British govt reviewing status of loyalist ceasefires

A British government verdict on the ceasefire status of loyalist paramilitary organisations who plotted ferocious rioting on the streets of the North will be given within days, Secretary of State Peter Hain revealed today.

After being briefed by Chief Constable Hugh Orde on the violence that raged across Belfast and surrounding towns for two nights, leaving at least 50 police officers injured, Mr Hain confirmed he was set to announce his course of action.

He has been under intense pressure to specify the Ulster Volunteer Force for carrying out a gangland killing spree against rival loyalists.

And now that faction and the Ulster Defence Association have both been blamed for the weekend mayhem.

Mr Hain, who studied CCTV footage of gunmen opening fire on police and soldiers, and petrol bombers attacking security lines in Belfast, Co Antrim and Co Down, said he was horrified by what he had viewed.

He declared: “The evidence I have seen this morning is absolutely clear-cut. If it wasn’t clear-cut before, it’s absolutely categorical now.

“As a result, I’m now going through, and indeed have been over the past week, a process in which I will be making an announcement in the next few days.”

Mr Hain refused to say if that would involve specifying, or declaring the ceasefires of both organisations in tatters, but he added that detailed legal issues were being examined.

“I need to do this in a proper way,” he insisted.

Mr Hain added that the situation had now reached a defining stage for political representatives and all others caught up in the violence.

He said: “This is a moment of choice for everybody, for politicians and for people right the way down through every part of the community.

“Whose side are you on? Are you on the side of law and order, applied fairly and equally to every citizen?

“Or are you against law and order, siding with those firing bullets at the police, throwing petrol bombs and blast bombs at police and attacking them?”

Mr Hain said on BBC Radio 4's World At One: ``Nothing justifies trying to systematically kill police officers in the Northern Ireland Police Service.

“If you disagree with the decision I have taken, then argue about it and protest about it.

“Do not go out and try to kill and murder police officers.

“We do need to get to the root of it. These communities are alienated, they are deprived. They have not benefited from the prosperity and record number of jobs that apply right across Northern Ireland now.

“Northern Ireland is now more prosperous and has higher levels of employment than ever in our history, yet there are pockets within our society including these areas of Belfast and elsewhere that have not benefited.”

Peter Shirlow, a geographer at the University of Ulster who has studied the poorer Protestant communities of Belfast, told the programme: “Within the unionist loyalist community there quite clearly has been a long-term suspicion that the peace process is about denying them their rights.

“The argument about poor jobs is somewhat invalid. If we actually look at statistics, it is quite clear that there are much greater levels of poverty within the republican communities where we have actually seen a decline in violence in recent times.

“There is no doubt that there is a social alienation within these communities where rioting has taken place over the last few days. One of the problems in Protestant working-class areas is very low levels of educational qualification.

“But that is not the reason why we have had this violence. Quite clearly what you have here is a politics of fatalism. A community that sees itself as not being listened to, as not being able to bring itself into a new dispensation.”

Sir Hugh told the programme: “There was a call by the Orange Order for their supporters to come out and support the march, which had been banned from a certain route and had been given a determined route to go down.

“That’s why I am holding them substantially responsible for the disorder that followed. It was inevitable and it was predictable.”

Nelson McCausland, DUP councillor, Assembly member and a member of the Orange Order, who was present at the march, told the programme: “I think the violence that we saw at the weekend is an expression of a much deeper resentment and anger that exists right across Northern Ireland, in huge areas of Northern Ireland, that alienation within the unionist community expresses itself in sullen resentment, in anger, in frustration.

“But in areas where you have a paramilitary presence, it will express itself in violence.

“The key thing is that the Government, in other words Peter Hain as Secretary of State, and the Chief Constable and others have failed to listen to the political leadership of the unionist community.”

Mr McCausland said that over the summer the Parades Commission had sent out a message to people on the streets in Belfast – “We reward violence”.

“I believe that’s bad government,” he went on.

“It’s not the way to run our country, but sadly the Government and the Parades Commission have sent out the message over the years that they reward republican violence.”