Newt hears echoes of Lawrence in PSNI probe of sectarian attack; UUP mixed messages exposed
The vicious sectarian attack on James Turley in the Village area of Belfast was in the media spotlight throughout the week. However, in today’s Irish News, Newt Emerson raises a number of issues regarding the handling of the incident by the PSNI:
Why did the PSNI issue no statement on the attck of James Turley, the film extra left for dead in south Belfast’s Village area? An incident of this seriousness would normally appear on its news feed. Nor do there seem to have been any house-to-house inquiries, arrests for questioning or prompt investigations of the crime scene. The nature of the area and the large number of assailants, reportedly up to 15, may provide an explanation. The Stephen Lawrence murder inquiry showed that attacks of this type can see the police switch from crime solving to ‘public order’ mode. Does the PSNI have a ‘public order’ issue with tackling crime in the Village?
Whilst the DUP have remained somewhat muted in relation to this incident (so much for that outreach to potential catholic voters…), there has been strong condemnation from many other unionist representatives of the attack- including local UUP representative Bob Stoker and former loyalist MLA Dawn Purvis.
However, the attempts by one Ulster Unionist Party member and former election candidate, Neil McNickle, to blacken the character of the victim prompted one Damien Carlisle to produce this stinging attack video for Youtube, taking apart McNickle’s Twitter strategy (though individuals not used to hearing language alien to the clergy should steer clear!)
Not sure its a stinging attack. Carlisle comes across as a bit of a twat in that youtube.
Very interesting Mr McNickles tweets are (recently?) protected and only ‘confirmed followers’ may view them?
Is there any suggestion that reports of the attack may have been exagerrated?
“Not sure its a stinging attack. Carlisle comes across as a bit of a twat in that youtube”
_
He blocked his account after Ryan Turbidy tweeted that he’ll be doing a piece on the incident this Monday. Threatening lawsuits left right and centre.
The pillock.
*McNickle that is, not Carlisle.
McNickle’s tweets have went private all of a sudden.
@RyanAdams
Yes, they are recently private as I was able to view some of his tweets the other day in reference to the shooting in Comber.
For someone who was attacked by a fifteen strong sectarian gang which intended to murder him he looks remarkably well.
http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/57798000/jpg/_57798865_dsc02997.jpg
Have you had many beatings by such numbered crowds Decimus? How should one look?
No Condemnation, just he looks remarkably well. It is almost like you think thats how all Catholics should look leaving the Village Decimus.
Truth be told Decimus does have a point, he does look remarkably well. After all he is alive unlike so many others before him.
In fairness, politics.ie gave this story prominence but shamefully other boards did not…….thus underlining the difference between political rhetoric and whats really happening…literally on the streets.
Too many people have fallen for the hype that Belfast is all about being best weekend break destination, MTV Awards, Game of Thrones and Titanic centenaries to look past the part that what happened to James Turley is below the surface.
This is not part of the new narrative.
We would have considered any community worker/leader or potential politician in SW London who pleaded that the focus should not be on the RACIST nature of the attack on Stephen Lawrence but rather on the violence itself or waht makes people like David Norris and Gary Dobson “angry”. as shameful.
Likewise we should not treat any take seriously anyone in the Village area who thinks that the focus should not be on the SECTARIAN nature of the attack but on what makes the attackers “angry”.
Of course this is not new.
Some politicians used to complain that broadcasters and the media should not focus on the religion of sectarian victims……it was “unhelpful” ……and its depressing to think that there are some who have not left that thought process behind.
We dont need to understand the anger of the mob. They are nasty evil sectarian bigots. Luckily not everyone in the Village is like them or indeed the neighbour who told the attackers “get him out of my garden”.
We have surely moved to the situation where we recognise that there is a form of volence motivated by deep seated hatred…..towards people of a different race or colour, religion, gender, sexuality etc.
We now have a concept called HATE CRIME……and thats all that needs to be understood.
Hate Crime is alive and well and living in Norn Iron.
In another part of Belfast……a Catholic part….a young (Catholic) woman was attacked because she would not or could not give a light to a group of young (Catholic) men. As the same thing happened about two years ago….with fatal consequences to a man less than a mile away we cannot have double standards here.
Yes there is a balance.
Young Catholic men are often as unpleasantly violent as young Protestant men. And as potentially liable to commit a Hate Crime.
Most violence is committed within communities rather than by one community on another.
But let there be no mistake this attack in the Village was sectarian.
If I am not mistaken a similar attack in a band hall near the Village, a young Protestant woman, Margaret Wright was brutally murdered because her killers…..more angry young men who need to be understood……..thought she was a Catholic. In a chilling similarity, they dumped her body in a wheely bin.
FJH,
“If I am not mistaken a similar attack in a band hall near the Village, a young Protestant woman, Margaret Wright was brutally murdered because her killers…..more angry young men who need to be understood……..thought she was a Catholic. In a chilling similarity, they dumped her body in a wheely bin.”
I think that’s what makes this so chilling. That and the apparent ambivalence of some Unionist politicians towards the attack.
This crowd of young men felt that James Turley was so below human that they could beat him and leave him for dead in a wheelie bin. Or presumably anywhere, so long as his body didn’t clutter anyone’s garden. Why? Because he is an Irish Catholic.
So why don’t we broach the subject in the manner that it would be anywhere else? This is a community in which the local Orange lodge condemned two other orangemen for attending the funeral of a Catholic police officer.
Can we say that there is a worrying surfacing of a residual, anti-Catholic prejudice within some communities that is given credence by local civic institutions and political leaders? It’s a prejudice that has debased the perception of the neighbouring Catholic/Irish population to the level of animals, liable and deserving of a beating when the opportunity presents itself.
No one’s saying it exists in all Protestant communities. God knows, it doesn’t! But in some it very much does, and the sooner it’s identified and dealt with the better.
“For someone who was attacked by a fifteen strong sectarian gang which intended to murder him he looks remarkably well.”
_
A Protestant youngster is snubbed at an award ceremony and all unionists can talk about is the ordeal that the poor kid must have gone through, and the inhumanity of it all.
A Catholic youngster is beaten unconscious by a Loyalist mob all Unionists can talk about is how it ain’t that big a deal really.
Incredible.
“Why did the PSNI issue no statement on the attck of James Turley, the film extra left for dead in south Belfast’s Village area? ”
Do you want a statement issued on every sectarian attack in NI?
“Do you want a statement issued on every sectarian attack in NI?”
Is it every day that a mob attacks a teenager because of his religion and tosses him in a bin?
I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is something a little melodramatic about this whole incident.
“I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is something a little melodramatic about this whole incident”
Yeah that could be down to the fact that it was only a Catholic.
I, and I expect the vast majority of unionists would agree with me, have no problem with recognising this attack as a sectarian hate crime and condemning it as such.
However there are two aspects of the response to the incident that are worthy of note. Firstly the policing angle. If it is as has been suggested there was paramilitary involvement in the attack why the faux surprise at the reticence of the police to headline the incident? Anyone who has lived in Northern Ireland during the ‘peace process’ should be aware that paramilitaries on both sides have been indulged and treated with kid gloves. Witness the howls of outrage, particularly from Irish Republicans, whenever the police investigate historical or contemporary crimes allegedly involving paramilitaries. The police have learned to tread very carefully when this type of incident occurs preferring to contact ‘community representatives’ rather than, as I and others would prefer, making arrests.
The second aspect of the response, as illustrated here on slugger, is the poorly veiled sectarian nature of many of the comments by Republicans. The implied thrust of those comments is that sectarianism is the ‘Protestant Disease’. With the notable exception of fjh the posters seem unable to recognise their own sectarian natures.
To the Irish News such stories are a godsend as they so neatly play to its audience. The reasons such reportage is headline grabbing stuff will sadly never be the subject of editorial pondering on a newspaper that reads like a monocultural throwback to the 1970s.
SonofStrongbow
While I don’t agree with a fair amount of your post (although I do accept sectarianism is a two-faced coin) at least you have the decency and honesty to recognise this as a sectarian hate crime and condemn it as such.
I’ll certainly take your word that the vast majority of Unionists would also do so.
I’m afraid that the comments (and total lack of condemnation) from Decimus and Cynic2 while entirely predictable rather undermine your laudable stance.
I’m afraid the the comments from McNickle are even worse.
I’m a little surprised that anyone expected anything other than silence from the DUP – they haven’t changed that much!
Their so-called Catholic outreach campaign is totally farcical.
Have you had many beatings by such numbered crowds Decimus? How should one look?
RepublicanStones,
Just the one by a gang of six Loyalists. I was totally unrecognisable afterwards with a face that was swollen up like a football and was coloured black and purple. Thankfully young Turbidy seems to have gotten away with a lightly bruised eye. The fifteen strong mob don’t seem to have been very proficient at attempted murder.
Are there any other witnesses at all?
“I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is something a little melodramatic about this whole incident.” – PaulUK
Of course there is. A young man is beaten to the edge of death by a Loyalist mob. Police remain indifferent.
He was a Catholic for God’s sake ! In The Village, if you please.What else do these people expect ?
There appears to be some complaints in this thread that the young lad did not get himself beaten up badly enough.
How remiss of him. It appears that some of the posters on here would be happy to escort him back so that he can rectify this oversight.
Have a word/look at yourselves you numptys.
Many a human being has been killed with a single blow.
How about condemning such sectarian (from either side) attacks without the mealy mouthed utterances.
”Are there any other witnesses at all?’
From the BBc report:
‘James’s friend Sammy McDaid said they came under attack from a crowd of about 25 people, mainly teenagers.
“As I tried to close the car door, they wouldn’t let me, they were holding the door and they were kicking us in through the door,” he said.
“I had to pull one of my friends into the car on top of me in the passenger seat.
The attack took place in the Village area of South Belfast
“They were kicking and throwing punches through the window.
“As I tried to close the car door, one of them slammed it onto my leg, back and forth.
‘Scary experience’
“As I got the car door closed they just began to wreck the car, kicking the whole car, as the driver got into the car, they punched my passenger side window in.
“I tried to turn my head but the glass came in all over me. They were punching us on the back of the head.
“It was hard to believe that what was happening was actually happening. It was a scary experience.”
Paula Bradshaw, from the Greater Village Regeneration Trust, said she was saddened by the attack. She said police knew who was responsible but needed people to come forward and give them evidence.
“As a mother of a young son I can imagine what it must have been like to take that call (about the attack),” she said.
“This was an horrific crime and the young people responsible have to be taken to task.”‘
Will that do?
cynic2:
Do you want a statement issued on every sectarian attack in NI?
A shameful comment that deserves no response.
This event and the loyalist response to it is similar to the murder of Kevin McDaid, (anyone jailed yet psni)?
Loyalism is failing young people here. (anyone seen “the men who wont stop marching”)? You only have to look at the loyal bands and marchers and their hangers on with their KAT and trick or treat masks to know it. The array of shaved heads banging instruments to death have nothing to do with music and everything to do with keeping the taigs in their place. When you have the dup funding these sectarian bands you are telling young people this is a good way to behave. When you have nothing, like that mob in the village you will be easy to indoctrinate into a sectarian way of thinking. 15 and 16 years ago I was attacked and beaten with weapons by a loyalist mob still have a bent nose from it, the second time I was hospitalised for 7 days. My crime ? Wearing my school uniform in the wrong part of town. So they say things have changed and moved on and this is our shared future. Well , I say bollix..
Decimus
Would it be ok if this guy was punched just enough to give him a black eye?
Monk,
You take away even as you give.
Whilst ‘agreeing’ with my point that unionists will condemn this hate crime you can’t resist going on to list individual slugger posters, a failed UUP candidate and the entire DUP party as evidence that unionists are in reality ok with this sort of thing.
Of course no word from you on the Diss-the-Hun avalanche on this thread. The sadly predictable anti-police rants also pass without comment.
There again, other than an Orange sash, I imagine there’s nothing that sets an Irish Republican off like a cop uniform about the place.
“A shameful comment that deserves no response.”
Why?
There are probably scores of hate crimes every week. Do we want PSNI to issue a statement on every one? What will the reaction then be? Revenge attacks? Tit for tat?
Do we only want them to issue statements on sectarian crimes? Not homophobic attacks? Race attacks? Attacks on disabled people? Are they less worthy? What is the boundary? Why do we want this? What is the social good we are trying to realise? Do they need the victim’s permission to make a statement? May that result in their re victimisation again in revenge?
And how will PSNI gauge what is and what is not a sectarian attack? The victims perception is one factor – but not the only one. So how do they decide at the start of an investigation what is / is not sectarian?
What is shameful here is intellectually sloppy grandstanding to plug a sectarian perspective and give the police a bit of a kick along the way – not that they don’t need it mind you
Oh and by the way I do hope that PSNI catch those involved a quickly as possible and that they all get at least 5 years. Its an appalling attack and should be dealt with.
I would say this is a shocking crime but of course it is not shocking. We have these sorts of loathsome criminal incidents perpetrated against predominantly young working class men on a regular basis. This one made the news because it was a sectarian attack and the victim was involved in making a film. This attack is wholly wrong but it would have been just as wrong had it been within one side of the community.
The most significant wrong is the violence visited upon the young man not the utterly spurious reasoning behind that violence.
What is worrying is the fact that some few in the working class loyalist community will see this as a less serious issue (or even a non or a positive issue) because of the religion of the young man assualted. The overwhelming majority of working class unionists have rejected this sort of thuggery time and again. However, for far too long loyalist paramilitaries have been treated with kid gloves by all sections of society: the media who report on Jackie McDonald like he was a legitimate public figure; the police; the liberal establishment and yes the politicians.
It is long past time that the parasites of the loyalist paramilitaries were removed from the back of the working class unionist population and prevented from attacking them or for that matter Catholic young men who happen to be in “the wrong area.”
This thuggery is not confined to loyalist areas but is also prevalent in some republican areas. That is has not been taken on in an aggressive fashion in either community is one of the most vile compromises the so called peace process has visited upon us. Such foul bigotry occurs accross the water and is probably not dealt with sufficiently aggressively there either. We tend to hear much about these sorts of attacks if there is “an angle”. In this case it was the filming and the young man’s religion though I suspect mainly the former.
I differ from Chris Donnelly that this is not an example of institutional sectarianism by the police it is just one more example of the results of years of institutional disinterest in the criminality of paramilitaries against “their own community” which has now as it does from time to time cut across to the other community.
Until we all of all sides empower the police, courts etc. to root out these paramilitary thugs this sort of thing will recur. The media stopping treating criminal godfathers like minor celebrities would help begin that process.
“Of course no word from you on the Diss-the-Hun avalanche on this thread.”
_
Unionist reaction to this incident thus far has largely revolved around blaming the victim, or alternatively, claiming that this kind of thing is ‘no big deal’.
Pointing this out is not bigotry.
I hate threads like this. It privileges idiocy over informed comment. Any one who thinks this was okay, non sectarian? Really?
South Belfast loyalist has been in this hole for years now. The DUP have simply stopped digging. Cllr McNickle, kindly take note!
Decimus,
Attempted murder or just assault?
We wont know until the PSNI actually charge the thugs and it will of course be properly tempered in the light of the chances of conviction.
Certainly many thugs have a built in radar which tends to seperate the two…although this is precious little comfort to the person getting a kicking as you never know when the kicking will stop, especially if accompanied by verbal violence.
There might even be a case for saying that some drunken brawls go “wrong”. Certainly that is the mitigation heard in courts.
JH,
While agreeing with most of what you say, I think youre too hard on unionist politicians on this one. Its those who have bought into the “new Norn Iron” nonsense that are most at fault. Most mealy mouthed. Because this does not fit with the new narrative of regeneration. A young man from Short Strand was attacked. He was the “Fenian/Taig” target…..it wasnt any of the “crew” or indeed any Dublin based actor. That would have agitated the New Norn Ironers much more than a young lad from the Short Strand. Indeed if it had been a French Catholic, a Spanish Catholic, a German Catholic….it would have been much different.
In my original blog some days ago I made the comparison with Stephen Lawrence. Newt Emerson apparently makes the same comparison. So does Chris Donnelly.
Actually at best we were only half right.
There is actually a much more obvious comparison to be made.
The biggest similarity is the case of the young lad from the Somerton Road murdered by sectarian thugs from Mount Vernon.
Now that was off-script because thugs from Mount Vernon “should” be targetting someone from (say) Bawnmore. That murder of a middle class Catholic boy agitated the (Protestant & Catholic) middle class communities because they could readily identify with the victim and his family.
Put frankly there is a patronising and resigned attitude that working class teens (Catholic and Protestant) ….have an almost occupatonal hazard in their lives that they will be the victims or perpetrators of sectarian violence.
James Turley is from the Short Strand. The muted reaction of people who should know better would be different if James was a Catholic from Cultra.
And thats the simiarity with Stephen Lawrence. If Gary Dobson and David Norris and others had gone into Brixton and stabbed a stereotypical black guy…..it would have been treated as a typical “occupational hazard”. The great mistake Stephens killers made was that they picked on the son of an upwardly mobile “respectable” family. Thats what agitated the Daily Mail.
I have to agree with “son of strongbow”. Notwithstanding the latent sectarianism of “get him out of my garden” statements, the reaction of unionists….real unionists….has NOT been muted.
The mealy mouthed response has come from “lets get alongerists”.
We all do sectarianism.
And “lets get alongerists” are just as sectarian. They look after people they perceive as “their” own. The difference is that “their” people includes Catholic and Protestant.
“I can’t quite put my finger on it but there is something a little melodramatic about this whole incident”
Yeah that could be down to the fact that it was only a Catholic.
Centuries of oppression certainly leave a mark on a man’s mind. It would appear.
A young man is beaten to the edge of death by a Loyalist mob.
Was he really though? Do we have any evidence, apart from a black eye to back such a dramatic statement up?
I wonder if a young Protestant appeared in the Newsletter sporting a black eye said he had been beaten, to the very edge of death no less, how seriously he would be taken by the people who are wailing to the heavens here?
Decimus
Would it be ok if this guy was punched just enough to give him a black eye?
Skinner,
No of course it wouldn’t. There is no justification for assaulting anyone.
“Centuries of oppression certainly leave a mark on a man’s mind. It would appear”
_
Centuries of oppression my arse, I just know equivocation when I see it.
You’ve proven yourself to be a real class act on this thread, incidentally.
Will that do?
Dec,
Not really. The witness that you quote claims to have escaped in a car. Therefore he could not possibly have witnessed what happened afterwards. The alleged bin incident and the alleged Protestant woman who allowed the guy into her house and then released him to the thugs when she heard he was a catholic and said “Get him out of my garden.” All of that is being taken as fact when it is one man’s unsupported word.
If I was in the mood for writing a stereotypical everyday republican tale of oppression by the black subhuman huns then those factors would all fit in very nicely indeed.
Centuries of oppression my arse, I just know equivocation when I see it.
It would appear that you don’t.
“Wasn’t that bad of a beating”…no, you’re right, no equivocation here.
What is the minimum amount of violence that a Loyalist mob must mete out on a Catholic before you feel your condemnation is warranted?
“If I was in the mood for writing a stereotypical everyday republican tale of oppression by the black subhuman huns then those factors would all fit in very nicely indeed.”
Another completely non-sectarian Unionist casting the completely non-sectarian assertion that this guy is lying through his fenian teeth.
If you peel yourself off the ceiling and re-read through the thread you will see that I condemned the assault.
Try confining your attacks on me to at least an ounce of fact.
You issued a belated, grudging condemnation after several critical posts were directed against you. Your first instinct was to go down the “he’s telling porkies/it’s no big deal” route.
I think it would be fair to say that you and the McNickle moron are cut from the same cloth.
Throw a cat in a bin and you stir a animal loving nation,
throw a Catholic in a bin and the police wont even ask for witnesses
“throw a Catholic in a bin and the police wont even ask for witnesses”
….. we now seem in fantasy land again.
Imagine – ten years of Patten, almost half of the uniform officers on the street Catholic and now we find that all along PSNI seem to have been recruiting the long kind of Catholics – those who cant wait to do down the nationalist population.
I don’t know how badly this young man was beaten. None of us do.
Some of the more hyperbolic rants here suggest ‘to the edge of death’ and others that he’s actually just got a black eye. Sometimes the difference between the two is much closer than one might think anyway and whatever it was, it was wrong.
But Mick is right. Threads like this just expose the knuckle dragging, slobbering tribalism that infests this country
SK,
Your ad hominem attacks on me roll off me like water off a duck’s back. Try discussing the actual facts rather than simply attacking me, and the Protestants of Sandy Row and Northern Ireland, on the basis of the tall tales your mother told you whilst you were suckling on her knee.
cynic2:
There are probably scores of hate crimes every week.
Do we want PSNI to issue a statement on every one?
I expect the PSNI to issue a statement for every single serious assault that is reported to them.
What will the reaction then be? Revenge attacks? Tit for tat?
I’d like to understand what your motivation is in trying to downplay a very serious crime.
throw a Catholic in a bin and the police wont even ask for witnesses
Is there any actual evidence beyond this man’s word, that he was dumped in a bin?
Was wondering how long it’d take for Slugger to address this attack. If it was IRA, PB and Turgon would have a posts up within seconds.
“Your ad hominem attacks on me roll off me like water off a duck’s back.”
_
Mine is not an ad hominem attack. Ad hominem would be something along the lines of: “Centuries of oppression certainly leave a mark on a man’s mind.”
No, I’m genuinely intrigued about the mindset of any individual who would seek, almost instinctively, to lay the blame for a sectarian attack at the victims feet. Folks like yourself and McNickle are dying breed, fortunately.