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Date: August 12, 1996
The British army used heavy lifting machinery to block off the western section of the walls and 500 British soldiers from the Princess of Wales regiment were recalled to the Six Counties to provide extra back-up for the RUC. Roads leading to the walls were also closed to both pedestrians and vehicles and security screens and large bollards designed to prevent pedestrian access were erected on the disputed stretch of the walls, known as the Grand Parade.
Throughout the week unsuccessful talks had taken place between the Bogside Residents Group and the Derry Apprentice Boys, chaired by SDLP leader John Hume, in an attempt to reach a compromise. The BRG organised a march in Derry city on Friday, August 11 but re-routed it away from the loyalist Fountain enclave in the city.
On Saturday the Apprentice Boys agreed not to walk the walls of Derry on that day but their governor Alistair Simpson said that they reserved the right "to walk them at a time of their choosing", an implicit threat to the nationalist people of Derry city. The Apprentice Boys negotiated the consent of the BRG to do a tour of the inside perimeter of Derry’s walls. At 12.30am a member of the Apprentice Boys came to where Donncha Mac Niallais, chairperson of the BRG and BRG stewards were standing at Butcher’s Gate, which leads directly into the Bogside. The Boys said that it was traditional for 13 of their number to touch the pillars of the four main gates to signal the lifting of the siege in 1688. They said there would be no singing, chanting or drum playing and agreed that Mac Niallais and his stewards would escort them around the perimeter with no media presence and six policemen walking at a distance.
This they did and as the BRG stewards participated in their own oppression the nationalist people standing around assumed that they were merely watching a BRG patrol, unaware that it was accompanied by members of the Apprentice Boys. In the glory days of the Apprentice Boys, before they were forced to cease marching along Derry’s walls after 1969, it was their custom to stand on the walls overlooking the Bogside, shout insults, throw pennies and play triumphalist loyalist music down at the nationalist people living under the walls. A counter-march which had been scheduled to take place at Free Derry Corner on Saturday, August 10 was cancelled by the BRG.
On Saturday afternoon about 15,000 Apprentice Boys descended on Derry and marched from the largely Protestant Waterside area across Craigavon Bridge to the west bank to hold their annual commemoration of the 1688 lifting of the siege of Derry by forces loyal to King William of Orange. Earlier, agreement to re-route contentious parades in the 100% nationalist town of Dunloy, Co Antrim and in the lower Ormeau Road in Belfast had taken some of the heat out of the situation in Derry. These parades were scheduled to take place early on Saturday morning as members of the Royal Black Preceptory and Apprentice Boys set out for Derry.
In Newtownbutler, Co Fermanagh nationalists ended a protest when Apprentice Boys on their way to Derry agreed to take a direct route out of the town while in Roslea, also in Co Fermanagh, the annual mobilisation of the Apprentice Boys was curtailed. The agreement between the members of the Royal Black Preceptory, the RUC and the Newtownbutler Area Association allowed 50 Black members to parade outwards from their hall to board buses bound for Derry but were not allowed to parade down the entire main street. A number of nationalist residents of the town expressed unease at the agreement entered into by the Newtownbutler Area Association on their behalf.
Skirmishes took place between the RUC and loyalists in Derry throughout the afternoon and two loyalist marchers were arrested and charged with rioting. A woman shopper suffered a badly cut head after she was hit by a bottle when loyalists attacked nationalists at the Foyleside Shopping Centre in the city centre. During the parade members of the BRG acted as stewards, or assistants to the RUC, to keep a large crowd of nationalists behind RUC barricades at Butchers’ Gate in Derry city. As a drunken loyalist staggered from the memorial hall towards the nationalists behind the barricades one of the ‘stewards’ asked the RUC "Are you gonna sort this out or are we?" As John MacElhinney said in his Bodenstown address in June of this year: "Some dress like clowns. Some act like clowns. Undoubtedly they are all clowns. . ." but the RUC are paid a huge salary to act as Britain’s policemen. They do not do it gratis.
Early on Sunday morning over 200 nationalists attacked the RUC in various parts of Derry’s city centre. Eighteen people were arrested and charged with public order offences. The crowd attacked the RUC with stones and petrol bombs. The Strand Road RUC barracks was also petrol-bombed and several premises had windows broken and minor scorch damage. Vehicles, including two buses, were burned. The rioters, many wearing masks, also tried to burn the war memorial at the Diamond, close to the Apprentice Boys’ memorial hall. Members of the Provisionals’ leadership "worked until 5am to restore order". Clowns doing the work of the British Occupation Forces.
At 11.40pm on Saturday night, July 13 two warnings were telephoned by a caller claiming to be from the IRA to the Killyhevlin Hotel in Enniskillen that there was a bomb outside in an Isuzu jeep. Half-an-hour later it exploded, wrecking the 44-room hotel and about a dozen cars parked outside. The hotel had been evacuated and 17 people were treated for shock. The bomb consisted of home-made explosives and left a crater 12ft wide in the hotel car park. It was the first major bomb attack in the Six Counties since the Provisionals' unilateral ceasefire of August 1994 and damage is estimated to be between £2-3 million.
The Sunday Business Post went on to say that "The statement, issued through the Irish Republican Publicity Bureau and signed ‘B O Ruairc – Runai’ says that the military action was ‘carried out by volunteers of the Irish Republican Army under the direction of the Continuity Army Council’ . . . It adds that this was ‘an immediate reprisal for the killing of an Irish citizen by British troops the previous night and the general campaign of terror by British forces against the nationalist population at that time’ . . . The statement concludes with a warning that ‘as was indicated in our statement of January 6 last military action will continue to be taken against British occupation in Ireland until such time as the British government withdraws finally from our country’."
The Sunday Business Post said that "the organisation holds that the entire peace process will force Republicans to make compromises that will involve the abandonment of traditional Republican aims and principles".
Meanwhile a large crowd of loyalist supporters gathered at the southern end of the village. Two photographers were attacked by the crowd and their equipment was smashed by women in the crowd. At 6.30pm RUC paramilitary police in full riot gear approached the nationalist protesters from both ends of the road in an attempt to intimidate them. When the protesters remained unmoved the RUC withdrew to a less threatening position.
A local Catholic priest, Fr Andrew Dolan, also attempted to disperse the protesters and appealed to them to allow the parade through. The protesters again remained unmoved. However, on Monday morning a compromise was reached and the Black men were allowed to march to their local Orange lodge rather than through the town, defusing the situation.
In Armagh city there was a 10-minute stand-off between returning Apprentice Boys and British Crown Forces after the traditional route was shortened because 200 nationalists blocked the Shambles junction in Lower English Street.
After attempts to reach a compromise failed, some 200 nationalist residents set up barricades on roads to the village. The Dunloy Residents and Parents Association had met the RUC earlier in the afternoon and agreed to allow local club members to be bussed to the Orange hall for their service on return from Derry. The RUC fired about 15 plastic bullets at the loyalists and eventually drove the crowd back to the buses.
The chairman of the Dunloy Residents and Parents Association, Paddy O’Kane, said that "So far as residents are concerned there will be no more marches here. We saw today what Dunloy Apprentice Boys stand for. In my opinion they only stand for riots and trouble and yet all the time they preach peace".
He is believed to have been on his way home from an entertainment venue in the area and local people suggested that he was either followed from the nightspot by his killer or ran into a gang looking for a random target. Six weeks ago Belfast tennis star, Gareth Parker (23), was killed outside a lounge bar in the same vicinity of the Antrim Road.
The man said there were in the region of 70 RUC "Mobile Support Units" (MSUs) deployed in Derry for the Apprentice Boys parade. A single MSU is made up of 24 officers, one inspector, two sergeants and 21 constables. "Those MSUs do not include the Derry RUC. You do not volunteer for these operations but are selected and very few Catholic officers have been." He said that the same situation arose during this year’s Drumcree stand-off and that the Catholic RUC-men were excluded from duty in Derry because "they would only witness colleagues gung-ho at the prospect of firing plastic bullets".
He added: "This is not just about the fact that Catholic officers are being excluded from getting overtime but also that they do not witness anything. By that I mean the firing of plastic bullets at nationalists."
The chief prosecution witness at Duffy’s trial was Lindsay Robb, a senior member of the Progressive Unionist party which represents the UVF British-backed death squad. He was later convicted in Scotland of gun-running for the UVF. Colin Duffy’s appeal against the conviction has been set for September 16.
In June 1992 Nelson was given a ten-year prison sentence after charges of murder of two men, Terence McDaid and Gerard Slane, were dropped. Instead trial judge Lord Justice Kelly, who described Nelson as "a man of the greatest courage" decided on the lesser charge of conspiracy to murder and collecting and possessing information useful to terrorists to which Nelson pleaded guilty. The head of British Military Intelligence (known as Colonel G) described Nelson as "a very important man" (a principle of British justice – innocent until proven Irish).
Dublin unionist goes north to found the Orange state (Edward Carson).
Dublin unionist goes north to help re-invigorate the Orange State (Conor Cruise O'Brien).
Michael Collins signs Treaty that establishes Partition.
Gerry Adams agrees Treaty (the Mitchell Principles) that copperfastens Partition.
ENDS
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