By Laura Friel

(RM List*)

In his study 'Necessary Illusions', Noam Chomsky argues that power elites that no longer maintain control through direct force negotiate popular acceptance to their rule by manipulating perceptions.

 Real power relations are obscured through a prism of propaganda that protects the powerful and ensures their continuing domination. A key agency in this process is the media.

 For northern nationalists, this year has been marked by ongoing loyalist attacks against vulnerable areas, most persistently in North and East Belfast. In North Belfast, without the immediacy of the loyalist blockade of Holy Cross, media attention has dwindled despite the fact that the daily trauma of children attacked on their way to school has simply been replaced by the trauma of nightly attacks on their homes.

 In terms of perception, the blockade of Holy Cross had challenged the media almost to breaking point. The photographic images of girls, some as young as five years of age, attacked by a sectarian mob on their way to a school, threatened to dispel the myths. The British-controlled media responded by suggesting totally ridiculous interpretations of the evidence of our own eyes.

 In the prevailing discourse, loyalist violence must be portrayed as retaliatory, the unionist community must be perceived as the primary 'victim' community and sectarianism must be cross-community and apolitical, in other words, no more than regrettable, ignorant prejudice.  

These notions assist in obscuring the operation of British rule in Ireland and the role anti-Irish racism and anti-Catholic sectarianism has played in the establishment and maintenance of that colonial power relation.

 Within this dominant discourse, the British can be portrayed as neutral, even progressive arbitrators, attempting to sponsor decency and democracy. By presenting themselves as unselfish defenders of the primary 'victim' community, the real violence of British occupation is obscured.

 In the current peace process, it allows the British to maintain a  hierarchy of issues to be addressed. Unionist concerns, even when arguably imaginary, must be urgently and vigorously addressed within the political arena, while unionist paramilitary violence against vulnerable nationalists is deemed irrelevant to the political process.

 Inadvertently all this was threatened by Holy Cross, increasingly so as the international media placed its own interpretation on the film footage and asked awkward questions about the seeming inability of the PSNI and British army to secure safe passage for children walking to school.

 But in sharp contrast to Holy Cross, the nightly sectarian violence of loyalist mobs attacking vulnerable Catholic areas is much easier to ignore and contain. The nature of the attack precludes any challenging photographic imagery. Under the cover of darkness and the chaos of bombardment the actions of unionist paramilitaries are more easily obscured.

 The Short Strand is a small nationalist enclave of around 3,000 nationalists, a high proportion of which are children and pensioners, surrounded by a 60,000-strong unionist community in East Belfast.

 As Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has noted, while the peace process has brought benefits to many people in the north, in vulnerable nationalist areas like the Short Strand and North Belfast, life has been considerably worse. In a blatant attempt to derail the peace process by breaking the IRA ceasefire, the

UDA had been attacking nationalists in North Belfast for over two years.

 In May 2002, unionist paramilitaries opened up another front in East Belfast. Having failed in the north of the city, perhaps anti-agreement paramilitaries believed the more vulnerable Short Strand community would be more volatile.

 In an estate of little more than fourteen streets, nightly bombardment by masked loyalists, armed with bricks and bottles, petrol, pipe and blast bombs have reduced parts of Short Strand, particularly Clandeboye and Strand Walk, to near dereliction, and the people who live there close to despair.

 But the actions of unionist paramilitaries are only one element that has fed the increasing trauma of the residents of Short Strand. As with Holy Cross, the actions of the PSNI, the media and wider civic society have all played their role in the continuing distress.

 In a local community centre, a number of mothers gathering for a morning toddler group describe the impact of six months of 'living hell' on their families, friends and neighbours.

 "It's apartheid," says Debbie, "that's the only way I can describe it." Earlier in the year, sectarian mobs attacked women and children as they attempted to collect benefit from the local post office, or attend the local doctor's surgery, or take a child to a nearby clinic.

 Many local shopkeepers refused to serve Catholics after being threatened by unionist paramilitaries. 'No Short Strand Taigs' and other sectarian graffiti appeared on the walls.

 "Shopkeepers who refused to stop serving Catholics were forced out of business," says Debbie, "most local businesses have closed. Some because of direct paramilitary intimidation and the rest because without customers from the Short Strand the business failed."

 At times of heightened sectarian threat, local doctors have been forced to see their Short Strand patients at a community center within the area. But recently the doctors moved back into their Bryson Street clinic. Continuing intimidation has meant that many people in the Short Strand simply stay away.

 "If I need a prescription, I drive up and wait in the car with the engine running while my eldest child runs into the clinic to collect it," says Debbie.

 "I would go myself," says Geraldine, "but I wouldn't walk up there with a child. If there's trouble it's too hard to run away with a pram."

 "If there's trouble and a child is sick, mothers are forced to take them directly to the hospital," says Geraldine, "and the doctors there don't understand the situation. They think you're wasting their time because you didn't see a GP. It's humiliating but if a child is sick there is no choice."

 "My child attends a speech therapy clinic," says Sinead, "I have to take him because if he doesn't attend he loses extra tuition at school. But it's a nightmare every week. I've been spat at and verbally abused. The child asks, 'is there going to be trouble?'"

 Poverty and welfare dependency are relatively high in Short Strand. The number of people unemployed increased over the summer following a number of loyalist death threats to people from the Strand working outside the district. And as if losing a job because of sectarian intimidation wasn't bad enough, collecting benefit has become an ordeal.  

"There's total confusion. You are sent to one post office only to find your benefit has been sent elsewhere," says Geraldine, "and then the post office gives you telephone numbers of other offices and you're left to ring around and try and find out where it has been sent."

 "I cash my giro at a bank but they want three days to clear it," says Debbie. "I've come out crying because I've no money and although I arrange for an immediate payment at the last minute the bank refuses and I'm left with nothing for days."

 "And all the time you are dealt with as if you are the problem," says Una. "We're the victims of sectarian violence but no one acknowledges it. We're treated like troublemakers. We're caught in the middle, loyalist intimidation on one side and official indifference and disapproval on the other."

 To shop the people of Short Strand must now travel outside the district but catching a bus is not an option. "Because we're an isolated nationalist area, all the buses are travelling out of unionist areas," says Una. "The atmosphere is hostile if you get on at a stop outside Short Strand. Most of us just walk."

 Una has two small children. In all weathers she must push her youngest in a pram and walk the elder child several miles to a shopping centre. And then, loaded down with shopping, there's the

long walk home. A seven-pound round trip taxi fare is not an option for those surviving on benefit. Accessing other facilities, like the local library or swimming pool are now all out of the question.

 To sustain the necessary illusion that sectarian violence is 'tit for tat', this community has not only been denied meaningful protection by the PSNI but worse still its plight has been systematically denied recognition. Without recognition the grievances of these mothers cannot begin to be addressed.

*©  RM Distribution.  Articles may be reprinted with credit to RM Distribution.