Kilkeel Republicans living under siege

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Thursday August 22, 2013 11:44

by RNU PRO - Republican Network for Unity

PSNI join Loyalist backlash

For generations the Mourne harbour town of Kilkeel has been a place where Catholics were largely expected to ‘know their place’.
Catholics in Kilkeel will tell you of a persistent underlying daily tension, of deliberately timed and calculated sectarian beatings (including upon women and priests) as well as a complete intolerance of all symbols regarded as Irish, Nationalist or Gaelic.

Republican tried to walk away from Police, but was elbowed in the face and beaten on the ground.

Just last week the BBC News reported that three men in Kilkeel were arrested and charged following ‘scuffles with police’. The rest of the report was left as vague as is possible. Some of those charged have since got in touch with RNU and with written statements and photographs explained what the BBC would not, how PSNI men fired up with Loyalist fervour launched a random attack on known republican faces.

For generations the Mourne harbour town of Kilkeel has been a place where Catholics were largely expected to ‘know their place’.
Catholics in Kilkeel will tell you of a persistent underlying daily tension, of deliberately timed and calculated sectarian beatings (including upon women and priests) as well as a complete intolerance of all symbols regarded as Irish, Nationalist or Gaelic.

Despite the town centre being bedecked in Loyalist flags and bunting virtually all year round, GAA club flags are described in statements from local politicians as ‘offensive and unacceptable’. DUP MLA Jim Wells even took the time out to complain about a nearby GAA club conducting a charity collection in the local ASDA.

As a result of such Ku Klux Klan like sentiments, GAA football pitches often have their goalposts cut down in the Kilkeel area, the nearby Attical GAA clubhouse was burned to the ground 2001. And unlike in other towns across Ireland, flags of competing GAA clubs and counties are viewed as ‘offensive emblems’ and are nearly always removed.

And despite the supposed shift in cultural and political tolerance since the Good Friday Agreement, Kilkeel’s ‘Alabama 68′ atmosphere, makes any expression of Irish Republicanism a complete anathema to well entrenched Mourne bigotry.

It was as a direct result of the towns anti-Catholic sentiment that three local Republicans found themselves being viciously attacked by the PSNI on the night of August 15th.

On the run up to a yearly ‘feast of the assumption’ march in the town, another locally elected bigot Henry Reilly (UKIP) went to the Kilkeel paper the ‘Co Down Outlook’ and laid out which brands of local nationalism were acceptable to him and to Orange supremacy in the town centre. Displaying typical supremacist arrogance Reilly stated .. “The first thing that we have to point out is that no-one in Kilkeel has a problem with the nationalist bands such as Glasdrumman Pipe Band, Longstone Pipe Band and Attical Accordion Band. “These are normal bands and respectable people, and we have no problem with the traditional bands having their parade, but we are very concerned with the antics of [Banna Fliuit Naoimh Phadraig].”

The reason for Reilly’s displeasure with a marching band named after St Patrick is clear. Unlike the other bands which are Hibernian in character, Banna Fluit Naoimh Padraig (though being unaligned) have a membership which unapologetically describe itself as Republican. A former Sinn Fein councillor, former and current Republican prisoners are amongst their ranks.

Orange supremacy has always been comfortable with Hibernian style Nationalism as it is an outlook which is easily controlled, Republicans on the other hand refuse to ‘know their place’. And so Banna Fluit Naoimh Padraig were deliberately singled out for criticism.

By the time Reilly’s comments had hit the shops a predictable campaign of Loyalist hysteria had gripped the town. A facebook hate page entitled ‘Ban dissident republicans from ‘parading’ Kilkeel town’ was established with over 1700 likes. Soon it was printing photos of what they claimed to be ‘dissident republicans’ at their place of work.

On the evening of the religious march, flag waving Loyalists gathered to protest as they had done in the morning, however unlike in Belfast they did not launch a physical attack. Worryingly it increasingly appears that task may have been left to the PSNI.

Following the march, Several members and supporters of the Naoimh Padraig band took the opportunity to get off the streets and slip into a bar in Newry Street, earlier in the day the local PSNI had accommodated two illegal Loyalist protests, now on the streets tensions were high.

In written statements provided to RNU one band member explained how
“I was on my way home from the cove bar with my finance when i seen allot of riot police outside a kebab shop, there were police all over the street and i could hear them arguing and shouting”, i tried to make my way past but my cousin was then hit by 5 or 6 policemen. I went over and asked them to stop when i was grabbed in a headlock by a police man and threw to the ground, he then started hitting me”

The Republican continued..

“The policeman kicked me on the side and i was telling him i couldn’t breathe, be he repeatedly kept hitting and kicking me. My fiancé ran over to help me and pulled me off the road”.

This man was later advised by paramedics to go to hospital due to injuries to his face, but he refused instead waiting to see how his cousin was.

His cousins accounts of events include.

“On the 15th of August i was leaving the Cove bar on Newry Street with some friends, we were en route home when PSNI officers approached me and pushed me off the side of the road, i said to the officer that ‘there was no need to push me’, then he and 5 other officers forced me into the front door of the Archways Bar telling me i was under arrest”.

Not yet formally under arrest, the man’s frightening ordeal continued.

“While this was happening police with riot gear were doing something in the middle of the road, i just didn’t want to be there so i tried to make my way towards the direction of the Police station, then i was elbowed in the face by one of the five riot Police, they then beat me with batons and kicked me while i was pinned to the ground face down. I kept saying ‘im not resisting’ but they still hit me. They were twisting my right hand as if trying to break my wrist. I was then arrested and taken to Banbridge Police station and charged with disorderly behaviour, resisting arrest and assaulting a Police officer”.

Eyewitness accounts of what occurred in Kilkeel on the 15th of August appear much more detailed than the PSNI version of events which claimed ‘the disturbance was not linked to any parades.’
Those assaulted and arrested describe an atmosphere of menace in Kilkeel that day, emanating from the utterances of Loyalist politicians and street protests and directed at the Catholic procession in general and the Naoimh Padraig band in particular.
It is the stated opinion of Kilkeel Republicans that the PSNI played up to the Orange mood in Kilkeel on the night, waited outside a bar for certain individuals to appear then launched an unprovoked sectarian attack upon them. RNU have no reason to disbelieve those who claim this.

We pledge to do what we can to assist progressive Republican activists, trying hard to exist in this most hostile of towns.