Intimidation rules in town riven by hate

"No outsider will ever understand what it's like to be a Catholic in Portadown," says Ms Orla Moloney

"No outsider will ever understand what it's like to be a Catholic in Portadown," says Ms Orla Moloney. "You can feel and smell and taste the hate."

Ms Moloney, a Dubliner, moved to the Co Armagh town 25 years ago when she married a local man. They have seven children. Sometimes she wonders why she came. It was always difficult, but the past two months have been unbearable, she says.

Her nerves are shattered. She chainsmokes - as most Catholic women in Portadown seem to do - and she hasn't eaten a proper meal in weeks. There are loyalist marches, legal and illegal, nearly every night, she says.

Hundreds of protesters regularly gather near Catholic streets, hurling missiles and shouting abuse, residents say. Catholic businesses have been attacked. And on two consecutive Saturdays Catholic shoppers were chased from the town centre. "They want to make Portadown totally Protestant. They want to drive us out," Ms Moloney says.

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The violence stems from the banning of the Orange Order march from Drumcree in July. Portadown has long been riven by sectarian hatred. Loyalists killed 10 people in the town centre alone during the Troubles. They were shot in bars, at work, waiting for lifts, on their way to the unemployment benefit office. Others were abducted and tortured, their bodies dumped in the Bann river.

There were countless attacks by republicans, too, which caused appalling injury and death to the security forces. Earlier this year the town was extensively damaged by a dissident republican bomb and incendiaries destroyed one Protestant shop and damaged another in July.

But Catholics in Portadown feel particularly vulnerable because they are outnumbered three to one. They complain about discrimination in employment and claim they don't get their fair share of funding from Craigavon Council.

"Now we have all this trouble to deal with," says Ms Marion Halfpenny, whose daughter and young family live in the Catholic Craigwell Avenue. Groups of loyalists have been gathering just yards from there most nights for the past two months.

"There will be around 300 of them," she says. "They sing The Sash, shout abuse and throw missiles. A wee boy was hurt one night. Some of them are masked. Sometimes they shout death threats. They can stay up to four hours. The only night they don't come is Sunday. They keep the Sabbath holy."

Ms Halfpenny claims the RUC is failing to protect residents. "Why do they allow this mob to keep assembling? The police take out a placard from a Land-Rover saying it's an illegal gathering and asking the crowd to disperse. That's all they do."

The RUC insists it is acting with "courage and professionalism" in very difficult circumstances. It points out that an officer remains critically ill after loyalists threw a blast-bomb during recent disturbances.

On two recent Saturday afternoons, August 29th and September 5th, loyalist protesters gathered in the town centre. The first weekend they entered High Street mall and chased Catholic shoppers. The following Saturday, Catholics fled the town centre when 500 loyalists assembled there.

At one stage about 200 nationalist youths, on hearing what was happening, rushed into town. Police say they kept the groups apart. "It was a very tense situation," says Ms Halfpenny. "I was in the mall with my son, who is in a wheelchair. They threw stones, bottles and fireworks at women and children."

Nationalists say protesters carried banners saying "No Taigs in Portadown until we march our town" and sang derogatory songs about Robbie Hamill, who was beaten to death by loyalists last year.

After Catholics fled the town, loyalists petrol-bombed the Slumbertime bed shop in William Street. Two other Catholic businesses - Tommy Knox's butcher's and Morgan's fruit shop - had been targeted two days earlier.

"They aren't just burning shops, they have been mounting pickets outside Catholic businesses and telling shoppers not to go in," says Ms Monica McCann.

"The RUC are treating them with kid gloves . . . If nationalists were treating Protestants like that we would have immediately been beaten off the streets." Last Saturday there was no trouble in Portadown. Residents say this was due to a heavy police presence and the fact that many loyalists were attending a parade in Ayrshire.

Nationalists were relieved but say it's too early to predict that the disturbances are now on the wane. "We hope that Saturday will not be a one-off and the state will at last protect us," says Ms McCann.

She wants the area's MP, Mr David Trimble, to meet nationalist residents: "We are his constituents. We're being persecuted, yet he hasn't visited us once."

She believes the Orange Order could ease tensions by accepting it will not march down Garvaghy Road this year and by telling the protesters to go home. It has condemned the violence, which it says sullies the good name of Protestantism, but is still insisting on walking its traditional route.

One loyalist, who did not want to be named, accused nationalists of oversimplifying the disturbances. "It's not the case nationalists are the poor wee victims in all this. They taunt Protestants on the street about not marching down the Garvaghy Road."

He denies loyalists set out to intimidate Catholics and said nationalist youths often attacked them first. He says any loyalist violence is the work of "outsiders".

"We don't want to harm anyone. We just want to march from our church. If we are allowed to do that, everything else will be resolved. Do the nationalists not want peace?"

Ms Moloney says the issue is more complex. "Nobody wants peace and reconciliation more than I do. But allowing a march because someone is holding you to ransom is wrong. Catholics in Portadown have to stand up for their rights."