A Belfast Child

by John Chambers

  But this was no nightmare and the horror had just begun. As I recovered from the immediate shock of what had just happened my eyes drifted around the bus. All I could see were bodies, blood, broken glass and wreckage strewn all over the place. It looked as though a bomb had gone off and I could see and smell destruction all around me. I glanced at the back of the bus and to my utter disbelief the whole of its back section had been ripped off. The seats that Noddy, Maria and others had occupied had completely disappeared.

  I looked out of the gaping hole and my heart almost stopped. Bodies and debris littered the road and I could clearly see Noddy lying sickeningly still on the rain-soaked tarmac, illuminated by vehicles caught up in the accident and others who had stopped to help, or gawk in amazement at what they’d just witnessed.

  As my traumatised mind tried to process all this, I staggered up and checked myself for injuries. I was relieved to find I was mostly in one piece, although my head was bleeding and I was starting to slip into shock. As I turned and looked out the window to my left, I froze in terror as I watched a car lose control, cross the lanes and crash violently at speed into the bus right below where I was sitting. I’d automatically braced myself for the impact and my whole body rocked as the shockwaves of the crash reverberated through the bus and my aching body.

  From this point on everything becomes hazy, as if I’m watching events happen to someone else and I’m oddly detached from my own body and mind. I should have been panicking and fighting to get off the bus and the danger below me. That car could’ve blown up or engulfed me in fire at any moment. But I just sat there for what seemed like ages and although I could see everything around me and hear ambulances and fire brigade approaching, I was frozen to the spot in deep shock.

  Eventually, someone guided me off the bus and I walked as if in a trance to where Noddy lay on the damp, wet ground, lifeless. As the rain drenched me, I looked down on him and, bowing my head, I said a silent prayer for Noddy, Maria and the other injured boys and girls on this bus. Then I cursed the type of god who would let such a thing happen.

  After a while, ambulance crews came to check on me and the other walking wounded, patching us up where necessary. We were led to a nearby hotel, given hot, reviving drinks and interviewed by the Garda (the Irish police). To this day I cannot remember whether we stayed in the hotel overnight or how we got back to Belfast. My next memory is of lying on the sofa in my flat and being fussed over by my sisters and other family members. The Ulster News had carried the story about the crash and those killed and injured, and my family had spent hours not knowing if I was alive or dead. I should have called them from the hotel the night before but I was away with the fairies and it had not even entered my battered brain to let them know I was alive and well.

  In the days that followed, the Belfast Mod community banded together in shock. One of our own had been killed, and others injured, and many gathered outside the City Hall in sombre groups, chatting and remembering Noddy and those injured in the crash. Maria was still in hospital fighting for her life, while many others were scarred emotionally and physically and would never fully recover from the trauma of what they had gone through.

  I was numb to it all, hibernating at home and licking my wounds, and I couldn’t face a world that seemed so unfair. In fact, I refused point blank to talk about the accident and months later, when many of those involved in the crash began the process of suing Ulster Bus and claiming compensation, I wanted nothing to do with it, missing the opportunity for a substantial pay-out. Looking back, I was probably suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) – but this was Belfast and many people suffered from that, whether they knew it or not. The response was just to get on with life, which I did, but the psychological wounds lasted for years to come.

  Mods from all over the island of Ireland, north and south, travelled to the Falls Road for Noddy’s funeral. Catholic and Protestant stood shoulder-to-shoulder, forming a guard of honour as we buried one of our own. Even then I felt nervous as I stood outside Noddy’s house, trying not to catch the eyes of a few mourners who seemed to be staring right at me, trying to discern if I was Catholic or Protestant.

  Putting my fears aside, I ignored them. This was not about religion and as I paid my respects to Noddy’s friends and family I felt nothing but love and gratitude from them. I came away from that awful event wondering why we couldn’t always live in peace and harmony and move on from centuries of the suspicion and mistrust that ruled and ruined our daily lives.

  RIP, Noddy – you were one of the best.

  CHAPTER 14

  B

  y now, I was torn. Pulled in all directions over my loyalty to my Mod friends (especially the Catholic ones) and loyalty – with a capital ‘L’ – to the religion and culture that had nurtured and sustained me throughout my life. Although I was careful not to broadcast it, I’d felt I had to join the UDA; scores of my friends from Ballysillan, Glencairn and surrounding areas were also signing up. No matter that I was running around with Catholic girls and boys at the weekends, there were still sections of this community who were out to kill me and my kind, and if I had to defend myself against that by whatever means, so be it. I always said that I couldn’t kill anyone and I meant it. But protecting my community and its traditions was another matter. At the time, paranoia among Protestants and Loyalists was at boiling point, and the constant threat of civil war with IRA-supporting nationalists drove countless other ordinary kids like me into the ranks of Loyalist paramilitaries although, like me, many of them remained on the fringes and never took part in the ‘military’ operations.

  So, let’s wind back the clock a year or so to a dreary day in November 1985. For most of that year, the talk around Belfast had been about the Anglo–Irish Agreement, drawn up and signed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Irish equivalent, Garret FitzGerald. This agreement gave the Republic of Ireland some say in Northern Irish matters in return for them dropping their claim to our country by agreeing that any change to its status could only come with the consent of a majority.

  Predictably, Loyalists saw this as a complete sell-out. We relied upon the British government to support us as loyal subjects and now they were talking to the very people we saw as the enemy. We saw this as the first step on the road to a united Ireland, the situation we feared the most. The backlash was huge – strikes, resignations, anger and violence all over Northern Ireland. We were Protestants and by God would we protest about this betrayal. A week or so after the Anglo–Irish Agreement was signed a mass rally was planned for Saturday, 23 November outside the City Hall. Usually, we Mods would’ve gathered here at the weekend, but not this one – and certainly not any of our Catholic counterparts. It seemed that every Loyalist in Belfast and beyond had gathered in the city centre that day; more than a hundred thousand people amid a sea of red, white and blue. It was like 12 July, except with drizzle and a hell of a lot more anger.

  I was there with a lot of my mates from Glencairn and the Shankill. It was an event not to be missed. We pushed and shoved our way to as near to the front of the crowd as we could get, and managed to climb up some scaffolding above H Samuel, the jeweller’s shop facing the City Hall. There were dozens of us hanging off the metal poles and if the whole thing had collapsed there’d have been a terrible tragedy. But it didn’t, and as we clung on we enjoyed the spectacle of the vast crowd below us as they waited for the day’s speakers.

  The Ulster Unionist Party leader, James Molyneaux, spoke and while he said all the right things, he wasn’t a patch on the next man up – the infamous Ian Paisley. Anyone who knows anything about Northern Irish politics will remember ‘the Big Man’. You either loved him or hated him, but no one could ever deny that his heart wasn’t right at the centre of Loyalism. Of course, he had quite a turnaround many years later when he shared power with Martin McGuinness. But in 1985, there seemed more chance of Big Ian becoming Pope than there was of him getting all chummy with the IRA.

 
; Anyway, this massive crowd hung on to his every word as his booming tones rang out right across Donegall Square and beyond.

  ‘Where do the terrorists operate from?’ he roared. ‘From the Irish Republic! Where do the terrorists return to for sanctuary? To the Irish Republic! And yet Mrs Thatcher tells us that that Republic must have some say in our province. We say Never! Never! Never! Never!’

  The crowd roared back its approval, united in one voice. We were determined that a united Ireland would not happen to us proud Protestants, and in later speeches Paisley would say that we were on ‘the verge of civil war’, with the possibility of hand-to-hand fighting in every street. It was scary stuff, particularly for us on the front line in Belfast and despite my non-sectarian approach to Mod-dom, I was as angry as anyone else that we were being sold down the river by Mrs Thatcher. Then, in typical Belfast style, some kid or other broke into a nearby sports shop and soon the square was filled with flying tennis and golf balls, mostly aimed at the police. It livened the mood a little, but there was no doubting the fierce anger that hung over the crowd on that grey autumn afternoon.

  I knew I couldn’t kill anyone, but there’s no doubt that as a member of the UDA I was now among killers – or at least guys who would go on to kill. I abhorred all sectarian killings, but those were the times and people did whatever they felt was right, or whatever their consciences could handle. I knew I’d never be able to square away the killing of a Catholic as justifiable political act, and I think the UDA guys who were training me and the other young lads who’d joined around that time knew this. They didn’t put pressure on me to go out and pull the trigger – I’d have been useless anyway, and for a paramilitary organisation having someone like me on the front line would’ve been counter-productive, to say the least.

  In the meantime, I’d regularly go down the Shankill to various places, where I’d learn to map read and march in line. There were lectures on the history of the Loyalist movement and training in compass-reading techniques. They were preparing us as foot soldiers for civil war. As I’ve said, it was all a bit Boy Scouts or Boys’ Brigade to me, but to others it was deadly serious – not a game, but a matter of life and death. These were the lads who would go on to be the ‘top boys’ of Loyalist paramilitarism and in time would become infamous in Belfast and well beyond. They’d do time in the Maze prison or in ‘the Crum’ – the damp, dank Crumlin Road gaol that is now a major tourist attraction in Belfast. I have to confess that I was in there too – but not for any romantic notion of defending Loyalism against hordes of Republican invaders. In fact, it was for motoring offences.

  I had a very reckless approach to taxing and insuring my scooter and given that I was prone to crashing or falling off it, this wasn’t great behaviour. Time after time the RUC would flag me down and demand that I produce my documents at the nearest station. Of course, I never had any of these so it would be off to court, and a fine that I couldn’t or wouldn’t pay. This happened so frequently that eventually the magistrate demanded that I either pay the fine straight away or spend three days in Crumlin Road gaol.

  Well, I didn’t have much else to do that weekend, to be honest. And I didn’t want to be slapped with a big fine that would be on my mind for ages. So to the surprise of the magistrate I said, ‘I’ll take prison, please,’ and with that I was marched down the steps of the dock and through the tunnel that links the courthouse with the gaol. As I walked I thought about all the paramilitary hard men from both sides who’d been taken on this very journey, many receiving multiple life sentences for the terrible stuff they’d done. I wasn’t exactly in their ranks, but a taste of the Crum would be something to tell the boys when I was finally sprung on the Monday.

  Unfortunately for me, I’d overlooked two things. The first was that my time in prison coincided with a bank holiday Monday. There wouldn’t be enough screws present that day to take me through the release procedure, so I’d have to come out on the Tuesday instead. That took the wind out of my sails a wee bit. The second was my clothing. I’d arrived at court complete with sixties paisley shirt, eyeliner and a string of beads around my neck. This wasn’t great gear for going to prison in and when I arrived in the prison to take the obligatory shower the screw in charge gave me a filthy look.

  ‘Are ye seriously goin’ in there looking like a fruit?’ he asked. ‘D’ye think that’ll be fun for ye?’

  I looked at myself in the cracked mirror. The guy was right. Some of the fellas in here were psychos, not exactly sympathetic to lads who looked a bit gay, as I’m sure I did. I couldn’t do much about the shirt, but I scrubbed off the eyeliner and handed in the love beads for safekeeping. Then, in an act of defiance, I scratched the words ‘Mods UTC’ (‘Up The Hoods’) on the door of the shower with a pen before handing that in too. I headed into the prison and to my cell for what turned out to be a pleasant few days. Because I wasn’t in for anything heinous, nobody took any notice of me. Also, I was a skinny lad with hollow legs and I enjoyed the carb-heavy prison food served up to us three times a day. I can’t say I was sorry to be released but it was an experience, and I could always talk it up a bit for the benefit of my mates.

  Many years later I took my young son on an organised tour of the prison, which is now a museum. I showed him the shower, and the graffiti that I’d etched on to the door. An American tourist overheard me talking to my boy about my ‘time’ in the Crum, and for the rest of the tour he and his fellow visitors treated me like royalty – Republican, no doubt. I didn’t tell them the truth . . . why let the facts get in the way of a good yarn?

  As I’ve said, the spell in gaol was towards the end of a long period of joyriding, shoplifting and drug-taking, some of which I was lifted for, much of which I got away with. In the 1980s, stealing cars and joyriding was almost a full-time occupation for many of Northern Ireland’s teenage males, especially in the Loyalist and Republican-controlled ghettos. There was always a danger that an untrained driver would crash, accidentally or deliberately, into an army checkpoint and be shot dead, and this happened on multiple occasions during the Troubles. I wasn’t confident enough to drive, but I was a regular passenger in cars that had been stolen by my mates in Belfast city centre and driven at high speed back up to Glencairn, where they’d be burned out.

  This was the scenario one such Saturday night, when we jacked a car just for the hell of it. The experts could be in there with the engine started in five seconds flat, and there was little chance of being caught red-handed. We belted up the Crumlin Road, not bothering ourselves with red lights or pedestrian crossings, and celebrated reaching our home turf with a screeching handbrake turn, perfect in every technical sense except that it ended with a side-on smash into a nice new Opel Ascona car parked on the other side of the road.

  None of us were hurt, but as we stared at the damage we’d inflicted on the Ascona we realised we’d committed a crime that could see us all shivering in fear as, one by one, our kneecaps were removed by a bullet from a Browning pistol. The car we’d just hit belonged to a top UDA man, a guy known to all of us as a character who took no nonsense, especially from a gang of hoods. Sensibly, we bolted from the car and ran as fast as our legs could take us.

  Unfortunately, Glencairn is a small place and word quickly reached the UDA as to the identity of the joyriders. The following day we all received the inevitable summons to the community centre, where the paramilitaries were waiting. To say we were shitting it is an understatement.

  ‘Don’t even fuckin’ think of denying it!’ screamed the enraged commander when we tried to do just that. ‘If youse think you’re gonna get away with this, youse are more stupid that ye look!’

  With that, he pulled a pistol from his waistband. A couple of our gang started to cry. I could feel my balls disappearing into my stomach as I thought about the prospect of hobbling around the estate for the rest of my life.

  ‘Now,’ he said, brandishing the pistol in our faces, ‘did ye smash my car up or didn’t ye?’

&n
bsp; Miserably, we nodded in unison. Our fate was sealed. Whatever happened to us next, we’d just have to accept. It was simply part and parcel of life in Loyalist West Belfast back then.

  The commander looked us up and down, this group of shuffling, shaking, sniffling boys. Perhaps something about our pathetic appearance softened his heart. Maybe he realised that we’d not meant to do what we did, that it was an accident that only affected him personally, not the Loyalist movement as a whole.

  ‘Here’s what’s going to happen,’ he said, after watching us sweat for a minute or so. ‘I’m going to buy a new car, and every Saturday youse are gonna come up to my house and clean it inside and out. And if it’s still dirty, you’ll start all over again. You got that?’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He was letting us off! Well, not quite, but washing a car was a whole sight easier than walking with a missing kneecap. We glanced at each other in shock, barely suppressing our smiles of relief, until the commander banged his fist on a table.

  ‘And if I ever catch youse joyriding again,’ he said in a menacingly low tone, ‘there’ll be no question of what will happen to you. Got that?’

  We trooped out like a gang of monkeys released from a cage. And two Saturdays later we were at the commander’s house armed with buckets, sponges and cleaning liquid. After we finished, his was the shiniest car on the estate.

  We got off very lightly because the UDA controlled everything on Glencairn. And I should’ve known better, being in their ranks. They were helpful on occasions, though. One time, a guy downstairs from me had a party and got clean off his head. He came upstairs, slabbering to me about some rubbish or other. Whatever I said back to him obviously offended him because he went ahead and smashed all my windows. I didn’t bother with the police – you just wouldn’t – and instead had a quiet word with a couple of the senior UDA guys on the estate. A couple of days later, the slabberer knocked my door and apologised for his behaviour before fixing every one of my broken windows.