by Ken Wharton
Simple; problems solved; peace ever after? Sadly not: the IRA fought a bitter civil war as they attempted to overthrow the pro-treaty forces of the new Eire government; at the end of the fighting, approximately 3,800 lay dead. Ireland was still divided, but the fledgling IRA dumped their arms and peace came; or did it? Articles 2 and 3 of the new Irish Constitution demanded the ‘return of the North’ to the Irish Free State. The Irish ‘founding fathers’ could not have realised that they were effectively legitimising anything and everything that Republican paramilitary groups would do in the name of ‘Irish unity’. The IRA have always maintained that these two clauses gave them the ‘moral high ground’ to continue their armed campaigns.
The IRA relied on a hit-and-run strategy, with at times random, pinprick strikes against the armed forces of Northern Ireland; at other times – the 1956–57 border campaign for example – with more concerted efforts. They even bombed mainland Britain – notably London and Coventry – somewhat ineffectually, but with sufficient force to make those fighting the Blitz against the German Luftwaffe occasionally take their eye off the ball.
Fast forward to the late 1960s: Northern Ireland was a Protestant and Loyalist state with a two-thirds Protestant majority with an unofficial policy of quite effective sectarian discrimination against the Roman Catholics. It was not uncommon, pre-1968, for an employer to place adverts blatantly stating that ‘No Catholics should apply’. It was as blatant and overt as that; it was naked discrimination. When this became unacceptable, other methods could be found to weed out ‘unsuitable applicants’. Application forms might request religious affiliations, or failing that, the address of a would-be employee would likely reveal their religious leanings. For example, an address on the Falls Road, Ballymurphy Estate, etc., would likely be the home of a Catholic, whilst an address on the Shankill, Crumlin Road, Woodvale or Tiger’s Bay would demonstrate that the application was a Protestant. The growth of civil rights organisations such as the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) took the fight for equality onto the streets, where they met the hard-line Unionists head-on; it was never going to be a marriage made in heaven.
It is necessary, however, to draw some balance; equally, it is vital that we also look at why this discrimination – perceived or otherwise – happened, and indeed, if it happened in the manner in which the Nationalist politicians would want history to believe. It is axiomatic that at the time of the Irish rebellion, the Protestants in the north, in the six counties, had expressed a desire to remain a loyal and integral part of the Union. They wanted to remain in the United Kingdom, after all, like the Southern Irish who had fought and bled out in the mud of the Somme, Ypres and Passchendaele – so too had they. Indeed, the Protestants had continued shedding blood during the Partition riots in the years following the war. The Loyalists settled on being part of the Union, albeit acutely aware that the majority of the Catholics who were, by now, no longer part of Ireland were living inside a country that was overwhelmingly Protestant. Many felt that they would be ‘traitors’ who would agitate from within to destroy the Loyalist enclave on the island of Ireland; they saw Catholics as trouble-causers and malcontents. With pressure from the fledgling Irish Republican Army creating dissent from within and border attacks from without, the Protestant ‘siege mentality’ of ‘No Surrender’ became inevitably part of their mindset. Cross-border attacks by the IRA on Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC), later Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) barracks* caused great loss of life and destruction of property.
So, from 1922 onwards – possibly even much earlier – the siege mentality gained a hold, passed down through mothers’ milk. The new government of the Irish Republic had made it manifestly clear in the second and third clauses of their new Constitution that they considered that the North belonged to them and that they would never stop attempting to ‘bring them back into the fold’. The IRA could, claiming historical, constitutional as well as legal precedent, justify their campaign of violence and civil unrest.
One member of the Loyalists put the case to me, arguing in a cogent and rational manner that when fellow writers raise the ‘discrimination’ issue, we tend to overlook the fact that the Ulster Civil Service practised a form of positive discrimination towards Roman Catholics. He told me: ‘The Roman Catholic Church were the real rulers of Ireland, and they preached hatred from the pulpit, which included telling them not to co-operate with the Ulster Government.’ Additionally, there is clear evidence of the Catholics caused further division in Northern Ireland, as they have done throughout the western world, by insisting on a separate education system. In stipulating that no Protestant teacher could be employed in an RC school, while aware that the State schools embraced applicants from any religion, the Catholics further brought about the sectarian divide that eventually became an abyss.
Rioting and civil disobedience escalated into out-and-out violence against the RUC; the later disbanded, largely discredited, ‘B’ Specials overreacted in many cases, which simply increased the hostility on both sides. Eventually, on 14 August 1969, the then Prime Minister of Great Britain, Harold Wilson, ordered troops onto the streets of the two main riot-torn cities – Belfast and Londonderry – the very next day.
It wasn’t the ‘invasion’ that Republicans, Irish Americans and Britain’s ‘hard left’ claimed that it was – it wasn’t simply a case of ‘troops being sent in’ – and nor was it the ‘occupation of the North’ that the IRA’s armchair supporters bitterly described it as. It was simply a matter of reinforcing troops in a part of the UK. It was, for example, no more than soldiers based at Tidworth, Aldershot or Catterick going in to aid the police forces of Dorset, Hampshire and North Yorkshire respectively. The police – the RUC – were beleaguered and overrun; it was very obvious that soldiers were required to aid them.
Thus, on 14 August 1969, the Troubles effectively began.
Ken Wharton
Queensland
January 2019
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* Casualty figures for the 10th and 16th Irish Divisions were 37,761 killed, wounded or missing. The 36th (Ulster) Division figures were 32,186 killed, wounded or missing.
* Post-1921.
PROLOGUE
It was 13 August 1969, a hot, steamy Wednesday night; tensions had been building throughout the course of the British summer. Demonstrations, mass riots and confrontation between Catholic youths and the RUC had left two people dead: on 14 July, Francis McCloskey (67), a retired Catholic farmer, had been struck on the head by an RUC officer during a baton charge against rioters close to Dungiven Orange hall in Londonderry; two days later, Samuel Devenney (42), a Catholic father of nine, had been killed when several RUC officers broke into his house and, in a fit of unprovoked violence, had beaten several members of his family, during the course of which he was fatally injured. Eight days earlier, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had planted their first explosive device in the Irish Republic, which badly damaged the State-run RTÉ (Raidió Telifís Éireann) Centre in Dublin.
Stormont – the Northern Ireland seat of government – was failing and its police force was rapidly losing control, being unable to safely enter Nationalist areas of both Belfast and Londonderry; the scene was set.
As the minutes of 13 August ticked towards midnight, Shankill Road resident Herbert Roy (26), a Protestant father of a young child, made his way to the end of Dover Street, close to where it joined Divis Street. Dover Street was then mixed, although predominantly Protestant, whereas Divis Street, which housed the Divis Flats and the Divis complex – known to later generations of soldiers as the ‘Zanussi’ – was 100 per cent Catholic. It is not certain if Mr Roy was a rioter or had simply walked down to observe what was later classified as a ‘Loyalist/‘B’ Specials incursion’ into Catholic territory.
The ‘bad arse tower’, as it was known to soldiers. It dominated Divis Street, Belfast.
The clock ticked down to midnight and passed; suddenly it was Thursday; crowds of aggressive
Protestants began to congregate at the entrance to Divis Street. A short time later, the word ‘interface’ would be etched irrevocably into the lexicon of the Troubles. Anger was showing on their faces, with murder and mayhem almost certainly in the minds of many. An RUC spokesman later stated that chaos was ‘... reigning supreme in Dover Street’. What was happening on the streets of West Belfast was the personification of what US psychologist Philip Zimbardo* referred to as ‘deindividualisation’, the process where people in a crowd are pressurised or encouraged to lose their sense of socialised individual behaviour, which in turn manifests itself as aggressive, antisocial attitudes and actions. The crowds spilling down from the Loyalist areas towards the interface with the Falls and Divis Street had one attitude in common: they were sectarian bigots who were apparently unable to escape the influence of the crowd in which they found anonymity. Freed of remorse, they were able to attack the homes of fellow working-class people, albeit people from across the sectarian divide.
It was now what the Belfast people refer to as the ‘wee hors’ of Thursday morning; the violence known as the Troubles was ready to commence its thirty-year orgy of blood-letting. Mr Roy’s life was about to end; another orphan of Ireland was about to be created; the Troubles had ‘officially’ started.
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* The Lucifer Effect, Philip Zimbardo (Random House, 1971).
CHAPTER 1
THE FIRST AND SECOND DAYS
At precisely fifteen minutes past midnight on 14 August 1969, in nearby Gilford Street, a gunman of Óglaigh na hÉireann, as the IRA is referred to in Gaelic, opened fire into the throng of rioters streaming out of Dover Street into the Divis area; other shots were fired simultaneously by other IRA gunmen located in St Mary’s Comgall primary school. Mr Roy was hit by several rounds fired from a Thompson sub-machine gun; the IRA gunman was said to be Charles Hughes,* who was himself killed on 8 March 1971 in nearby Servia Street. Interestingly, the gunman who stood with the Provisional IRA (PIRA) was killed in a shoot-out with Official IRA (OIRA) gunmen.
Bleeding heavily from several chest wounds, the 26-year-old was rushed to the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital (RVH), which stands at the crossroads of the Falls Road, Springfield Road and Grosvenor Road. The hospital, which was founded in 1893, was later to become, albeit reluctantly, the world’s premier hospital for the treatment of gunshot and bomb-blast wounds. It was an epithet that was thrust on to it, with almost 2,000 cases treated during the long years of the Troubles. It is unique among all hospitals because almost two-thirds of Northern Ireland’s population live within a forty-minute journey of its doors and wonderful medical staff. Mr Roy could not be saved, and thus the country saw its first death of the Troubles and the first death at the hands of the Republicans during this ‘new’ period of history.
That fateful 14 August was not many minutes old when further savage rioting broke out, with the RUC and their Auxiliaries, the ‘B’ Specials, in action as Protestants and Catholics, angered for different reasons, came onto the streets, throwing missiles at the police and at each other. Three Shorland armoured cars came under attack in the Divis Street/Falls Road area, from both sides; by now, petrol bombs were being thrown. Supplies of petrol bombs had been stockpiled for several days in caches in the Nationalist areas; on the tops of the Divis Street tower and the adjoining Divis complex, scores of the flaming weapons cascaded into the streets below. Shots were ringing out, prompting the officers to return fire, which resulted in the next death: that of Patrick Rooney, a 9-year-old boy who lived in St Brendan’s Pass.
The altar boy and his parents lived on the bottom floor of the flats; they had witnessed the rioting, the petrol bombs, the angry cries of the mobs. Mrs Rooney described the scene outside: ‘... half the street was on fire. I was trying to watch television, but Patrick went to bed. I’ll always remember he told me not to wake him until late ...’ At around 01.30 hours, as the child slept in the ground-floor flat, it was hit by four high-velocity rounds, fired from one of the Shorlands. One of the rounds hit the sleeping child, mortally wounding him, passing straight through his head and impacting in a mass of blood and brains on his bedroom wall. Another of the rounds also hit his father, Neely, who was fortunately only grazed on the forehead. At first it was thought that Patrick had fainted at the sight of his father being hit; however, once it was realised that the boy had been shot, his parents went outside into the pandemonium that reigned to summon an ambulance. An Australian journalist reporting on the chaotic scenes realised that an ambulance was required. He took out a white handkerchief, waving it as he ventured through the ongoing gun-battle. Patrick’s distraught parents watched as he was picked up by a passing ambulance, which arrived shortly afterwards. He was taken first to the City Hospital on Lisburn Road, before being rushed to the RVH, where the staff now knew that they were in for a very rough night; Patrick died shortly afterwards. The RUC were apparently unaware that young Patrick had been hit, and indeed it took the intervention of British journalist Max Hastings to alert them to the fact. In 2018, the Police Ombudsman announced that he intended to reopen the case. However, there was only one surviving member of the RUC team from that night (a 78-year-old); he voluntarily attended a meeting with the Historical Enquiries Team. Further details had not emerged at the time of publication. A leading MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) – Doug Beattie – told the Belfast Newsletter: ‘How can an investigation be balanced and fair? The shooting came at a time of intense rioting before the Army came onto the streets.’
The author, at that time a 19-year-old soldier, read the following morning’s newspapers; it made horrific reading, in particular the interview with Patrick’s father – a former British soldier – as he described returning to their flat after leaving their dead child in the hospital. In it, he stated that he had tried to scrape Patrick’s brain matter off the bedroom wall, with the only thing that he could find, a kitchen spoon. Although there were no further fatalities in those early hours, the rioting and firing continued, resulting in scores of injured in the RVH, with others being taken to the Mater Hospital on the Crumlin Road.
The RUC and the ‘B’ Specials were being run off their feet, coming under fire from the higher flats of the Divis Tower as well as from street level. In a later inquiry, several of the officers in the Shorlands had tried to justify their shots towards Patrick Rooney’s house, stating that they had come under fire from the Divis Tower. This, however, did not explain why around thirteen rounds were fired at ground-floor flats in the complex. The later Scarman Inquiry tellingly remarked: ‘We believe that, appalled by the human consequences of their shooting and frightened by the spectre of revenge, the Shorland crew members have not made to the Tribunal a full disclosure of what they know occurred.’
Approximately twenty hours after the death of Patrick Rooney, amid what has been described as a ‘catastrophic riot’ in the interface area of the Protestant Woodvale and the Catholic Ardoyne, there was another fatality. Mobs from both sides of the sectarian divide – it might better be described as an abyss – had started to construct barricades. Both sides would claim that their respective makeshift barriers were for protective purposes, and it is very clear that their mutual worries were very well considered as well as justified.
The more serious of the clashes occurred in Hooker Street, which, back in those pre-urban redevelopment days, ran into the Crumlin Road, close to the Woodvale. The conflict then began to escalate as IRA gunmen joined in the action, firing on RUC officers as they tried to get in between the rioting parties. At one stage, several IRA volunteers, thought to have been armed with First World War German Mauser rifles firing the outdated 7.92mm round and possibly former British Army Lee–Enfield .303s, ageing Thompsons and shotguns, engaged in a firefight with police officers. The fighting moved into nearby Herbert Street, where the McLarnon family lived. With all the street lights deliberately extinguished, the firing continued, illuminated only by muzzle flashes from both ends of the street and by the
burning buildings.
In one of the houses, Ulsterbus employee Samuel McLarnon (27) was closing the blinds to his living room window in Herbert Street at precisely the same moment that RUC officers opened fire. They were retaliating to shots being fired at them by IRA gunmen. Three rounds entered his window, one of them striking him in the head, mortally wounding him. He fell, drenching the carpet and furniture in his blood, in front of his shocked wife. He was taken to the Mater but was already dead as the high-velocity round had caused catastrophic damage to his head.
Moments after Mr McLarnon was mortally wounded, Michael Lynch (28) who lived in Strathroy Street, approximately 600 yards from the scene, was crossing Butler Street when a stray round, thought to have been fired by an RUC officer, hit him in the chest. He had been walking towards Elmfield Street where, it has been claimed, around eight men were hit by stray rounds, thought to have been fired by an automatic weapon, possibly an RUC Sterling sub-machine gun; he died at the scene.
The 14th was not over, and nor had the violence or deaths ended, when David Linton (48), a father of three, was fatally wounded by IRA gunmen firing into Palmer Street in the Protestant Woodvale. The gunmen had crossed over the sectarian interface, firing at anything that moved in the Protestant housing on the south side of the Crumlin Road. At this stage, the rioting had raged for around six hours, with the exhausted, unrelieved police officers having temporarily abandoned their positions, thus creating a vacuum. It was into these positions that the emboldened gunmen had started to infiltrate when Mr Linton strayed into their sights.
The tactics employed by Catholic rioters in the absence of police was to throw petrol bombs and other missiles into Palmer Street, thus luring the Protestant residents into the open. The alarmed residents began to retaliate with the same weapons, with their own gunmen in support. They pushed their barricade to the very mouth of Palmer Street where it adjoins the Crumlin Road, and began to take the initiative. However, the gunmen fired a shotgun at the Protestants, hitting Mr Linton in the neck and chest, fatally wounding him, leaving him lying in a pool of blood. Shots were fired back, which it is believed wounded two of the IRA gunmen, who were whisked away to a sympathetic doctor in the Ardoyne or New Lodge. The fatally wounded Protestant was rushed to the RVH, where he died from internal bleeding some ten hours later on the 15th.