Drumcree
Loyalist hardliners vent fury
By Ben Lowry
9-Jul-2001
AS yesterday afternoon wore on, a small angry core remained on Drumcree Hill.
It was a cross-section of hardline loyalism - assorted Orangemen, youths in baseball caps, little old ladies, families with young children draped in the Union flag.
A younger section of the crowd, including some girls, leant over the bridge at the barricade and threw bottles and stones at the security forces.
As policemen appeared, the chant "SS RUC" went up. When stones struck soldiers, there were cheers.
Then a woman manoeuvred her wheelchair up to the barricade and hurled a bottle of water over the top.
And yet, amid the low-level violence, the mood was almost carnival-like. Those present enjoying being among like-minded company.
But the bitterness was never far away.
Most expressed the belief that everyone is against them: the pan-nationalist front, the police, the governments, traitors in their ranks.
Earlier, Harold Gracey had appealed for the protesters to respect another enemy, the media. When one middle-aged woman with a walking stick learned that she was talking to the Belfast Telegraph, she asked: "Oh, and who do you report to? Gerry Adams?"
Adams was not the only hate figure: a poster on the barricade had the caption Mad Cow Disease beneath a picture of Brid Rogers. Another read Oppose your pervert priests and not our parades .
Hatred for David Trimble was widespread.
Later, an articulate Orangeman, Mark Harbinson, drew a crowd.
Wearing an Orange Volunteers fleece, he held their approval through some controversial statements.
"I actually don t believe the Protestant people have suffered enough. I don t see too many people from North Down here,"he said.
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