Holy Cross parents: Our children need help
Parents of Catholic children caught up in the Holy Cross dispute in north Belfast have appealed for help at Westminster to end the long-running hostilities.
Pat Monaghan and Gerard McCabe of the Right to Education Committee told a meeting of the Friends of Ireland of their five-month ordeal walking their children to school through a Protestant area of the city.
Following the meeting, the audience of around 80 people signed a petition which is to be sent to Northern Ireland Secretary Dr John Reid saying that the children were not being protected by the RUC and that their human rights were being breached.
Mr McCabe, a father of two, said he had received death threats during the dispute, which meant his son would not let him out of his sight.
He said: ‘‘My nine-year-old son is being told in his school by friends that his daddy is going to die because I have had death threats.
‘‘He would not go to school and he wouldn’t let me out of his sight.
‘‘In the year 2001 the world should be well beyond stuff like this.’’
Mr McCabe blamed hardline Protestants for the hostilities in the Ardoyne area of the city but insisted that the differences between their two communities should not be thrust on to the children.
He said: ‘‘What I’m trying to do here today is to get people in this room to put pressure on these people to sit down and talk to us and lift these children out of the equation.
‘‘There are problems in our area but the kids need normality brought back into their lives.
‘‘We need the RUC to bring normality into our lives and stop having them queuing up like animals outside the school gates.’’
Mrs Monaghan said she feared reprisals following her appearance in London last night but said something needed to be done to end the stand-off.
She said there had been claims that the mothers and fathers who walk their children up the road to school were bad parents.
But she said: ‘‘When I was accused of being a bad parent, I took it personally because I have buried two daughters and I know what it’s like to bury a child.
‘‘There is no way I’m going to put my daughter’s life at risk.’’
Northern Ireland Security Minister Jane Kennedy, who attended the meeting, said: ‘‘You present a very rational and sensible argument and I have been saying from the outset that whatever the grievances are, whatever things they feel, need to be addressed.
‘‘This is not the way to get their grievances heard. We have been working very hard to provide a way of resolving this so the residents can back down from their protests.’’
During the 90-minute meeting, the audience was shown a video of news coverage and undercover footage filmed during walks to school.
