ANALYSIS:SOME SENIOR police officers can be unduly cautious when operational matters stray into political waters but not PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr.
He said yesterday he was “deeply worried” about the coming weeks in the lead-up to the mammoth Orange Order demonstration in Belfast on September 29th when more than 20,000 parading Orangemen, 100 marching bands and tens of thousands of spectators will commemorate the centenary of the signing of the Ulster Covenant.
Politicians must stop their “posturing” and sort out this latest parading dispute, warned Kerr at Antrim Road station. “You can’t sustain the levels of violence that we had over the last couple of nights and not worry about somebody getting killed.”
His sharp-shock verbal reality check may also have been motivated by the fact that over recent nights more than 60 of his officers were injured as they held the line between loyalist and nationalist rioters at Carlisle Circus in north Belfast.
Saturday, September 29th, is a huge day in the unionist calendar. The six-mile parade from Belfast City Hall to a massive rally at the Stormont estate commemorates Ulster Day when on September 28th, 1912, Lord Edward Carson – the “uncrowned King of Ulster” – led almost half a million unionist men and women in opposing Home Rule.
On and around that day, 237,368 men signed the Ulster Covenant and 234,046 women signed a similar declaration against Home Rule.
So why is there now all this interface violence and general anxiety and tension after a relatively quiet summer?
There was serious violence at Ardoyne in north Belfast on the night of the Twelfth of July, but it was managed well by police, and otherwise this marching season was a more peaceful one than last year, and this has been the pattern of recent years.
However, on the Twelfth of July, the Shankill Road-based Young Conway Volunteers band was accused of playing sectarian songs and being deliberately provocative outside St Patrick’s Church in Belfast city centre.
This resulted in the Parades Commission banning the band from marching past the church during a Royal Black Institution parade last Saturday week. Other participating bands were also instructed not to play music passing the church.
Both these legal instructions were flagrantly breached.
Ahead of that parade, First Minister Peter Robinson, who was abroad on holidays, supported a petition condemning the rulings of the Parades Commission.
Then and since, north Belfast Assembly member and DUP Minister Nelson McCausland refused to condemn those who broke the law while the Rev Mervyn Gibson of the Orange Order yesterday said such acts were perfectly legitimate forms of civil disobedience that demonstrated unionist abhorrence at the rulings of the commission.
Over a week ago, the Catholic Bishop of Down and Connor, Dr Noel Treanor, deplored the “provocative sectarianism” at the church and the “profoundly” disappointing decision of Robinson and other politicians in condemning the commission.
One cleric’s act of civil disobedience is another cleric’s act of sectarianism.
Sinn Féin and SDLP politicians also waded into the row.
Which is how, in Northern Ireland, what might first seem a minor event can degenerate into a major crisis.
All the recrimination has fed into the nights of rioting at Carlisle Circus which police said was started by loyalists but also involved nationalists. They also said that known loyalist paramilitaries were involved but that there was no evidence the trouble was orchestrated by the UVF leadership, as some nationalists have alleged.
Northern Ireland has been here before but not so much in recent years.
The immediate requirement, as Kerr trenchantly said, was to cut out the “posturing” and solve a problem that could – as he also warned – get fatally out of hand.
Work to try to defuse tensions is happening behind the scenes and the need now is for Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness to show united leadership so that all the way down the political and community line, cool heads and common sense prevail.
