ARN rally in belfast

antrim | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis Sunday October 31, 2004 23:13 by fascists out

With up to 3 racist attacks carried out a day in northern ireland, the ARN had organised a rally to highlight the probelm. The south belfast area which has the highest number of racist attacks, the anti racism contigent set off from shaftsbury sq at 1.00pm, with about 25 marchers, the police said we could not march unless under Parade commission rules we had stewards to protect the marchers and maintain order.

We set off with 4 stewards to walk towards the city centre , myself being one to protect the marchers. Along the way we didn't encounter much aggro, we met up with the west belfast anti racist contigent, with around 2 thousand marchers, and walked to the city centre, with only 4 stewards to escourt by now the swelling thousands of marchers, I fell behind to escourt/protect disabled anti racists some of whom had cerebral palsy, and weren't able to keep up with the main marchers, when we encountered a lone faceless fascist hiding in the crowd of onlookers shouting, 'long live fascism', this visibly initmidated the vunerable disabled anti racist marchers, but because i had no loud speaker/ communication device, to communicate the probelm with the other stewards, who were half way up Royal avenue. My first instinct was to dive into where the fascist was and beat the shit out of him, but I had to stay with the disabled marchers to protect them from attack and let the fascists attack first, i also had to protect the Sein fein contigent which was directly infront of us . In the end the march passed off peacefully, the stewards further on ahead encountered abuse at the junction of lower north street, but that was countered by the main crowd of marchers.

I feel the organisers could have done more to coordinate response to fascists, as even one lone fascist/nazi heckler, is one too many, and to ensure that the vunerable disabled anti racists were accomodated in terms of providing communication devices to stewards, to convey any probelms and that vunerable disabled people weren't left to face fascist abuse by themselves.

The fact is although there was a carnival atmosphere on the march, the few nazis there are deadly serious, and nasty, and their capacity for opportunistic cowardly violence against isolated vunerable individuals such as the disabled etc is very real.

All in all it was a good turn out, with several thousand anti racist marchers stretching from the city hall to the Art college at the other end of royal avenue.