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To
those that may read this article, it was penned on
some notes of memories of yesteryear which at times
has me reliving some of those events in my mind. Part
one in a wider political context dealt with, in part
my youth and religion in the article ‘A
Personal Voyage of Taboo' (Archive section the
Blanket) a subject to which I will be returning to
in part at a later stage in this series of articles,
of which there shall be several more. For this article
as with others it can take just but a face or a voice
to remember, so apart from spelling and grammar I
have left this exactly as it is, that is, just a very
small part of what immediately came to mind and noted
down in my growing volumes of scrap pieces of paper
of thoughts of yesteryear. In times ahead I intend
to develop this further but for now but another short
piece for the Blanket..
A
few months ago I accompanied a few writers around
the ‘West’, some came from around Britain
while others from further afield. West Belfast holds
still a lot of interest to many internationally and
is perhaps the most politically researched community
of recent times. Driving around the ‘sights’
of the West of the city and recounting some of its
history I had time to reminisce of times past. Starting
of in Ballymurphy (the Murph) we visited the various
wall murals which speak out from many gable walls
depicting and commemorating various aspects of Irish
history with more especially that of the recent conflict.
Then we visited the ‘Bullring’ an area in
the centre of the ’Murph’, now re-developed,
but twenty odd years past as a child I can remember
playing in or going to the shops with my Gran. And
of course it is an area which holds its own infamous
and famous conflict related stories passed down over
the years.
Coming
into Ballymurphy’s Glenalina Road, the street
to which I was born into in the seventies (so being
called a ‘Murph’ man due to my place of
birth and families upbringing) I see now some material
change. I remember in the late seventies around a
dozen houses in that street alone which were in some
way related to me along with others dotted around
Ballymurphy. Although still ten families remain in
the Murph which are related to myself, changing political
and economic times have meant now more young people
and families are able to move further afield. Like
many, although but a child I hold many memories of
that time and heard much first hand accounts of a
community not willing to bow down to a brutal state
or to any longer take second class citizenship.
Like
many of similar age, as a babe in arms during the
early part of the seventies I originally learnt much
from my relatives, a lot of it intertwined with sport
and politics. I heard personal stories, such as how
my mother, despite a British soldier's gun aimed at
her face broke the curfew to get milk for her hungry
child, of an uncle in the All Ireland finals in Croke
Park which I attended, of another uncle beaten to
an inch of his life in my Gran's front garden by the
‘Paras’, or of the death of another uncle.
Also of my stepfather's father in the Irish Republican
Brotherhood and one if not the first in Belfast to
get the cat of nine tails. I remember also listening
with interest about my Gran known as the ‘Rosary
woman’ because women from the Murph came to her
house in their scores where they prayed and said the
rosary. They prayed for the safety of the young men
from the Murph as they went off to defend the area
during the early day of the ‘troubles’.
This oral generational history I remember and much
more. Yet it is one's own personal memories that remain
etched on my mind of a street and a community which
despite the circumstances had a oneness that attempted
normality in a not so normal situation.
I
remember fondly the personalities and characters of
the street, of the many kids' games and the songs
that accompanied them, of the street 'get togethers'
and my favourite, that of the street bingo. I remember
sadly the young kids burnt to death in their home
in tragic circumstances and remember the wonderment
of witnessing a woman tied to a lamppost with her
hair shaved, tarred and feathered. I remember at times
of seeing the young men, some local, others foreign,
some wounded, others, dying. At times I see the many
faces of old of those from the Murph and it again
at times throws me back to memories, many of them
of fond.
As
we came to the bottom of the street I remembered the
old ‘climbing frame walls’ and the slabs
above the doorways we use to climb up on and sit on
as kids in those long hot summer days. I remember
also the once various openings and shortcuts that
as kids one could use to take you into different streets
and the maze of local Murph alleyways, like many such
areas, now gone through tactical re-planning of estates.
At the bottom of the street I pointed out the old
house of Gerry Adams which most wish to see through
inquisitiveness and the barracks that once stood across
the road, a place as kids where one would vent one's
anger, now where stands a new development of apartments.
Coming out of the Murph we drove down the Whiterock
Road, with on my right the Falls cemetery and park.
The park which once held the ‘coolers’ (an
open air swimming pool) where I frequented as a kid,
now hosts in its place a BMX course. On my left a
new Gaelic football pitch now takes the place of again
a once fortified barracks.
Now
on to the Falls Road, again I remember the regular
local shops I went to when I moved permanently to
Sevastopol street on the lower Falls in the late seventies
with my mum and stepfather, as I had still until then
spent my weekends in my Grans. There was Hectors,
Lenas and Lillylands amongst others and although some
survive many have since closed down. Those with me,
like many others who visit are interested in the whole
history of the community. Yet for those I accompany,
on most occasions it is almost certain that I will
be asked the one same question, one I believe to be
merely of personal inquisitiveness. ‘What was
it like for a black kid growing up in West Belfast
during the height of the troubles? In the time ahead
if time, finance and a publisher permitting I shall
correlate those oral histories and all those memories
jotted down when a word, a face, or a street threw
me back in time to childhood and will endeavour to
write a short book on those primary school years based
on the memories and those various accounts of relatives
and childhood friends. I feel many have told the story
of their involvement in the conflict but few have
covered their thoughts as kids growing up during it,
so for now I will give but a few of those memories.
Just
to note I was also especially inspired in this line
of thought of doing this by Brian Kelly, a contributor
to the Blanket and author of a brilliant book (Race,
Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908 -
21, awarded amongst others the Deutscher award). Also
by Michael Patrick MacDonald the author of ‘All
Souls, a family story from Southie’, whom I spent
a few days with during his last visit to Belfast and
was impressed by both his attitude to life and how
he revisited and articulated his personal account
in such an excellent way in his book. Again a book
well worth a read.
As
we got out at my ‘aul’ street on the lower
Falls which has the Sinn Fein premises at the bottom
of it, those with me took some pictures of the mural
of Bobby Sands that adorns the Gable wall in Sevastopol
street. As they took their pictures I remember standing
at that very wall at seven years old, myself and my
mate being given a crispy pound note for raising our
fist in the air for an American journalist while he
took pictures. I left them now to take their pictures
and dandered up the street and thought of the time
twenty years past looking into the coffin and onto
the face of Bobby Sands at his parents home and remembering
my thoughts which as a child included that of how
alike the outfits of his guard of honour were to those
on my own soldiers I played with at home as a kid.
I walked up to the second house, number four Sevastopol
Street where twenty years past number six was situated
and stood and stared. Although I pass up and down
that road every day from my home now in Turf Lodge
it was the talk of the past that again threw me back
in time. The house like all in the street was now
new, not like the old decaying houses of twenty years
past. The street was all but silent - I closed my
eyes
It was August late afternoon 1979 - ‘Here come
the ‘Scoppies,’ it’s a fucking convoy’.
Here came huge monster tractors and trucks, green
and camouflaged accompanied by ‘sixers’
- small six wheeled tanks - and other armoured vehicles.
They always came out down by Conway street beside
the Divis Flats and could be spotted standing from
the bottom of our street which was across from Lesson
Street. This time though we kids were standing on
top of our wood, our bonfire semi build on the Falls
Rd with the rest ‘planked’ (hidden) behind
a massive timber sheet which stood in between the
Falls Road Library and St Augusta’s youth club.
They came up the Falls - a convoy of monster vehicles
their noise deafening; their job - to remove our bonfire
wood and to cause confrontation.
And
so they came and first beat us off our wood then used
their huge tractors to lift the wood into huge green
trucks and to move the rest up the street so to destroy
our partially built ‘bonnie’ due to be lit
that night. Our sticks, stones and bottles as kids
did little damage to their armoured plated steel,
and so the convoy left as quickly as they came leaving
the remaining wood strewn all over the street. I remember
so vividly women and children all standing at the
doors and then I remember going into the middle of
the street and lifting a small beam into my arms then
walking backwards I started to drag it back to its
original place. I was then joined by my three childhood
mates, then more joined, and although it was mainly
the kids and teenagers who collected and built the
bonfire, on that day women and some older youths came
from their homes and started dragging the wood back
down the street. Later it was decided to have a joint
bonfire in Clonard Street as most of our wood had
been taken by the trucks. 'Wrecked' I went home at
around 10pm and asked my mum to wake me. When I awoke
it was morning. My mum told me she didn’t wake
me because she didn’t want me caught up in the
serious rioting, yet because of missing that bonfire
after the days events that day never did feel complete.
Looking
again in memory through the house I remember the time
late one night in the late seventies when my stepfather,
mother, myself and the other kids walked down from
my stepfather's mother's house on the Ballymurphy
Road back home. In hindsight they have agreed it was
a stupid thing to do as it was the time of the Shankill
Butchers. We were followed all the way down the Falls
by a car with several men in it, the car turned around
several times and followed us again, this from the
Whiterock all the way to our home. I remember knowing
there was something wrong by the look in their faces.
My mum to this day says maybe it was the four young
kids in tow, one each in their arms, or just by the
‘grace of god’. Whatever the case I remember
the settee being laid in font of the door with all
us lying on the ground huddled for what seemed like
hours, then daylight came. Despite their reassurances,
although young I was old enough to know that something
was seriously wrong. To be completely honest, I was
absolutely petrified as I lay there in my mum's arms.
Looking
again at the door, although a different shape and
colour I could see birthdays and Xmases, I could see
twenty years past my mum at the door talking to the
neighbours. Looking up and down the street I could
probably still name most of those that lived there
such was the closeness of the street. In fact at that
time some of them were like a second family to me.
When people ask me what was it like to be a black
kid in the seventies and eighties in the West I believe
they are attempting to ask did I experience racism.
It has to be said that at least during my primary
school days in my own individual experience (Icannot
speak for the handful of other black kids who lived
here at the that time) I can never remember one remark
to my face from an adult, and it was at times but
only curiosity from the kids ('look at that painted
boy' etc. ) of my early years in West Belfast. But
I remember vividly the state forces. I remember that
when almost every army/police jeep that passed me
I was guaranteed racial abuse, From 'you black fenian
bastard' to 'you fenian mongrel'. A particular favourite
of their's shouted out from their vehicles was 'Kootakinti'
or when on patrol they would sneer ‘ hey boy,
boy lick my boots’ from the then programme ‘Roots’,
which ironically was about slavery. While on my own
I ignored it but if with my family or relatives I
would pretend to look at a shop window or bend down
to tie my shoe lace if I seen a patrol approaching.
I did this not through embarrassment or immense fear
for oneself as I was always taught to be proud of
who I was and where I lived. I did it because my relatives
would answer back and I feared for them getting a
beating. -----
------- It was now the autumn of 1977 a particularly
bad day of rioting and so the ‘Brits’ (British
soldiers) saturated the area. As usual the women stood
at the doors including my mum with myself beside her.
The women were shouting at the Brits who were calling
them ‘Fenian whores’ or words to that effect.
One Brit then walked past my mum and told her in not
so many words to get into the house and to take that
black so and so with her. This done in more gritty
language. I then felt my hand gripped in what felt
like a vice. Without a mention of what the solider
had actually called her, my mum looked at him and
said ‘What did you call my son’. Then saliva
first covered then dripped from his face. He lifted
the butt of his gun with both hands and aimed it towards
my mum’s face. I looked at my mum's face and
it must be said that on only two other occasions in
my life have I ever witnessed from anybody a face
of such complete and absolute defiance as I seen in
my mum's face on that day in 1977. I know of many
other women who have had their teeth completely smashed
in by British soldiers rifle butts, this time though
women neighbours were on hand to intervene. The soldier
and his colleagues continued shouting, yet that soldier’s
voice seemed more subdued, maybe for the very reason
that this is etched firmly on may mind - that look
on my mum’s face of absolute defiance. It was
then I decided to grin and bear it while on my own
as to react could later result in a relatives enhanced
intimidation or worse when with me. (Eventually such
were the frequency of the remarks that I became immune
to an extent - when it started to happen in my teens
from others, like the conflict it was what I perceived
to be but my normality. So then through my adolescence
I unfortunately thought that the same logic applied
in all situations). So therefore while with relatives
I attempted always to hide my face, or tie my lace
or to look at the ground when Brits and peelers came
by. It was in my own small way an attempt to protect
them as I knew they would do for me. I let myself
take this for many years. It was my own young decision.
It was what I believed for the best. I have nothing
more I want to say on that matter.
So
many memories - I did not realise I was staring at
the ground lost in thought. I then looked up again
at the house. I remember in detail that small’
kitchen house’. I remember six kids cramped into
a small back room. I remember looking out the back
window into my school yard, St Finians and remembering
my teachers and classmates of which I can still recite
many of the names called at morning roll and see still
some of them ‘about the road’. I remember
standing in a green jumper and brown trousers as I
waved goodbye to my mum who stood at the gate as I
went in doors on my first day at school. From the
school Gaelic team to the handball team it was a start
of a long interest in sport (on leaving St Finians
primary school my report stated that I excelled not
only in my academic studies but also in sport) which
seen me win many awards for a number of sports home
and abroad over the years. With soccer trials for
Sheffield United (staying with Clive Mendonca, an
apprentice at the time and who I seen recently playing
in the Premiership) and Celtic, with winning youth
championships in Gaelic, basketball, handball, table
tennis, and athletics I was doing well at sport. Although
a number of bad ‘hidings’ (beaten up) in
my teens held me back a bit it was a non - violent
approach that gave me a ‘sickener’ and made
me from then on see sport merely as a hobby rather
than a potential for a career. At the age of sixteen
I remember at the soccer trials for N. Ireland school
boys, I was pulled to the side and told in no uncertain
terms that although I was one of the best players
it was hard enough for a Catholic to get into the
squad, but for a ‘black Catholic from the West?
The guy seemed really apologetic but I was sent back
home. Part three of this series will deal with such
question of Identity, perceived and real while in
later pieces I will deal with other issues such as
my young perception of ‘the other side’,
of politics, of community and of wider international
concerns relating to the local.
Still
in thought now looking out of the back window I remember
at nights the volunteers running across our outside
toilets which were covered only by light iron sheeting
and wondering how they were never heard.
It
was now 1978 I was running down Lesson street chased
by an army jeep, I got halfway down the street and
ran into a doorway, the jeep screeched to a stop outside.
I opened the door meaning to run through the house
and out into the back but when I opened the door,
two volunteers jumped up and shouted 'is it the Brits?'
I nodded and they split out the back. I just stood
there in that house while a woman told me not to worry.
Ten minutes later she opened the door checked it was
all clear and I bolted up the street. I always wondered
why they never came in after me. I suppose they may
have thought a kid throwing a stone wasn’t worth
it or maybe they thought it was a trap, who knows,
whatever the case it gave me a 'frightener' for a
while.
'Davy,Davy,Davy,
BEEEEEEEP, Davy.' They had finished their picture
taking and their visit to the book shop. As I walked
down to the car I remember still, like all others
here at the time the state beatings and brutality,
the shootings, to see the injured and wounded and
again at times death. Yet as a child like the others
it was but part of our world, our immediate reality,
but it did not stop our enjoyment playing hide and
seek in the dark when the power went off, of the card
games, of the street games, of the water shortages
so we had to go to Ross’s Mill at the top of
the street, of the water fights when there was abundance,
of the Dunville Park summer scheme, of the Falls Library
which was like a second home to me, the youth club,
the Falls Baths. Of the laughter, of the friendships
woven in hard and dangerous times, of companionship,
of a street family. Of a street just like the Murph
with its character combined with its own street characters
in those ‘unusual times’ in which lived
a community who despite discrimination had pride,
who despite poverty had dignity, who despite the odds
set against them had immense bravery. Yet above all
it was a street who may have had little but they shared,
looked after and provided for each. As we drove out
of Sevastopol street and up the Falls I looked back
with both a breaking smile and an emerging lump in
my throat and promised as I did with the Murph, to
at sometime once again revisit those, and many other
memories of days gone by.
Now
we drove up the Falls up into Andytown (Andersonstown
Road) and I knew I had to scribble all these memories
down as I see now evermore revisionism creeping in.
One's own childhood thoughts and memories however
will not be revised. Passing the Andersonstown Leisure
Centre it was again the late seventies. ’Hold
on tight to each others hands’. It seemed as
if we were queuing for ages outside the leisure centre
but it would be worth it after many days of we ‘the
kids’ being told to be good or we were not going.
Standing there with our chocolate and juice it was
to be our first time at the ‘pictures’,
to watch, Watership Down not long released. I remember
vividly it was but six people in front of us when
then we heard the shout ‘ sorry full house ’
- We continued up through Andytown towards Twinbrook.
The
now sprawling Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore estates
holds thousands of people. Part of the Lisburn Borough
Council, unionist dominated, the overwhelmingly nationalist
estates are still today denied many basic facilities
that would be common place in other such areas. Yet
I have come to an understanding that socio - economic
deprivation exists in many working class estates ‘across
the divide'. These particular estates though appear
to combine also that old favourite - continuing political,
economic and sectarian discrimination.
It
is now the first month of the year 1981. I am in a
car behind a large lorry which is carrying our furniture
from Sevastopol street to the new houses built in
Twinbrook. We went up the small winding road surrounded
by fields, trees and rivers; ‘ look, look a fox’,
we were in the country. To me Twinbrook although but
a few miles from the Falls may as well have been a
thousand miles away, this was a different world, a
world green, open, fresh. My mum said a new home,
a new start and a chance to get ‘the kids’
away from the witnessed daily conflict. Within a few
months I was first looking into the coffin of Bobby
Sands in his parents' Laburnum Way home in Twinbrook,
a scene caught on footage film at the time and shown
again recently on the BBC on the twenteth anniversery
of the hunger strikes. It was a strange feeling twenty
years on watching myself as a child looking upon the
face of Bobby Sands, especially now as I can fully
understand the huge historical significance of that
time. Two weeks later I was looking into yet another
coffin, that of school colleague, Carol Anne Kelly.
An eleven year old innocent child shot dead - murdered
by the state, around the same age as Brian Stewart
- my partners uncle - also shot dead, murdered a few
years prior, like Carol Anne also but a child, again
by the state.
‘Davy
do you want a fag?'
‘Naa, cheers’. We turned the car into present
day Twinbrook. We parked beside various murals on
the range of walls across from St Luke’s Church.
They got out and started taking more pictures, I stood
and looked around me and again I left the realms of
present day reality.
It
was 1981 and the binlids echoed around the Twinbrook
estate late at night as I lay in bed. It was the time
of the hunger strikes. I climbed out my back bedroom
window, climbed onto our porch (our new house now
had two indoor toilets one upstairs and one down,
it was the down ones extension I climbed onto) then
jumped onto our coalbunker, then into our back garden.
I grabbed our binlid and made my way round to the
‘circle’ (a large round circle made out
of bricks at the back of our new cul-de-sac, I believe
of no known functioning purpose when plans were drawn
up other than I presume for décor to accompany
these new modern houses. It was used though as a drilling
ground for volunteers as my mates and I used to sit
and watch them in the middle of the day kitted out
in full uniform, men and women drilling to the voiced
orders called out in Irish). I began with others to
bang my binlid. - So it was one after one that Thatcher
then let the hunger strikers die. Those weeks even
as a child again will always be etched on one's mind.
‘Where’s
Bobby Sands house’?
‘Over there’. I stood and looked around
me and could find much memories without an in depth
search. Behind me to my right I remember behind the
flats facing the VG seeing several faces over a period
of years all alike. They were all pale white, blood
drained from their faces, all quiet. Some shot through
the knees or ankles others through the elbows, some
a combination, others all combined. Straight ahead
was the field on which as as a teenager I won the
Bobby Sands Memorial Cup, presented with my trophy
by Gerry Adams. It was the first in a number of times
that I won it. Further ahead the state murder of a
child spoke out. To my left the church in which I
was ‘confirmed’. I remember as a kid coming
out of Mass on occasions and seeing young men with
placards proclaiming 'I am a thief I am a joyrider'
etc. It was either this or ‘kneecapped’.
Behind me I remember the dangerous game we played
as kids of ‘hopping on’ lorries and buses
(to jump on their back bumpers and hold on to the
back doors to catch a lift). I remember one kid killed
doing this and I remember yet another from down our
street killed while on a horse, his foot caught in
the stirrup the horse bolted, his head smashing off
the side pavements and off walls, he had no chance.
--- In a few hours so many memories and yet so many
more.
‘Right
are we going for a pint’. They had finished their
picture taking. What was it like as a kid? .‘I’ll
write about it some day so ya can read it’ came
my reply. As we headed out of Twinbrook and back towards
the Falls to find an ‘Irish Pub’ for a bowl
of stew and a pint of Guiness I reflected on those
few hours and wrote my thoughts down as written above
at the time on a piece of paper - I summed it up though
putting past experience into my own present political
understanding. As with that programme ‘Roots’:
‘They
may bind our hands or shackle our feet but one's thoughts
and beliefs will always remain free in our minds.
It is though when those ideas become reality through
collective action that then and only then can we hope
to break free from those binds and shackles and deliver
real and lasting emancipation.’
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