The Worst Year of the Conflict

In terms of people killed during the north of Ireland conflict, 1972 was the worst year for fatalities. There were 497 people killed over half of which were what is termed as civilians, people who were not part of the security forces or proscribed armed groups.

I was 18 years old for the most of 1972 and one of those people, as yet, living in an area relatively untouched by the troubles. The first casualty of that year (I refer to Lost Lives) was an 18-year-old English soldier. No doubt his death was announced on the evening news. I don't recall. The news on the 30th of January, exactly fifty years ago was much more dramatic. Thirteen men and boys were shot dead on the streets of Derry by British soldiers. This atrocity came to be known as Bloody Sunday. I remember it but, to be honest, at the time it didn't sink in. 

I had a friend from Derry, her name was Marian, a student nurse at Musgrave Park Hospital. Marian was a goth before goths were even a thing. My Daddy used to call her the wee black crow. She was always staying at our house and this one time she invited me to come to her house in Derry. She lived in Irish Street which I found odd as it was a loyalist area. But Marian was no loyalist. She socialised across the bridge and on that particular night she took me to a republican club. Marian told me that it was a 'Stickies' club and I had not a clue what that meant. Later on, I came to realise that the Stickies were the Official IRA which would be superseded by the Provisional IRA. It was all a mystery to me.

Back then I didn't even know that fifty years earlier my own Granda had been in the IRA. For some reason, it was not something openly discussed in our family. I knew my Granny was always ranting talking about the Easter Rising, the perfidy of the British and the tragedy of the Irish martyrs. I remember her shaking her stick at me in a rage because I didn't know who James Connolly was. So, suffice to say, I was a total ignoramus when it came to Irish history - even though I was living through it.

The day we took the bus to her city Marian brought home to me what Bloody Sunday meant to the people of Derry. She opened her bag and took out a handful of Mass cards. Showed them to me, pictures of wee fellows, some of them younger than me. she'd say about one, I went out with his brother. About another, I was at school with his sister. Another, my ma was friends with his ma. These were her people.

Years later and not long after the findings of the Savile enquiry, Bert and I went to the Museum of Free Derry. It was heart-rending. The man at the desk was one of the relatives and he told us that to hear that the enquiry had found all 14 victims innocent of all accusations originally used against them was a wonderful moment. I saw him on the news this evening. He is still fighting for justice.

 

Hard Times

My Uncle Vincent's funeral in Rasharkin was held on the same day as the interments of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa. I have to say that the old nun's death passed me by what with everything else that was going on at that time. But I'm rarely in that churchyard and when I visited it last week on the eve of Aunt Marian's funeral I was surprised to recognise so many names of people who are buried there. One of the most startling was the grave of the three Quinn brothers from Ballymoney who died in a sectarian arson attack on their home on the 12th of July, 1998.

Marian had lived to 83 years of age and she had lived well. The priest who conducted her Requiem Mass made much of her sense of adventure, her love of travel and her strong attachment to family. It was probably one of the most inspiring eulogies I've ever heard and, I can assure you, I am very hard to please when it comes to preachers. One thing I noticed in the chapel was the presence of three young brothers, great-nephews of Marian's I suppose, who were around the sort of ages as those other three brothers lying in the churchyard. The Quinns would be grown men now, probably with families of their own but they never made it to adulthood just like so many of the youngsters murdered in Manchester the other night.

It is hard not to feel a terrible sadness right now for it happens that tonight is the 43rd anniversary of the deaths of our father's two brothers, my uncles Shaun and Brendan. Sometimes I forget it is their anniversary. But not this year.

Yvonne and Anne
write far more eloquently on this than I can. There is a lot of reading here but it is very worth it.

Forty Years Ago

In my last post I wrote a little about the Dublin-Monaghan bombings that occurred 40 years ago during the Ulster Worker's Council (UWC) strike. I did not add that I was pregnant with my first child at this time. Perhaps it was being pregnant that made me feel so thin-skinned about everything that had happened. I remember walking at dusk feeling as if a cloud of dread was enveloping me. I felt terribly apprehensive to be bringing new life into the world at such a dangerous and precarious time.

Daddy brought the terrible news to us. A young man, Michael Mallon, from Cargin, near Toome, had been found beaten and shot on the outskirts of Belfast. He was twenty years old, a student at Queen's University in Belfast. I did not know Mickey but my sister did and our family knew his family. My father and my sister went to his funeral. So did my Uncle Sean, who is supposed to have remarked that the funeral was a big one and he hoped not to be at such a one for a very long time. His own funeral would be held less than a week later.

Mickey Mallon was the closest that the Troubles had come to us but it would be closer again within days. I will write about it on the anniversary.

Michael Joseph Mallon was found murdered, at the age of 20, forty years ago today.

Looking Back In Anger

In February 1973, during the first Loyalist Workers Strike, I was working in the Ballymena branch of Crazy Prices. There was a prolonged power cut and all the freezers powered down. Urged by our managers we worked on. Until the cry went up, 'the Tartan Gangs are coming!' And sure enough, gangs of youths, wearing denim, big boots and tartan scarves were rampaging along Broughshane Street, smashing windows as they went. Managers hastily locked the doors and told us to get ourselves off home but not before allowing us to help ourselves from the freezers. So it was I phoned Daddy to come and rescue me and my big cardboard box full of frozen food. Seamus was not afraid of any Tartan Gang.

That is my abiding memory of the 1973 Loyalist strike. Tartan Gangs and a surfeit of frozen food to which we were certainly not accustomed. Of course the power cuts meant that we couldn't refrigerate the food and a good deal of it had to be thrown out anyway.

This month is the 40^th anniversary of the second, and even more sinister, Loyalist strike, the one that brought down the power sharing executive, and the one that Ian Paisley and his ilk supported to the hilt.  

Today is also the 40^th anniversary of the co-ordinated bombings in Dublin and Monaghan. On the third day of the UWC strike thirty-three people died, the greatest number of people killed on any one day. A full-term unborn infant is not included in the list of dead but tiny sisters Jacqueline and Anne Marie O'Brien are. They were 17 and 5 months respectively and their parents died with them.

No-one has ever been charged in relation to the murders in Dublin and Monaghan.

It was thirty-three years later, again in the month of May, that Ian Paisley, who had been so vehemently opposed to the idea of power-sharing, accepted the post of First Minister of Northern Ireland, in an assembly that included Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein as Deputy First Minister. It is rumoured that the two of them got on so well they were dubbed the Chuckle Brothers.