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Belfast and Derry in Revolt. Simon Prince
Читать онлайн.Название Belfast and Derry in Revolt
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isbn 9781788550956
Автор произведения Simon Prince
Издательство Ingram
Tension inevitably mounted. The ban on Paisley’s march did not prevent him holding a rally at the City Hall. Crowds gathered in the vicinity of the Republican Party’s office, and police patrols reported an uneasiness and growing hostility amongst local residents, especially the younger ones. The situation was becoming very ugly. Although no serious incidents occurred in Divis Street that particular evening, it was well after midnight before the crowd disappeared, leaving me apprehensive about the rest of the week.33
Hermon’s apprehension was justified. In the small hours of 29 September, an emergency meeting of the Republican Election Directorate upped the ante by announcing that unless the RUC replaced the Tricolour it had removed within two days, McMillen would put up another in its place.34 That evening a second vigil was staged outside 145 Divis Street. According to the Belfast Telegraph, about 100 children gathered opposite the Republican headquarters around 7:30 pm singing rebel songs. By 9 pm they were joined by a number of adults and ‘there was loud cheering when a group of boys ran along Divis Street flaunting the … Tricolour and an anti-Paisley banner’. The flag was placed beside the election headquarters and garbage and stones were thrown at police officers who were trying to persuade the crowd to disperse. It finally did so around midnight and a disgruntled Divis Street shopkeeper remarked the following morning that the whole business had been started by teenagers and that ‘if there had been a heavy shower of rain … the whole thing would have been over in ten minutes’.35
At the same time as these incidents in Divis Street, Paisley was holding his rally in Donegall Square, brandishing a message from the hardline Ulster Loyalist Association that congratulated him on his ‘stand against the Tricolour’. He called for the prosecution of Republicans and criticized the RUC for its handling of the matter. Although he had appealed for order, about 100 of his followers had to be dissuaded by a sizeable police presence from proceeding to the Shankill via the Falls.36
Serious trouble broke out on the following night. As on the previous day a crowd began to gather in Divis Street at about 7:30 pm. Two hours later, bottles were being hurled at passing vehicles. By 10 pm the road was covered in broken glass. The appearance of a police Land Rover prompted a shower of bottles and four vans, containing fifty policemen, were rushed in as reinforcements. The police marched up Divis Street and the crowd scattered into the side streets whence they continued to bombard the police with missiles. The crowd was estimated at about 1,500 when the violence reached its peak at around 11:30 pm. The demonstrators began to chant ‘Burn, Burn, Burn the Bastards!’ while cursing Paisley. The police drew their batons. According to one report, ‘women screamed, and children scattered and policemen clashed with the demonstrators. Several were knocked underfoot and hundreds ran for the shelter of nearby Percy Street and other adjoining streets … One young girl ran into a side street with blood streaming from her head’.37 McMillen blamed the Minister of Home Affairs. ‘To appease mob law’, he said, ‘he ordered armed police into a 100 [per cent] nationalist area and created a situation the consequence of which has been to destroy respect for the civil law and set a deplorable example to the more unruly elements.’38
McMillen duly replaced the Tricolour on 1 October 1964, as he had threatened to do. The police promptly broke in to remove it. This precipitated further mayhem which escalated into what the nationalist Irish News called ‘a night of fear’ during which petrol bombs exploded around police vehicles, a Belfast Corporation trolleybus was set on fire, plate-glass windows in shops were smashed and blood flowed from more than thirty injured heads as iron gratings, bottles and stones showered down from the side streets.39 Across the Lagan in east Belfast, the author of the parish chronicle of the Catholic St Matthew’s Church wrote in an entry dated 2 October 1964, ‘it looked as if serious trouble might develop and partisan strife be again violently enkindled [sic] in the City. Also alarming – to the police [–] was their helplessness against and the devastation that could be caused bythe “Molotov cocktail” … used for the first time in Belfast against the hithertofore invincible police tenders’. A local milkman, he claimed, could not lay his hands on many empty milk bottles for his Saturday morning delivery.40
Paisley stirred the pot still further by issuing a statement in which he and one of his colleagues demonized all Catholics. ‘The disgraceful acts on the Falls Road’, it declared, ‘which have been instigated by the Republican associates of the murderous IRA demonstrate the real character of the Catholic population’. No responsible spokesman of the Catholic community, it claimed, had condemned the violence, but had instead slandered Protestants and loyalists who, despite provocation, had remained orderly and law-abiding. The replacement of the Tricolour, it thundered, was ‘a challenge which cannot be ignored, and the Catholic community better know that the loyalist and Protestant people will not capitulate to this illegal and riotous behaviour’.41 As the peak number of rioters was estimated at 1,500 and the entire Catholic population of Belfast was over 114,000 in 1961,42 this blanket condemnation of the latter was absurd. Indeed, it was even claimed subsequently that some of the rioters were Protestant agents provocateurs.43
As it happened, both Protestant and Catholic Church leaders did appeal for calm on Friday, 2 October 1964, as did O’Neill. Even the Republicans seemed to realize the danger posed by what they had helped produce when they issued a statement which said: ‘We wish to avoid injury to innocent people and do not intend to allow the issue of flying the Tricolour to overshadow other issues. The flag is merely a symbol of freedom’.44 But there was further rioting on the night of 2/3 October 1964 in which petrol bombs were again thrown and shops looted, although a police spokesman was quoted as saying, ‘We don’t think it has been as severe as last night.’45
There was no serious trouble after that; even though there was a 5,000-strong march through Catholic west Belfast on 4 October 1964 in the course of which people waved miniature Tricolours and sang Irish songs. The march ended in a rally at which seven out of the twelve Republican candidates in the election were present on the platform, together with Ena Connolly, daughter of James Connolly, who presented McMillen with a ‘lucky Tricolour horseshoe’. The proceedings concluded with the singing of ‘The Soldier’s Song’, in Irish.46 None of this had much effect on the results of the election, which took place eleven days later. As a Metropolitan Police Special Branch report of 16 November 1964 pointed out, they brought ‘little joy’ to the Republicans. They obtained 101,619 votes out of a total of 633,263 throughout the province and although this was an improvement upon their position in 1959, it was almost 50,000 votes fewer than they had polled in 1955.47 McMillen came bottom of the poll in West Belfast and lost his deposit. Kilfedder won the seat with a majority of 6,659 over Diamond, with Billy Boyd in third place. The new Unionist MP reportedly stated that he owed his victory to Paisley.48
IV
A ‘Top Secret’ report of February 1966 by the RUC Special Branch claimed that the Divis riots ‘were not casual riots but an organised attempt to incite sectarian troubles. While firearms were not used, incendiary bombs were thrown at police vehicles … It was noticed that important members of the IRA who presumably thought they were unknown to the police, worked secretly in the background playing a major part in creating troubles during the elections.’49 But this was not what the police were saying at the time. On 3 October 1964 the RUC’s City Commissioner for Belfast, Graham Shillington, said of the rioting, ‘It is not controlled by anyone, but is entirely undisciplined, a lot of young hooligans running wild’.50 Nor was there any hint of deliberate IRA orchestration of the riots in government statements during the parliamentary debate on the subject. If there was ‘an organised attempt to incite sectarian troubles’, it was singularly badly planned, as there was no attempt to confront Protestants, but only the police, and all the rioting took place in a Catholic area. If there was any sectarian threat, it came not from the Catholics but from Paisley and his supporters. As for the presence of ‘important members of the IRA’, this was no surprise. They were the Republican candidates in Belfast and their principal helpers. As we shall see, the organization