestant community. There was also an acknowledgement that it was the responsibility of community leaders to try to keep things under control.

The Unionist politician responded to calls for assistance from people in Torrens, but had some problems getting into the area.

When he arrived in Torrens the situation was tense and his attempts to deal with the problem proved difficult.

I had said that, if they could identify somebody in the crowd, I would talk to them to ask them to withdraw, to allow me to get the people out of the houses. Before he had even given me the answer; about four people came down and one of them spotted me and he said to the police ‘If you don’t get that Orange bastard out of here we will burn the people alive’. One of my concerns was that there was a grandmother of a loyalist prisoner who was in one of the houses and nationalists were taunting her saying 'We are going to kill you, we know your grandson is in the UVF’ - all this sort of stuff

At this point he withdrew from the frontline and phoned Oldpark RUC station. He told the officer that he thought the situation was so volatile that a stronger security presence was needed.

The army came in about an hour later I then tried to get people out of the area who shouldn’t have been there - there were a number of people who had got there before I did because they had heard about the nationalists. By then two houses had been destroyed. Both of them had been destroyed by nationalists, both of them belonged to Catholics (Unionist politician).

The arrival of a stronger security presence seems to have ensured that no more people were forced to leave, or feel the need to leave that night, and seems to have prevent any further street violence that night.

The next day, Tuesday 9 July, however a number of the remaining Catholic residents in Torrens moved out. Some of them reported that they had been told to leave by people they believed to be loyalist paramilitaries; others appear to have felt under threat from both sides.

The first night there was only three or four families put out hut the next day it happened on a much wider scale. Any Catholic which lived in Torrens was just told to get out. They went up with plastic bags and rapped people’s doors and says ‘You have half an hour to get out’. There was some windows broke and - slogans written on their back doors UVF - UFF - UDA - sort of threatening them, letting them know what could happen (Ardoyne resident).

My mate lived in Torrens Drive too. He had already been put out, and he and his kids stayed with us, and they came the next day and told me to get out or else. I gave the names to the police. The police came out to interview me approximately four weeks ago and said they couldn’t charge the people involved because they didn ‘t come hooded and they didn’t use an organisation's name, they didn’t use UDA, UVF. They said all they had to do was go up in court and say that they were advising us to move out. It was people from just the next street. Two of them I know are connected with UVF I know that for a fact. And there was other ones involved - they didn’t come to the door but they were standing outside it, standing talking to the police outside the gate. One of them has been subsequently charged with intimidation and released on High Court bail. He actually lived about a hundred yards from where we lived. But they were all local people who was doing the intimidating in the Torrens (Catholic ex-resident, Torrens).

One Unionist politician who returned the next day and tried to reassure some of the Catholic residents who were moving out that they would not be attacked if they decided to stay in their homes.

Some people were reluctant to leave the area, but felt that the increasing pressure was too much and in the end they had no choice.

On the Monday night my other neighbour said ‘Well we’re not moving’. These four fellows came up the path next door to me and the husband says ‘What do you want?’ - ‘We’re here to protect you’ - I need none of your f-ing protection. Get away from about me, I’m alright, I’ve got good neighbours’. And he threw them down the path. My neighbour ended up in my house, until seven o’clock in the morning.

My Neighbour knocked my door at eleven o’clock the next morning. They said ‘we’re going to move out because ‘You will not get sleeping tonight again if we are here’. And I said ‘Who is putting you out?’ - ‘No one is putting me out, we are scared, we’re just going’. But I said ‘No-one has interfered with you, no-one has come near you, nobody has intimidated you, have they?’ - ‘No’.

Apart from the Unionist politician quoted above, none of the Protestants who spoke to the Inquiry believed that Catholics in Torrens had been threatened or told to leave by Protestants. As the last quote above and others below show, they believed that Catholics left the area either because Nationalists made them leave or because they wanted to leave anyway.

The continued presence of Catholics from other areas in Torrens, a rally from Ardoyne to Torrens on Wednesday 10th July night, and the wrecking of houses abandoned by Catholic residents, all fed into more deep-seated beliefs in this community that there was a long-term nationalist plan to ‘take over’ their area.

Intimidating the residents of the area went on for approximately three days. Can you imagine fellows walking about with cudgels and calling you Orange B’s and ‘You will be next’ and ‘Don’t think you are safe on the front of the road because you are living at the Police Station’. They had a march from New Lodge Road up, a two thousand plus crowd, it was all well managed. They want to take this area over completely because its been told that we’ll not be here for long. The amount of slogans that were painted on the area, right up to Cliftonville Circus, for months - ‘Torrens will be burnt out’. You know, they want this complete area, they want the complete Oldpark Road. They want to make it a totally Catholic area (Protestant, Torrens).

Catholics, on the other hand, saw the rally on the Wednesday night as a legitimate reaction to the events of the previous two days.

Protestant Torrens residents believed that the pressure put on Catholic residents to leave by other nationalists was part of a bigger propaganda exercise, and this was facilitated by the fact that many of the Catholic families who left had been living in privately rented houses on the estate.

There are still Catholics who have lived in this area most of their married lives who refused point blank to he intimidated by Catholics out of their homes and they are still living in this area. Those people who moved out were people who had moved in within the past year The Catholics who wouldn’t move out own their homes. The ones who moved out all lived in DHSS houses. That way they didn’t care about getting out. Because I says What about your furniture and that?’ - I don’t care, he says ‘its not mine, I’m going’. (Protestant, Torrens).

The issue of who left and who stayed raises questions about the different nature of the stake’ people have in local communities, and the ‘stake’ they either have, or haven’t, got in maintaining or building relations with their neighbours. In the case of Torrens, it seems that the declaration of paramilitary ceasefires, together with the availability of ex-Housing Executive, but now privately rented, houses (and a shortage of NIHE houses elsewhere), resulted in a number of new Catholic, residents settling in Torrens in 1995. Many of these people did not become known by theit Protestant neighbours and this helped fuel suspicions about their backgrounds.

In addition there were also illusions to ‘lifestyle’ disputes between old and new neighbours. The example of words being exchanged about children playing was mentioned at the beginning of this section; other people mentioned the numbers of young single people, of drinking and drugs as issues that maintained a divide between neighbours.

People who had recently moved into an area like Torrens, which was dominated by the ‘other community’, and then felt themselves vulnerable in the build up of tension surrounding Drumcree, had few reasons to risk life and limb by staying put, unless they had bought their house and so had a material stake in remaining. It is hardly surprising that people without such a stake would prefer not to live in an area of communal tensions, but this was probably true of some Protestants in Torrens as well as Catholics. Both communities, however, interpreted such behaviour on the part of members of the other community as attempts to screw the system’ rather than reflecting people’s fears and distaste at the events that had occurred.

There was a lot of Protestants left the street - they weren’t intimidated out - to get rehoused. To get a house they were saying they were intimidated out too, because they were in private landlords houses, to get a Housing Executive house. And they have all been rehoused, so they have (Catholic, ex-resident Torrens).

Continuing Tensions

By Thursday 11 July, quiet had returned to the Torrens estate, but those few days of violence and threats have had a much wider and longer lasting effect on community relations in the Torrens/Oldpark/Cliftonville Road areas. Drumcree week left very high levels of distrust and bitterness. By December 1996, when this Inquiry gathered information from local people, attacks on churches and schools, angry verbal exchanges, painting of slogans and intimidation of individuals in their homes, and restrictions on the use of shops, were still being reported.

I was going up the Oldpark Road with my mother and we were talking, not about anything in particular; and this girl, she lives facing the bus stop, who was very nice to me when my husband died - she had a wee girl who died - and she shouted at me about being up the road at the 8th July road blockade, but I just never answered her (Protestant, Torrens).

This selection of quotes shows that Protestants from the Torrens community are held by a range of local Catholics to be responsible for the violence of last Summer. Given the relatively isolated location of Torrens, getting shopping, going to school or church or simply walking along the road are all routine activities that now require more consideration than previously, and thereby help to maintain tension at a high level.

Nevertheless some people are also thinking about what can be done to rebuild relationships in the future. A number of local people stressed the importance of community work, but they were also aware of how difficult and slow this will be.

It was recognised that there would have to be work done so that people from the differing communities would get to know each other personally, and that this would provide the foundations for more longer term understanding.

I think things have calmed down at the moment in Torrens. The action group are looking at what they can do to hold people in the area. One of the things that I have been saying is that we need to create relationships with the other communities around us. Westland is doing exactly the same thing - getting involved in the North Belfast Partnership, things like that. So I think people are starting to realise that they need to hold out the hand of friendship and try and put last summer on the back burner

It’s going to be very, very, difficult because there are still a lot of tensions - you can reduce tensions to a certain degree but you will get people who won’t be involved in community work and they will just continually argue - you know, ‘look what they done to us last summer’ and that’s always going to be the difficulty, trying to get through to those people (Unionist politician).

People were also aware that not everyone wanted to build relationships across the various peace lines that divide the area, and that the suspicion, mistrust and fear had been there long before last summer.

Overcoming this kind of behaviour will be a considerable task, one simple way of beginning the process was suggested to the Inquiry.

Unfortunately one feature that comes through in many of the submissions is that neither side likes to admit that they were wrong or that they were in any way to blame for what happened last summer.

While much of the attention during Drumcree week was focused on the events in the Torrens area, the violence, fear and intimidation quickly spread to other areas of north Belfast. The biggest single exodus of residents was in the Clifton Park Avenue area, the scene of street protests over the Tour of the North parade, and a prominent interface. One of the drivers of the removal vans described how the problem escalated and the scale of the evacuations he had to deal with.

Clifton Park Avenue was the biggest eviction that took place, there were five houses, there was I think three flats in each and those were completely cleared. Half of them was burnt out - and they’re still blocked up, on the same side there is a maisonette thing which is a brave size, they were completely cleared and every window was broken and then there was another four or five houses which were more or less cleared (Ardoyne, van driver).

Background Tensions

The Tour of the North parade had led to an increase in communal tension in the Clifton Park Avenue area, but much of the anger had been directed towards the behaviour of the police over what was felt to be their heavy-handed approach to the protest, rather than towards the neighbouring Protestant communities. For some people this simmering resentment meant that people in the area were already on edge, and when controversy arose in July over the Drumcree church parade it quickly erupted into violence.

Submissions from the Protestant side of the peace-line put a greater emphasis on the longer term problems in the area. One resident felt that tension between the two communities had been building from before the parade but claimed that this was the responsibility of some of the residents of Clifton Park Avenue who had deliberately tried to provoke antagonism.

Our community visitors were abused, they were called Orange whores and Orange sluts. I’m back now to the end of May, beginning of June, long before the parade went down Manor Street - shouted at them about your parade will not get down. Just drawing attention to the fact that there were Catholic’s living in the flats. I’m only talking about one or two people, but it also happened in the town when they seen them in the town. I know they were also shouting at kids over in our park which is just across the road (Lower Oldpark resident).

The same individual suggested that this provocation was the work of a few individuals and these were people who had only recently moved into the area. In contrast the people who had lived in the area for some time did not receive the same treatment.

My point is, having lived in this area and having worked in this area, there is Catholic people who have lived in Clifton Park Avenue in this end - which would be seen to be 90% Protestant - that have lived there for years and have reared their children and are still in there and nobody has bothered with them. But I think it was the new tenants in the new flats - it was an excuse you could say - the drawing attention to it by them one or two, and from what I hear they were actually using it Just as giro drops (Lower Oldpark resident).

For this woman the large number of rented properties encouraged a relatively transient population who had little interest in the area. This flexibility also meant that the population balance could easily be disrupted, as people moved out from the Protestant side of the peace line houses were either left derelict or were occupied by Catholics. This was recognised as a feature of the area but at times of increasing tension had the potential for trouble.

A local landlord recognised that some people were concerned by the changes that were taking place in the area, but he said something needed to be done and he claimed that the only alternative would be an increase in derelict properties, vandalism and trouble.

In retrospect the violent clashes on and around the peace-line at Clifton Park Avenue may have seemed predictable, especially given the trouble earlier in the year. However the violent clashes at the parade protest seem to have been regarded as a brief flare-up and, according to one resident of Clifton Park Avenue, they did not leave any apparent bad feelings between the two communities.

I don't think there was any real tension and I don‘t think anybody thought about what was going to happen at Drumcree. There wasn‘t a lot said about it or anything - everything was just very normal after the Tour of the North march in North Belfast. Everything was back to normal the next day (Clifton Park Avenue resident).

This individual was surprised by the violence that was to erupt during Drumcree week and which was to force him to leave his home.

It is not completely clear from the submissions that were made to us how exactly the trouble began in the area, or the full sequence of events during the week. It was suggested that some form of activity began on the Monday night although at this stage there were no direct confrontations.

Things escalated on the Tuesday. Some minor clashes in the streets during the day seem to have led on to more serious violence early in the evening and this in turn led to the first people being moved out.

At some stage during Tuesday evening it was claimed that petrol bombs were thrown at some of the properties and this seems to have been the action which precipitated widescale evacuations from the area.

One of the local landlords told us that all of his properties were evacuated at this time.

He felt that the tenants were not targeted as individuals but rather they happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He gave examples of two of his tenants who had suffered from the violence. The first was an older woman who had recently moved back to Belfast from Canada.

The second tenant was a younger woman.

This man has eighteen flats in the Avenue and has lived in the road for many years. He was forced out of his own home and his children were forced to leave their flats in the area and move to another part of the city. Although his properties were not extensively damaged, they have remained empty and boarded up since July. He fears that by the time compensation is agreed more substantial damage will have occurred and he will not receive enough money to refurbish his flats.

The residents in Clifton Park Avenue bore the brunt of the violence during Drumcree week but the fear and tension spread to neighbouring streets. A number of Protestant families in the Avoca Street area decided to move at this time.

I think for a lot of them it was an excuse - 'I felt threatened there, I’m scared to let my kids out or whatever’ - I think an awful lot of them made what happened an excuse and they moved back to the Shankill estate or the far side of the Shankill or Crumlin Road (Lower Oldpark resident).

An Individual Account

One resident of Clifton Park Avenue described his experiences during Drumcree week and the events that led to his own departure from the street in more detail.

The trouble and threats had begun on the Tuesday and, according to other submissions many people moved out almost straight away, but this man and his neighbour did not move immediately. They were hoping that things would blow over and that they would be able to stay, or at least return after a period. But in the end, fearful of their personal safety, moving became the only option.

I really didn't want to move out because it was my home, and I enjoyed living round there. I would have actually stayed, not in the flat, maybe in friends or my parents house maybe until it all blew over but I thought if I don’t get my stuff out I’m going to come back and the fiat’s going to be burnt and I’m going to lose everything so I thought it was better to move out - it was very, very nerve wracking.

While it was clear to this resident that they were being threatened and intimidated by Protestants, there was a reluctance to accuse any of his immediate neighbours of being a party to the trouble.

Submissions from the Protestant community also expressed their concern at what happened but tended to blame ‘kids’ rather than outsiders.

Genuine people genuinely think it’s crazy what happened there is out of hand or whatever But again I think people feel threatened within their own communities by people - I’m sure this is happening on both sides - it is the people that live within these communities that are threatened by these people. I think the general feeling is that what happened was ridiculous and it was the kids were allowed to run rampant (Lower Oldpark resident).

Within this statement there is an unspoken and yet implicit suggestion that this trouble should have been dealt with more rapidly or severely. Although there was no overt criticism of the police from the Protestant side, people who were forced to move were critical of the inactivity of the police rather than their neighbours. It was claimed the RUC did little to protect or aid residents during the trouble. When this man and his neighbour had finally decided that they should move out, offers of help from the police were dismissed.

This attitude was in part a response to the way this individual felt about the RUC in general - ‘they don’t do nothing, they’re a waste of space, over the years the police have done nothing for the nationalist community’, but in part it was also a response to the way in which he felt that his attitudes had been justified by the way in which the police reacted to current violence. As in many other areas nationalists in the Cliftonville area were critical of the way the security forces responded to the crisis. In particular it was felt that the police did not intervene enough nor try to nip the trouble in the bud and this allowed things to get out of control.

And the night of the petrol bombings, I mean, the police seen it happening, nothing was done. Nothing was going to stop these people petrol bombing - I think they bombed maybe six or seven houses, yet there is an army camp there and they have probably the best set of closed circuit TVs around (CPA resident).

One local landlord was also critical of the police and in particular he suggested that things might not have been so bad if the community policing had been kept in place.

A further part of the criticism of the police was the feeling that they were responding in a partial manner that if it had been nationalists on the streets then the police would have acted tougher and quicker.

But yet they stood by - they fired, like I don’t know, was it a couple of plastic baton rounds, yet they fired five thousand that day in Northern Ireland at nationalist people. Yet the Protestants caused more damage and more destruction - that just shows you again what the police are like, that the police do nothing.

These accusations against the RUC are in part a response to this person’s own experiences of last summer and in part a response to events elsewhere that were seen on the television. While they may be partial and personalised they are nevertheless similar to many other stories which recount the events of the summer of 1996 from people who feel that the police should have been swifter to act against violence and intimidation. The main assertion of this individual is that the police simply did not do the job that they are expected to do.

However these reactions do not exist in a vacuum. They are added to more deeply held concerns about the bias within the police force, and which were widely expressed from within the nationalist community. And while it was acknowledged that some attempts had been made to try to address these concerns it was also clear that the events of last summer had completely undermined this work. These feelings were expressed by one community activist.

Consequences

The consequence of these events can be addressed on two levels. The impact on an individual who is forced to move and the impact on the community itself. As mentioned above, one landlord who made a submission to the Inquiry is in a kind of limbo and is unclear as to where his future lies.

For the tenant who was forced to move out the problem was addressed more immediately.

This period of living in hotels was far from pleasant

Getting rehoused quickly meant visiting the Housing Executive office every day, visiting every housing association and looking for empty houses. It also meant being prepared to take a flat anywhere in the city, or rather anywhere he felt safe which meant moving into a Catholic area. He was offered his old flat back in Clifton Park Avenue

However the houses in Clifton Park Avenue remain empty and the area has taken on the appearance of a no-man’s land.

But where does it stop? It creates more empty houses - that place is so dead now around there. There’s nobody living in the street. Do you know where we lived, there’s nobody there and it’s mad. There’s some beautiful houses still there - what a waste (CPA resident).

While people were aware of the problems in the area and were aware that something needed to be done to improve things they were also suspicious of plans being drawn up over their heads and of being presented with a ‘fait accompli’. One example given was the peace-wall at Manor Street. Residents acknowledged that there were often tensions in the area during the marching season, and there had been more violent clashes during the mid- 1980s, but they claimed the wall had been built without any real consultation and this resulted in negative effects on community relations and attempts to redevelop the area.

I think the wall created a problem because the people in this area would say that they weren’t considered when negotiations for the plans for the wall actually developed. The first they heard about it was when the digger arrived to start - I think that created an awful lot of problems. It created the problem because we didn’t want it. It made them become more aware - we weren’t given a say there, so if something is going to happen to Clifton Park Avenue we have to make ourselves heard, to have a say or are we going to be walked on again. I think that is the general feeling too for people (Lower Oldpark resident).

In Manor Street there was £0.5m of public sector housing destroyed within two weeks of the troubles in Manor Street in 1986. Then they erected the big wall - so there was millions of £s of public sector money being spent in creating an abyss, a wall, a divide. The Manor Street / Cliftonville community had been devastated. In the early ‘80s it was going through redevelopment, it was a mixed community, there was loads of derelict houses, the community had to rebuild (Manor Street resident).

The feeling from the Protestant community is both that their areas were being neglected: that houses are allowed to remain empty, until they become vandalised and then derelict, and at the same time that local residents are left out of planning discussions. Both of these factors fuel concerns that plans are being made to squeeze them out of these areas.

At the minute there is talk that people have seen plans - the New Lodge have proposed three hundred new dwellings which would be seen as for Catholics and I think that people round here have problems, I think there would be a lot of objections. I don’t know what form that would take but certainly I know that there are proposals for public meetings to take place.

The Lower Oldpark is right at the edge - we would come in under North Belfast, we can come in under the Shankill Partnership. We are right on the edge of the Crumlin Road and I think a lot of people see it if the Catholic community get the far side of Clifton Park Avenue that the peace line will move from Roe Street to Agnes Street. Now you are maybe talking about a lot of years on but I think that is something that they already are identifying with and if they want the area to continue and they want people to come in and bring jobs in or bring shops in that they have to get their act together as a community, as a whole (Lower Oldpark resident).

However there have been positive responses to the perceived decline in the area, the exclusion of local people from the decision making process and the events of last summer.

One of the community activists from the nationalist side also believed that positive things could come from the events of last summer.

Our attitude as a group has always been that our community needs to develop first before you can talk to other communities because what is the point in talking if you are not developed enough yourself The stage where our community are at now, they are nearly at that stage where you can talk now and that’s why the communications network has started. That’s why they have started to create the links to see - because we are so divided.

We have got all sorts of money community relations things, you know, but you had to develop - our objective was to develop our own community establish our own community groups, address the housing, address the mother and toddlers, address the old age pensioners, address the needs within your own community before you can go across and talk about issues across the other side.

While the ongoing constructive work within one’s own community and the building of tentative links with neighbouring communities were positive signs, there was also a concern for the implications for individuals if the security situation deteriorated.

There was an awareness that individuals who were identified as community representatives were making themselves conspicuous and therefore potential targets.

This fear is not just a hypothetical concern but rather is one that is rooted in the experiences of living in North Belfast during the Troubles and an awareness of the sectarian fragmentation of the area which makes it unlike any other part of Northern Ireland.

The problem is unique, it's a Bosnia situation. You have so many interfaces and there are so many points where violence could easily occur It only takes a small incident to escalate violence. And then if sectarianism starts again, what happens? If the loyalist ceasefire breaks down, where do the people get slaughtered - in the Cliftonville Road and lower Cliftonville. In our community. This is where people died, this last twenty five years. There was more people killed in North Belfast than any other part of Northern Ireland - through the Butchers, everything. It’s a killing field. And that’s what will happen if another Drumcree happens, if the Provisionals continue on at their campaign, if the loyalists break their ceasefire - the first place they will hit will be North Belfast (Cliftonville resident).

Another perspective from the unionist community recognised many of these concerns but also tried to suggests some positive strategies.

I think it would be very, very dangerous just to allow elected representatives to meet because there is very few of them can agree and I think that we need more of a participative democracy than a representative democracy The more people we involve the better and the more ideas are thrown up - all right, it’s a bit harder to reach agreement probably when there is more people involved - but! think that if we leave it to one or two politicians, they’ll all have a vested interest and that vested interest is in getting votes. They usually lead from the back rather than from the front. They are afraid to take chances. I think community people can take more risks because they have nothing to lose and! think quite a lot of them have a lot to offer in terms of the issues that we are all struggling with. I would put a lot of value in allowing communities to talk. I think it is important that we don't give elected representatives more power than they deserve (Unionist Politician).

The need to engage in some form of dialogue, both within single communities and also between communities and across boundaries was widely recognised as being a key element in any attempt to begin to rebuild trust, confidence and wider relationships. Most people also acknowledged that this would not be easy and would not be done quickly. Nevertheless it was felt to be a process that needed to be started sooner rather than later. The last quotation above is significant because it highlights a number of facets of this process:

These points provide only the barest of frameworks for a way forward but they are worth dwelling on at this stage because they resonate with similar statements made by many other people to the Inquiry. While much of this report is concerned with the events of 1996, it is important to note that many people in many communities in North Belfast are also looking to the future. Some look in trepidation, but some also see an opportunity.

WHITEWELL AND GRAYMOUNT

Disturbances in the Whitewell Road area started on the evening of Tuesday 9 July when Protestant residents from the White City area blocked the Whitewell Road. The submissions from the two communities about the events in this area are quite distinct. From the Catholic side we were told very personal stories about how individual families had been threatened and intimidated and forced to leave their homes. From the Protestant side we heard a more general view of longer term issues and more general concerns that were affecting the community.

The Attack on Whitewell Road

We begin by relating how a number of residents remembered the week unfolding. This involves quite detailed retelling of traumatic and violent events. The first story is that of a family who were living on the Whitewell Road.

For a few hours things seemed to quieten down and during this time the police phoned to check that the family were OK. However shortly after this the man saw what he describes as ‘a group of older men looking and pointing to his house’. This was done in a manner which caused him to worry. He phoned the RUC again but this time the reply was not so reassuring.

Once again things seemed to go quiet for a while.

He then went around the back to get his wife and daughter from the neighbours house.

I didn’t want to draw any attention to my neighbours by using the front of the houses My daughter was still crying and screaming. My wife was crying and a policeman helped my daughter and tried to console her. Someone in the mob shouted ‘Give us another scream you wee fenian bitch’.

The next morning he went back to his house to assess the damage and see what other belongings might be retrieved

After they were forced to leave their home they were faced with the problem of finding new accommodation. Initially they were found a room in a hotel but this was only temporary, and marked the beginning of a period of uncertainty, being moved from one place to another.

We were put in a local hotel, then sent to another downtown hotel, then we had to move again to a bed and breakfast supplied by the Housing Executive. We found it totally unsuitable - dirty beds and bedding, unkept kitchen and toilet facilities and we returned to the hotel. The Housing Executive told us the house had been cleaned up and new bedding supplied and if we didn’t accept this offer we could be out oil the street. Our second inspection of the house found it to be temporarily satisfactory.

The events of July were truly horrific, but they were only the beginning of a complete upheaval in the life of this family. Living in temporary and crowded accommodation made it difficult to resume work, there were problems in sorting out both their insurance claims and their mortgage on a property that had dropped considerably in value.

Despite an initial optimism when they had moved back to Northern Ireland a few years ago, they felt that they had few options left open to them.

Unfortunately this family were not the only ones living on the Whitewell Road to suffer in the violence, the house of a near neighbour was also destroyed and the family forced to move out. Another neighbour was also caught up in the turmoil but decided to remain.

The attack on his neighbours house then seemed to intensify into an all out assault.

After the family were taken to safety the police placed a Land Rover in his front drive to try to protect the property. But this was inadequate as the attackers returned via the back of the house.

This man had lived on the Whitewell Road for some considerable time and had always had good relationships with his Protestant neighbours. He was not personally threatened during Drumcree week but he says he found the episode extremely frightening.

He feels that if the police had remained between the two barriers on the Whitewell Road through the Tuesday night the two houses would not have been destroyed and the families would not have been driven out of the area.

Like many other submissions he feels that less protection was offered to Catholic residents at the beginning of the week than to Protestant areas later on.

However he does acknowledge some of the concerns of the local Protestant community, and some of the pressures and more explicit threats that could be applied to the police.

Both residents of the Whitewell Road talked of a sense of uncertainty about their security and a fear that the police would be unable to protect them if the situation got out of control.

They were able to sit out the worst of the violence. After the Drumcree parade was allowed along the Garvaghy Road there were no further protests. And although there have been no further disturbances since July, he felt that his relationships with his neighbours will never be the same.

We also took submissions from Catholic families in the nearby Graymount area, who had experienced similar attacks and violence to those people on Whitewell. They also talk of mob attacks on homes and were critical of the lack of protection they were given by the security forces.

He was also surprised that the Protestant residents were able to block the roads in the area so easily.

The violence was more extensive during Drumcree week but it was not the first time that this man had suffered abuse by his neighbours.

He acknowledged that these personal attacks were a relatively recent problem, for although the family had lived in the area for six years this petty harassment had only begun in the past two years.

It was after the first siege that we started getting abuse. The four years before that everything was all right in the area. It’s only since the siege when it started - Get out you Catholics this and that’ you know and then the bottles, the bricks - it really got worse coming up to July.

Fortunately the night their house was petrol bombed he and his family were not in their home.

Their house was not badly damaged by the petrol bomb attack but it was clearly unsafe for them to remain in the area. They had to face the problem of moving all their possessions and finding another place to live.

As there were no immediate offers of another house, he decided to act on his own initiative and squat in an empty Housing Executive house.

His decision to squat in a house led to a prolonged and complicated dispute with the NIHE, but this was eventually resolved and the family were allocated a new home.

With the passage of time he felt able to describe the events of last summer in a fairly matter-of-fact way, however the family continued to experience difficulties with their children (aged 8 and 9) who were badly affected by their experiences. Not only had they lost their home but their school had also suffered arson attacks during the summer.

My kids have turned, they are writing on the walls in the house I’m in now, they are just writing on the walls ‘White City - Burn, IRA, and everything’. And my kids were never like that. Never They weren’t brought up like that. Now it’s green and white; red, white and blue to them now. They don’t like Protestants now, my kids have turned very bitter; for the age of them like.

His main criticism focused on two themes, first the lack of protection offered to Catholic residents in mixed areas and second the contrasting protection they were able to offer Protestants later in the week and in the months that followed.

Another submission recounted the experiences of a Catholic woman and her family who had lived in the Graymount area for forty years. They had been happy to remain in the area because they wanted to live in a mixed community.

She recalls that her neighbours were always ready to help out with the children whenever they could.

The beginning of the troubles brought some changes but even these were felt to be only temporary disruptions.

But as with the previous account, the woman noted that more serious changes had taken place in the last couple of years.

They were not directly affected by events at first, although they were aware of the growing tension.

They were caught up in events by chance when a neighbour was attacked and they went to see if they could help. The woman’s daughter-in-law tells the story.

The activity also brought Protestant residents out onto the street and the family soon became the target themselves. And events seemed to rapidly spiral out of control.

They all came in with drink on them - they were having parties in their houses - so they all came out and started gathering around the front gate and they got my husband and started to push and shove him. They actually got up the hall and cornered him and tried to get him into the kitchen until I jumped in front of them and I edged them out.

The police came, but within two seconds they were called out to somewhere else and that left us sort of vulnerable and there was a mob milling outside. I seen the mob coming from Shore Crescent, with baseball bats and they came up to the door: ‘What the f..s going on here and they started beating at the front but they couldn’t get in. Then they started on my husband’s car - smashed it up and just then the riot police came and they stayed for the rest of the night.

This story illustrates something of the haphazard and random nature of the events during Drumcree week. The family were not the initial victims of the violence, but were trying to help a neighbour. However they quickly became the targets in the anger and confusion.

In each of these four accounts the spark that led to the victims being identified and the violence escalating is not completely clear. The only common feature is that each of the families forced to leave were Catholics living in a mixed area, but not all Catholic households were attacked. On the Whitewell Road two houses owned by Catholics were targeted and two were left alone. One of the residents felt that his long residence in the area gave him some status and had offered him some protection. But long standing residence failed to protect the family in Graymount.

The response of these residents was confusion and bewilderment. Their recurrent questions - Why had their neighbours picked on them? Why had they been attacked? Why had they been forced to leave their homes? - remained unanswered.

Throughout the enquiry the accounts of what happened varied greatly from one community to another. We received a submission from a group of residents and community activists from the Protestant community in Whitewell and Graymount areas who offered us their perspectives on what had happened during the summer and why.

While they initially expressed surprise at the response they also suggested that this indicated the depth of feeling within the community, and they felt that the problems were rooted far deeper than the recent events at Drumcree.

Now Drumcree sort of brought it to a head for the Protestants and an incident - -there was a Roman Catholic school burnt. A community activist came to me, a Catholic, and says ‘What about the school being burned?’ I said 'It’s not right’. He says 'Not right, we are really annoyed up here’. I said ‘Really annoyed? How do you think we have been feeling for the last two years when you have burnt our churches. The nationalist youth up there have been burning our churches or Orange Halls and putting people out. You get a school burnt and you are annoyed’.

These statements highlight some of the broader issues that this submission raised: the nature of the protests, feeling challenged and threatened by both Catholics and the police, and feeling that changes that the Protestant community were experiencing were not really being addressed.

Policing the Protests

The Protestant submission argued that the protests during Drumcree week were mostly peaceful and uncontentious and they were not intended to threaten or intimidate Catholic neighbours.

The peaceful atmosphere changed and trouble began they felt when the police decided to change their tactics and move the women and children from the road. This was done without any consultation.

On the third day there was something like a dozen women and kids on the road and the Inspector down in the police barracks decided to send in the riot squad and beat the women and kids.

This decision by the police to break up the protests, led to an escalation of the issue. According to this submission it was only after this that Catholic families were attacked by Protestants. These attacks were carried out by people from outside the area who felt that the local Protestants were themselves under attack.

When the police moved to clear the roads it undermined the position of local activists and gave outsiders the opportunity to stir up trouble.

We have our own troublemakers down here - the defenders of Ulster became the defenders of Protestantism and that gave them the excuse to come in. We couldn’t hold it after that. We live in the real world. We know how far we can go and how far we can’t go.

The media depicted the attacks on Catholics as the Protestant community closing ranks and uniting to get rid of outsiders, but they said this was not the whole picture.

They also insisted that while the focus of attention had been on the attacks on Catholic families, the general high levels of tension in the area also made Protestants aware that they were vulnerable to attack, and like many Catholic residents, they claimed the RUC did not take their concerns seriously.

On 11 July we were informed by a Catholic in the Graymount estate that nationalists were going to come in to burn the Orange bastards out. That’s actually what the girl said. So, we heard this here, and went down to the police and we seen the desk sergeant. We explained to him that we had been told that the nationalists were going to come in and they were going to do this and going to do that - could you put some static patrols in the Graymount estate itself and at the bottom of the Whitewell Road. He wrote this down anyway and said Look we will get back to you, bla, bla, bla.’

The expected threat materialised in the early hours of the morning, when an estimated eighty men 'from the nationalist area’ arrived in the estate.

This potentially violent confrontation was actually dealt with peacefully and the crowds dispersed. But at other situations during Drumcree week, Protestants felt that the police were either unsympathetic to local concerns or over aggressive in their handling of events.

It is rather ironic that both communities saw the police as the source of the problems in this area. Nationalists claimed that the police had failed to offer sufficient protection from loyalist violence, and that they had not been willing to confront those blocking the roads. Loyalists on the other hand say that the police were too aggressive in clearing protesters and ignored their concerns. They further state that the escalation of the trouble, into violent attacks on Catholic neighbours only occurred after they had been challenged by the police. In contrast the submissions made by Catholic residents who were forced to leave their homes claim that in general the attacks on them coincided with the road blocks rather than police attempts to clear them away.

These diverging explanations and interpretations of the events suggest that the reasons for the violence are in fact more complex and deep rooted, the protests were a symptom of a deeper malaise rather than the cause of the rioting and intimidation.

Some of the possible factors that underlay the explosion of violence were raised in the submission from the Protestant community.

The first of these factors was the changes that have occurred in the area in recent years as more Catholics have moved in to Lower North Belfast. Protestants see these changes as an example of their willingness to live in mixed communities, but feel that outsiders only focus on these changes when tensions build up.

They also argued that because of the perception of Protestants as more sectarian then more attention is paid to attacks on Catholics and on Catholic property. They claim that attacks on the Protestant community are more easily ignored.

Take Whitewell Road, now ten years ago it was probably a predominantly Protestant area and now you have Protestant churches being attacked, Protestant schools being attacked, Protestant Orange Halls being attacked, and homes. And as soon as you see a Catholic church attacked - which is wrong and I’m not trying to justify that - it’s in the paper. It’s all over the news - but there is no media coverage of the violence in the Whitewell or Mountcollyer of the attacks on Protestant property.

Another perfect example of it is the Whitewell Road - Graymount where you have four Protestant churches who have been burnt and attacked. You have an Orange Hall that is totally vandalised. Last year it was burnt three times.

Orangemen who have to get to the ball and get back again were spat on. There were stones thrown at them. Women and kids who were there were spat on, stones thrown at them. This is an area that was Protestant. OK, they can move people, but we can’t lift buildings and move buildings. It is not our fault that movement has been so great. And they are not understanding this. They just keep on putting slogans up ‘Nationalist Whitewell, Protestants out, Orange B’ - every Protestant is an Orange B.

This they see as a localised version of the arguments over Drumcree. It enabled Protestants in North Belfast to identify with events in Portadown and elsewhere which were seen as a generalised attack on their community.

A second factor which fuelled the violence was a sense of the Protestant working class being let down or even abandoned by the unionist political leadership. This was sometimes expressed in extremely strong terms.

This last statement addressing the issue of the increasing sectarian segregation of North Belfast was a widely expressed concern. In many areas Protestants felt that they were being encouraged to leave the area.

The issue of housing resources was one area where the Protestant community felt that they were under attack from all quarters. The previous statement put part of the blame on the unionist political leaders, earlier statements had suggested an unwillingness to allow Protestants to move into widely accepted ‘nationalist areas’. The Housing Executive were also seen as part of the problem.

The local people did not blame individual Catholics and could understand their needs, but they felt that their own needs were too readily ignored.

We want to remain here. We want better housing. I mean the perception that we are all living in big houses on the Malone Road - anyone’s only to walk around the area. We have poor housing. We have unemployment. We have got problems with all the social diseases - we have got drug abuse and domestic violence. It all exists in our areas.

There is also some acknowledgement of the pragmatics of the pressure on the demand for housing and some of the problems that it will raise.

We don’t want to go any further We want proper houses. We want proper facilities within our own areas and if that means that we have to hive beside Catholic neighbours we are quite willing to look into that and do that. I’m not saying everyone will be pleased with it - there would be a terrible lot down here would not be pleased with it but it is a real world we are living in.

But people were insisting on their right to stay in the areas that they regarded as theirs and the right to have their desires respected.

What we are looking for is for them to respect our culture, respect our rights. They just can’t have it all one way street all the time. Everything that is our culture is pushed aside - I mean I’m not an Orangeman but the Orangemen are part of my culture, they have a right to do their marches. Negotiation has to come into it. The) have to respect where we are coming from. They have to respect us.

The submission expresses a seamless flow of feelings and concerns which links the problems of parades and housing to the larger issues of national identity.

They cannot keep on going out and saying ‘Brits out’ and us feeling Brits out is us. The British presence is not the army. We are the British presence. The Protestant population is the British presence and we are not going anywhere else. We are staying. We are going to fight for what rightly is ours and that means housing, education, jobs - just like anybody else. We are moving no further. We are staying here. And the feeling of isolation - we are going to lift that. We are going to get into networking and if it means we have to go on by ourselves, then we will do that. But at the end of the day our whole confidence building is that somewhere along the line we will be able to make that step across.

This last statement is perhaps surprisingly optimistic given recent events. But in spite of the violence people felt that there were still enough strong links between the two communities to start to pick up the pieces.

This experience would then serve as the basis for future work, it would also indicate some of the areas which need to be tackled most seriously and some potential problems.

For some people at least the violence had made them realise that they faced a stark reality, either they could move towards further segregation and isolation conflict or they could attempt to rebuild the bridges and restore the mixed communities. This did not really seem to offer a choice.