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The Holy Cross dispute occurred in 2001 and 2002 in the Ardoyne area of Belfast, Northern Ireland, and involved residents of a unionist area picketing children at a local Catholic primary school and their parents during the daily walk to and from school. Incidents of verbal abuse and violence occurred at the pickets, and there was widespread associated disorder throughout North Belfast for the duration of the dispute.

Beginnings

Holy Cross is a Catholic primary school in what had been a mixed area until the beginning of The Troubles. The Ardoyne area segregated at that time, with Protestants to the West and Catholics to the East of Alliance Avenue, and over time a permanent wall was built immediately to the West of Alliance Avenue. Holy Cross was stranded on the opposite side of the peace line from its catchment, although only about 200 metres from it, and remained relatively undisturbed but for minor incidents of vandalism for three decades.

The origins of the dispute are inevitably murky and contested. The most commonly repeated story is that on Friday 15 June 2001, a dispute arose between local Loyalist and Republican activists on the Crumlin Road peace line in North Belfast over the flying of Loyalist paramilitary flags. Unionists were putting up flags linked to the Ulster Defence Association in an area which they claimed was solely Protestant, but Republicans insisted was neutral territory. An altercation ensued.

Loyalists began to blockade the nearby Holy Cross Primary School when children left for the day accompanied by their parents, some of whom were known members or sympathisers of the Irish Republican Army. At the same time many of the picketers were equally well known members or supporters of the Ulster Volunteer Force and Ulster Freedom Fighters.

Summer 2001

Loyalists continued the picket on Monday 18 June. There had, however, been a weekend of tension on the Ardoyne peace line and the atmosphere on the morning school run was poisonous, with known Loyalist paramilitaries taking part in the picket. By Tuesday 19 June, riot police had to be called out to force children through the picket as the children and their family were attacked with bricks by unionists. On Wednesday 20 June Loyalist protesters blocked the front gates of the school and forced it to close, while officers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary advised parents not to attempt to enter the school. The standoff continued until the end of school term on 29 June, with Loyalists blockading the Ardoyne Road, the police refusing to force children through, and some parents bringing their children to school by smuggling them through the grounds of another school.

There was continuing violence in North Belfast involving both youths and more seasoned paramilitaries at evenings and weekends during this period, concentrated in but not confined to Ardoyne.

Northern Ireland school holidays comprise the whole calendar months of July and August, covering the July Orange Order marching season. The 2001 marching season was, across Northern Ireland, more peaceful than for some years, although serious violence erupted at the main 12 July parade in and around the Ardoyne area. There was a good deal of low level unionist violence in Northern Ireland, dissident Republican bombs in Britain and several sectarian murders carried out by Loyalists in Northern Ireland. Talks between residents (in practice, political activists) from the two parts of Ardoyne took place over the Summer, but no agreement was reached.

Autumn 2001

The protest resumed on Monday 3 September, the first day of the autumn school term. The police and British army were, however, better prepared and managed to force a path through the protestors for about 50 of the 240 children in the school and their parents who were prepared to run the gauntlet. Children and parents were pelted with bricks and condoms filled with faeces. Some protesters held up hard-core pornography pictures so the girls could see them, hoping to discourage their parents when they got to the school gates, and on Tuesday 4 September the protest escalated when an RUC officer sustained a foot injury from a blast bomb thrown by one of the protestors, with more blast bombs being thrown at police, pupils and parents on Wednesday 5 September.

Not only the police were better prepared than in June. The world’s media descended on Ardoyne, as images of visibly distraught girls as young as four being stoned and jeered at were beamed around the world from the start of September until the attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York on 11 September. The Holy Cross standoff was a propaganda disaster for Ardoyne unionists, and for Unionism in general. While the Protestants of Upper Ardoyne undoubtedly had genuine grievances which merited attention, they ended up defending what was, to any impartial observer, indefensible, viz. obstructing girls aged four to eleven on their way to Primary School, not to mention verbally abusing and physically attacking them.

On Thursday 6 September, the Loyalist picket remained peaceful but noisy with Loyalist picketers banging bin lids, whistling and sounding claxons when the children passed. On Friday 7 September the protest was silent in a tribute to Thomas McDonald, a 16 year-old Protestant boy killed in a hit and run accident with sectarian overtones in a different part of North Belfast, 7 km away on Tuesday. Parents also held a minutes’ silence before departing from school.

From Monday 10 September, the picketers adopted new tactics: remaining silent when the children were walking to school, but making noise and making sectarian comments when their parents returned. This pattern continued until 14 September, when protestors called off their protest for a day in memory for the victims of the 11 September attacks in the United States.

Throughout this period, there was widespread civil disturbance in Ardoyne and other parts of North Belfast outside school times.

Later in September the protest began to escalate again. Picketers began to make noise during the children’s walk to school once more from Thursday 20 September, with fireworks being thrown at children and parents on Wednesday 26 September. Violence escalated across the north of the city during this period, with unionist protests on the nearby Crumlin Road turning violent throughout the week commencing 24 September and widespread rioting on the interfaces between the New Lodge, Newington and Tiger’s Bay areas about 3 km away. On Friday 28 September, seven children were injured in a Loyalist part of the Skegoneill area, 3 km away from Ardoyne, when a concrete block was thrown at the school bus taking them to Hazelwood Integrated College. Hazelwood is a school which is attended by both Protestant and Catholic children.

The protest continued in this vein throughout October and November, with urine filled balloons being thrown at parents and children on Monday 1 October, and a blast bomb being left close to the route to school on Wednesday 17 October. Attacks on both Protestant and Catholic school children travelling to school through ‘hostile’ areas of North Belfast increased rapidly. On 20 November, with the protest showing no signs of ending, the Belfast Education and Library Board provided free buses to children attending Holy Cross, although most chose to continue to walk.

On Thursday 22 November, First Minister David Trimble and Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan met with residents of Upper Ardoyne, and the following evening, Friday 23 November, they agreed to call off their protest after 14 weeks. The situation remained peaceful from then until schools broke up for Christmas.

2002

On 9 January, 2002, there were confrontations outside Holy Cross Primary School during the afternoon school run, which exploded into widespread sectarian rioting, which spread across North Belfast during the evening and continued on 10 January, on which day the school was closed. On the same day, Loyalist gunmen attacked another Catholic girls’ Primary and a Catholic girls’ Secondary School within 1 km of Holy Cross, while pupils from nearby Protestant schools were ferried through Catholic areas in armed landrovers.

On Friday 11 January, North Belfast was largely quiet, but the Red Hand Defenders, a Loyalist splinter group issued a death threat to teachers and other staff working in Catholic schools in North Belfast, although police massively increased security and the threat was never acted upon.

Since then, Holy Cross has remained quiet.

Analysis and Consequences

The Holy Cross dispute could only have come about surrounded by the supercharged ethnic tensions of North Belfast. The behaviour of the Loyalist residents of Upper Ardoyne may have been self-destructive. However, North Belfast Protestants feel under siege in a part of the city which has become steadily more Catholic over the last forty years. For them there was no point behaving constructively – from their own point of view, they had been backed into a corner and had nowhere else to go.

On the other hand some have asked why Catholic parents insisted in walking to school only to have their children subjected to abuse. Again, one needs to understand the psychology of ethnic conflict. North Belfast’s Catholics have been on the receiving end of more sectarian murders than any other group in Northern Ireland’s conflict. While unionists fear losing territory to nationalists, working-class nationalists see their own areas overcrowded, and themselves barred from moving to more prosperous areas due to high house prices, or to nearby and relatively empty Loyalist areas due to intimidation. To give in at Holy Cross would be to lie over and allow oneself to be walked over again. Another way to look at it would be; where does one draw the line? If one takes ones children to a school further away, what happens when they bar you again? And the time after that?

The long term consequences of Holy Cross are difficult to discern. In a few pockets of North Belfast it has undoubtedly left a reservoir of bitterness and the impact on the children directly involved is incalculable. As of 2004, North Belfast remains a tense, divided, place, but then again, North Belfast has always been a tense, divided, place. Arguably, it increased the distance between unionist paramilitaries and middle-class unionists, most of whom were disgusted by the scenes at Holy Cross and horrified at the damage it did to their image outside Northern Ireland.

Despite the fact that it briefly attracted the spotlight of the world, outside its immediate area, Holy Cross caused barely a ripple on the sweep of events, even in Northern Ireland.

Resources

• Nigel Dodds
• BBC Q & A on the Holy Cross dispute
• – CAIN Chronicle of the Conflict for 2001
• – Guardian map of the disputed route

• History of Northern Ireland
• Education in Northern Ireland