My first experience of the PIRA was during one of the frequent riots. I was sitting on a wall with rubber bullets whizzing by and mayhem breaking loose when one soldier put down his rifle and lifted me off the wall and said itjust wasn’t safe before heading off again.
It was very easy to get caught up in the riots: one minute you are playing games, next you see the long line of armoured vehicles coming up your street. They lined the road facing our estate with two fields separating them and us. My house was on the other side of the enemy line on the same road, just feet away from their vehicles. That is what it was. Soldiers would stand behind the vehicles with guns pointing in, viewing the people in their rifle sights.
The place would transform instantly, bin lids clanging the warning, people coming out onto the street. The PIRA rushing to get their weapons and balaclavas lest they face the lashing tongues of the women if they failed to do something to protect them.
Very soon, the place would be in mayhem. If a bus was passing through, it would be stopped; the driver knew just to get out and leave it to them. It would have been driven to the end of the street and pushed onto its side as a makeshift barrier.
Sometimes my mother would have to walk over the no-man’s-land between us to come and get me, where I would stand with the women and other kids to watch the events. Other times she would be in the kitchen and not be aware of what was happening for a while and I would wander around in all of the wrong places.
I was always a fish out of water in the riots but thankfully there was always someone older to lift me to safety before the RUC land rovers ran me down- which they would have.
The RUC were most absolutely definitely not an impartial police force. They made no effort to hide their animosity and often insulted the women standing outside their homes; we were clearly just fenian bs to them which is how they addressed us. They relished pounding in doors and trashing houses.
They didn’t always find it easy getting in. Sometimes the intensity was too much and they would back down, only to return again, so riots could go on for days on and off.
One such time, a car was burned out just up from my house, I assume to stop them from being able to line the top road which was their usual start-off position.
I was walking home when they arrived and stopped just up from my house. It is hard not to stop and watch and you get used to the mayhem and eventually it draws you in.
I remember the tank approaching and I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me what was about to happen but I just stood there. Then the driver put the pedal down and rammed the car, not just pushing it off the road but slamming it right through an 8-foot factory wall and fence like it was paper.
That frightened the life out of me, the sheer intensity of it only feet away. It is one of those emotional memories that never really leave you and I still get flash-backs to this day.
Anyway, 90% of IRA activity would have been from within their own communities against the state forces which were the RUC and army. To now attempt to portray the RUC as being a police force caught between rival factions is not a fairy tale that I would tolerate. I mean, not even peace is worth that level of insult.
Ian Paisley once said, the IRA should “wear sackcloth and ashes … until the sackcloth and ashes wear out”.
In 2016, it feels to me like Paisley has finally got his wish.
Republicanism has been under severe scrutiny for considerable time now, whether it be mischievous propaganda from British intelligence on the existence of the IRA Army Council leading Sinn Fein coming up to elections, the criminality of gangs operating along the border with PSNI immunity as most are state agents, media digging through the archives for muck to rake or just plain making stuff up as they see fit.
None of what has been reported over the past few years match with my memories of the conflict. The truth as I recall it has been buried in favour of improved relations with Britain, who all the while are deliberately covering up evidence and locking away files under national security. Not one nation on the planet thinks this is unacceptable, not even our own.
Well I do.
Some claim that violence was not needed, that reason would have prevailed. Well, we have had almost 20 years of non-violence, and reason is not even achieving basic human rights or respect.
British rule in Ireland will never be acceptable to me.
I guess the plan is flood the media with attacks on republicanism in the hope that the future generations will find it more palatable and the British narrative will be the one to prevail. I suppose those are the new battle lines today. We must now fight to make the truth heard and not allow them to slander the names of good republicans who gave so much in the name of freedom for their nation.
For me, it is no longer about unification. We have been abandoned once again. I have also lost all interest in reconciliation; at the moment, all I want is for the truth to be known.
They can keep their sackcloth and ashes. I would rather die with honour than die without it.
I was a child when the troubles broke out too. We didn’t launch bombing and assassination sorties from our street so the RUC and the Army didn’t come round trying to catch people or disrupt paramilitary operations. My first memory of one of the kids in my class having to go home because his Daddy had been killed in “an accident with a gun” was probably P3. His Daddy was a policeman.
There’s nothing invalid about your point of view Jessica but you know yourself it’s one part of the story. If people outside NI are trying to be impartial and to help reconciliation how do you expect them to act?
Try reading the flawed de Silva Report.
In October 1969, UVF man Thomas McDowell electrocuted himself while preparing a bomb intended to blow up the ESB sub-station at Ballyshannon Co Donegal. Prior to 1969 the RUC were happy to turn a blind eye in relation to UVF activity in the north of Ireland. I accept that the culprits did not live in your street.
I didn’t say there weren’t horrible protestant paramilitaries and I’m not trying to sanctify the RUC this morning. I’m just swapping childhood memories with Jessica. Jude’s generation has screwed us both up 🙂
WHAAAAATTTTT? Now you’re going down gio’s road of ‘You are linked therefore you are guilty’…Grrrr
Jude, at the end of the day you’re old.
My own offspring neither knows of nor cares about any differences between Catholics and Protestants, they just go outside and play.
Bereft of interference from people of your generation, they’d do just fine.
Ha haaa, Pete. As long as I’m young the rest of the day, that’ll do. ‘Catholics and Protestants’ – I don’t think that’s what divides people (with some exceptions): I think it’s their political position – pro or anti-union. I promise you I wouldn’t interfere with any child – and I doubt v much if many of them come to this site. But I’d be appalled if we didn’t teach history or politics in our schools. I don’t really go with Rousseau’s notion of the noble savage – just leave children alone and they’ll grow up to be good and natural.
Pete, what is the difference between a Catholic and a Protestant in 2016?
Bloody Hell Pete, the impression I got from your comment there is that Jude or his whole generation was responsible for the Troubles! Talk about tarring everyone with the same brush!
“Jude, at the end of the day you’re old”
Old!? From what I hear Jude could maybe outrun me and you Pete, judging by how many half marathon’s he runs! I’m 25 and at the minute I don’t think I could run down the street, never mind do a half marathon, too many cream buns from the bakery you see!
Take no notice Jude, Age is just a number and your only as old as you feel 🙂
(Though admittedly, reading some of the comments from some people on this blog can age you dreadfully…..*Looks in MT’s direction*….)
Jude
Please point out where I said that or anything like it.
“I didn’t say there weren’t horrible protestant paramilitaries and I’m not trying to sanctify the RUC this morning. I’m just swapping childhood memories with Jessica. Jude’s generation has screwed us both up”
It isn’t a bad thing either BYC.
How can we respect one another’s points of view if we don’t understand the events that formed them?
If we are to genuinely have reconciliation then, it is not reformation that is required, but toleration.
As for blame, personally, I would say it would be difficult to find someone more responsible than Ian Paisley, but then what made him the way he was in his younger days at least? He died a different man than he lived.
As for horrible protestant paramilitaries, do you really think it is right for you to say that BYC?
I am sure there were horrible people on both sides who would have killed anyway, but I believe that the majority who got involved in the conflict did so because of life changing experiences they had as a result of living in a sectarian divided country.
Just because others were fortunate enough not to have had similar or had the strength and courage to overcome them, does not make it right to condemn everyone as horrible people.
The very worst of the lot however in my opinion joined the RUC and the UDR to kill and abuse with more or less immunity from the law.
And no, that does not mean there were not also plenty of good people in the RUC, we know there were. There were good RUC men killed by the British state and setup by their own colleagues for stepping on the wrong toes.
When James Connolly was about to face the firing squad, the priest asked if he would like to pray for the soldiers about to take his life.
His response was an emphatic yes, he would pray for all good men who would do their duty.
Britain should not be here, until they leave, there will be good men on both sides prepared to do their duty.
I had to snigger at that UVF story, never heard it before.
I mean, I know they’re as incompetent as they are vicious, but it’s when they make a scene like that…
BZZZT! Lol!
“There’s nothing invalid about your point of view Jessica but you know yourself it’s one part of the story. If people outside NI are trying to be impartial and to help reconciliation how do you expect them to act?”
I have never denied that BYC and I would respect every single persons experiences equally.
But there are enough sources for the British point of view, surely I am entitled to tell mine.
You are. So you think we’ll ever get from having competing points of view to just having different ones?
“You are. So you think we’ll ever get from having competing points of view to just having different ones?”
I have no problem with that at all BYC. If we were in a pub we would probably get fed up arguing about it and end up having a bit of craic instead.
It is being under british rule I cannot live with, not the people regardless of their opinions including of myself.
With Britain out of the equation, I would hope we could focus on building the economy and giving the best opportunities for our kids and have the maturity to deal with what would then become the less important things just as they are less important in the south.
Jessica, be thankful that there was someone there to care for you. Others were not so fortunate. In Derry on Easter Sunday 1981, two men, Gary English and Jim Brown were knocked down and killed by a British Army land rover. Jim Brown was killed on impact but Gary English died when the land rover reversed back over his injured body.
The rhetoric about “historical accuracy and mutual respect” still does not wash in Derry, Monaghan or Dublin. There are those who may wish to consign “the troubles” to the past, however, until Ms Villiers et al stop hiding behind a national security blanket, the past will continue to influence our present. Janus is alive and well in Dublin and talking about “the national interest” and the “good of the country.”
“The fools, the fools…”
Jessica , I share your palpable anger in the attempted rewriting of the historical narrative of everything since the enforcement of this sectarian cesspool upon us…..but no matter how much they try , should it be ” National Security ” or redacted papers in London , the Quisling government or gutter press in Dublin , the morally degenerate politicians in both jurisdictions , we know the truth and it will out in the end. I an Irish, Is Éireannach mé , and not a guttersnipe from Mayo nor a silver-tongued arsehole from Cork can change that…..I will settle for nothing short of a UI , where these deviant reprobates will be consigned to the dustbin of history and Ireland in all it’s glory will become a nation again !
“I will settle for nothing short of a UI , where these deviant reprobates will be consigned to the dustbin of history and Ireland in all it’s glory will become a nation again !”
Well said Eolach and I too believe that day will come. But Ireland has since divided itself and there is no longer one road, but many roads, I firmly believe that every single one of them will lead exactly to a unified and proud Irish nation, however, why should we wait for unification to make the occupied territory in the north, the Ireland we want it to be and the envy of Ireland?
“We have been abandoned once again.”
Jessica, Jessica…You’ve been feeling down this last while. Hey, that happens!
It seems that the constant negativity, the insults, the throwing things back in your face, the lies etc have been getting to you. Don’t let it.
Of course it can be wearisome and frustrating but it’s not working. And how do I know this? Well contrast and compare. Think back to a time when the negativity and insults were even more evident – when many Republicans sat in a cramped cell with only a blanket as covering, awaiting with knotted stomachs for perhaps their turn to be dragged out onto a wing to be beaten, sexually assaulted and insulted.
Yet, today some of those very people are public representatives, island wide, on the basis of almost half a million votes. 23 TDs, 29 MLAs, 4 MPs, 4 MEPs, 100s of councillors and 7 members of Seanad Éireann (soon). And that is just Sinn Féin.
Don’t be distracted. Chin up! 🙂
“Jessica, Jessica…You’ve been feeling down this last while. Hey, that happens!”
I have Ceannaire, was thinking of stopping posting until I picked myself up again, but decided to just blurt it all out anyway.
Hope I am not depressing everyone too much. All it takes is something positive to happen and the batteries will be recharged once again.
You’ve depressed me, Jessica. I’m going out to hang myself in the barn…
Now that’s hardly going to cheer me up jude but point taken
I have to agree with you Ceannaire, our Jessica has been very down of late, she’s been very pessimistic! But hey, that’s how God made her.
In Wars, “Defeatism” is often stated as the reason why Generals are dismissed. In WW2 Hitler dismissed numerous Generals (many of them maybe the best commanders in the World then) for Defeatism. When it came to Joseph Stalin, he not only dismissed Defeatist Generals but had them shot too as a warning to others. Better to be a defeatist German than a defeatist Russian, me thinks….
Now, of course, I’m not suggesting our Jessica should be shot or dismissed! but what I am saying is defeatism can be contagious. Its often used as propaganda. Example: “What’s the point of fighting on? Its no use, you’ve lost”, or as Jessica herself said “We have been abandoned” etc etc. That’s why Republicans should be very careful when expressing their views, we should be in full knowledge of the facts.
The reality is a United Ireland is inevitable for numerous reasons, the main one being Northern Ireland as a state is unworkable. The current status quo of power sharing isn’t sustainable and as Jessica herself said we are nearly 20 years from the GFA and STILL equality hasn’t been fully implemented in our society and is still opposed by Unionism today just as much as it was opposed in 1969.
Here’s an interesting article from 2010 that i’d advise everyone to read:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/edwest/100043747/can-northern-ireland-ever-work-history-suggests-not/
Have I really been as bad as that?
My head tells me you are right ryan but the truth is I do get down from time to time
Will try to be less negative but I can’t really expect others to be truthful if I can’t be honest myself
Forgive my ignorance here but…..how can you wear sackcloth and ashes?…..
If there was any one person was who responsible for the Troubles it was Ian Paisley. Even David Trimble, now Lord Trimble, said the same after Paisley died. So if there was any person who should be wearing sackcloth and ashes it should’ve been Paisley.
Paisley’s agenda was akin to that of a crazy, crackpot Pastor from the 1600’s. It was an agenda fuelled by Religious/Protestant fundamentalism which is comparable to what the Taliban would engage in. But Paisley was clever, he always distanced himself from acts of violence from the young Loyalists he worked up through his speeches of hate and fear. His hatred of Catholicism and Catholics and his agenda to portraying all Catholics as evil is one reason why so many Loyalists murdered so many innocent Catholic civilians. At one Loyalist Rally in the late 1960’s, Paisley compared Catholics to Vermin. He said Catholics “breed like rabbits and multiply like vermin”.
Why was Paisley never imprisoned for his hate speeches? Why was he never brought to Justice? Well for the same reason the UVF and UDA were allowed to go on sectarian murder sprees, because they were all working, either directly or indirectly, for the British State. The British Government even set up its own sectarian death squads, the MRF and FRU, whose members just 2 years ago laughed on TV about the Catholic civilians they murdered and how it didn’t matter if someone was in the PIRA or not, if they lived in a certain area they were guilty. Exactly the same logic the UVF/UDA had……Ken Maginnis, a UDR Major, even admitted, again on TV, to providing names of suspected Republicans to Margaret Thatcher and those men who later murdered. Has Ken been arrested? Has the FRU and MRF members been arrested? No because they have an amnesty. Why would they be convicted of murder if they were ordered to murder?
The correct term for the actions by the British Government is: Democide, the deliberate murder by a Government of its own citizens. Its listed as a Crime Against Humanity by the UN.
I grew up in the 1990’s. My memories of the last stages of the Troubles really revolve around the likes of Drumcree. The Holycross incident in 2001, though not officially part of the troubles, was another incident that stuck in my mind because I was the same age as many of those children being attacked by blast bombs, urine filled balloons and stones by Loyalists simply because they were Catholic.
I remember particularly the hatred, the utter hatred, those people attacking those Catholic kids had in their faces. I remember my mother watching the news getting flustered and saying stuff like “If they did that to my children I’d brack their necks!” or “They are disgraceful doing that to those kids because of their religion, God Forgive them”.
What always stands out in my mind is the Loyalist women. They were not shouting abuse at those kids, they were SCREAMING, literally screaming, abuse at those kids. One woman, a big fat woman, was leaning over a fence and shouting: “You fuckin fenian bastards, you fuckin fenian scum!, you taig bastards!” and the children simply watching as this woman was screaming at them, with blank faces. Even a British soldier pushed the woman back and, of course, all the men and women started screaming at the soldier as if the woman he pushed back was an innocent bystander and victim….
When it comes to the Truth Jessica, there is one thing you can always depend on and that is no matter how hard people or Governments try to cover up the truth, it always comes out in the end…..
“When it comes to the Truth Jessica, there is one thing you can always depend on and that is no matter how hard people or Governments try to cover up the truth, it always comes out in the end…..”
Not all of it, Robin Jackson took a lot of truth to his grave and the majority of the key loyalists who coordinated with British intelligence died in the loyalist feuds after the initial ceasefires.
But a lot of it will yes, many years from now. But lets not allow those in a position to press for the truth and do nothing instead, to not be aware it was their decision to make and how they have failed their own people.
Those children were 6, 7 or 8 years old in 2001.
Has anyone ever spared a thought of how they have been traumatised by the Loyalist “protest”?
Or of how the reality of Loyalism has been burned into their minds?
And what the range of their reactions might be?
Now they are of voting age.
Remember attacking Catholic children is one of the hallmarks of Organgeism/Loyalism
https://eurofree3.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/hallmarks-of-orange-loyalism-then-1795-and-now-then-2013/
Your parents must have been irresponsible to allow you to sit out in the street during a riot.
And your memory mustn’t be too reliable if you can remember tanks!
“And your memory mustn’t be too reliable if you can remember tanks!”
Oh, I will never forget them
The British Army did use Centurion tanks.
These had big rubber wheels and no front pointing cannon but they were solid and rammed the car right off the road and straight through the wall. It was not a people carrier or a land rover, it looked like a tank to me but I have no idea what they were called.
“And your memory mustn’t be too reliable if you can remember tanks!”
They didn’t have tracks and a swinging gun if that’s what you mean MT, they had big massive wheels but they were still bloody tanks.
“Your parents must have been irresponsible to allow you to sit out in the street during a riot. ”
You are some piece of work MT.
I clearly said my mother would have to walk across the field across which army and IRA would be exchanging gunfire to get me.
Of course I was not allowed to be out in riots but these things were not scheduled.
As I also said, the first you would know would be when the long line of armoured vehicles would line up along the street facing the estate
I did not live in the estate but on the road facing it, but naturally I would have friends there and played there.
The biggest problem for my parents was not knowing about it as our kitchen was not facing the estate but the opposite side so sometimes my mother wouldn’t realise what was happening for a while and my father worked shifts so may well have been either working or in bed. It was always my mother that would come and get me but sometimes I would have been unable to get home and yes, being an inquisitive child I was drawn right to the worst possible places to be.
Anyway, none of the people deserved to go through that. It was unionisms sectarian hatred of catholics that started it all in the first place and britain totally failed to deal with it properly like they always do in Ireland. I will never forget the animosity of the police and army who did come in, their land rovers would cross the field in lines with RUC in full riot gear walking behind until they got up close and then they were indiscriminate in the shooting of rubber bullets. I saw plenty of kids shot at close range in the back in the fighting that ensued.
We are good people MT, we deserve better than to be subject to british rule in our own country.
I think alot of people have their memories of growing up in ‘the troubles’ some due to location will be alot different, growing up in a rural area it was having helicopters land nightly in the fields behind your house and british soldiers/ruc/udr swamping the place stopping and harassing people wether theyre driving walking cycling etc, the isolation of a rural area created alot of fear as usually especially in the late 80’s early90’s a sudden influx of troops almost certainly meant that a loyalist attack was imminent, i would go so far to say that the fear as you were coming of age would be constant as even going to a pub in a country area was sometimes taking your life in your hands as witnessed many times, i dont think its a co incidence that many in our area who grew up in our area even though not directly involved politically or otherwise had major anxiety issues as they got older, i do envy some younger people nowadays who didnt have these things hanging over their heads growing up!
Jessica,you lament the fact that there won’t be a unified Ireland in the future because the 6 was abandoned.Firstly,the GFA stipulates that there has to be a majority of the people of NI voting in favour of a UI for it to become a reality.Now,with Nationalist turnout in the 6 counties’ elections consistently lagging behind their Unionist counterparts,how is constitutional change supposed to come about when apathy reigns amongst those of a Nationalist background.Change will only come about by mobilising the grass-roots.
Mickelroy, that is beyond the control of all individuals and even Sinn Fein who are working solo on this project, which is more what my lamenting is about.
I am absolutely certain there will be a unified Ireland in the future, what I would like to see is more enthusiasm from the southern parties now who seem to be more interested in their own parties than the country.
How can the people in the north achieve unification on their own, if the south aren’t interested because the establishment there are more interested in lining their pockets.
If they don’t get their act together on this and the people keep voting for parties not interested in unification, then what other message can that be taken as?
I would like a referendum now, so people can choose one way or another on this as without proper debate it is going nowhere and there is nothing to vote for in the north other than a British administration.
It is not fair to turn it into a sectarian headcount in the north and for the south to focus on itself while at the same time paying lip service to the people of 1916 who would be appalled at what has happened since.
All it would take is the south to show a little interest and the voter apathy would turned around.