Background

The Holy Cross dispute occurred in 2001 and 2002 in the Ardoyne area of north Belfast, Northern Ireland. During the 30-year conflict known as The Troubles, Ardoyne had become segregated — Protestants lived in one area and Catholics in another.

This left Holy Cross—a Catholic primary school for girls—stuck in the middle of a Protestant area.

In June 2001, Protestant loyalists began picketing the school, claiming that Catholics were regularly attacking their homes and denying them access to facilities. For weeks, hundreds of protesters tried to stop the schoolchildren and their parents from walking to school through their area. Some protesters shouted sectarian abuse and threw stones, bricks, fireworks, blast bombs and urine-filled balloons at the schoolchildren and their parents.

Hundreds of riot police, backed up by British soldiers, escorted them through the protest each day.

The “scenes of frightened Catholic schoolgirls running a gauntlet of abuse from loyalist protesters as they walked to school captured world headlines”.

Death threats were made against the parents and school staff by a loyalist paramilitary group called the Red Hand Defenders. The protest was condemned by politicians from both sides and by people from both the Catholic and Protestant communities.

Some likened the protest to child abuse and compared the protesters to American white supremacists in 1950s Alabama. The first picket took place in June, during the last week of school before the summer break. It resumed on 3 September, at the beginning of the new school term, and lasted until 23 November.

During this time, the protest sparked fierce rioting between the two communities in Ardoyne. The loyalists agreed to “suspend” the protest after being promised tighter security for their area. In January 2002, a scuffle between a Protestant and a Catholic woman outside the school sparked a large-scale riot in the area.

The picket was not resumed and the situation has been mostly quiet since then.