The Belfast Rioter

Belfast riots lead to questioning of police tactics over flag dispute

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About 80, people live in east Belfast as a whole, but those engaged in rioting number only a few hundred at most, sometimes much fewer, and many of them are youngsters in their teens. They are a tiny, embittered, radically disaffected bunch who have little idea of who they are and what they want, apart from the reinstatement of the union flag above city hall. High on rage and adrenaline, they fail to see that their self-defeating actions play right into the hands of republicans, the group they despise most fiercely.

The self-appointed ringleaders of the protests may claim — with a chillingly Stalinist ring — to speak for "the people", the wide sweep of the Protestant working class, but they are largely a group of hardline preachers and failed politicians whose crackpot views rendered them unelectable.

Most people, including the majority of unionists, find the pronouncements they make distasteful and extreme.

But you can tell that these once-obscure opportunists are savouring their newfound notoriety. Suddenly their presence is sought-after, their opinions courted. Willie Frazer , the most prominent of the protest organisers, has already popped up on Radio 4's PM programme and the Jeremy Vine show, to the incredulity of those in Northern Ireland who thought that his particular brand of inarticulate paranoia was consigned to the past.

Frazer — who was recently filmed telling loyalist protesters that "we will not be dictated to by gunmen, mass murderers and paedophiles" — has contested several elections, has never been elected, and in most cases lost his deposit. So we are talking about a relatively small number of protesters, led by a ragtag bunch of unelected malcontents, and an even smaller number of rioters.

Why then does it feel as though the country is being brought, once more, to its knees? The rioting of this period resembled low-intensity warfare more than civil disturbances at times. With the defeat of the IRA in the North by late , violence, including rioting, eventually petered out.

However, disturbances would again erupt from time to time in Belfast in the s and s. Some of these incidents —such as the Outdoor Relief riots actually saw Catholics and Protestants demonstrate and fight side by side in protest at the cutting of unemployment assistance. Depressingly often, however, violence would resume the old sectarian pattern.

Over the next week, 2, people, mainly Catholics, were forced from their homes, Catholics were driven out of workplaces and several were killed in sectarian attacks. The following decades were relatively placid in Belfast with exception of a major riot in when police tried to remove a tricolour flag from Sinn Fein office in Divis Street. In response to rioting in Derry arising out of, on one side Civil Rights agitation by Catholics and the Protestant Apprentice Boys Parade on the other, nationalists in Belfast staged protests outside RUC police stations.

Blame for what happened over the following two days must be shared. There was provocation from the nationalist side, some shots were fired at police and a grenade thrown by an IRA member see Hanley, Millar, The Lost Revolution p , leading the Northern Ireland authorities to think they were facing an insurrection. RUC armoured cars equipped with machine guns fired on the Catholic Divis Flats killing a six year old boy, while further up the Falls Road, police failed to stop a loyalist crowd from burning down two terraced streets in Catholic neighbourhoods.

Eight people were killed over three days and injured. Rival paramilitaries patrolled their areas. The British Army was deployed with fixed bayonets to restore order — a move Catholics initially welcomed. The rioting that scarred Northern Ireland for the following thirty or so years thereafter shared many facets with what had gone before. It usually broke out in areas where Catholic and Protestant communities bordered one another — between the Shankill and Falls roads in west Belfast, around the Catholic enclave of Short Strand in east Belfast and around Ardoyne in the north of the city.

As before, houses were burnt and families expelled from their homes on both sides. Most of these are still in place today — preventing mass incursions into rival neighbourhoods but also hardening segregation of daily life. They exchanged shots with a loyalist sniper who was firing from a house on Cupar Street, but failed to dislodge him, or to halt the burning of Catholic houses in the area.

Father PJ Egan recalled that the soldiers called on the loyalists to surrender but they instead began shooting and throwing petrol bombs at the soldiers. Soldiers were not deployed in Ardoyne, and violence continued there on Friday night. Nationalists hijacked 50 buses from the local bus depot, set them on fire and used them as makeshift barricades to block access to Ardoyne. Thereafter, the violence died down into what the Scarman report called, "the quiet of exhaustion". There were claims of police brutality.

On 14 August riots continued in Dungannon, Armagh and Newry. It is evident that the Stormont Government is no longer in control of the situation.

Indeed the present situation is the inevitable outcome of the policies pursued for decades by successive Stormont Governments. It is clear, also, that the Irish Government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and perhaps worse.

This is not the agitation of a minority seeking by lawful means the assertion of political rights. It is the conspiracy of forces seeking to overthrow a Government democratically elected by a large majority. What the teenage hooligans seek beyond cheap kicks I do not know. But of this I am quite certain — they are being manipulated and encouraged by those who seek to discredit and overthrow this Government".

The fact is that on Thursday and Friday of last week the Catholic districts of Falls and Ardoyne were invaded by mobs equipped with machine-guns and other firearms. A community which was virtually defenceless was swept by gunfire and streets of Catholic homes were systematically set on fire. We entirely reject the hypothesis that the origin of last week's tragedy was an armed insurrection. Catholics generally fled across the border into the Republic of Ireland , while Protestants generally fled to east Belfast. The August riots were the most sustained violence that Northern Ireland had seen since the early s.

Many Protestants, loyalists and unionists believed the violence showed the true face of the Northern Ireland Catholic civil rights movement — as a front for the IRA and armed insurrection. They had mixed feelings regarding the deployment of British Army troops into Northern Ireland. Eddie Kinner, a resident of Dover Street who would later join the Ulster Volunteer Force UVF , vividly recalled the troops marching down his street with fixed bayonets and steel helmets. He and his neighbours had felt at the time as if they were being invaded by their "own army". The disturbances, taken together with the Battle of the Bogside, are often cited as the beginning of the Troubles.

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Violence escalated sharply in Northern Ireland after these events, with the formation of new paramilitary groups on either side, most notably the Provisional Irish Republican Army in December of that year. On the loyalist side, the UVF formed in were galvanised by the August riots and in , another paramilitary group, the Ulster Defence Association was founded out of a coalition of loyalist militants who had been active since August The largest of these were the Woodvale Defence Association , led by Charles Harding Smith , and the Shankill Defence Association , led by John McKeague , which had been responsible for what organisation there was of loyalist violence in the riots of August While the thousands of British Army troops sent to Northern Ireland were initially seen as a neutral force, they quickly got dragged into the street violence and by were devoting most of their attention to combatting republican paramilitaries.

The role of the IRA in the riots has long been disputed. At the time, the organisation was blamed by the Northern Ireland authorities for the violence. However, it was very badly prepared to defend nationalist areas of Belfast, having few weapons or fighters on the ground. The Scarman Inquiry, set up by the British government to investigate the causes of the riots, concluded:. But they did not start the riots, or plan them: In nationalist areas, the IRA was reportedly blamed for having failed to protect areas like Bombay Street and Ardoyne from being burned out.

One, Sean O'Hare, said, "I never saw it written on a wall. That wasn't the attitude. Another, Sean Curry recalled, "some people were a bit angry but most praised the people who did defend the area. They knew that if the men weren't there, the area wouldn't have been defended. At the time, the IRA released a statement on 18 August, saying, it had been, "in action in Belfast and Derry" and "fully equipped units had been sent to the border". It had been, "reluctantly compelled into action by Orange murder gangs" and warned the British Army that if it, "was used to supress [ sic ] the legitimate demands of the people they will have to take the consequences" and urged the Irish government to send the Irish Army over the border.

A total of 96 weapons and 12, rounds of ammunition were also sent to the North. According to Hanley and Millar, "dissensions that pre-dated August [] had been given a powerful emotional focus".

Shortly after its formation, the Provisional IRA launched an offensive campaign against the state of Northern Ireland. The actions of the RUC in the August riots are perhaps the most contentious issue arising out of the disturbances. Nationalists argue that the RUC acted in a blatantly biased manner, helping loyalists who were assaulting Catholic neighbourhoods. There were also strong suggestions that police knew when loyalist attacks were to happen and seemed to disappear from some Catholic areas shortly before loyalist mobs attacked.

Belfast Riots – A Short History

From the outset, the response of the state and its forces of law and order to Catholic mobilisation was an issue capable of arousing far more anger and activism than the issues around which mobilisation had begun. Police behaviour and their interaction with loyalist protesters probably did more to politically mobilise large sections of the Catholic community than did any of the other grievances.

The Scarman Inquiry found that the RUC were "seriously at fault" on at least six occasions during the rioting.

Specifically, they criticised the RUC's use of Browning heavy machine-guns in built-up areas, their failure to stop Protestants from burning down Catholic homes, and their withdrawal from the streets long before the Army arrived. However, the Scarman Report concluded that, "Undoubtedly mistakes were made and certain individual officers acted wrongly on occasions. But the general case of a partisan force co-operating with Protestant crowds to attack Catholic people is devoid of substance, and we reject it utterly".

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They pointed to the RUC's dispersal of loyalist rioters in Belfast on 2—4 August in support of the force's impartiality.

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