DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley yesterday joined Northern Secretary Peter Hain in visiting a Catholic school in his North Antrim constituency, which was subjected to a loyalist sectarian attack during the summer.
Dr Paisley and Mr Hain denounced loyalist violence and both politicians also condemned weekend threats by loyalists to desecrate Catholic graves in Carnmoney near Newtownabbey.
The DUP leader and Northern Secretary were accorded a good-humoured reception by children and staff at St Louis Primary School. St Louis was just one of several Catholic schools, churches, businesses and homes attacked by loyalists in north Antrim during the summer.
Dr Paisley, after being greeted by school principal Liam Corey, said those who perpetrated such attacks must be isolated. "I have no sympathy with them whatsoever, and the vast majority of people in Ballymena would have no sympathy with them.
"What we have to do now is to see that these people are isolated and that they know that all right-thinking sections of the community are opposed to what they are doing," Dr Paisley said.
He also deplored loyalist threats to damage Catholic graves in Carnmoney. He said those responsible had no respect for the living or the dead.
"They have no respect for the bodies of those in the tomb, no respect for the people who were weeping and were plunged into sorrow for the passing of their loved ones, and no condemnation could be strong enough," he said.
Mr Hain said the Carnmoney threats were "just an awful, almost medieval, throwback to a past of violence and bigotry. With Dr Paisley I condemn it utterly and say that people must start respecting each other.
"I ask, too, that the people who did this just understand the image that it projects, not only to the rest of the community, but to the rest of the world who look on it with amazement and horror".
Mr Hain also visited St Mary's Primary School in Ballymena which in late August suffered damage in a loyalist arson attack, and Harryville Protestant, or state, school which was forced to close briefly last month after loyalist pipe bombs were discovered near the building.
He said that political progress would only be made when all paramilitaries "left the stage". Loyalist paramilitaries should now end their violence and decommission.
"The IRA has decommissioned its arms. The loyalist paramilitaries must now do so, too. We condemn utterly their vicious assaults, sectarian attacks and their murder attempts on the police. They will not succeed."
SDLP North Antrim Assembly member Seán Farren welcomed Dr Paisley's visit to the St Louis school.
"For other MPs this might be a small gesture, but for the North Antrim MP it is quite momentous, given his silence through so much of the wave of sectarian attacks and intimidation during the summer," Dr Farren said.
"It would be fitting if the political leader who launched his career by opposing visits to Catholic schools by Capt Terence O'Neill would, in his maturity, realise the great benefits to be gained by all from true reconciliation," added Dr Farren.
