Street theatre with a cutting edge

IT WAS street theatre with an edge. A man dressed as an Orange marcher juggled his RUC cap and his plastic bowler hat. Wearing one, he demanded to march down the Garvaghy Road. "Ye can't, there's a load of Catholics down there", he answered himself with the RUC cap on.

Swapping hats, he demanded again to march the Queen's highway. "Fair enough so, OK", he said as the RUC man. Finally he put both hats on together. The crowd cheered.

It was part of the rally organised by the Irish National Congress (INC). Representatives from Portadown, Belfast and Derry appealed for support from a crowd of about 600 people in Dublin yesterday evening.

The "Orangeman" was part of a group calling themselves Solidarity Theatre Company. As they stood in costumes at the top of Grafton Street, a small boy asked the Orangeman "What's that baton for?" Another man in Ku Klux Klan sheets answered from under his hood. "It's for beating Fenians up North."

The third costume wearer was dressed as a Nazi. And then there was John Major in drainpipe trousers, a man wearing the mask of the British Prime Minister, his face smiling benignly as the crowd booed him.

The four were introduced one by one, the Orangeman as "our own home grown bigots fresh from our victory in the Garvaghy Road."

The INC chairman, Mr Robert Ballagh, said the rally had been organised to express solidarity for the people "who spent the last week under siege". He said the events represented a watershed in the perception of people in the Republic about the North, and especially the impartiality of the RUC.

Mr Brendan Mac Cionnaith from the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition said he hoped the events "broke the complacency in this country and the belief that the RUC can be reformed". He said there had been an absence of voices raised against the loyalist protests by the trade union movement on both sides of the Border.

"Portadown has a railway station. But all last week not one peace train pulled into Portadown. I wonder why."

Fianna Fail TD Mr Eamon O Cuiv said he saw the RUC provoke residents. Every effort was made to make them resort to violence and they didn't." He said one man had been hit in the jaw by a plastic bullet in Derry and driven over by a Land Rover. When his brother went to help him, he was also injured.

And Mr Gerard Rice, from the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, said more TDs should be sent to monitor marches in the North. He said there should be no marches without consent.

"They poison our children. They divide our society. I don't want my son to be a bigot. I don't want my daughters bigots. We believe that people have the right to march, but that does not mean the right to abuse."