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At the start
of the year Loyalists and B Specials had attacked a Peoples Democracy March at
Burntollet, outside Derry. Sporadic rioting had occurred in the months since
then and in Belfast Catholic homes were attacked and some families evicted.
In April
Samuel Devenney had been batoned in his home by the RUC. He died three months
later on July 16th. That same month an Orange parade had clashed with
nationalists in Derry, and in three days of renewed attacks on the Bogside by
the RUC, two civilians were shot and wounded. In the course of two days of
riots in Dungiven, a Catholic pensioner Francis McCloskey was killed on July 14th
in an RUC baton charge. He was first person killed as a result of violence in
the most recent phase of conflict.
The British
statelet would not concede ‘one man, one
vote’, or any principle of equality; it could only be sustained on the
basis of inequality. That was what kept Big House unionists in their positions
as top dogs; they knew that if change came and inequality was ended they would
no longer even have reason to be unionists. The slogans of the regime, ‘Not an inch’ and ‘No surrender’, must prevail at all costs.
On 2 August
the Shankill Defence Association, aided and abetted by the RUC and B Specials,
launched attacks on Unity Flats after an Orange march. Patrick Corry, a
Catholic, was hit by an RUC baton near his home and died four months later.
Catholic families were intimidated out of the Crumlin Road area by loyalist
gangs.
On 12
August the Orange parade went ahead in Derry. At the edge of the Bogside,
young nationalists clashed with loyalists, and the RUC launched baton charges.
Fighting side by side with the loyalists, the RUC brought up armoured cars and,
for the first time in Ireland, CS gas. For forty-eight hours the mainly teenage
defenders of the Bogside used stones, bottles and petrol bombs against the
constant baton charges of hundreds of RUC and loyalists. Free Derry was born.
At the height
of the Battle of the Bogside I attended an emergency meeting of NICRA in the
Wellington Park Hotel in Belfast. It was decided to organize demos throughout
the North to stretch the RUC and relieve the pressure on the people of the
Bogside. The Belfast demo was to be organized by the West Belfast Housing
Action Committee.
In Dublin
three cabinet ministers proposed that the Irish army cross the border and seize
Derry, Newry and other areas of majority Catholic population. On August
13th An Taoiseach Jack Lynch went on television to announce that ‘the
Irish government can no longer stand by and see innocent people injured and
perhaps worse’. At around the time of his broadcast I was chairing the
protest meeting at Divis Flats. When we marched later to Hasting Street and
Springfield Road Barracks we were attacked by the RUC. Later again in the early
hours of the morning the RUC opened fire on us from the roof of Springfield
Road barracks.
Only half
slept I went into work that morning of the 14th, but at 11.30
a.m. someone came into the bar for me, saying, ‘You’re wanted. You should
pack in work. The wee man’s looking for you.’ The ‘wee man’ was Billy McMillen.
I went
straight from work to Leeson Street, where Billy McMillen and Jimmy Sullivan
were in the process of mobilising republicans from all over Belfast and
attempting to put in place some defensive arrangements for nationalist areas
which were under attack. During the course of that day, there were reports of
increasing tension in different parts of the city bordering on loyalist areas,
in particular Ardoyne.
That evening
a loyalist mob, including many members of the B Specials, armed with rifles,
revolvers and sub-machine guns moved from the Shankill Road toward the Falls.
They petrol bombed Catholic houses in the streets that lay on their route,
beating up their occupants and shooting at fleeing residents. As the mob
reached the Falls Road itself, it started to attack St Comgall’s school. A lone
IRA volunteer opened fire and the crowd was repelled. The RUC, coming in behind
the loyalist civilians and B Specials, opened up with heavy calibre Browning
machine-guns from Shorland armoured cars. They directed their firing into the
nationalist area, into narrow streets and into Divis Flats itself, where they
killed a nine-year-old boy. An RUC sniper from Hasting Street Barracks shot
dead a young local man home on leave from the British army.
Within a
remarkably short space of time, the streets off the Falls Road, and the Falls
itself, had been turned into a war zone. Throughout the night, the RUC roared
up and down in their armoured vehicles. Dover Street was burned out, and Percy
Street, and fighting continued all night in Conway Street. As dawn arose on the
morning of 15 August, it did so over a scene of absolute devastation. Six
people were dead, five Catholics and one Protestant; about 150 had been wounded
by gunfire and 150 Catholic homes had been gutted. The streetscape that I grew
up in was gone.
The attacks
continued through the 15th. In the Clonard area Gerald McAuley, a
fifteen-year-old member of Na Fianna, was shot dead defending Bombay Street,
and the street itself was ablaze. Catholic families were fleeing from their
homes across Belfast. From the Grosvenor Road, Donegal Road, Tiger’s Bay, York
Street, Sandy Row, Highfield and Greencastle: Some fled south, but more moved
into safer areas of West Belfast, particularly Andersonstown and Ballymurphy.
Relief committees were established in most of these areas.
Local people
opened up their homes to these refugees or just emptied their houses of
blankets and clothes and gave up their beds to those who had been forced to
flee. In the short few weeks of August 1969, all had changed. Forever.
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