Local activists believed to be behind boycott of Protestant businesses after Drumcree

The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) believed Sinn Féin and the IRA were involved in the boycotting of Protestant businesses in some towns in the summer of 1996, after the RUC forced the Drumcree Orange parade past Portadown’s nationalist Garvaghy estate.

However, an assessment prepared for a meeting between a British government minister and Protestant businessmen said the boycott was “not thought to be a top-down, orchestrated activity, but it’s rather a bottom-up campaign stirred by local activists”.

When the meeting between Michael Ancram and a group called Business and Professional People for the Union took place in October 1996, the Conservative minister was handed a videotape “purporting to show IRA men taking part in a march to encourage boycotting”. But the RUC later confirmed the film had been taken months before the boycott campaign began.

During the summer of 1996 a number of Protestant businesses claimed to have lost hundreds of thousands of pounds in trade because of the Drumcree-related boycott. In one government note, the British joint secretary Peter Bell said he had first-hand information about a Catholic resident of Lisnaskea closing his account with a neighbouring Protestant businessman by post because he didn’t want to be seen to call at his door.

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Bell writes: “In the secretariat we have been ensuring that the Irish cannot use ignorance as a pretext for silence on this current, and continuing, evil. We even express with due submission the hope that that they may induce their friends – especially the less ‘politically tainted’ – to take a public stand.”

The assessment provided for Ancram states that the most severe boycott had been in force around Pomeroy. The document notes that Gerry Adams had described boycotting businesspeople linked to the Orange Order as “a very legitimate peaceful and democratic tactic”, though Sinn Féin’s public position was that it should not be applied indiscriminately against Protestants.

‘Patchy nature’

The assessment then states “it is believed that the campaign is organised at local level by Sinn Féin and enforced by PIRA... Unusually, however, for the PIRA-SF axis, the boycott is not thought to be a ‘top-down’ orchestrated activity, but it’s rather a ‘bottom-up’ campaign stirred by local activists. This theory would be supported by the patchy nature of the boycott, strong and solid in some areas [Pomeroy, Armagh], weakening in others [Castlederg, Fermanagh].

“The security forces also believe that the campaign is being underscored by low-level intimidation, such as phone calls to those who may have been shopping in Protestant businesses, or minor damage to property. The RUC believes that nationalists are not inclined to report such intimidation to them, for fear of further action.”

It added: “Politically, it is reported that Sinn Féin feel they are benefiting from the boycott campaign. Many nationalists are angry about Drumcree and see the boycott of businesses owned by those identified with the Orange Order as legitimate.”

During his meeting with Protestant businessmen at Stormont Castle, Ancram was handed a videotape said to show IRA men on the streets of Pomeroy backing the boycott campaign. However the RUC later confirmed the video had been filmed during a “mock decommissioning parade” in Pomeroy which took place in March 1995 when the IRA ceasefire remained intact, well before the start of the anti-Drumcree boycott.

An NIO official commented acidly: “We were obviously being deliberately misled.”

The weekly picket of a Catholic church in Ballymena, Co Antrim by loyalists protesting at the re-routing of Orange parades is also covered in the previously confidential files.

An NIO memo from September 1997 records that the blockade of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church at Harryville in the town began in the autumn of 1996 in apparent response to nationalist obstruction of Orange parades in Dunloy, a nationalist village in North Antrim.

The blockade was described as “sinister” by the SDLP politician Sean Farren, who claimed that the shadowy “Ballymena loyalist residents” group, which picketed Saturday evening Masses at the church, carried placards vilifying local SDLP councillors.

Broad spectrum

The NIO memo noted that the protests had been condemned by a broad spectrum including the British government, the mayor of Ballymena and Robert Salters, grand master of the Orange Order. However, this had not deterred a hard core of demonstrators who “had guarded their anonymity closely”.

Following violent clashes between 500 loyalists and the RUC at the church in November 1996, a meeting was held between J M Steele and Stephen Leach of the NIO and assistant chief constable (ACC) Daryl Beaney of the RUC on December 6th, 1996. Beaney explained that the police were gradually increasing their profile at Harryville without over-reacting in the hope that the protest “would die a natural death”.

In terms of core responsibility for the Harryville campaign, the RUC attributed this to the North Antrim UDA/UDP [Ulster Democratic Party] – one of the loyalist parties involved in all-party talks.

The ACC regarded it as significant that the party’s leader, Gary McMichael, had kept a very low profile on the issue in contrast to the “up-front condemnations” of David Ervine, the spokesman of the UVF-linked Progressive Unionist Party. On the prospects for resolving the background issue of parades in Dunloy, the ACC was not optimistic.

The protests at Harryville continued. In May 1997 loyalist protesters again clashed with the RUC and in June some loyalists broke into the church and attempted to set it on fire. The picket was finally called off in May 1999.

The Church of Our Lady was demolished in 2013 after the building developed structural issues. Two years ago developers built nearly 50 new houses on the site where the ugly disturbances took place.