Photo: Belfast Media Group A Belfast wall mural commemorates schoolboy Patrick Rooney and on-leave soldier Hugh McCabe, both shot dead in the August ’69 pogrom. The homes of nationalist Bombay Street were rebuilt by local people in 1970, but to this day a ‘peace wall’ divides the Catholic Falls from the Protestant Shankill areas of Belfast.
n Mairtin O Muilleoir
In a city oft-divided, unity against a common enemy
W
e’ve been here
before. Or at least, I have. Dread and despair. A fear of imminent and overwhelming attack. Panic and hysteria. A feeling of abandonment. Questions in a torrent but answers in a trickle. It took a while before it hit me but my first ride on this rollercoaster was as a nine-year-old when I watched on, wide-eyed and tremulous, as my elders were swept away by the tumult of August 1969. In that burning summer of ’69, hate rather than love was
in the air in Belfast as gangs of pro-British loyalists rampaged through defenceless Catholic streets while the forces of law and order looked on. The doors of Catholic families were marked with ‘X’s as the local MP egged on the mob to “work to rule, boys, work to rule”, by targeting their venom on the marked homes. When dawn broke on August 15, the two-up-two-down terraced homes of the Falls were but rubble and among the dead were a British soldier home on leave and defending his neighbours and a nine-year-old boy killed as
he slept. Both were cut down by automatic fire from B-Specials, the state’s paramilitary force, using armoured cars mounted with Sterling machine guns. The resultant exodus from the Catholic Falls area represented the greatest movement of refugees since the Second World War. Things would never be the same again. Bombay Street had been burned to the ground by the mob and refugees were flooding into the half-finished homes in Upper Andersonstown, West Belfast. It was frightening but exciting too as, with my primary school buddies, I roamed the estate, observing the unfolding drama. We saw the lorries bring in the belongings of the refugees as workmen knocked together mobile homes on the Glen Road above Rosnareen. We watched as petrol bombs were made on a makeshift production line and stored behind the barricade at the top of Ramoan Gardens. Young as we were, we knew that this was an epoch-making time.
M
y most vivid memory from those frantic few days in August is of Patcheye Doyle standing on the roof of a Morris 1100 which was caving in under his weight. His one eye dancing, he was roaring at a gathering of local men, urging them to get organised before the next onslaught. A fearsome and fearless scrapper of some reknown, Patcheye took the lead while others dithered. He ColdType | April 2020 | www.coldtype.net
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