1984. Back story:‘The Troubles’ is the term given to the ‘guerrilla war’ that took place in North-ern Ireland from late 1969 through to the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, and the Conflict in Ireland, it is sometimes described as a "guerrilla war" or a "low-level war". Al-though the Troubles primarily took place in Northern Ireland, at times the vio-lence spilled over into parts of the Republic of Ireland, England, and mainland Europe.

It also had an ethnic or sectarian dimension,[32] although it was not a reli-gious conflict. A key issue was the constitutional status of Northern Ireland. Unionists/loyalists, who were mostly Protestants, wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the United Kingdom. Irish nationalists/republicans, who were mostly Catholics, wanted Northern Ireland to leave the United Kingdom and join a united Ireland.

The main participants were: The Irish National Liberation Army (INLA), or Un-ionists (Protestants), who wanted Northern Ireland to remain within the UK and the Irish Republican Army (IRA), or Irish nationalists (Catholics), who wanted Northern Ireland to form part of a united Ireland. British troops were deployment to keep the peace as during that time over 3,600 people were killed and thousands more injured. I went there in 1984 at the height of ‘The Troubles’ (for a weeks holiday) and this is my story:

On a personal level I’ve always felt some sympathy over the Northern Ireland question. I mean if (say) France annexed ‘Cornwall’ and said that from now on, the county would be ruled by Paris, then you’d say: ‘Hang on a minute, we are an island and that bit’s attached to us, so can we have it back please?

Belfast at the height of ‘The Troubles’:Regardless of what was going on over there, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Irish (North and South); in fact I can honestly say (hand on heart) that I have never met a bad ‘un’. The Irish are great conversationalists, very witty, they are amazing writers, poets, they drink Guinness and are fiercely intellec-tual and boy do they make great music. I mean what’s not to like?

I first met Sean McGauchy (an Irishman of note) when I was working as a councilor on an American Summer Camp called ‘Rock Creak Farm’, he had gone over their to get away from the troubles for the summer and on the first night on camp I suggested we all go down the local pub and (although Sean was a reformed alcoholic) he decided to tag along - for the ‘craic’.

On the plane going over I watched ‘Chariots of Fire’. A factual story about two athletes in the 1924 Olympics: Eric Liddell, a devout Scottish Christian who runs for the glory of God, and Harold Abrahams, an English Jew who runs to overcome prejudice and for no particular reason I had become obsessed with the William Blake hymn ‘Jerusalem’.

At the end of the night I climbed upon the bar and sung it and all the public school boys councilors joined in. Then (not to be outdone) ‘Sean’, followed suit and sang an IRA protest song about the conflict in Northern Ireland and the Catholics struggle with English oppression. The only difference in delivery was that I was completely plastered when I sang my rendition and Sean was 100% sober.

Stunned by his choice of song, I went over and confronted him, but during the course of the evening he won me round and by the end of the night we were firm friends. After the camp ended we went separate ways (Sean stayed with the family of a girl he’d met and I went off hitch hiking). We met up again at JFK Airport in New York, as the organization (‘Camp America’) who sent us out their had chartered a plane for our return flight.

On the way back Sean said ‘Why don’t you come over to Northern Ireland and meet me ma?’ And I said ‘isn’t it a bit dangerous for an English Protestant to be wandering around the Catholic district of Northern Ireland, what with the ‘Troubles’ being on and all?’ And Sean said: ‘If any of them murdering bas-tards points a rifle at you then I’ll step in front of the barrel and take the bullet myself’ and I thought to myself, he really means it.

So the following weekend I found myself crossing the Irish Sea on a Sealink ferry bound for Belfast. When I arrived, Sean was there to pick me up in a car he‘d got from somewhere (I didn’t even know he had a license) and drove me to his ma’s house in County Antrim.

It was also as may recall, the city was where U2 wrote their song ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’, which was released several years after I was there. I remember at the time, noticing that all the street signs had been taken down and asking somebody what it was all about and I was told it was done to con-fuse the British army. But as I am writing this I have just learned that the lyrics were inspired by a story that Bono heard about the streets of Belfast, North-ern Ireland, where a person's religion and income are evident by the street they live on. Either way here’s some of the lyrics, which on reflection I could have related to at the time:

I want to run, I want to hide I want to tear down the walls that hold me insideI wanna reach out and touch the flame Where the streets have no name.

I want to feel sunlight on my face I see that dust cloud disappear without a traceI wanna take shelter from the poison rain.

Where the streets have no name, oh oh Where the streets have no nameWhere the streets have no name.

By-the-way, I knew what I was getting myself before I went to Belfast As both ITV and the BBC News bulletins regularly reported scenes of sectarian vio-lence from both sides, as justice was dished out by the paramilitaries, with victims being kneecapped (shot in the knees), beaten or tarred and feath-ered. I knew the city was going through some very dark times and that rioting, looting and petrol bombing was a common day occurrence.

But even so, seeing something on the TV and experiencing it in real life is too different things. I was literally in the middle of a war zone and I knew I was out of my depth. On arrival, my instant impression was that the city was grey, de-pressing and rundown. Everywhere I looked, there was bombed out shops and houses and burnt-out shells of cars and rubble was strewn all over the pavements and roads. There were murals on the end of houses depicting military imagery showed support for one side or the other, all of which added to a sense of a divided community.

Ireland's history is of course a long story of suffering, suppression and pov-erty, but also one of strong people who refuse to give up and who manage to see things from a humorous side in the face of hardship. I remember going to see Eric Sykes being interviewed on Parkinson once and at a Q&A session at the end of the show my friend asked him what does he look for in life and he said: ‘I look for daffodils in the dustbin’ and that‘s what I found over their. All these lovely, funny, warm, immensely kind people living in a dustbin of largely their own making. Am I right to say that?

As explained, back then Belfast was a divided city (Protestant and Catholic) and when we got to Sean’s Ma’s house in County Antrim, I met his family (who were of course all lovely). Unfortunately for me (being Church of Eng-land) they lived on the Catholic side of the Peace Line (which had been built at the end of their road), which meant, I was going to be staying on the wrong side of the fence, as the British government had built a massive wall separat-ing them from the Protestants neighbors on the other side.

That night we went to visit Sean’s best mate who (illegally) rented out VHS videos. As ‘stopping in’ and watching a home movie back then, was the new ‘going out’ (especially as the local cinema had been blown the previous year and never rebuilt). Anyway, his friend invited us to stop and we ended up watching Pink Panther movies (and me drinking Irish Whiskey) all evening.

We left around midnight and walked back to Sean’s mums house and it was then that it struck me how small Belfast was and how difficult it must be to keep the Peace, as one minute we were in a street where hard line Loyalist painted the curbing stones and lamp posts red, white and blue (Protestant) and the next we were walking down Shankill Road (a Catholic stronghold) with green, white and orange Catholic flags (the Irish tricolor), flying from the houses and shops.

The following day we went into the City center, which had a ring of steel around it and was only accessible via security gates, where everybody who went through were checked by the Police. In fact, you couldn’t go anywhere without opening your bags or standing, arms outstretched, waiting to be frisked. On the way back Sean pointed out the local Job Center, which was completely caged in with wire, he said that because it was a British Govern-mental building the IRA systematically blow it up, only for the British to rebuild it again and so it would go on.

The following day there was an Easter Monday Parade that passed down the end of Sean’s mum’s road and we all went out to cheer them on. Parading was a controversial issue in Northern Ireland back then, as people from one community have to march through another’s community and they would often end in a violent clash. They were traditionally led by a ‘color party’ (carrying flags), followed by a marching band, (pipes and drums), followed (in this case) by masked IRA men wearing black paramilitary-style clothing (plus dark glasses and black berets). They were often seen as a show of strength and an opportunity to show loyalty to the cause.

As we stood watching the parade pass, it suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t brought my camera and so Sean gave me his keys and I ran back and grabbed it, but by the time I got back they had gone. So Sean said that we could catch the parade again if we took a short cut through Milltown Cem-etery, which is on a hill in the middle of the city, (which ironicially was where UDA volunteer Michael Stone launched a one man attack against the funeral of three IRA men with a sniper rifle and hand granades). Luckily we came out the other side, just as the parade was coming up the road and I got my pic-tures.

I asked Sean if we could continue to follow the Parade until it got to the rally at the end, but he said that it would be too dangerous to even contemplate it and so we returned the way we came. Sean said that he would often go Mill-town Cemetery when he wants to get away from the violence. At the top of the hill we paused as Sean pointed out the landmarks of the City: ‘Theirs the Port where you came in, there’s Harland and Wolff (the shipyard that built the Ti-tanic)’ and then a voice behind us said ‘and there’s the Chip Shop!’ Startled, I turned around and standing behind us was a gang of lads and I thought ‘Shit, were in trouble here’, so I said to Sean ‘Shall we leg it?’

But Sean said ‘No, you don’t show fear in Northern Ireland’ and then just as we were sizing each other up a British Army Gazelle (helicopter) appeared from nowhere and just hovered above us (it had been following the parade and having seen us, came over to investigate) and it just stayed their hover-ing, 20-30 foot above our heads. The noise was as deafening as the tension was silent, but after a while one of the lads said something (which we couldn’t hear) and we just went one way and they went another and that was the end of that. Either way, it was a none event.

On the way back I asked Sean if he would take me into a pub, as I wanted to have a pint of Guinness in Belfast (I mean it would be rude not to), but equally my nerves were beginning to fray at the edges and I thought it would help me chill out a bit. So (and God knows why) he took me to a barely functioning bar in the lower Falls Road.

It was called the Beehive and that before the IRA blew up the top half of the building it was a popular pub with the locals, but not anymore. But as we ap-proached it (even from a distance), I began to get a feeling of foreboding that this wasn’t a good idea after all. Firstly, there was a turnstile on the door (to prevent people from chucking a bomb in) and like wise the windows had iron bars and shutters on them and were covered in wire to fend off rockets, mor-tars and other projectiles. Welcoming or what?

Needless to say, this did little to quell my sense of anxiety. We went inside (and as I recall it now), it was just one big room with maybe 20 or so Victorian iron pub tables with mahogany tops dotted around and their were perhaps two or three groups of three or four people sitting around them, playing domi-noes, or just smoking. The floor was bare concrete, with the odd crisp packet blowing across it like ‘tumbleweed’ in a cowboy movie.

Sean and I went to the bar and he ordered me my pint of draft Guinness and an orange juice for himself and just as I was about to take a sip, when a rifle barrel came through the turnstile and as I stared at it, it was followed by a Brit-ish soldier, who was in turn followed by another three (I assume their were two more outside guarding the entrance) and they proceeded to walk about the room with a book of ‘mugshots’ going up to each table and compared the people who were sitting at them to the pictures in the book and nobody batted an eyelid.

I said to Sean ‘Is this real?’ and he said yes, they are four men with semi auto-matic SLR’s walking around the bar, but we just choose to ignore them, be-cause we prefer the troops not to be here.

The Troubles is usually dated from the riots of 1968 through to the Good Friday Agreement, which was brokered by John Majors Government (and not Tony Blair who just happened to be in power at the time of the signing of the documents). However, it is impossible to shake off the fears of generational mistrust. So despite sporadic violence continuing after this point, Belfast has since been transformed beyond all recognition, as it is now a lively and excit-ing city, known for it’s music, nightlife and Universities and so hopefully ‘The Troubles’ are over for good.

Footnote:On the 12th October, 1984 (two months after I had returned to Leicester), the IRA brought their bombing campaign to the mainland and committed their worst austerity of the conflict, when they exploded a bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, in an attempt to wipe out Margaret Thatcher and her government. The explosion killed five people and injured 34. Including party Chairman, Norman Tebbit’s wife, Margaret who was seriously injured.

Grand Hotel, Brighton

Welcome to Northern Ireland

INLA Street Art

Peace Divide (Belfast)

Stock photo: of the Peace Divide

Irish National Liberation Army (INLA)

Irish Republican Army (IRA)

Sean and me on his Ma’s Road

GEOFFREY REED’S

Belfast at the height of ‘The Troubles’

Street protest art on burned out corner shop

Turnstile on an off-door beer license

Support for the PLO (your enemy is my friend)

Milltown Cemetery hand grenade attack

The Belfast Job Centre

‘The Troubles’ Belfast 1984

Bomb attack in Belfast city center

A typical day going to work

Loyalist red, white and blue street art

New beginnings: Sean, his new wife and child (when I went back to him them two years later)

British Army riot control

Security gate entrance to Belfast city centre

Orange, white and green Catholic area

The rally at the end of the parade

Westland Link helicopter

The Grand Hotel, Brighton bombing

Peace in Northern Ireland?