CNN logo
Navigation


Infoseek/Big Yellow


Pathfinder/Warner Bros


Barnes and Noble
World banner
rule

Raging protesters force Blair to take cover

Blair shoved by protester

In this story:

October 13, 1997
Web posted at: 9:26 p.m. EDT (0126 GMT)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- Jeering Protestant protesters shouted "Traitor!" and jostled British Prime Minister Tony Blair on Monday, forcing him to take cover shortly after his historic handshake with Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams.

The protest erupted when Blair visited a Belfast shopping center after the first meeting in more than 70 years between a British prime minister and an Irish republican leader.

Women at the shopping center put on rubber gloves and thrust their hands at Blair, screaming, "You are contaminated! You have shaken hands with a murderer!"

One woman threw a rubber glove at Blair, hitting him in the chest. As the angry crowd surged forward, armed police formed a cordon around Blair and ushered him into a bank.

Blair's meeting with the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, in an attempt to bring peace to Northern Ireland, also drew fierce criticism from Protestant leaders furious that it might bestow respectability upon Sinn Fein.

Ken Maginnis, of the Ulster Unionist Party, the main pro-British Protestant group, said it was "demeaning for the prime minister of the United Kingdom to be meeting unreconstructed terrorists like Gerry Adams."

'If we don't seize the opportunity now ...'

But Blair reassured them that he would hold the IRA to the commitment it made to non-violence in exchange for Sinn Fein's entry to the peace talks.

"That is what they accepted and that is what we will hold them to," Blair said.

Blair also met with leaders of seven other Northern Ireland parties involved in peace talks before emerging to defend his meeting with Adams.

"We can continue with the hatred and the despair and the killing, treating people as if they were not parts of humanity, or we can try and settle our differences by negotiation, by discussion, by debate," Blair said.

"So, that's what's important, whether it's with Gerry Adams or with the Loyalist people I met, or with anyone else."

British officials said Blair told Sinn Fein leaders that they and other parties to the peace talks had a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shape history.

"If we don't seize the opportunity now, we may not see it again in my lifetime," an official quoted Blair as telling Adams. "It's a very rare thing for humanity to make sense of history but that's exactly what we've got to do."

'The best thing ... is to shake hands'

Blair told Adams, "You either end up as victims of your history or you make sense of it. ... I do believe this is one of the moments in history when things can be moved forward."

Despite the protests, not everyone in Northern Ireland opposes the meeting or the talks that are to follow. One man, a Protestant with loyalties to Britain, said it's important for everyone to put the past behind them.

"They had to get together," he said. "It's been 30 years."

It is a sentiment echoed on the Catholic side of town, where one man said, "The best thing to do is shake hands."

"If Tony Blair has the courage," said another, "we need to do the same."

British officials say Blair was encouraged and senses a strong desire to end the decades of strife between Catholics and Protestants over British rule.

The last British prime minister to shake hands with an Irish republican leader was David Lloyd George, who met Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins in negotiations in 1921 that led to the partition of Ireland.

Adams plays down handshake

Adams himself played down the historic handshake.

"Well, I have shaken hands with many people," he told reporters. Adams stressed his determination to unite Ireland, an aim vehemently opposed by Northern Ireland's Protestant majority.

"We want to see Irish unity," he said. "We want (Blair) to be the prime minister that helps bring that about and, indeed, as I said to him, we want him to be the last British prime minister with jurisdiction in Ireland."

Correspondent Siobhan Darrow and Reuters contributed to this report.

 
rule

Special Sections:

Related stories:

Related sites:

Note: Pages will open in a new browser window

External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.

Infoseek search  

rule
Message Boards Sound off on our message boards

You said it...
rule
To the top

© 1997 Cable News Network, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.

Terms under which this service is provided to you.