1972

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “You may be, but this little car isn’t. Show it some mercy, will you?”

  McCoy ignored the remark. “Every man feels more powerful when he’s behind the wheel of a car. Have you no interest in motors at all?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “Sometimes I despair of you, Seventeen.”

  The first day passed without serious trouble, though there were frequent bands of hecklers along the way. That night Barry and McCoy stayed in a small country inn and enjoyed a good meal, during which McCoy expounded on the merits of various automobiles between fits of coughing.

  “You should give up those cigarettes,” Barry advised him.

  “Not me, I love my bad habits. They’re the best thing about met.”

  The next morning they caught up with the marchers only to find a large crowd surrounding them, shouting obscenities. Some of those in the crowd were no older than the marchers themselves. A score were even younger; a mob of children being trained to hate.

  Barry’s eyes sought out the red-haired girl. She continued to walk forward with her head up and her eyes straight ahead, refusing to react to the verbal assault. Then someone in the crowd threw a bottle filled with urine.

  As if that were the signal, a barrage of bricks and stones was hurled at the students. Barry hardly had time to get his camera focussed before the barrage turned into an even more physical assault. Marchers were kicked and pummelled. Girls’ hair was pulled. A couple of male students were seized around the neck and half throttled.

  Their police escort watched but made no move to interfere.

  Uttering a string of expletives, McCoy started to get out of the car. Barry caught him by the wrist with a grasp of iron. “We can’t, Séamus. I’m here as an observer.”

  “Meaning you can’t fight back?”

  “Meaning I—and you as my driver—can’t get involved. We tell the story in pictures, we can’t be part of it.”

  Muttering to himself, McCoy settled back into the car. “Goes against nature,” Barry heard him say.

  MEANWHILE, Ian Paisley was addressing a large gathering of his supporters in Derry’s Guildhall. A simultaneous protest against Paisley was going on outside. In the City Council Chambers, a number of homeless Catholics had barricaded the door and turned off the lights.3

  Tempers were raw in Derry City.

  Throughout the day the marchers were subjected to increasingly violent assaults. The hostilities were well organised; carloads of men armed with cudgels, billhooks, crowbars, and scythe blades were brought to meet the march at predetermined points.

  The escalating violence drew the press, whose numbers swelled hourly. They began to send out bulletins on the progress of the march. As photographs of the marchers, bloodied but unbowed, appeared on television, the courage of the students began to swing public opinion in their favour. Others joined them until there were almost a hundred civil rights demonstrators walking toward Derry. Carrying no placards, inciting no violence. Just walking.

  The ranks of police grew too, totalling more than eighty by the end of the third day. Never did the police give the marchers any assistance or make any effort to protect them from their tormentors.4

  Barry was painfully reminded of the reaction of southern white politicians in America when the federal administration tried to enlist protection for civil rights marchers.

  The climax came on the fourth day. With the collusion of the RUC and B-Specials,5 a mob of more than three hundred, including a number of off-duty constables,6 ambushed the marchers at the narrow Burntollet Bridge. They ran out from lanes on either side of the road, screaming invective. Wielding iron bars and bicycle chains, they swarmed into the ranks of marchers. Men and women alike were battered to the ground. A few of the marchers managed to break through and run for their lives, but many were driven into the ditches on either side of the road and beaten unmercifully. Others were forced into the River Fahan and attacked on the bank when they tried to crawl out.

  The journalists covering the march were appalled. At last several, including Barry Halloran, abandoned their professional objectivity and ran to try to help. Most met with the same violence as the marchers. But the thugs who meant to attack Barry turned and ran when the tall man let out a roar and charged at them instead. His hair was fire, his eyes were ice. The fury on his face was too much for any bully.

  One of Barry’s terrified assailants stumbled over an earlier victim and fell flat on his face in the dirt. Before he could stop himself, Barry gave him a vicious kick in the ribs.

  God, that felt good!

  Describing the scene at Burntollet Bridge, a reporter wrote in the Belfast Sunday News, “I saw a young woman lying face down in the stream.” He went on to relate that before he could pull her out, several men had attacked her with spiked cudgels. “I could see the blood spurt out of the holes in her legs,”7 he stated.

  Although most of the marchers were injured to some degree, they regrouped and staggered on toward Derry. As they passed through outlying Catholic communities their numbers increased dramatically. When they entered Irish Street, which was strongly Protestant, they were ambushed again by extremists, whose cudgels studded with six-inch nails were augmented by large piles of stones conveniently provided by a local builder.

  Yet more men and women—not all of them Catholic by any means—

  continued to join the march. They were attacked yet again as they passed through the Waterside. But by the time they reached Guildhall Square their ranks had swelled to almost two thousand, a number sufficient to deter any further attack.

  As public opinion swung to their side during the course of the march, John Hume and Ivan Cooper, a prominent Protestant and strong proponent of civil rights himself, had hastily organised a public reception in the Square. The dazed marchers stumbled into a hero’s welcome.

  Eighty-seven of their number were admitted to Altnagelvin Hospital with severe injuries. Miraculously, no one had been killed that day. But something was born that would survive for a very long time.

  That night the red-haired girl whom Barry had first noticed in Belfast was invited down to Dublin, together with a couple of other marchers, to tell her story on RTE. She proved to be both passionate and articulate. Her name was Bernadette Devlin.

  In the early hours of the next morning some members of the RUC who had been drinking in the pubs all evening went rampaging through Derry’s Bogside district. Armed with riot sticks and pick handles, they broke windows, smashed down doors, and battered any Catholic they could catch.

  A member of the B-Specials chased a seventeen-year-old girl into a laneway. Calling her a Fenian whore, he hit her on the side of the head with his baton and then tried to rape her with it. As she staggered bleeding from the laneway, she ran into a newspaper reporter who recounted her ordeal in the evening papers. A photograph by Barry Halloran accompanied the story.

  When Barry and McCoy returned to Belfast they found three young men waiting for them outside the Felons’ Club. “Allow me to present my reservists,” McCoy said with mock formality.

  A gangly youth with tousled hair told McCoy, “After what happened in Derry, there’s gonna be more of us wantin’ to join you.”

  “The Army’s not on active service now.”

  “You will be,” the youngster said.

  STATEMENT BY TERENCE O‘NEILL, PRIME MINISTER OF NORTHERN IRELAND,

  5 January 1969

  I want the people of Ulster to understand in plain terms events which have taken place since January 1st. The march to Londonderry planned by the People’s Democracy was, from the outset, a foolhardy and irresponsible undertaking. At best, those who planned it were careless of the effects it would have, at worst, they embraced with enthusiasm the prospect of adverse publicity causing further damage to the interests of Northern Ireland as a whole … .

  Clearly Ulster has now had enough. We are all sick of marchers and counter-marchers. Unless these warring minorities rapidly return to their
senses we will have to consider a further reinforcement of the regular police by greater use of the Special constabulary for normal police duties … .

  I think we must also have an urgent look at the Public Order Act itself to see whether we ought to ask Parliament for further powers to control those elements which are seeking to hold the entire community to ransom.

  Enough is enough. We have heard sufficient for now about Civil rights, let us hear a little about civic responsibility. For it is a short step from the throwing of paving stones to the laying of tombstones and I for one can think of no cause in Ulster today which will be advanced by the death of a single Ulsterman.

  Belfast Telegraph, 6 January 1969

  Chapter Thirty-four

  BARRY returned to Dublin determined to buy an automobile of his own. To cover the situation in the north he needed to be independently mobile, not relying on public transport or borrowed cars. After the Long March it felt good to be back in Dublin. The home was still the hub of society. Everything was built around the family. Children said please and thank you and were respectful to their elders. Young people did not gather in large, threatening crowds. There was no graffiti on the walls urging “Kill a Taig today.”

  IN the next road down from Philpott’s house was a garage which did motor repairs. Occasionally an automobile was parked on the forecourt with a For Sale sign on the windscreen. After carefully examining his bank balance, one Thursday afternoon Barry walked to the garage with the gait of a man out to take a casual stroll. A man who had no intention of buying anything.

  A bright red, rather battered-looking sports car of an inexpensive make was parked invitingly close to the footpath. A sign displayed on the windscreen announced, FOR SALE AT A REASONABLE PRICE.

  Barry stopped. Gave the automobile a long, hard look. Ambled into the garage, where he found a swarthy man in greasy coveralls. “How much do you want for the red car out there?”

  The mechanic glanced past him as if he had forgotten that there was anything parked on the forecourt. “Oh. You mean the Austin Healey?”

  “I do. What do you call a reasonable price?”

  “It’s not a new car, you can see that for yourself. Clean—washed and polished, I mean—but not new at all. In fact it was modified for rally driving. Road racing, that class of thing.”

  The jaunty grin of Barry’s youth had been replaced by a slight smile and one lifted eyebrow, giving him a gently mocking expression. “Did I say I was looking for a new car?”

  The mechanic’s eyes narrowed to calculating slits. “But you are looking for a car?”

  “I didn’t say that either. I just happened to be passing and noticed the Austin. What’s the story?”

  The mechanic wiped his hands on a rag that hung out of his pocket. “Man brought it in here for repairs months ago. To tell the truth, that car was in pretty bad shape. The gears were shot, the tyres were bald, and it needed a new top. When the owner came back and saw the invoice he tried to wriggle out of it, but like I says to him, parts and labour cost money. I was ready to be reasonable but not robbed.”

  “Of course not,” Barry agreed.

  “I cut the cost as low as I could and he said he’d be back with the money the next day. I waited. Not a sign of the sinner. My wife wasn’t best pleased, I can tell you. She said I should have been paid up front.”

  Barry looked sympathetic. “You could hardly take money from a customer at gunpoint.”

  “Feckin’ right! So like I say, I waited. Three months now. No sign of the owner, and the wife giving me cold tea. She tells me,’Sell the car for what’s owing.’ And she’s right too.”

  “May I see the repair bill?”

  “There’s storage charges on top of that, y’unnerstand.”

  “Of course.”

  “And like I say, the car ain’t been cared for properly. She’s small but she’s powerful, a real racing machine. Somebody installed a big push rod six-cylinder engine that makes that light chassis fly. Man has a car like that, he should take it to a garage on a regular basis, have an expert give’er a going over.”

  “I couldn’t agree more,” said Barry. “I only live a couple of hundred yards from here. With a car like this I’d be a regular customer, Mister … ?” He paused.

  “Coates. Paudie Coates.”

  Barry extended his hand. “Barry Halloran.”

  A closer examination revealed that the car had been crashed at some stage, but Paudie assured him the damage had not been sufficient to make further driving dangerous. “The axles are solid and the body’s not out of alignment.”

  Barry chuckled. “I wish I could say the same about myself. Is there an owner’s manual that comes with this?”

  “Lost years ago, I suspect,” said Paudie. “There’s no jack, either, but I’ll throw one in for free if you buy the car.”

  An hour later Barry was sitting behind the wheel of the Austin Healey, negotiating it through the streets of Dublin. Deliciously aware of the purr of the big engine, and of the admiring glances coming his way. The automobile a man drives reflects his personality.

  He was whizzing down the quays when he realised, A man driving around the north in this car could hardly be more conspicuous.

  A muscle tensed in Barry’s jaw. If Ursula had been sitting beside him she would have recognised her son’s “dangerous look.”

  Unfortunately, almost every week something went wrong with the Austin. On its fifth trip to the garage in as many weeks, Barry asked Paudie Coates, “Can you teach me to do some repairs for myself?”

  “Are you good with your hands at all?”

  Barry laughed.

  IN the aftermath of the Burntollet Bridge debacle a commission was set up to examine the causes of the violence. Ultimately nothing changed. It remained for prominent Protestants such as Ivan Cooper and Campbell Austin, who owned the largest department store in Derry, to try to encourage a less bigoted and more liberal attitude amongst their co-religionists.

  However, the voice of the demagogue was growing louder in Northern Ireland.

  On the second of February, Ian Paisley led six thousand supporters through Belfast, demanding an end to Terence O’Neill’s premiership.

  When a disaffected group of Unionists met in Portadown to demand his resignation, O‘Neill called for a general election at the end of the month. Unionism fractured into pro- and anti-O’Neill camps. Most vocal on the anti-side were Ian Paisley, Brian Faulkner, the deputy prime minister, and Lord Brookeborough, who had preceded O’Neill in office.

  In the election O’Neill managed to hang on, successfully defending his constituency seat against Ian Paisley, but his majority in parliament was fatally diminished.

  New figures were emerging in the political sphere. John Hume—newly elected to Stormont as nationalist MP for Derry—Austin Currie, and Ivan Cooper formed the nexus of a civil rights faction. Ian Paisley roundly condemned them all, claiming that the civil rights issue was merely a front for Irish nationalism. “NICRA equals IRA” was his oft-repeated slogan.

  In April, Terence O’Neill announced a new policy of one man, one vote.

  That same month, in a Westminster by-election Bernadette Devlin, running as a unity candidate, became the youngest woman ever elected to the British House of Commons. In her widely reported maiden speech in Commons, Devlin said, “I am not speaking of one night of broken glass, but of fifty years of human misery.”1

  When a series of explosions disrupted the water supply flowing from the Silent Valley Reservoir to Belfast, at first the IRA was suspected. Then it was found to be the work of the UVF, which was trying to destabilise O’Neill and put an end to his reforms. 2 People in the city feared that it was part of a larger loyalist plot to deny water to the firemen while the Catholic areas of Belfast went up in flames.

  On the twenty-eighth the beleaguered Terence O’Neill resigned.

  In June, Ian Paisley was banned from Switzerland during the forthcoming papal visit. Following talks at the Swiss
embassy, Paisley said that the Swiss were “dimwits” whose only contribution to the twentieth century was the cuckoo clock.3

  IN 1969 the ha’penny was phased out to prepare for the introduction of decimalisation. The song topping the Irish charts was Elvis Presley’s rendition of “In the Ghetto.” Very few in the Republic knew what a Chicago ghetto was like, but some knew what parts of Northern Ireland were like. The parts where the Catholics lived.

  A small contingent of IRA veterans from Belfast, led by Joe Cahill, travelled to Dublin to talk to Cathal Goulding. They asked him to release whatever arms the organisation had in its Dublin arms dump for use in the defence of Catholics in Belfast and Derry. Goulding refused. He assured the group that continued civil disobedience would not attract the sort of violence they were worried about. Deeply disappointed, Cahill returned to Belfast to await, with mounting concern, the onset of summer and the Marching Season.

  IN 1690 two claimants to the English throne had used Ireland as their battleground. William of Orange, a Dutch Calvinist—who paradoxically had the support of the Vatican4—was opposed by the Catholic James II, last of the romantic and doomed Stuart dynasty, who had the support of France. The decisive battle took place on the banks of the Boyne River on the first of July. William had twenty-five thousand men; James fewer than nine thousand. The Battle of the Boyne turned into a rout when James abandoned the field and fled to Dublin. The Williamite victory had assured that a Protestant monarch would rule England’s colony in Ireland.

  To commemorate that event, the Orange Order annually turned the month of July into Marching Season. Hundreds of Orange parades throughout the Six Counties claimed to be celebrating civil and religious liberty. The fact that only Protestants were entitled to either was unspoken but fully understood.