MAN AND LADDER

Northern Ireland was, in short, a tinderbox of seething sectarian tensions just waiting to be ignited by a spark, however small.

Although the Protestants of Glenbryn, like their co-religionists throughout the North, traditionally celebrated the annual "Twelfth" of July, until 2001 they hadn't made a big point of putting up flags along the road leading to the school.

This year, for whatever reason, was different, according to David Lindsay (31), father of two children, Amy (9) and Kirsty (12) at Holy Cross. "They would have put flags up but it was never in any huge quantity.

However, "That summer, every house along the road was fully decorated and the road was ablaze with colour, as if they were trying to rub it in your face".

Two days before the "man on ladder" episode, on June 17th, Sharon Quail (mid 30s), mother of Shaunalee (8) was chatting with a friend on the edge of Ardoyne, waiting for their daughters to walk down from Holy Cross.

"They (loyalists) had never ever put flags up or painted kerbstones during the school term. This day, there was a couple of 14 or l5-year-old fellas painting the kerbs. It was a first".

"A parent's car came out of Holy Cross and, as it passed the loyalists, they threw paint tins at it. The car was hit all over". Dozens of schoolgirls witnessed the incident and ran, screaming, down the road.

Many ended up in Colette Cassidy's garden because she lives on the interface of Alliance Avenue and Ardoyne Road. "I immediately phoned Mrs Tanney (Holy Cross girls' school principal) and told her that I had 50 squealing children in the garden. I had a sense something was about to explode". She didn't have to wait long.

Two days later, June 19th dawned warm and sunny. The girls of Holy Cross were looking forward to their school sports day the following week while the older girls were busy rehearsing for their annual end-of-year play, "Babes in the Wood".

That lunchtime, on the nearby Oldpark Road, Michael Cosby, a solidly built, sandy-haired, 41-year-old loyalist, was enjoying a Father's Day present from his wife - a back massage to ease his aching spine.

Chief Superintendent, Roger Maxwell, the Commander of the North Belfast Command Unit, was at the funeral of one of his sergeants in Larne, County Antrim. "Things were quiet when I left", he says.

Anne Bill, later to become prominent on the loyalist side, was enjoying a holiday in Spain.

A few streets away, Jim McClean, a young, dark-haired loyalist from Glenbryn, was engaged in bedecking the Ardoyne Road with loyalist flags.

Amanda Johnston (42), a striking, blonde-haired lady with a fashionable stud in her top lip, was standing on the same spot she had occupied for the previous two years, helping the children of adjoining Catholic Holy Cross and Protestant Wheatfield schools safely across the road.

But, at about nineteen minutes past two in the afternoon, an event took place that would have a huge effect on their lives.

McClean and two helpers continued putting up flags, tying them to lamp-posts along the street. McClean admits being close to members of the UDA's notorious "C. Company", formerly controlled by Johnny "Mad Dog" Adair. His father, Denis, was convicted in 1988 for the theft of a cache of weapons from a British Army depot and served six years in prison.

Jim was enjoying his work, climbing up and down the aluminium ladder as the three-man team made their way closer and closer towards the gates of Holy Cross.

Amanda takes up the story. "At 22 minutes past two o'clock, I saw a white car driving towards where a few lads were putting up flags". The passenger in the car was wearing a Celtic top.

"There was one fella up a ladder and two standing holding the ladder. The car drove past and I saw the guys look at the car. The next minute the car reversed a bit and rammed towards the ladder", says Amanda.

The car, she says, then mounted the footpath. "He reversed back and went towards the ladder and the fella was actually knocked off the ladder. He (the driver) went right into the ladder and then the car drove off".

She is sure she saw the white car hit the ladder, forcing Jim McClean to jump off, although he didn't appear seriously hurt.

She then says she saw the driver of the car get out with "something in his hand as if he was going to attack the guys. They started shouting at the car and chasing him. Which they had every right to do.

"Other people had seen it and started chasing the car too. He (the driver) tried to do a three-point turn but by this stage he was sort of jammed in because other people had come out and started attacking the car".

McClean's version of events shows the gulf of perception and memory between the two sides. "There were three of us putting up flags, me and two others about sixteen years old".

"We noticed a car driving up towards us. I was on my way up the ladder with a flag. They were union flags and Ulster flags. They weren't paramilitary; we were putting them up for the Queen's jubilee. The whole road was getting decorated".

"I remember I was up the ladder with a flag in my hand at the only wooden telegraph pole on the road. The white Vectra car pulled up in front of me. There were two people in it, a man of about 38 and a younger man in a Celtic top who was pointing the finger and slabbering (Belfast slang for complaining)".

The "wee lads" with Jim, he says, "started slabbering back. The car sped up towards the school and dropped off the fella with the Celtic football top. He ran into the school".

Jim says the car came "flying down" towards him and tried to knock one of the other lads down. The driver "threw the handbrake on and mounted the pavement towards the telegraph pole", but then veered away from him, and the pole, "or he would have wrecked the car on it".

Instinctively, Jim says, he jumped down two or three rungs off the ladder. He was now standing behind the pole. The taxi-driver, he says, was confronting him "with a stick in his hand" before getting back into his car and driving away.

By this time, says Jim, "parents began coming from everywhere in a matter of seconds. There was about 30 of them, with baseball bats and iron bars. There was fellas running at me with screwdrivers".

"I seemed to be surrounded", he says, but he somehow managed to run away to his own car down a side street. His hands were shaking so much, he could barely open the door, but he got in.

Then, he says, two assailants "grabbed the ladders we were using to put up the flags and began running towards me, towards the back of the car". Jim says he was by then struggling to turn his ignition key.

"I was nervous and shaking. One of them had a knife trying to get into the passenger's door. The other had a screwdriver trying to open the driver's door".

Then, he says, his ladders were smashed through his rear window "like a battering ram and hit me on the back of the head". He somehow managed to race away, with the ladders still sticking out of his rear window.

Asked if he believes the whole incident was planned, Jim says, on the whole, he doesn't. "But there was a great deal of, to some extent, there was tools in their cars, crowbars in their boots, pickaxe handles, brush poles, crutches, anything you could get your hands on in their boots".

"Maybe they could say they were afraid of an attack happening one day or something but for 30 years those kids walked up to the school and nothing happened".

Amanda, however, is certain the whole event was pre-planned. She says it all happened too quickly to have been spontaneous and claims there were men at the school that day that she did not recognise as parents.

"Out of the blue", she says, "all of these extra cars appeared from inside and outside the school grounds". Men, she says, "with hurley bats and baseball bats".

"They came flying out to attack the fellas from this community. Our's were more trying to get at the guy in the car". She denies what happened next was a free for all although, she says "there was a few punches thrown".

Both these eyewitness accounts are at odds with the version of events given by the driver of the white Vectra car, who has chosen to remain anonymous for reasons that will become clear.

The driver (we'll call him "Sean") is a nationalist aged 34 who was born in Ardoyne but whose family were burned out in the 1969 riots. Sean says he had a daily fare collecting a child from Holy Cross, usually accompanied by her mother.

"That day she couldn't come with me, so her son, aged about 12, came with me to pick up the daughter, then aged about six. The son was wearing a Celtic top".

"We turned right on to the Ardoyne Road and I noticed people putting up paramilitary flags with one guy up a ladder holding a brush-pole with a flag on it".

"He jumped off the ladder, he was only two or three rungs up, and began shouting at us about the Celtic top. My window was half wound-down so I could hear him. He was shouting 'Fenian bastards'".

"The next thing he hit one of my quarter-lights with the brush pole and then hit the boot with it. It must have been hard because I saw the dent later. Fixing the window cost me £85".

"I drove towards the school but was worried about the boy's safety and did a U-turn to get out of the area. I then realised his little sister would panic if I didn't turn up, so I took a diversion to come to the school from the other direction".

"All I wanted to do was avoid the man who had been shouting at me, but when I arrived at the school gates I was surrounded by a crowd of parents and other taxis and loyalists who started attacking us".

"They were coming out of everywhere. That is what happened and I would swear all of this is true on the Bible".

"Sean" is, of course, aware that this incident was subsequently described by the Protestant community in Glenbryn as the straw that broke the camel's back.

Asked if he has any feelings of regret about his a key role in what became the Holy Cross saga, he says that the people of Ardoyne know him and accept he did nothing wrong.

"I couldn't live here if they didn't trust me", he says. "What happened that day could have happened to anyone. It's unbelievable that I have been blamed for it all".

"The police have told me four times that I'm on a Red Hand Defenders death list and that my name has been found in UDA files. I've had to move home and I've lost a lot of money because I can't work in loyalist areas".

While it's difficult, if not impossible, to ascertain what really did happen on June 19th, there's probably more than a grain of truth in what one Holy Cross parent, Chris McDonald (34), a builder, later said about it.

"If you have a group of loyalists putting flags up right beside a Catholic school, just as parents are arriving to collect their kids, it's only provoking trouble".

"We pulled (Belfast slang: 'argued with') the police about it but they said that they couldn't stop them. It was always the same people who were doing it, putting up light blue UDA flags at the exact time the kids were getting out of school".

Colette Cassidy, mother of Holy Cross pupil, Caitlin (11), also says the June 19th incident was "an extension of the other incidents. It wasn't just a one-off - I knew that it was a case of things building up for weeks".

Amanda says that when she realised how serious the rioting was, she closed the Holy Cross gates. She then quickly opening them again so stranded mothers outside, who'd already picked up their daughters, could take shelter in the relative safety of the school grounds.

Her thoughts then turned to her own daughter. "My head was spinning. I knew

Nicky would be coming home from school. As I walked home, a woman accused me of leaving my post. But I had got the girls safely into school first".

"It was getting nasty and I was scared and I had done my duty by the children."

The violence began during a Board of Governors meeting at Holy Cross. It was parish priest Father Ken Brady's last meeting as chairman and Anne Tanney had arranged for tea and sandwiches to say goodbye.

Amongst those present was the principal of nearby Holy Cross boys' school, Terry Laverty, who had noticed the men putting up flags as he drove up to Holy Cross. The governors' meeting began, blissfully unaware of the rioting outside.

Anne Tanney was suddenly called out. The meeting continued, as the violence got worse outside. Then she returned, looking for Father Brady. The rest of the Board sat waiting for news. When it came, it was bad. The police had ordered the school's evacuation.

"I remember a couple of times during the meeting I could hear kids crying. Looking back, I wonder why we all didn't jump up and leave immediately", says Laverty, adding that on his way home, it struck him he had almost been expecting something "because of the attitude of the three boys I had passed in the car".

Outside, matters were deteriorating fast. Amongst others, Jim Potts, who became the main spokesman for the Glenbryn protesters, explains what was going through his mind and that of the other loyalists on the road.

"We believed nationalists had planned the attack on the men putting up the flags, to entice this community into a fight. For the last 30 years, we had allowed the nationalist community to come and collect their children freely, but some of them were gathering information on people who lived in this community", he claims.

"A lot of young (Catholic) lads from St Gabriel's were starting to use Hesketh as a thoroughfare. We were getting complaints that cars were being scored, fences destroyed, the lads were being abusive. Residents enjoying their front gardens were getting spat upon and abused", says Potts.

Michael Cosby, a father of three children now aged 21, 19 and 14, was also on the scene that afternoon, fresh from his back massage. He accepts the initial "ladder incident" was minor but accuses nationalists of deliberately provoking the trouble.

"It wasn't done by accident, the nationalists came equipped with baseball bats in their cars".

Ronnie Black, another loyalist on the scene says, "I can't remember how the idea came to block the road. People just gathered on the road and it was blocked. There were so many people, the police couldn't move us back".

On the road, more and more parents were gathering to find out what was going on and where their children were. Colette Cassidy was one of the first on the scene, claiming she witnessed loyalists breaking up kerbstones.

She drove up to collect Caitlin as soon as she realised what was going on. "I ended up taking a load of kids out with me. We tried our best to settle them but you knew it wouldn't leave a child's mind easily".

"Caitlin was terrible, she was in hysterics. There were a lot of terribly shaken and confused children but Caitlin was just completely out of it".

Liz Murphy, mother of Niamh, (7), was another parent on the scene early, finding herself at the heart of the trouble beside the school gates. She remembers the children being "all huddled together with only one teacher" in the roadway.

Stones started hailing down and the children began scattering, then a Protestant woman, who lived next to the school, opened her door and remonstrated with the loyalists, shouting at them to stop.

Two fathers, remembers Liz, were trying to keep things calm and push the girls back into the school grounds away from the hail of stones and bricks. The school principal, Anne Tanney, came out to try and calm things down.

Liz remembers trying to persuade Mrs. Tanney not to go anywhere near the protesters for her own personal safety, but - with commendable courage - off she went to speak to them, to little effect.

Humour can survive even in the midst of violence. Liz tells of how another parent, Phyllis Doherty, walked right up the Ardoyne Road even as the stones and bricks were raining down.

"I think it was a case of the loyalists not knowing if she was one of us or one of them, she just walked right up the middle of the road on her own, unscathed."

Wondering how to get the children home safely, someone remembered there was a back gate. "There's a wire mesh fence, so you couldn't drive through it, but there is a small single gate where you could walk through", Liz recalls.

Liz's husband, John (40), an electrician, wanted to use his car to ram the wire fence so cars could drive through to pick up the children, but Anne Tanney would have none of it. "Sheer panic set in. The children were in hysterics. The fear in those children's faces would have broke your heart", says Liz.

A small group of about four parents then lined the children up and walked them through the back exit. Another parent drove a mini-bus into St Gabriel's and piled in about 20 pupils.

The bus began driving down the Crumlin Road. "Loyalists on the road realised who they were and began stoning it", says Liz.

She, along with other parents and teachers, began walking the remainder of the children through the back of Holy Cross, up a hill, across a football pitch and through the gate towards St Gabriel's and the Crumlin Road.

"They cried the whole way. We were shaking too. Then somebody shouted the loyalists were running around and onto the Crumlin Road to try and get at us that way. You should have seen us rushing those wee children."

The adults started walking the children down the wide Crumlin Road with the loyalists behind them, baying abuse. "They had run around the school, knowing we were bringing the children out that way, to try and get us that way".

"You should have seen the speed we walked with those poor kids. I remember one or two of the loyalists making a run down the road after us. The cops never did a thing", says Liz.

The children's faces were by now red and tear-stained as they made their way with their equally terrified teachers towards where their parents were anxiously waiting at the Ardoyne shops.

"Niamh was in tears and shaking. She was always a jolly wee kind of person but that day she sobbed her heart out. She held my hand so tight. She didn't have a clue what was happening and just kept asking what she had done wrong".

Another parent, Tanya Carmichael (33), mother of Emer and Emma (4 and 8) was amongst the group escorting children out through the back door and St Gabriel's. She says she pretended there was a fire drill to explain their hasty exit.

"As what had really happened filtered through, the older ones panicked. They knew they were being attacked and they were frightened. It was awful. There were kids running about screaming and crying. There were children literally wetting themselves".

One reason loyalists gave later, to justify their accusation that nationalists had orchestrated the riot, is the speed at which the cavalcade of black taxis arrived, to ferry the children down the Crumlin Road to their waiting parents.

There is, however, a simple explanation. Tanya Carmichael's husband, Sean (33), is the co-ordinator of Ardoyne's black taxi-drivers. She saw what was happening and decided to alert them and ask for help.

"The taxis are radio-controlled, so I flagged one down and told him to radio through quick and tell them the girl's school is being attacked".

Sean picks up the story. "One of the drivers radioed through. I asked all of the taxi men to go to either the Ardoyne Road or Crumlin Road. They all rushed up. By that time the kids had all been evacuated into St Gabriel's".

"At Mercy Primary school (on the Crumlin Road, opposite St Gabriel's) they were also frightened in case a crowd from Glenbryn broke through there. So the same taxi-drivers evacuated Mercy Primary ".

The loyalists were, says Tanya, behaving "just like a pack of wild animals. I couldn't believe it. They were saying 'You Fenian scum, you'll never walk our road again' and 'We'll burn your school down' and what they were going to do to ourselves and our children".

"The venom and anger and hatred in their faces was unbelievable. Our people were angry also because we didn't know where our kids were. We were telling the cops that we had to get our kids out but they just pushed us back".

"The loyalists were not locals, they had come from everywhere. I had never seen that many people in Glenbryn in my life", says Tanya.

"The police were very aggressive towards us and were constantly pushing us back. The loyalists were shouting the whole time, 'This is our road and you will not be back', and 'Provo bastards', 'No more Provie Fenian bastards are using our road'".

While some parents and the teachers were getting the children out of the back of Holy Cross via the Crumlin Road, there was total panic at the opposite side of the school, on the Ardoyne Road, where parents had gathered not knowing what was happening to their children.

Brendan Mailey, who became the main spokesman for the nationalist "Right to Education" group (“RTE” set up by the parents as a response to the crisis) says "There were rumours going around that the school itself had been attacked, that loyalists had surrounded it and were still trying to get inside."

"There was all sorts of panic and hand-to-hand fighting. RUC and British Army jeeps arrived to put up a line between the parents and the loyalists".

"We were faced with a line of about two to three hundred loyalists shouting 'That is the end of it, you are not getting up here no more'. Then we got word that the teachers had brought the kids out".

Chris McDonald, father of Holy Cross girl Nicole (10), says by then "the cops were really crapping themselves because they were caught in between two crowds who were wanting to murder each other".

Elaine Burns, a motherly woman who has worked for many years with the Ardoyne Association, describes how she tried desperately to get through police lines to find her daughter, Leona (7).

"As far as we were concerned she was trapped in the school but the police pushed us back with their perspex shields. We were distracted, I was shaking and heartsore".

"There was a mob of loyalists and bottles and bricks flying about; panic, confusion, fear. People were crying and asking others if they had seen their children".

"Mothers were screaming and fathers were like bulls trying to get through while the loyalists were shouting they were going to attack the school and burn it down and that we were scumbags".

"Then word got round that the teachers were bringing them out the back to the Ardoyne shops". That started a stampede as parents turned around and began running away from Holy Cross towards the shops.

"Everybody started to run, it was like a marathon race, down past the new houses, onto the Crumlin Road. All the people from Glenbryn rushed in the opposite direction, trying to get out further up the Crumlin Road", says Chris McDonald.

His wife, Rita (33), an IT co-ordinator, takes up the story, "There was no one left for the loyalists to fight on the Ardoyne Road so they ran towards the Crumlin to stop the parents getting up the other way". It was chaos.

At this stage hundreds of Ardoyne nationalists had gathered on the Crumlin Road. The police appeared to lose control. British soldiers continued to arrive in large armoured vehicles. People who were only out shopping joined in. Nobody knew what was happening.

"People started to take their frustrations out however they could. Loyalists were hitting Alliance Avenue and nationalists were hitting back at the houses in Glenbryn and cars were getting wrecked", says Rita McDonald.

"The police hadn't a clue what they were doing. Carloads of loyalists started arriving. It got to the stage that both sides just wanted to kill each other and get at each other whatever way they could."

Miraculously, no-one was killed, or even badly hurt.

That night fierce rioting raged until the early hours. Chief Superintendent Maxwell, who had returned from his funeral in Larne to find "the place had gone to hell," says it was one of the worst nights of his career.

"We had sustained rioting right throughout that night. The police were out-numbered but we had had to sort it. There were three blast bombs thrown, acid bombs, paint bombs. Things were really tense right throughout the night."

Meanwhile, parents and the wider community in Ardoyne met at the community centre to decide their next move.

"There was shouting and yelling," says Sean Carmichael. "I don't think anyone would have supported proposals to cause harm to anyone else. It was just the thought of young children being abused".

There were concerns raised that if parents did not walk the direct route to Holy Cross the following day, there could be a domino effect with at least four other Catholic schools targeted in the same way.

"It might not have ended in North Belfast, it could have spread throughout the six counties", says Carmichael.

Father Brady told the meeting he hoped it was a "one off" and the best thing might be to take the back route for the rest of term, but others did not agree.

"Those who were first on the scene on the 19th said they recognised a lot of known UDA faces. It was agreed we should not storm into this blind. It was time for cool heads to see what tomorrow might bring", says Sean Carmichael.

In their homes, parents and children discussed what had happened and what they should do the following day. Some decided, then and there, not to try and make it to school the following morning, others were equally determined that life must go on as normal.

Amongst the couples agonising over what to do were Elaine Burns and her husband, Danny, a postman. "We talked to Leona and told her that something bad had happened but that both of us were going to take her to school the next day", says Elaine.

Brendan Mailey says his daughter Rachel (8) was "too young to fully understand what was happening. I think the children were really bewildered as to what was going on at that stage".

"You tend to tell children lies to keep them calm. You know exactly how serious it is, but you tell the child that it's just a little problem".

Colette Cassidy says she decided not to send Caitlin back on the 20th. "The child was totally hysterical, petrified. Caitlin was one of the first children to go on diazepam. She just couldn't face walking past the mob again".

"There was no way I would have forced her through. It was her decision. It was her last year at Holy Cross. A week or two and she was going to be finished. She was upset, though, about not taking part in her leaving play or saying goodbye to her teachers and friends".

Colette, like other parents, offered to drive her child to school the following day, but Caitlin declined, "she was that frightened".

Liz Murphy's daughter, Niamh kept on asking that night if she would be going to school in the morning. "I had to let Niamh know that she hadn't done anything wrong and she was entitled to go to her school".

"If I had had said no, she would have assumed she had done something wrong and she was being punished. She seemed happy enough because she really didn't understand what was going on. It was like a jigsaw to her".

On the morning of June 20th, a group of parents assembled, some without their children until they saw the lie of the land. They began walking up the road. A line of policemen and vehicles was strung across, blocking their path.

Elaine Burns says "They didn't speak to us except to inform us that we were not permitted to take our children up the road because it wasn't safe. We said the police were there to make sure we were safe but they said they couldn't protect us and we couldn't go any further".

Sean Carmichael has a slightly more detailed memory, remembering how the police at first told parents to walk up the left-hand pavement and reassured them that armoured vehicles would protect their flank from the loyalists.

This was rapidly countermanded with the police deciding no men would be allowed to walk the road, only women and children. He accuses the police of effectively acting as intermediary with the loyalists.

As the loyalists' demands changed, so did police tactics. "Then they threw their jeeps across the road and said nobody was getting up. There was a stand-off for about half an hour before Mrs Tanney sent word the school wouldn't be opening".

"There was a lot of anger and parents were shouting at the cops who, as usual, were manhandling people and pushing them out of the way. The loyalists just stood in the background laughing at us".

"At no stage during the protest in June did the RUC make a neutral decision. At no stage did they tell the loyalists 'Look, it's very important these children get to school. We are putting them through no matter what'".

"They allowed the loyalists to dictate security," said Carmichael, claiming he and other parents witnessed RUC officers facing the protesters joking and laughing with them.

Liz Murphy says she couldn't believe what she was seeing. "I thought the police would push the loyalists back. The cops were incapable of doing their job; they were incapable of handling the loyalists. They bowed to threats, facilitated them and blockaded the road".

"There were stones thrown, again by the loyalists, and our ones, naturally enough, threw them back".

One woman, says Liz, had climbed a wall to get a better view of what was happening and had seen an armed loyalist running into a house. "A (police) jeep did fly down but nothing more came out of it. It was never on the news and nobody was arrested".

This was, arguably, a point where decisive police action could have halted the protest in its tracks. It had yet to build up a head of steam and swift deterrent action might have averted a more serious protest.

Parents find it difficult to believe that, had the boot been on the other foot, a similarly small group of Catholics would have faced the police down so comprehensively.

Even though confronted with a hostile loyalist crowd, the police eventually allowed three parents to walk up the road, accompanied by one police officer, to see if the school was going to open.

"The abuse they got was wild, they were called 'Fenian bastards', 'whores' and 'sluts'", says Liz Murphy. "We decided to bring Niamh home although a few took their kids up through St Gabriel's."

"But if you had started going in through the back door, the next thing they would have blocked that, which would have had the knock-on effect of blocking another three Catholic schools".

"Niamh was in a bad way that morning because of the stones that were thrown at us. She was backing herself into a wall with fear. She asked me questions for the rest of the day about whether they were going to kill us all".

One of the other parents there was Geraldine McGrandles (29), mother of Danielle (8). "It made me angry that the police were facing us, beating us down the road, shoving us with their batons, while the loyalists were behind them, shouting abuse and throwing things at us".

Brendan Mailey says he hadn't known what to expect on the second day. "I thought there'd be a few loyalists on the way up to school doing a bit of verbal intimidation, but we didn't expect there to be a full blockade of the road by the RUC.

"The police told us the loyalists were prepared to use violence, so parents would have to go up the other way.

"Some of us did go up the back way then, thinking there was only a week to the end of term, but even on the Crumlin Road loyalists confronted us shouting that we would never get up the Ardoyne Road again so we might as well get used to it".

"There were TV cameras following us up but once we got up to St Gabriel's, Father Kenneth wouldn't let them in. I had a bit of an argument with him but he said he didn't want St Gabriel's pulled into the controversy".

Maura Lindsay had a better idea than most what to expect, living as her family does right on the peaceline. "The RUC faced us and our wee children dressed in full riot gear. The loyalists stood behind them jeering. They could do what the hell they wanted".

"As far as the RUC was concerned, it was the parents and the children who were the problem, not the hundreds of hate-filled protesters behind them".

Not wanting to stand about too long with the already upset Amy, who suffers from chronic asthma, she decided that was effectively the end of her summer term.

Unknown to parents trying to get to school, there was yet another drama being played out. Before the loyalists had gathered on the road that morning, convincing Anne Tanney to close the school for a day, several mothers had already left their children there.

Lisa Irvine was one of the early arrivals with her only child, Shannon (9) in the back of her car. Another mother who had arrived early, only to find the school closed, was Lynda Bowes.

When the two of them realised the protest was under way and that the school day had been disrupted, they rounded up all the stranded children to take them back down the road.

Lynda, in the first car, says she knew she had to "get the hell out of there" when she saw how quickly a crowd had gathered and how hostile it was. Driving the children down the road through the loyalist crowd was "like a scene out of a movie".

"The children in the back of the car, many of whom didn't know me, were panicking and the crowd was really close, virtually sitting on my bonnet and glaring in the windows".

"I told the kids not to look at them and not to worry. I could see the crowd closing in behind me and parting again to let Lisa down. The impression I got was that this would be the last time we would be allowed on the road".

Lisa was in the second car. "I crammed as many kids in the back as I could", she says. "It was like the parting of the Red Sea as I drove towards them. Looking in my rear view mirror, all I could see were them closing in behind us. It was terrifying".

As for how the children themselves responded, some were terrified, while others didn't really understand what was going on. Tina Gallagher (in her 30's) says she tried to minimise what had happened when she got her daughter, Roisin (7) home.

"We didn't want to say too much about it because we didn't know what would happen the next day. We told her that there must have been a football match somewhere and that Rangers were beaten and that was why there was a bit of a riot".

There is, of course, a police explanation for the events of the morning of June 20th. Former Assistant Chief Constable Alan McQuillan says numbers on the nationalist side had swollen to about 200 and 50 on the loyalist. In an effort to keep both sides apart, he says, the police had baton-charged the loyalists.

"Two minutes later police received a report of armed men having been seen in the Glenbryn area. The question was then whether we were going to push the parents and children up the road, bearing in mind there may have been armed men in the area. To me there was no decision".

Chief Superintendent Roger Maxwell says there was fury on the loyalist side after the baton charge and confirms there had been reports of gunmen in Glenbryn. "I ask you, would you have pushed the protesters off the road and told four and five-year-olds that it was safe? Would you?"

"I had two sons aged seven and ten. I was a parent as well. Could I have looked at myself in the mirror if I had done something to endanger the lives of the Holy Cross children?"

On the night of the 20th, another meeting took place in the community centre. "There were a lot of angry parents", remembers Liz Murphy. "Some were shouting to block Protestant schools but a majority said it wasn't fair to inflict on other innocent children what was being done to ours".

Outside, the police were facing another night's intense rioting. Chief Superintendent Roger Maxwell says it was nightmarish. "It was dreadful, there was serious disorder on both sides of the peaceline and then the gunfire began, from both sides, against the police".

"There were blast bombs, petrol bombs and paint bombs thrown at us. I asked Alan (McQuillan) for reinforcements from across Northern Ireland. Thirty-nine police officers were injured and we fired nine plastic baton rounds".

"We had intelligence that the loyalists had blast bombs and were intent on throwing them over the heads of my men at the Catholic crowd. It didn't happen only because of the tactics we employed but the threat never subsided."

The following day, June 21st, a few parents arrived on the Ardoyne Road, trying again to reach Holy Cross. The police were waiting, in full riot gear, face-shields down and body shields up. There weren't more than 50 or 60 protesters on the road.

Some parents turned round and walked up via the Crumlin Road and the back way, but not Tina Gallagher. "I didn't want that. I am proud of my child and I want her to be proud of herself. I didn't feel it (the back route) was safe so she didn't go to school. I got her ready and brought her up every day but we returned home when we saw the police blocking the road. It was coming up to the summer holidays anyway and the kids would be off for eight weeks".

Liz Murphy also decided to try again to reach the school. When her daughter said she was worried that the stones would hurt her parents, Liz tried to reassure her by saying that she would see the stones coming and avoid them but that if the child was too afraid, they would come home.

"Niamh said she would be all right if I held her hand. It was heartbreaking. She was trying to be so brave, to impress us, but deep down inside she was petrified. Away we went to the school and there again were the protesters".

Some of the parents were angry at Father Brady and Anne Tanney's support for the temporary use of the back route. Liz Murphy, for one, says she understood their reasoning, but there was no way she would be setting a precedent and take the back road.

Lynda Bowes also walked her daughter, Amanda, up to police lines on June 21st. "We all met up at the shops with Anne Tanney, Father Kenneth and the rest of the governors".

"Mrs. Tanney said that, for the sake of the children, we should take them up the back. Before this, I had always had a very good relationship with her but I had to say, sorry, I have never refused you anything before, but not this time".

Lynda was shocked at the turn of events. "People cannot believe I come from Ardoyne at times, because I am so naïve. I approached a policeman and asked why they were blocking our path. He blanked me, stonily. He didn't even look at me, as if I wasn't there".

"I told Father Kenneth I wanted somebody in charge to explain why I wasn't allowed to walk my ten-year-old child to school. He went behind police lines but returned to say there was nobody high-ranking enough to speak to. How could it be right that the police decide to allow loyalists to block a road but not explain themselves?"

"I thought it was a direct lie to say there was no-one there authorised to speak to us. Whoever was responsible was too cowardly to face us." Lynda conveyed these views, forcefully, to the nearest police officer.

"I got it all off my chest but when I looked down, our Amanda was in a mess, the tears were streaming down her face. I asked myself what the hell I had just done, frightening her?"

"Amanda had never been so close to a policeman before, especially one dressed like that. She knew I was upset and that something was seriously wrong. I was very, very angry."

Unlike many others, Lynda decided to take the back route for the rest of term. Amanda was just starting to work towards her 11+, a qualifying exam. "The loyalists were still making her suffer by the long hike she had to make, but they weren't going to damage her school record".

What Lynda and other parents could not know was that, even at this stage, the police feared loyalists might bomb the school. Chief Superintendent Roger Maxwell says that, "For the rest of that school term, it was always my big fear that the loyalists would throw the blast bombs we knew they had locally at the children".

On the Glenbryn side of the peaceline, people were playing it by ear. According to Michael Cosby, there was no meeting within the area to get themselves organised until the end of the summer term (over a week after the June 19th incident).

Both he and Potts agree that there was never any democratic vote within Glenbryn on blocking the road nor any discussion on possible alternative ways of raising their grievances.

Cosby says "People just went up and blocked the road. It was the obvious place to make a protest".

Anne Bill, a spokesperson for CRUA (Concerned Residents of Upper Ardoyne, Protestant residents’ group set up to organise the protest), says that the thought that the children might be affected if they blocked the road simply didn't arise.

"People just felt they needed to protest and the Ardoyne Road was the natural place to be. Nobody thought it would mean the kids couldn't get to school", she says.

In an apparent contradiction, however, she adds "If that did happen, people were saying they didn't care about the children. Once and for all, somebody was going to have to listen to us".

Potts adds, "From June onwards, I don't think the community ever let go of the idea of blocking the road. They gave CRUA a chance to resolve it over the summer but what happened later was more or less a continuation of what was done in June".

Cosby says, "Everyone was at one mind about blocking the road. There was no discussion about tactics. It was just a question of organising and making placards".

On the nationalist side, Father Brady counselled parents to play it cool and hope things calmed down over the summer before the start of the September term.

Parents focussed their anger on the school governors. "We were expected to have all of the answers. We didn't", says Terry Laverty. "There was no precedent, no textbook to consult. It was a question of trying to use common sense and to see what was reasonable against the backdrop of ever-increasing threat".

Once the loyalists and police blocked the road, he said, it was a question of deciding whether to take the back road through St Gabriel's. "Obviously, the preference was not to be bullied off the road but some parents thought the back road was acceptable as an intermediate step".

"We couldn't exactly break through the police lines. There were only a couple of weeks to go and we thought, 'Lets go up through St Gabriel's and see what happens'".

The dog days of the summer term played themselves out in a welter of rioting, confusion and a deep foreboding about the summer that lay ahead.

At Holy Cross, the end-of-year play, "Babes in the Wood", went ahead with teachers reading the parts of the missing girls. The teachers, through their union, said it was too dangerous to hold a Sports Day, and it was cancelled.

Another victim of the escalating tension was a farewell party planned by the local Church of Ireland minister, Rev Stewart Heaney, for his friend, the then Catholic parish priest, Father Ken Brady.

"The party had been planned for our church of Emmanuel on 20th June. We had planned to bring children from Wheatfield and Holy Cross along, but what happened on the 19th was the end of that", says Heaney with a sigh.