Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison

Shame on Them

They called them slugs, scum, bastards, rats, whores, filth, shite. They spat upon them. Hurled stones, bottles, ball bearings, wooden fences, golf balls, a bucket of urine and a bomb. A chorus sang: "Who let the Fenians out? Woof, woof!" One six-year-old girl was left in tears when a man, in his forties, labelled her "Dumbo" and called her a "big-eared bastard".

Then, when all their intimidation failed and the parents continued walking their kids to school, they shouted, "Shame on you!" when they should have been thinking, "Shame on us."

The people of Glenbryn are unionists, though middle-class unionists prefer the appellation 'loyalists' in attempting to distance themselves from this dark side of unionism. The people of Glenbryn say they have legitimate grievances but you couldn't hear what those were above their own din. Looking at their houses, they are not rich people. The local Protestant school is dilapidated. Whoever they elected over the years to look after their interests did not do a good job. Their MP, who won't sit in the same studio with certain elected representatives, sends out the apartheid message, "the other side is inferior".

Catholic parents faced a terrible personal dilemma in deciding whether to take their children to school along Ardoyne Road and risk serious injury or death or go in by the back door. Were they right to choose the front door? Absolutely. They have done a service to the cause of civil rights. Before the end of the week, however, some people, including British journalists especially, whom I watched interviewing, were beginning to shift the pressure onto the parents of the Holy Cross schoolchildren. One journalist asked, what can be the mentality of parents who, after their children have been stoned and abused, still insist they would take the same route the following day? They were becoming part of the chorus shouting, "Shame on you!" when they should have been thinking, "Shame on us."

They would not have asked Asian or Jewish parents if fascists in London were forcing their kids to run a gauntlet, "Why don't you just take the long route and use the back door?" They would, in fact, have been calling upon the Prime Minister not to bow to naked racism. They would have been calling for arrests by the score for incitement.

To the people of Glenbryn and their kids the union, the state of Northern Ireland, has brought nothing but bunting and flags, UDA party packs of e-tabs and heroin, and, tragically for themselves and for us, a creaking superiority complex which is essentially racist and which is why what is happening to those Catholic schoolgirls bears comparison with what happened to blacks in the USA.

Rosa Parks, a seamstress and civil rights activist in Montgomery, Alabama, became a symbol of African Americans' determination to attain their civil rights. In 1955 she was arrested for disobeying a city law that required blacks to give up their seats when white people wished to sit in their seats or in the same row. She said she was no longer prepared to sit at the back of the bus, which is the same as saying, I'm not prepared to go in the back door. Montgomery's blacks protested her arrest by refusing to ride the buses. Their protest lasted 382 days, which entailed a lot of suffering, a lot of walking. But it ended in victory when the city abolished the bus law. It would have been safer but wrong to shift seats. Rosa Parks was right.

On September 2, 1957, the night before school was to start, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who opposed integration, called out the state's National Guard to surround Little Rock Central High School and prevent any black students from entering. A federal judge granted an injunction against the Governor's use of National Guard troops and they were withdrawn on September 20.

When school resumed on September 23, about 1,000 protestors gathered in front of the school. The police escorted the nine black students to a side door where they quietly entered the building as classes were to begin. When the mob learned the blacks were inside, they began to challenge the police and surge toward the school with shouts and threats. Fearful the police would be unable to control the crowd, the school administration moved the black students out a side door before noon.

On September 25th President Eisenhower sent in 1,000 soldiers to ensure that the nine black students could go to school, through the front door. In the case of Ardoyne the kids aren't trying to force their way into a Protestant school, but their own school! It would have been safer but wrong for the black students to go to a different school. The nine students were right.

In 1962, James Meredith, a black who served in the US Air Force from 1951 to 1960, applied to the University of Mississippi. The public, including the governor of Mississippi, tried to prevent Meredith from registering for classes. Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent federal marshals to protect him. A riot broke out on his first night on campus. Two bystanders were killed and 160 marshals were wounded. In the end, the university was integrated and Meredith graduated in 1964. It would have been safer but wrong for James Meredith to have gone to a different university. James Meredith was right.

In 2001 it would have been safer but wrong for eighty school kids and their parents to have gone the long way and used the back door, with the sign on it that reads '1968'. They were right. Absolutely right. And for fighting for their children, for raising our dignity, for taking risks, we owe them a great debt of gratitude.

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