Although the British and Irish governments don’t recognize the UDA ceasefire, politicians on both sides of the border were anxious that the paramilitary group renew last year’s verbal commitment to a “12-month period of military inactivity.”
Recent meetings between the UDA-linked Ulster Political Research Group and the British and Irish governments have been intended to bolster those within the paramilitaries arguing against violence.
In a statement issued on Tuesday through the UPRG, the organization said it remained suspicious of the intention and objectives of the republican movement. However, it added it wanted to develop relationships with the broader nationalist community and said it hoped that a political agreement that was acceptable to all sides could be agreed upon.
Sinn Fein MP Martin McGuinness said that people would judge the organization by its actions.
“The sectarian attacks which the UDA have been orchestrating must be brought to an immediate end,” he said.
One such incident came this week when a 105-year-old grandmother, Jane Crudden, had to be evacuated from her home by ambulance staff after she was showered with glass when loyalists attacked her North Belfast home.
Crudden, who is bed-ridden, was lying in a downstairs room when four bricks came through the window. Badly shaken, she was carried into an ambulance to be taken to a residential home to recover.
Her family said that the ordeal had left her scared. A Catholic who lives close to the Ardoyne area where she was born, Crudden has 11 children and more than 120 descendants.
There was widespread political condemnation of the attack, which is being blamed on the UDA, as are a series of other attacks last Wednesday. Four homes were attacked with bricks and paint-bombs. Three others were petrol-bombed.
The SDLP lord mayor of Belfast, Martin Morgan, called the attack “despicable and disgraceful.”
“My message to the thugs responsible for it is clear: there is no place for sectarianism in the new Belfast,” he said.
Cliftondene Gardens, where Crudden lives, is a comfortable residential street in the north of Belfast. But houses there and in surrounding streets have been boarded up and a number are for sale.
The street’s misfortune is that it has become one of North Belfast’s disputed areas. Protestant numbers have been dwindling in many areas in the north of city, leaving a series of tough ghettos where loyalists see themselves as besieged by Catholics.
Last year the UDA in North Belfast was taken over by a new brigadier, nicknamed “Bonzer,” who has asserted his authority by launching a previous wave of attacks in the adjoining Deerpark Road area. He has convictions for extortion and UDA membership.
The British security minister, Jane Kennedy, condemned the attack as “particularly repugnant and carried out for no reason other than base sectarianism. The perpetrators of this attack are cowardly, mindless thugs.”
Speaking after a quantity of explosives, weapons and ammunition were found in North Belfast, SDLP assemblyman Alban Maginness has expressed his outrage at the continued level of paramilitary activity in the area.
“The people of Ardoyne have suffered enough at the hands of paramilitaries,” he said. “It is time for this suffering to end. Paramilitary organizations must realize that they are not wanted within any community and represent nothing more than moral and political evil.” he said.