McCartney Sisters UnafraidGotta
admire their pluck:
And she knows, they all know, as does Sinn Fein and the IRA, that eventually the interna tional media will tire of the story and move on from the labyrinth of bricked streets of Short Strand, where Robert McCartney's eldest son, Conlaed, four, hangs over a garden fence squealing at the TV cameras that temporarily distract him from his own confusion. In their "subconscious", says one sister, they wonder if one day they will made to pay for this. Donna insists: "We are not afraid. We know who they are."
This bravery is what has turned the five McCartneys and Robert's fiancee, Bridgeen Hagans, into sudden folk-heroes. Despite all the insidious pressures applied, the whispering campaign by the IRA to stir doubts in people's minds, these six women with 19 children between them could force the IRA to do what the British have failed to do for decades: put away their guns and disband. All underground groups rely on tacit community support for their survival. When that support is withdrawn, they cannot survive long.Some excellent background in this piece on the Short Strand, the area where the family lived. Just to remind us that at one time the IRA had some claim to legitimacy, read this story of the events of June 27, 1970:
With the streets around the area thronged with a huge Protestant mob intent on burning the Catholics out, and the British Army and the old RUC apparently content to stand by, a handful of IRA men led by Billy McKee made a stand in the grounds of St Matthew's Church, which has gone down in republican history as the Provo Alamo.
McKee was badly wounded and another IRA volunteer killed in the gun battle, in which three loyalists also died. The battle finally put paid to the bitter Catholic taunt that IRA stood for "I Ran Away".
That fight for its very survival welded the Short Strand and its people to the republican movement. Former IRA man Anthony McIntyre, who hid out there while he was on the run in the 1970s, remembers a community that "was tough, resilient and generous... The owner of one of the homes I stayed in was later murdered by loyalists as he went about providing for his young family. The son of another couple met a similar fate. These people were outstanding; their hospitality always something to be remembered. They were a people worthy of nothing less than the highest regard."But by the time Robert McCartney's coffin was carried from St Matthew's Church six weeks ago, that seemingly unbreakable bond with the IRA was beginning to shatter. Hundreds of people joined a street vigil in protest at his murder by the IRA, and many talked of its volunteers as thugs, sadists and paedophiles who they now needed protection from. Even the hero McKee has long since left Sinn Fein and the IRA in disgust.
