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Column: Our Life and Times by Kevin A. Barry and Mary Holmes
IRA begins to disarm
As we went to press, the Irish Republican Army began to disarm, compelled
to do so by the revulsion for all forms of terrorism expressed by its own
base in both Ireland and America after Sept. 11. However, the apparent end
to the military conflict leaves the political struggle against the
apartheid-like status of Irish Catholics in the North still on the agenda,
as seen in the recent attacks on schoolchildren.
Since the new school year began, Protestant mobs in a Belfast neighborhood
have been attempting to block Catholic elementary school girls from walking
to school along a route they have used for 30 years, because they consider
it "their" neighborhood. They want the girls to take a longer route
that
would take them into school through the back door. The Protestant mob has
spat, cursed, tossed bricks, and even thrown a pipe bomb despite criticism
from leading Protestant clergymen and politicians.
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