Category: Northern Ireland

A Near National Disaster In the 40’s, you would have thought Ireland was nearer Australia than Britain for all the majority of the residents of Britain knew about the place and, I’m afraid, when I was dispatched there by the Navy in ’42, I fell squarely into that category too. In fact I knew more about France, which is about the same distance off-shore, than I did of Ireland. When I was sent, I had some vague idea I was going to the green and pleasant land I had seen depicted in the cinema. One person who had helped to confirm the British concept of Ireland was Barry Fitzgerald with his portrayal of the Irish as either dotty eccentrics, or slightly oily, very obsequious, forelock tugging, guileful little folk, who, in a minute, would bite the hand that fed them while smiling into the other’s eyes. The myths, too, perpetuated in song and on canvas, of thatched cottages and donkeys with their panniers in the peat cuttings, of this nirvana across the pond with its four million population, have been fostered in the minds of its 50 million ex-pats in the USA. In actual fact one has to search the wilder extremes of the country to find this idyll, which ironically is shrinking with every pound or punt poured in by the same ex-pats.

The media reports during the seventies, eighties and nineties, of the internecine war, so euphemistically referred to as ‘The Troubles’, have changed all that, but only marginally. The real Ireland is none of these, it is so much better and it is worse, it is beautiful beyond belief and in places it is an anachronism, held solid in the aspic of its own myths and prejudices; but above all it is a contradiction. To make the point, take the phrase itself, ‘The Troubles’, a euphemism if there ever was one, and so at odds with what the ‘Troubles’ really represent. It is certainly an interesting reflection on an absurd sense of propriety when one considers that working class women used to refer to their gynaecological ills in the same terms, perhaps they still do – the comedian, the late Les Dawson, used to make great play of womens’ ‘troubles’ in his Northern sketches. When one lives in Northern Ireland, in spite of every attempt to be liberal and non-biased, one soaks up the political atmosphere unknowingly because it enters the pores, like the sun on a Costa beach, until the whole of one’s perceptions become coloured. It may not affect one’s outlook, nor one’s attitudes to individuals, but it is there, like a third eye peering over the shoulder, looking for the bias in others and mentally countering every statement with the question, ‘is that really so?’ This conditioning starts the day one arrives and continues from then on. It was there in the ’70’s daily, and to give a taste of the stress it could produce I write about the theft of the drawings.

The Theft Of The Drawings At the time I was tendering for a large contract, worth enough to bring contractors over from the Mainland to consider pricing. The drawings for the job ran into two rolls of between thirty and forty drawings a roll, and these I permanently kept in the boot of the car so I could meet the contractors straight from the plane and take them to the sites.

My younger daughter borrowed the car to go to the Queen’s Film Society and while she was at the screening the car was stolen. We suspected it was the paramilitaries and this had me very worried because these drawings indicated where so much sensitive material was to be found, vital to the life blood of the area – the high pressure gas mains, feeding every thing including the chicken incubators of County Down, the high octane aeroplane fuel lines, telephone links and so on were all marked and described so the contractors would be able to price for the necessary precautions. The thought of their theft had never been envisaged. What to do? I thought long and hard for most of the night when I heard the news, and came to the conclusion that there was really nothing anyone could do but worry. It would have taken almost the whole of the British Army to have guarded everything depicted there and even then terror might have struck. I decided to stay stum, let the bosses enjoy their sleep, and await developments.

Within ten days the car was returned. There was no spare wheel, my golf clubs and other personal effects were gone, the engine had been tuned like a racer and the old valve was in the pocket to prove it. It had done a thousand miles in those ten days which said much for what it had carried and the drawings were lying flat in the boot, untouched, which in turn said something about the people who had stolen the car and the drawings! The relief was unimaginable – unless one has experienced it!

Any right thinking person had to be sympathetic to the young men who were sent over here, whether they wanted to come or not, to become potential targets for hidden snipers. That was not all, their living conditions were apparently appalling and they were not permitted to mix with the Town’ people, for obvious reason – I had the impression it was as close to being in jail as one could get without committing a crime. The result was that they lived as we had in the warships, something which we accepted because times were harder in those days. The rest of the army in Britain, with the availability of more money, pressure groups, reducing recruitment, and the greater choices open to young people, made the living standards in general of the armed forces  unrecognisable to old sweats like me.

When I tried to persuade Gwen, my aunt, to come over here for a holiday, the fuss her friends made was unbelievable and the way they described what might happen to her if she agreed brought home to me, not only the ignorance, yet again, of the English in Irish affairs, but how the parents of the soldiers must have felt and still feel. With the pressure from the job, the pressure from home and the tedium of confined living and no relief, it was surprising the men retained their humour, but they did, if perhaps in a cynical sense. I remember several instances of this, two in particular.

A mature woman, living in a corner house in one of the Republican areas in or near the Falls district, had been annoying a group of soldiers who were supposed to patrol the area by rushing out, as soon as they appeared, and banging the pavement with her bin lid, a general warning signal used to great effect in the area in the 70’s. In the end the sergeant decided to put a stop to it.

‘Everyone bring their mug’, he said and that was all. The men duly climbed into the Land Rover armed with all their equipment plus their mugs. They arrived at the woman’s house so quickly she had no time to get the bin lid and immediately on arrival the Sergeant and corporal went to her door and knocked. While he was waiting he told the corporal to bring all the men who were not on guard to the garden path with their mugs. When the woman opened the door he started to talk to her, but shielded her from view in the street, he then told his corporal to collect the mugs and pass them to him. A few moments later he passed the mugs back, one at a time and instructed the men to appear to drink. Finally he ordered the men back into the Landrover and with a salute and a loud ‘Thank you for the tea!’, they left.

Apparently, they were hardly round the corner when the woman had one of her windows broken by a neighbour. That story was going the rounds, but another along the same lines was witnessed by our Senior Tracer and can be vouched for. She was going to catch the bus to go to work when she saw a sight, which totally mystified her. She waited to see what it was all about.

A lorry full of soldiers had stopped, the men had dismounted, and some had dustbin lids in their hands, they all tiptoed down a long road in the Springfield Road district. They spread out along the centre of the road and waited. On a signal, the ones with the lids bashed the road, giving the well known signal and within seconds a number of doors burst open and men, putting on clothes, ran into the street, into the arms of those without lids but with repeating rifles pointing at where the men’s breakfast should be. A cynical sense of humour? Maybe!. Devious? Definitely!

I intended writing about the RUC sometime, but do so now, not as a rant, but to draw attention to the reports we had at the time of the Gulf War and currently of the two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where my relatives and friends are being asked to fight without the proper means and support. The details are in the Press daily, but there is little action by the Authorities. I can vouch, being at a disadvantage, unnecessarily, is frustrating, dangerous and stupid.

In the 70’s, aged 50, with a large staff, and responsibility for a number of Civil Engineering projects, I would have been silly to volunteer for service with the Police, part time, at night. I was aggravated by the IRA calling shooting old men in the back, as ‘legitimate Targets’, whose sole selection was they performed a menial, civilian task in a police station. – the Press called them ‘soft targets’ – they were unarmed and unsuspecting. I believe, an ‘army’, means fighting head on, not one or two civilians, bombing and shooting indiscriminately. In Armagh a young police woman, merely carrying documents was shot in the back and killed. This was the last straw – the police were under severe stress, working incredible hours and the shootings and bombings were at their height. The police woman, part time, was married with children. I joined up, primarily to relieve one professional at least, from standing guard duty, something I could reasonably do. He could get on with policing.

A new world, new procedures, a new uniform, and more study. We had to understand the Law as applied to policing, shoot a Walther, 9mm automatic (007’s choice), accurately, and mostly stand guard duty at the barracks, a judge’s house, or ride around in an armoured Land Rover, going to ‘incidents’ at speed. The average policeman, unsurprisingly, was like any other serviceman, interested in guns, his job, football and so on. There was, naturally, the odd bad apple. Sometimes I had to stand at the gate of the barracks, checking the traffic and watching all those places where a sniper could shoot me with equanimity – no chance of being caught. I was amazed no one had ever had a pop. One night, we were drinking coffee and eating buns at ‘break’ when there was a call. We shot off at speed, but when we arrived at a house which had been shot up by a speeding car, the Army and another patrol were already there, so we stood in a group, under a street lamp discussing. I wondered if it had been a set-up, and casually pointed out that someone in the nearby wooded Cave Hill could shoot several of us easily and get away and that we should disperse. It was met with derision

Sometimes we sat in a small hut at a judge’s house singly or in pairs, or manned street barriers looking for arms; then I rushed to keep guard in the hedge with the Stengun, my Golf Club was nearby and I didn’t want to nab a friend for drink-driving. Once, a car entered the drive of the judge’s house with two young people in it, when they saw the uniform and the Sten they reversed hurriedly. Another night a regular copper asked me what I would do if I was in a pub and the IRA made a hold up. I said I would have a go. He pointed out that, presupposing I shot the raiders, I would be standing there in civvies, holding a smoking gun, if the army came running, they would shoot first and ask questions after. Some weeks later that scenario was played out in a garage in N. Belfast and a part-time policeman in civvies was killed. The most hairy part of being a policeman, for me, was during office hours when I had to supervise work in ‘No Go Areas’, where the IRA were receiving protection payments and I, a copper, was carrying a gun.

The number of ironic stories attributable to the heightened atmosphere of the ‘Troubles’ are legion, this is just another. While you read what follows, bear in mind, if you will, that I was originally English, also Protestant, ex- Navy and a civil servant working in sensitive areas, and if I had been needed at the time of Suez I would have held the temporary rank
of Commander.

It was just an ordinary day in the early 70’s, I was on my way home after taking site photographs and had finished late. It was well past lunch time, the day was fine and dry and I was in a good mood. Out into the road stepped a Royal Marine with his hand up, I was being stopped – an everyday occurrence. “Park over there,” he said pointing to the other side of the road, I complied. “Get out of the car and open the boot,” he continued. By now his companions were surrounding my car and pointing their rifle at me. Well, why not? They had to point somewhere. I opened the boot. Lying there were two expensive cameras, films, lenses of various sizes, and other equipment amounting to a tidy sum, even on the second-hand market. “Go and open the bonnet” He said, starting to rummage. I am sure that the stories I had heard about the proclivities of the Royal Marines, when I was a sailor, were totally apocryphal, slanderous in the extreme, and Marines are really loveable, almost to the degree of being cuddly – but – as I was on my own with no witnesses to confirm what I had started out with, just to be on the safe side, I refused, politely but firmly.

“I said, ‘open the bonnet’” He reiterated. “Of course I will,” I said quite reasonably, “when you’ve finished here.” While this was going on his colleague was in my car looking through my correspondence, and a friend drove past and waved to me and I waved back. The first soldier repeated himself and I refused, adding “I am supposed to be present when my car is being searched. When you have finished, I’ll lock the boot and then you can look in the bonnet.” The argument went on until he had finished, his companion was still going through the car.

The same friend drove up and wound down her car window. ” My God,” she said, “Are you still here?” and laughed at my wry expression, it had been a considerable time since she had last passed.. “You wouldn’t think,” I said, taking the opportunity to make a point, “that I’m one of the few English civil servants in this neck of the woods.” She laughed, shook her head and drove off. I opened the bonnet after locking the boot. The marine now went to look in there. I got into the car and switched on the radio. By this time the Marine’s colleague who had been reading my mail was on the radio to base, telling them that they had a desperate criminal with a car registration number of XXXXX.

However, that was not the final curtain, there were a couple of scenes still to run. The officious Marine, I thought of as ‘Chummy’, toured the district with three others of whom two were supposed to be stationed away from the searchers to cover them from other directions, but the dialogue between Chummy and me had been so interesting that one, who had been within earshot, had been edging closer and closer, abandoning his position in favour of the drama. At this juncture, probably bored to death, he decided to take a hand and as I sat tuning the car radio he stuck his rifle into my face and said “Get out!” I must admit I was taken aback. “Why, I?” asked, reasonably, “What now, all I’m doing is waiting for your mate to clear me as he will.” “Get out, or I’ll shoot!” he said this time. I think if there had been a witness I would have put him to the test to see if he really would, but one man on his own with no witnesses should never tempt fate. I got out. We had only been together for twenty minutes so I had not really had a chance to build any bridges, we still hated one another, even when I left.

That evening I was seated watching TV when I saw my beloved wife come in through the front door beckoning some men in camouflage to follow her. She stuck her head into the room and said, “I was sorry for these poor chaps, I’ve brought them in for coffee or a beer.” She wondered why I laughed, but she was too busy with her social duties to find out, she had four mouths to feed. That’s right, they were Royal Marines!

On the site of a large sewage works under construction in the 70’s I was telephoned from Head Office to be told that bombs were ‘on all the bridges’, this meant rail, road and river. I closed the site to give the men time to get home and tried to pick a route for myself which would be trouble free. It was at the height of the bombing campaign by the IRA, At every turn I was frustrated and slowly found myself herded by circumstance into what was then thought of as ‘no-go’ areas At one point soldiers appeared from behind a hedge and held me at gun point until they were satisfied I was bona fide. I then had to decide whether to either drive through a certain UDA (Protestant militant) barrier or possibly one set by the IRA. I chose the former. I found railway rails driven into the roadway at junctions by the UDA to stop speeding bombers, a not unusual occurrence.

I was brought up short at a barrier with no escape route except to retreat the way I had come. I locked all the doors of the car and put the car into reverse with the clutch out and the engine running, while deciding what to do. A young thug dressed in camouflaged army surplus, with a bush-hat over his eyes, swaggered over to the car and knocked on the window. “Show me your licence,” he said, parroting the police and military in similar circumstances. “I will not” I said, firmly. I resented these vigilante groups almost as much as the IRA itself, although I could understand their predicament. “You’ve no right to ask.” I added. This conversation went on its boring, and repetitive way until finally I became fed up and said, ” you might as well let me through, because I’m not giving you my licence.” The irony and indeed stupidity of the whole performance was that when I was stopped by the barrier, I was leaving the area they were supervising, not entering it.

At this point a large man in his forties appeared, not in camouflage, but clearly a man to be reckoned with. His gait was steady if slow and his face expressionless. By this time, while outwardly calm, I was in a state of high tension. Alone, with no witnesses, completely vulnerable to say the least, I had made a stand and now was not the time to capitulate. There ensued a question and answer session between the two men and then the older man asked me if I had any other means of identification Luckily, I had a work pass which I showed through the closed window. This seemed acceptable, and I was about to put the car into forward gear, preparatory to departure when the man said, “Get out and open the boot.” I hadn’t expected that, caught off balance, incensed, I made a totally stupid remark at anytime, but especially in those circumstances. “If you intend stealing the car,” (a common occurrence at that time), “you’ll have to steal me with it, I’m not giving it up.” “No!” the man said, “I just want to see into your boot.” “I suppose I have to trust you,” I said, he nodded, I opened the boot. Inside was a valuable set of golf clubs belonging to a professional, circuit golfer, each club chosen and modified to suit I was scared it would be ‘liberated’. “A golfer,” he said, smiling broadly, “what’s your handicap?”

The sudden volte face, the drop in tension, the banality of the words in this charged situation, was nearly my undoing. I silently got back into the car, the barrier was removed and I drove round the corner for a hundred yards; I could go no further. The tension, the build up of adrenaline in the system, and then the sudden release had produced a pain in my back of paralysing proportions. For a while all I could do was sit there and wait for it to disperse, my brain in limbo.

Over the years I have had a number of stressful instances, and this final one made me evaluate the degrees of fear, from apprehension to terror, an exercise I found illuminating and totally contrary to what I had expected. The problem was I could not generalise, we are all different and must respect that.

There is so much to Northern Ireland that is so enjoyable, so worthy, so beautiful, I must share it, but this inevitably means I have at some point, to mention those two incredible, euphemistic words, ‘The Troubles’, not in the context of politics, and rarely touching on the frustration and horror, more, about ordinary people living in spite of them. When I say that I was total ignorant of what Ireland was like, and didn’t even know it was divided nationally, you will realise the overall lack of interest in that country by the Brits right up until the ‘Troubles’ .For this reason Northern Ireland did not change radically until recently, we were held, as it were, in an aspic of ignorance, and later, fear of involvement in the backlash of war.

I met James in 1943 along with his daughter. He was a quiet man, never given to raising his voice or exhibiting temper. He was strong, tough and had been a sportsman in his early manhood, playing football for Crusaders, a local team, and running in cross country races. Reticent, generous and always smiling he had started work apprenticed to a Printer, losing the tip of his little finger in the process, but he was earning so little compared with his friends, he joined them in Harland and Wolf’s shipyard where he became a Leading Plater – the toughest of trades.

He would describe how, when he was apprenticed, they formed the shaped steel plates for the keel, bow, and stern as well as others plates. Later there were hydraulic presses, rollers and punches, working on cold metal. When he started the plate was heated to red heat, the men, stripped to the waist, holding sledge hammers, stood in a queue, ran in, in turn, and hit the plate a single blow, accurately, and then ran clear because of the heat.

James, And The Early Troubles The first time I ever heard any deep discussion on the Northern Ireland political theories, was one night when there had been some trouble or other in Belfast, long since forgotten. That night Jimmy told me of the twenties and thirties. He was apolitical, and, held no brief for discrimination. He told me of how, in the early thirties, the men at the shipyard were worried for their jobs as so many had been laid off, even to the extent that through lack of traffic passing along the Queen’s Road supplying the shipyard, grass was growing between the granite sets. He said that there had been marches to Stormont and the City Hall and the interesting part of those marches was that both factions had buried the hatchet, and Catholic and Protestant were marching in unison. He alleged, that when this situation was realised, a false wedge was driven between the two factions so that they went back to addressing their separate grievances and left the unemployment problem alone. James was never given to hyperbole nor political extremism, therefore I believed him and with hindsight I am convinced he was right.

James got himself into difficulties on one occasion through his broadminded attitude to religious bigotry. The situation was similar to those experienced over the last decades but lasted only a short time. People were shot on the doorsteps or put out of their rented houses simply because they were of the wrong religion, and people who had the lack of foresight to marry someone from the other religion, even if they never went to church, were also shot. At the time he owned a small shop as insurance against redundancy and Catholic customers living in a mainly Protestant York Road area, came to him to be helped across sectarian lines of demarcation to get to their own kind in safety. James, well thought of by both communities was able to ferry them, on foot, by his own routes to the Catholic districts. On one occasion though, things were not so simple. James had been standing in the door of the shop one evening when he heard a shot coming from the shop on an adjacent corner It was an off-licence owned by a Catholic, Without thinking James entered the shop to find Paddy lying dead on the floor of his shop and at that moment the door opened and a policeman entered, gun in hand, to find James leaning over the body. “Think yourself lucky it was me who came in.” said the constable, “If it had been anyone else who didn’t know you they would have shot first and asked questions after.’

In 1944, as an Englishman, I was welcomed into an Ulster Protestant family with liberal views, and if you read a piece entitled James, you will see the level of that liberalism. This is not a detailed sortie into Irish history, just a preface to the pieces concerning the Northern Ireland troubles which will be posted in the next few weeks.

Everyone must know that the troubles started long ago even before, Cromwell, The root of them is that the original indigenous population was invaded by the Brits, and later the Scots and others settled here for various reasons, mainly economic and political. There have always been outside influences which have sculpted and moulded politically, mostly to the detriment of the inhabitants. That situation is believed to be still evident by both factions in this country, and this is the nub of the problem – the political perspective is always distorted, and not necessarily always by the inhabitants.

The real flare-up might not have happened if there hadn’t been heavy-handed precipitate action, politically and militarily. My father-in-law told me that often we had been on the brink and drawn back. This time it was for real, and on a percentage basis the majority of the population might have had strong views, but it is my belief that they were not in favour of what was being perpetrated either in their name, or by the other faction. Even if you have strong views, finding a coffee shaking in its cup, on a restaurant table, because a bomb has felled a building in the street behind, and you know you’ll be late home again that night, can cool your ardour. Having officials running their hands over your body in car parks, shops and office entrances is something you will never become accustomed to.

I have been threatened that my house would be burnt down, held up by both factions when I have been on my own and therefore vulnerable, I’ve been threatened to be shot by the Royal Marines, for no reason other than they didn’t like me insisting on the correct search procedures, amazing especially as I was English and a senior civil servant. I look back over the senseless waste of life, time, materials and know that it shouldn’t have happened, because, on a comparative basis, in 1969 I know Northern Ireland was in a better state financially and socially than a large proportion of Great Britain. On the whole I believe that in 1969 there was less cross-political animosity than there had been at any time in my experience. There were definitely wrongs that needed to be righted, but none were so grave as to warrant all that killing or the level of destruction.

No matter what it said in Stormont, nor the political mouthing of platitudes by the UK government, out problems, I believe, have been painted over for appearance’s sake, but deep down those who feel there is opportunity in maintaining what used to be the status quo, will wait. Criminality reached massive proportions during the troubles, eradicating that will have to be the first step, and as some of it is cross-border, and I don’t necessarily mean solely in the South, there is an uphill struggle, which the majority of the men in the street are to war weary to care about.

In spite of having worked in Belfast for fifteen months I was ignorant of this country’s traditions. During the war local differences were dwarfed. Today English School children know ten times more than I did, as I had never seen an Orange Procession until 1946 I looked upon the Orangemen like I did the Scouts and the Salvation Army, a group of like minded people, dressed in uniform because it made them feel more like a unit and marching behind a band because it helped to keep them in step. I was unaware of how easy it was to give offence, especially in regions of political correctness. Unionists, and others, every Twelfth of July, known cryptically as the Twelfth, go to the City Centre to watch the Orangemen march off to what is termed the ‘Field’ where they have a rest, a few noggins and an harangue from their leaders, before marching back

Interestingly, the other faction, the Roman Catholics, the Republicans, believing wholeheartedly in a United Ireland, also have Hibernian Day for marches and political rhetoric, but this is displayed in their own areas and I, in 60 years, have only seen it relayed on TV.

The members of the immediate family I had married into were not Orange men and women, they were, like more the 50% of the population, law-abiding, reasonably contented, Protestants, and that was all. between ’46 and 69, I found people were so busy in getting back their lives after the war, that apart from a few politicals, there was little sectarian strife as a generality. People were brought up in those traditions, but it was nowhere near as rigid as I had been led to believe, until it became as it did in 1969. That is not to say that deep down the prejudices still slumbered, and could be aroused if it was felt that the traditions were being ridiculed, or that some slight was intended. What this family of mine did not tell me was the long list of do’s and don’ts surrounding the Orange Order.

As I have said, in my ignorance I equated the Order no higher the bunch of like-minded people on a level I suppose with Morris Dancers.. I could not have been more wrong. I looked upon them as flamboyant curiosities, especially when I saw some of the Mace-Bearers cavorting like banshees at the head of the column – wrong again. I equated them to some extent to the Trades Unions when I heard their rhetoric. Wrongggg! I therefore made a number of mistakes from which others told me I could have died and it was a wonder I had got away unscathed.

The processions really are unique for the colour, the sheer numbers taking part, the disparate dress each lodge chooses, from the black bowler hat, black double breasted suit and black shoes, white shirt, white gloves and rolled umbrella, with the leaders carrying an unsheathed sword at the address, down to those in bright blue peaked caps with bright blue pullovers and trousers, and tennis shoes. Most lodges carry incredibly beautiful banners on two poles, with staying strings of woven coloured rope held by small children. They often depict King William the Third on a white horse at the battle of the Boyne. This latter specification was mistake number one. In our family, because King W. was at the Boyne, quite naturally therefore he was called Billy the Boyne.

On the day of the first Twelfth I was to see, we all went down to the centre of Town, to Donegal Place, and watched as band after band, banner after banner, passed; the music from one band momentarily mingling with the next. I always wondered at what point in the procession it was impossible to keep in step because of the cacophony from both bands. Laura, now a little over a year old was seated in a pram at the kerb with Sophie behind her, while I was at the back of the crowd because I was tall enough to see over most people and it would have been churlish to have stayed at the front. Suddenly, before I thought of what I was saying, I saw the most beautiful banner of King William on his white horse, and you’ve guessed it, I shouted to Laura to look at ‘Billy-The-Boyne and his white horse. For a second nothing happened and then with one accord most of the people within earshot turned to look at this creature who was blaspheming from the back of the crowd and they were like Queen Victoria, they were not amused. The following year I learned to my cost that one does not cross through the procession even if it does take over an hour to pass one spot, a large pogo-stick is needed, that or a helicopter