A Fiery Test Of Peace

By Barry Hillenbrand/Rasharkin

Some seasons, just being Irish seems curse enough, and never more so than in Northern Ireland's annual marching season, when Protestant pride expresses itself in drum-banging celebration of Catholic defeat. Down the streets of Belfast, through such villages as Drumcree, the brethren of the Orange Order must go each July, drums pounding, flutes trilling out martial tunes, banners fluttering portraits of William of Orange triumphing over the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne 308 years ago.

Was it just for that privilege that Lee Quinn, only 12 years old, found himself last week in the back bedroom of his grandmother's house in Rasharkin, dazedly watching over three small white coffins holding all that remained of his three younger brothers? They burned to death when Protestant thugs, angered by a ban on the Orange Order's march down Drumcree's Garvaghy Road, tossed a fire bomb through the window of the Catholic family's home in a mostly Protestant housing development in the town of Ballymoney. Lee was saved because he had been spending the night with his grandmother. "It's hot in here," he murmured as he pulled back the flowered bedsheet that served as a curtain and popped open the window. The thud of the mighty drums down the road grew louder, making the floors vibrate. On the day of the wake, Rasharkin happened to be the venue for the local Orange Order marches.

The marchers knew the Quinn family was in the one-story house they were passing; band members were asked to stop playing when they were directly in front. "There's not too many grieving in this town," said Irene Quinn, the dead boys' grandmother. Those who were grieving could do nothing but sit behind their curtains and wait for the Protestant parades to finish so Catholic friends could safely come by to bid farewell to the boys. One day later, weeping mourners formed their own somber parade behind the coffins bearing the boys to a hillside cemetery.

The dying was supposed to be over in Northern Ireland since Good Friday, when the sectarian communities that had killed and cried for more than 30 years accepted a peace agreement for sharing power designed to allow both sides to live and let live. But an impassioned Protestant minority refuses to accept the peace agreement, and so they set themselves to defy a ruling by the government's new Parades Commission.

They made the past two weeks look like the bad old days as Northern Ireland lapsed into a spasm of violence and madness. Angry members of the Orange Order chose Drumcree to confront the police and British troops barring their march down Garvaghy Road. They said they were merely claiming their basic civil right to walk the Queen's highway, but they fear that if their marching stops, they will lose their dominion over the six counties of the North. The sensible among them called for keeping the protest peaceful, but each night, gangs of Protestant youths resorted to violence as hundreds of fire bombs were pitched at churches and the homes of Catholic families unfortunate enough to live in vulnerable areas. Last Sunday one of those bombs incinerated the Quinn children within minutes.

It did not matter whether the militant Protestants who threw the fire bomb meant to kill or only to intimidate. Once again the country was burying innocent victims of the Troubles--and this time the coffins were white and the pain triple. The makers of the landmark truce wondered if their labors had been in vain and the prospect of peace was slipping away.

But for most Protestants as well as Catholics, this slaughter of the innocents went too far, inspiring a shock of revulsion so deep it had the effect of bringing the province back to its senses. From his pulpit in the church of Pomeroy, the Rev. William Bingham, deputy grand chaplain of the Orange Order, told his followers that no parade down a road "is worth a life--let alone three lives of three innocent boys." Leading Protestant clergymen urged the protesters "in the name of God" to leave Drumcree, and most did. British Prime Minister Tony Blair voiced the hopes of many when he said the tragedy would actually strengthen the agreement.

The ugly violence embarrassed many of the law-abiding members of the Orange Order who, although they may not welcome the new universe of inclusiveness, forswear violence as the solution. The split in Protestant ranks runs deep, and after last week the extremists seem ever more isolated, even within their own religious community. How small that consolation, though, for the Quinns.