Orde Nails His Colours to The Mast

by Patricia Campbell

The Mater Hospital in Belfast is situated on the Crumlin Road. The Shankill Road runs parallel to the Crumlin Road and the Shankill estate is situated opposite the Hospital. The Shankill Road, well known as a loyalist stronghold, has featured in many TV programmes, documentaries and news bulletins. The Mater Hospital’s busy Accident and Emergency (A&E) caters for all sections of the community in the North and West Belfast area. Like all other hospitals across the North, the Mater is under resourced and under funded, hence the delivery of health care being a difficult task for those nurses and doctors working under pressure to treat and care for the people who present to the A&E department in an area of extreme levels of deprivation.

Following a contentious ‘Tour of the North’ parade on 18th June, a mob of loyalists stormed the Mater Hospital’s A&E department forcing staff and patients to take cover. The mob took over toilets, shouted abuse and behaved in a threatening manner. Some staff reported that they had to lock themselves in rooms for their own safety. One can only imagine how traumatic and frightening this experience was for those patients waiting for medical attention. If this had happened in a busy A&E department in any other country it would have made international headlines.

There is no doubt that there would have been an outcry at such outrageous actions by a sectarian mob. Not so for North Belfast and not so for the Chief Constable of the PSNI, Hugh Orde who attempted to minimise the events and play it all down as “just a group of people looking for toilets in a confined space.” After studying video evidence of the invasion he refuted that it was a serious disturbance. The Chief Constable made it very clear that he did not see the mob as a disorderly crowd he even went on to say, “this was not a crowd intent on attacking people” If a Chief Constable in any other Country or State made the same comments in response to such serious disorder there would unquestionably be calls for his immediate resignation and rightly so, but there were little oppositional reactions to the events or the Chief Constables response. The Trade Union, Unison let their disagreement be known to mob rule and another politician complained that perhaps the Chief Constable would see things differently if the mob invaded his offices in the same manner. Overall there was little or no outcry about this very serious incident not even from the ‘usual suspects’. The ‘get tough on crime’ voices were notably silent this time around.

The Chief Constable, dispatched from England to be portrayed as the unprejudiced impartial policeman to get policing right has clearly ‘nailed his colours to the Mast.’ Orde has come and Orde will go and the loyalist mobs will remain and continue to run riot as they please, even in our hospitals. It is clearly evident that the British agenda remains steadfast as ever and that ‘reform’ does not and will not work for the 6 County State or its Police Force.

13 July 2004