Columbia, Castlereagh, Stormontgate. Ask a unionist why the Northern assembly collapsed and they will recite this litany of evidence that Sinn Féin was not fit to sit in government with democrats. Last week, the three men tried in Columbia were found not guilty. It was, said Ian Paisley Junior, "jungle justice at its worst."
It was the DUP's Peter Robinson who broke the news in August 2001 that the IRA had been caught training communist rebels how to use a "revolutionary new form of explosive" which was to be brought back to NI. Ian Paisley junior said it sorted everything out once and for all – Sinn Féin had now become just a security issue, not a political one.
Not to be outdone, UUP leader, David Trimble, claimed the three men arrested in Bogota had been testing a deadly Napalm type bomb. His colleague, Reg Empey, said the Good Friday Agreement might have been "fatally undermined."
The following St Patrick's Day brought the break-in at Special Branch headquarters at Castlereagh. The IRA was blamed, and one police source said what had happened was as important as the seizure by Allied Forces of Germany's encryption machine during World War Two. The chief suspect was named, and police said they had 3,000 pages of evidence. Yet, two years later, no effort has been made to extradite Larry Zaitschek from the US, and he has not been charged with any offence.
Then, in October 2002, there was Stormontgate and the raid on Sinn Féin's offices in Parliament Buildings. Police said they had broken an IRA "spy ring" at the heart of government. Trimble said it was "bigger than Watergate". Over one thousand prison officers were told their lives were at risk from the IRA. Millions of pounds were spent on security measures. The DUP and UUP pulled out of government and Stormont collapsed. Four people were arrested. Charges against one of them have been dropped. Charges against the others have been very significantly reduced, and no one has yet been convicted of anything.
But the damage has been done. The Agreement may indeed have been fatally undermined. No one speaks with any confidence now of politicians taking their places in the new assembly. Last week's session of the review of the Agreement wasn't expected to make any breakthrough, and it didn't. The Taoiseach admitted in the Dail that there is "not a hope" of making progress before 5 May. After that date, the peace process will officially be put on hold in the run up to the local and EU elections.
Loyalists, meanwhile, are getting ready for summer. There has been a spate of vicious sectarian attacks on catholics living near interfaces in North Belfast. One young man was set upon last weekend and left for dead by a gang which called him a "fenian bastard" before the attack.
Last weekend, leaflets were distributed in South Belfast, calling for the expulsion of catholics. This area has recently seen racist attacks on Chinese and African people. On Wednesday night, hundreds of loyalists marched up the Sandy Row and laid siege to a block of private apartments in which a number of catholics and Chinese people live. The marchers were accompanied by drummers and carried banners declaring, "Republicans out" and "Sandy Row is Sandy Row".
This last slogan must have puzzled those among the terrified residents of the apartments who don't know about the Sandy Row's legendary staunchness. One badly shaken young Dublin student said she would move out of the apartment her father had bought as an investment. A bad investment, she now realized. She said it was only when she saw the amazed reactions of other students when she told them she was living in Sandy Row that she realized the place was notorious.
Translated, the banner means, this is a protestant area and it always has been a protestant area, and we're going to make sure it always stays a protestant area. This is crude, basic unionism, the bullying politics of "we'll show them who's master", the pathetic remnants of what it traditionally means to be "proud to be a prod."
Some unionists condemned the intimidation, but Ulster Unionist councillor Bob Stoker said the "protest" was a response to republican harassment emanating from the flats. "If people are going to abuse the residents [of Sandy Row] they'll have to face the consequences," he said. The UUP's former minister for culture, Michael McGimpsey, defended the "protest", which he said was "peaceful and fairly mild." He blamed an "unsavoury element" in the apartments.
The PSNI said it had received no complaints about the behaviour of anyone in the apartments, and no other evidence has been offered. There was much talk of a tricolour. Don't expect unionists to stop citing Columbia, Castlereagh and Stormontgate as reasons they can't share power with republicans.
