Victimised children: An ecumenical shame
The most prolific killer of children during the Troubles was the IRA. A book, Children of the Troubles, details 186 children (under the age of 16) who were killed. 43% of them died at the hands of republican paramilitaries. 27% were killed by loyalist paramilitaries, and 26% died at the hands of the security forces.
The most prolific killer of children during the Troubles was the IRA. A book, Children of the Troubles, details 186 children (under the age of 16) who were killed. 43% of them died at the hands of republican paramilitaries. 27% were killed by loyalist paramilitaries, and 26% died at the hands of the security forces.
Whilst researching this piece, I discovered that paramilitaries counted statistically fewer children among their victims that the security forces. Republicans were responsible for 59% of all Troubles related deaths, loyalists for 29%, and the security forces for 10%. The supposed forces of law & order were pro-rata more enthusiastic killers of children than paramilitaries.
Many of the children killed died in indiscriminate bombings. One bombing that does not fit that description is the IRA operation to kill Lord Louis Mountbatten. Described by the IRA as " … one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country" no mention is made if the presumably substantial intelligence gathering exercise prior to the attack noted that children were frequently on Mountbatten’s boat. Two children were killed, and one was seriously injured. In 1973, the IRA also kidnapped and murdered a 15 year old boy, Bernard Teggart, with a mental age of nine, claiming that he was an informer. The details of this crime are appalling.
Many of the children killed died in indiscriminate bombings. One bombing that does not fit that description is the IRA operation to kill Lord Louis Mountbatten. Described by the IRA as " … one of the discriminate ways we can bring to the attention of the English people the continuing occupation of our country" no mention is made if the presumably substantial intelligence gathering exercise prior to the attack noted that children were frequently on Mountbatten’s boat. Two children were killed, and one was seriously injured. In 1973, the IRA also kidnapped and murdered a 15 year old boy, Bernard Teggart, with a mental age of nine, claiming that he was an informer. The details of this crime are appalling.
Among the child victims of loyalists are Peter Watterson and Philip Rafferty (both aged 14), who were by some accounts killed by the same men, in January 1973. Philip Rafferty died a particularly cruel death, being abducted and assaulted prior to being shot in the head, and left to die in an isolated part of Belfast.
The abuse of children, whilst widespread, is taboo. Civilised society simply does not accept it, or at least not in public. When the INLA detonated a booby trap bomb in 1982 that killed two children (and a British soldier), angry locals protested, stating, not unreasonably, that children should be safe.
The series of incidents in Ardoyne in 2001, hereafter referred to as the Holy Cross protest (HCP) or Holy Cross, remains something of an anomaly. Children were subjected to prolonged, sustained abuse, and it was done in the open, in full view of the world’s media. Children had been subjected to a full range of abuses, by individuals, institutions, and organisations in Belfast before, and will sadly continue to be now, but the scenes witnessed in 2001 had few precedents in history.
This piece is an attempt to explore what happened. As always, my desire is for debate to take place.
Mythology: background(s) to Holy Cross
Myths played a strong role in the HCP, and before, and in the aftermath. Most of the myths I will discuss in this piece are believed by the PUL community of North Belfast. But myths and mythology abound in both communities, as they have for generations. In Holy Cross: The Untold Story, the author quotes a nationalist from Ardoyne who talked about someone from the community being “left for dead” by the Shankill Butchers, who had used a “Black & Decker” drill on his head. It is not true. It has never happened. I do not doubt the sincerity of the Ardoyne nationalist in believing this story, but the facts are that it simply did not happen. It almost doesn’t matter: mythology took hold. People believe that it did.
A unionist MLA, Frazer Agnew, stated the following during a debate on the HCP, in September 2001:
PSNI statistics for North Belfast, June 15th to 31st December 2001 record that loyalists killed three people, carried out 53 shootings, and 120 bombings. Republicans in the same period, the PSNI record, killed nobody (though Thomas McDonald was killed during this period*), carried out 17 shootings, and eight bombings.
Agnew went on:
Interestingly, the Belfast Telegraph reported last week that the woman convicted of Thomas McDonald’s manslaughter (she drove at and hit him with her car after he reportedly threw a brick at her windshield) has a son, Gary McKeown, who is involved with supplying drugs to the South East Antrim UDA. Gary McKeown was in the car when it struck and killed Thomas. The article also reports that 16 year old Thomas was a member of the UDA.
Agnew captures two prominent loyalist myths: that republicans were responsible for the violence in North Belfast, and that republicans were also intent on somehow driving Protestants out of their homes, so that they could “claim” those homes. The PSNI’s own statistics demonstrate that a substantial majority of violence came from loyalists. Regarding the claims of “ethnic cleaning” of Protestants so that Catholics could have their houses, QUB academic Neil Jarman, then of the Institute for Conflict Research, stated that Protestants wanted to leave traditionally loyalist estates, rather than were intimidated out by Catholics “it was because Protestants were moving out rather than Catholics moving in” (Holy Cross, p22). Jarman noted that upwardly mobile Protestants were inclined to move out of loyalist areas, citing the activities of loyalist paramilitaries as a factor: “there may have been a decline in Belfast’s Protestant population, but it hasn’t led to Catholics claiming much new territory.”
Indeed, the loyalist feud of 2000 displaced 600 families on the Shankill Road. I recall reading one terribly sad account of two boys fighting at a Shankill Road primary school, and one of them telling the teacher who split them up: “his daddy killed my daddy.”
A commenter asked on TPQ why, if it was about Catholic kids, was Holy Cross not targeted prior to 2001. One might ask why, during that intensely bitter feud, the children of UVF aligned families were not abused by UDA aligned families in a similar fashion, if it was about paramilitary intimidation people being forced from their homes.
Another academic from QUB, Peter Shirlow, noted that where Catholics have expanded into previously Protestant territory, is the arena of private property: “the Catholic middle-class is growing and affluent. It is young and confident and has moved into Protestant areas” (Holy Cross). Needless to say, the Malone Road has not been the scene of sectarian anarchy.
How blockading schoolgirls’ access to Holy Cross could reduce republican violence, or safeguard Protestant homes, was not made clear by the “protestors” or politicians.
The murder of Trevor Kells
Another commenter on TPQ linked the murder of Trevor Kell with the HCP. This is worth exploring in more detail.
Late at night on the 5th December, 2000, Trevor Kell was working for his second night as a taxi driver, reportedly in order to buy Christmas presents for his wife and three children. He was shot dead by “freelance” republicans, with guns belonging to the IRA.
Mr Kell’s family believe that he was murdered in a case of mistaken identity, and that the actual target was Archie (brother of Johnny, and referred to as James in other articles) Adair (CAIN/Irish News). Archie Adair had been convicted of attempting to murder a Catholic man in a random sectarian attack, alongside the notorious Trevor Hinton, a rapist and murderer, convicted in relation to one of the most horrific incidents in the conflict (Belfast Telegraph).
Archie Adair was jailed for crimes related Holy Cross (Guardian). Interestingly, Mr Kell’s family believe that the man who murdered him was on the run in Dublin. This is a challenge to the version of events that links Holy Cross parents with the murder.
Mr Kell was a member of the North Belfast UDA (Peter Moloney Collection). A loyalist source said to me that this “didn’t mean much: probably just a social thing” and there is no suggestion that he was an active paramilitary.
The RUC accepted that it wasn’t a sanctioned PIRA operation, and loyalists murdered a Catholic workman in “retaliation” and attempted to kill two more (Irish Times) despite Mr Kell’s mother calling for a stop to the violence (BBC).
Two men were subjected to punishment shootings by the PIRA, one of whom was arrested and questioned about murdering Mr Kell (Irish Examiner). The men were “six-packed” – shot through the ankles, knees, and hands.
Could Mr Kell’s killing have led to the HCP? McDonald & Cusack said that this was a “factor” in raising the “collective blood of Glenbryn to boiling point” (UDA, p358).
However, I think it is pertinent to point out that Mr Kell was murdered in December, 2000. Loyalists didn’t start targeting those travelling to Holy Cross primary school until seven months later, June 2001. In the intervening period, loyalist paramilitaries murdered two Catholics in sectarian gun attacks, beat a Protestant man to death they believed was a Catholic, and killed five fellow loyalists, one of whom was almost decapitated and his body rolled in a carpet and dumped. None of these heinous acts led to children being attacked.
The UDA and Holy Cross
McDonald & Cusack wrote that:
Ardoyne residents labelled these people “the new kids on the block” and blamed them for stoking up tensions” (UDA, p354).
McDonald & Cusack note that the Glenbryn UDA was an “adjunct” of C Company, and that the “new kids on the block” festooned part of Ardoyne Road with UDA flags and posters of their imprisoned commander, Johnny Adair. They went on to write that:
C Company figures were prominent in the HCP. Jim Potts was a leading “protestor” and worked behind the scenes in the organisation of the blockade – his brother, Tommy, was sentenced to 16 years for conspiracy to murder, as a member of C Company. Gina Adair was frequently seen screaming obscenities and abuse at the parents and children, and C Company’s Archie Adair and Gary “Smickers” Smyth struck a brave blow for Ulster by being imprisoned for criminality at Holy Cross (in Smyth’s case, it was phoning a false bomb threat). McDonald & Cusack report that the UDA man who threw a pipe bomb towards RUC officers, within the vicinity of Holy Cross schoolgirls, did so at the behest of C Company, to pay off a drug debt.
The calibre and personality types of those Adair gathered around him was described by an RUC source thus: “they were housebreakers and hoods … they would have shot their own mothers, but Adair still took them” (Mad Dog, Lister & Jordan).
They were the worst type of people to be in a worsening sectarian flashpoint.
Part Two to follow
Notes & Sources:
* (Regarding why Thomas McDonald’s death is not recorded as a republican killing, I assume the PSNI didn’t link it to paramilitaries, or at the stage of statistic publication, it was unclear who was responsible.)
Sources:
Holy Cross: The Untold Story. Paperback by Anne Cadwallader.
Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' by David Lister and Hugh Jordan.
UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror by Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack.
Northern Ireland Assembly Archive
Trevor Kell murder sources:
Murderer "meant to kill Adair brother."
The abuse of children, whilst widespread, is taboo. Civilised society simply does not accept it, or at least not in public. When the INLA detonated a booby trap bomb in 1982 that killed two children (and a British soldier), angry locals protested, stating, not unreasonably, that children should be safe.
The series of incidents in Ardoyne in 2001, hereafter referred to as the Holy Cross protest (HCP) or Holy Cross, remains something of an anomaly. Children were subjected to prolonged, sustained abuse, and it was done in the open, in full view of the world’s media. Children had been subjected to a full range of abuses, by individuals, institutions, and organisations in Belfast before, and will sadly continue to be now, but the scenes witnessed in 2001 had few precedents in history.
This piece is an attempt to explore what happened. As always, my desire is for debate to take place.
Mythology: background(s) to Holy Cross
Myths played a strong role in the HCP, and before, and in the aftermath. Most of the myths I will discuss in this piece are believed by the PUL community of North Belfast. But myths and mythology abound in both communities, as they have for generations. In Holy Cross: The Untold Story, the author quotes a nationalist from Ardoyne who talked about someone from the community being “left for dead” by the Shankill Butchers, who had used a “Black & Decker” drill on his head. It is not true. It has never happened. I do not doubt the sincerity of the Ardoyne nationalist in believing this story, but the facts are that it simply did not happen. It almost doesn’t matter: mythology took hold. People believe that it did.
A unionist MLA, Frazer Agnew, stated the following during a debate on the HCP, in September 2001:
Strangely enough, we are told that most of the damage is being done to the Nationalist and Roman Catholic community. There is not one person on this side of the House who would not decry any such activities. The truth of the matter, however, is something entirely different. All the violence that we have seen in north Belfast in June, July and August has come from one source. It has all been highly orchestrated and organised. That is a fact.
PSNI statistics for North Belfast, June 15th to 31st December 2001 record that loyalists killed three people, carried out 53 shootings, and 120 bombings. Republicans in the same period, the PSNI record, killed nobody (though Thomas McDonald was killed during this period*), carried out 17 shootings, and eight bombings.
Agnew went on:
Let there be no mistake that these activities have been orchestrated by Provisional Sinn Féin. Why? We must record the simple answer and call a spade a spade: it is all about ethnic cleansing. They want the Prods out of upper Ardoyne, and they want those houses for their own people. It is not a coincidence that this is happening throughout north Belfast … It is Protestant, not Roman Catholic, homes that are being visited and bombed as part of this violence. The evidence is there for everyone to see. Last week the tragic death of a young boy took place (reference to the death of Thomas McDonald).”
Interestingly, the Belfast Telegraph reported last week that the woman convicted of Thomas McDonald’s manslaughter (she drove at and hit him with her car after he reportedly threw a brick at her windshield) has a son, Gary McKeown, who is involved with supplying drugs to the South East Antrim UDA. Gary McKeown was in the car when it struck and killed Thomas. The article also reports that 16 year old Thomas was a member of the UDA.
Agnew captures two prominent loyalist myths: that republicans were responsible for the violence in North Belfast, and that republicans were also intent on somehow driving Protestants out of their homes, so that they could “claim” those homes. The PSNI’s own statistics demonstrate that a substantial majority of violence came from loyalists. Regarding the claims of “ethnic cleaning” of Protestants so that Catholics could have their houses, QUB academic Neil Jarman, then of the Institute for Conflict Research, stated that Protestants wanted to leave traditionally loyalist estates, rather than were intimidated out by Catholics “it was because Protestants were moving out rather than Catholics moving in” (Holy Cross, p22). Jarman noted that upwardly mobile Protestants were inclined to move out of loyalist areas, citing the activities of loyalist paramilitaries as a factor: “there may have been a decline in Belfast’s Protestant population, but it hasn’t led to Catholics claiming much new territory.”
Indeed, the loyalist feud of 2000 displaced 600 families on the Shankill Road. I recall reading one terribly sad account of two boys fighting at a Shankill Road primary school, and one of them telling the teacher who split them up: “his daddy killed my daddy.”
A commenter asked on TPQ why, if it was about Catholic kids, was Holy Cross not targeted prior to 2001. One might ask why, during that intensely bitter feud, the children of UVF aligned families were not abused by UDA aligned families in a similar fashion, if it was about paramilitary intimidation people being forced from their homes.
Another academic from QUB, Peter Shirlow, noted that where Catholics have expanded into previously Protestant territory, is the arena of private property: “the Catholic middle-class is growing and affluent. It is young and confident and has moved into Protestant areas” (Holy Cross). Needless to say, the Malone Road has not been the scene of sectarian anarchy.
How blockading schoolgirls’ access to Holy Cross could reduce republican violence, or safeguard Protestant homes, was not made clear by the “protestors” or politicians.
The murder of Trevor Kells
Another commenter on TPQ linked the murder of Trevor Kell with the HCP. This is worth exploring in more detail.
Late at night on the 5th December, 2000, Trevor Kell was working for his second night as a taxi driver, reportedly in order to buy Christmas presents for his wife and three children. He was shot dead by “freelance” republicans, with guns belonging to the IRA.
Mr Kell’s family believe that he was murdered in a case of mistaken identity, and that the actual target was Archie (brother of Johnny, and referred to as James in other articles) Adair (CAIN/Irish News). Archie Adair had been convicted of attempting to murder a Catholic man in a random sectarian attack, alongside the notorious Trevor Hinton, a rapist and murderer, convicted in relation to one of the most horrific incidents in the conflict (Belfast Telegraph).
Archie Adair was jailed for crimes related Holy Cross (Guardian). Interestingly, Mr Kell’s family believe that the man who murdered him was on the run in Dublin. This is a challenge to the version of events that links Holy Cross parents with the murder.
Mr Kell was a member of the North Belfast UDA (Peter Moloney Collection). A loyalist source said to me that this “didn’t mean much: probably just a social thing” and there is no suggestion that he was an active paramilitary.
The RUC accepted that it wasn’t a sanctioned PIRA operation, and loyalists murdered a Catholic workman in “retaliation” and attempted to kill two more (Irish Times) despite Mr Kell’s mother calling for a stop to the violence (BBC).
Two men were subjected to punishment shootings by the PIRA, one of whom was arrested and questioned about murdering Mr Kell (Irish Examiner). The men were “six-packed” – shot through the ankles, knees, and hands.
Could Mr Kell’s killing have led to the HCP? McDonald & Cusack said that this was a “factor” in raising the “collective blood of Glenbryn to boiling point” (UDA, p358).
However, I think it is pertinent to point out that Mr Kell was murdered in December, 2000. Loyalists didn’t start targeting those travelling to Holy Cross primary school until seven months later, June 2001. In the intervening period, loyalist paramilitaries murdered two Catholics in sectarian gun attacks, beat a Protestant man to death they believed was a Catholic, and killed five fellow loyalists, one of whom was almost decapitated and his body rolled in a carpet and dumped. None of these heinous acts led to children being attacked.
The UDA and Holy Cross
McDonald & Cusack wrote that:
in response to the mass expulsions from the lower Shankill in the previous summer, the UVF expelled a smaller number of UDA-aligned families in the the middle and upper parts of the road. A group of these families, some with direct C Company connected were rehoused in Glenbryn.
Ardoyne residents labelled these people “the new kids on the block” and blamed them for stoking up tensions” (UDA, p354).
McDonald & Cusack note that the Glenbryn UDA was an “adjunct” of C Company, and that the “new kids on the block” festooned part of Ardoyne Road with UDA flags and posters of their imprisoned commander, Johnny Adair. They went on to write that:
This handful of loyalist extremists would not have any apparent aggression from Ardoyne lying down, but through their obstinacy they would create a trap for themselves which the republican movement would exploit around the world.
C Company figures were prominent in the HCP. Jim Potts was a leading “protestor” and worked behind the scenes in the organisation of the blockade – his brother, Tommy, was sentenced to 16 years for conspiracy to murder, as a member of C Company. Gina Adair was frequently seen screaming obscenities and abuse at the parents and children, and C Company’s Archie Adair and Gary “Smickers” Smyth struck a brave blow for Ulster by being imprisoned for criminality at Holy Cross (in Smyth’s case, it was phoning a false bomb threat). McDonald & Cusack report that the UDA man who threw a pipe bomb towards RUC officers, within the vicinity of Holy Cross schoolgirls, did so at the behest of C Company, to pay off a drug debt.
The calibre and personality types of those Adair gathered around him was described by an RUC source thus: “they were housebreakers and hoods … they would have shot their own mothers, but Adair still took them” (Mad Dog, Lister & Jordan).
They were the worst type of people to be in a worsening sectarian flashpoint.
Part Two to follow
Notes & Sources:
* (Regarding why Thomas McDonald’s death is not recorded as a republican killing, I assume the PSNI didn’t link it to paramilitaries, or at the stage of statistic publication, it was unclear who was responsible.)
Sources:
Holy Cross: The Untold Story. Paperback by Anne Cadwallader.
Mad Dog: The Rise and Fall of Johnny Adair and 'C Company' by David Lister and Hugh Jordan.
UDA: Inside the Heart of Loyalist Terror by Henry McDonald and Jim Cusack.
Northern Ireland Assembly Archive
Trevor Kell murder sources:
Murderer "meant to kill Adair brother."
⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.
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Plenty of good material in this piece which I think Brandon laid out very well.
ReplyDeleteThe kids trying to get in school in so many ways replicated the experience of Elizabeth Eckford of the Little Rock Nine in Arizona - a podcast I was listening to this afternoon while walking the dog referred to that event.
The Trevor Kells myth is certainly laid to rest.
Sectarian hatred explains Holy Cross School better than any other single factor.
As someone who policed holy Cross dispute, I'm really looking forward to the second part Brandon.
ReplyDeleteEchos of Holy Cross......
ReplyDeleteA PARENT of two boys at Mercy College in North Belfast fears a child could be "seriously injured or worse" whilst walking to school through a notorious interface.
The father, whose children attend the Catholic Maintained school, says he has been forced to keep them out of school in recent days, due to intimidation from loyalists. It comes after a terrifying incident last week when a loyalist teenager was captured clutching what appears to be some sort of club at the junction of Ardoyne Road/Alliance Avenue, in front of Mercy College pupils attempting to walk to school.
Pupils who live in Ardoyne have to walk up Ardoyne Road and on to the predominantly loyalist Ballysillan Road where Mercy College is located. Twenty years ago, another Ardoyne interface made headlines around the world when loyalist residents of Ardoyne Road prevented parents from walking their children to the Catholic Holy Cross Girls Primary School. The dispute lasted for several months.....
Speaking to the North Belfast News, the father of the two children, who did not wish to be named, said he is fearful for his two sons' safety walking to school in the morning and afternoon.
"We live in Ardoyne," he explained. "This all started when the bus service to Mercy College was cut.
"They walk up Ardoyne Road and out on to the Ballysillan Road. There has been a number of incidents in recent months, including when a pupil was hit with a bottle on the back of his head.
(open the link and read the rest)......
Whilst it's unfortunate and unacceptable, the fact that it's a youth causing trouble rather than a large number of local adult men and women is encouraging.
ReplyDeletePerhaps some lessons have been learned.