Protestant paramilitaries plotted to murder Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble as he inched towards sharing power with Catholics, the Sunday World can reveal.
THE posting online of a vile video showing members of the Orange Order mocking the murder of Michaela McAreavey has been widely condemned. Last week in another video Pastor Barrie Halliday appeared on social media describing Catholics as “rats that need to be murdered with rifles and grenades”. Both of these actions are evidence of an existing underlying sectarianism within northern society that has its roots in English colonialism and in the deliberate fostering by the British state in Ireland of division between Catholics and Protestants. The Loyal Orders have long played a prominent role in promulgating this. That sectarianism still exists is not surprising. Unionist political leaders and their British allies often play the Orange card as they seek to maximise their electoral vote or secure an advantage in a negotiation. Since partition there are few Catholic families in the North that have not had direct experience of sectarianism, of discrimination in employment or housing,