by Ken Wharton
At around the same time, some 43 miles south-west of the drama, in Armagh City, a Catholic civil rights march was in the process of breaking up when mobs of both Catholics and Protestants began to gather, hurling insults and sectarian slurs at each other. The RUC appeared to have the matter under control; at that stage, it seemed highly unlikely that the Ardoyne and Divis Street violence would be replicated on the same scale there in Armagh. However, a unit of seventeen ‘B’ Specials had arrived from nearby Tynan at 23.00 hours in private vehicles; their main role was taking part in border patrols, with very little, if any, riot training. A lone RUC inspector had instructed them to follow him into Cathedral Road, but the two parties managed to lose contact. Instead, the ‘B’ Specials found themselves at a Catholic barricade at the mouth of Edward Street. By this stage, the verbals had turned into violence, with rioting taking part on both sides; petrol bombs and rocks were by now the order of the day, being used by both Catholic and Protestant alike.
The driver of the leading car drove through one of the barricades in Edward Street, quickly followed by the other cars in the convoy. As the cars crashed through, the seventeen part-time police officers thought themselves in severe danger; quite clearly the mood of the mob was undoubtedly hostile. One of the officers opened fire, which was the cue for a panicked volley of shots from his colleagues. They formed themselves into a crude line abreast before they began firing over the heads of the crowd; inevitably some shots were deliberately fired into the mass of people trying to escape. One of the shots hit John Gallagher (30), a father of three, in his back and two others in the crowd were also hit.
Later, twelve of the seventeen testified that they had fired over the heads of the crowd; however, five stated that they had fired into them. One officer initially admitted that his Sterling sub-machine gun had accidentally discharged while on ‘auto’, with several rounds hitting people. The ‘B’ Specials had a very poor reputation amongst the incoming soldiers and were hated by the Catholic population. It is not within the remit of this author to put the blame for the shooting on these men, but the later Scarman Tribunal found them culpable of manslaughter, concluding:
It is not possible to identify who fired the shot that killed Mr. Gallagher, or who wounded the other two men. Nevertheless, the Tribunal rejects the contention that none of the B Specials fired into the crowd. The Tribunal is satisfied that some of them did so fire, and that one of them killed Mr. Gallagher.
Clearly, the auxiliaries did open fire and in doing so acted from a deadly combination of panic and sectarian hatred, as well as simply being unskilled and untrained in riot control.
Steel-helmeted police at a burning barricade across Shankill Road, Belfast, littered with stones and debris after a spree of rioting in 1969.
While some of the men cheerfully made statements to RUC officers, the arrival of legal representatives prevented the others from incriminating themselves, thus beginning the start of a mass cover-up. It was several days before their weapons and uniforms were collected for evidence, by which time both clothing and weapons had been cleaned, thus removing vital forensic evidence. Mr Gallagher was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died shortly afterwards. One of his stepdaughters, Catherine Dunne, was 16 at the time of his death and later went on to become a nun. She was killed almost twenty-one years later, on 24 July 1990, by a PIRA landmine on the Killylea Road between Armagh and Navan Fort along with three police officers. The nun was in a car that was hit by the blast of a 1,000lb (454kg) device that was aimed at the RUC vehicle.
It was midnight now as the firing died down and blazing buildings were finally extinguished by exhausted fire fighters. In different morgues in Belfast and Armagh, five people lay dead; their cold bodies alone in the dark with all life extinct offered grim proof that a type of apocalypse was about to be visited on the small country of Northern Ireland. Meanwhile, in the RVH’s intensive care unit, another man – David Linton – was fighting for his life. It was day one of the Troubles, but there were another 10,366 days to go before anyone dared to believe that the Troubles were finished. More than 4,000 bodies would occupy morgues all over Northern Ireland, England, Germany, Holland and Belgium before it was all over.
Armed soldiers behind a wall on Londonderry’s Bogside.
Meanwhile, over on the British mainland, soldiers were being issued with live ammunition in barracks the length and breadth of England, Scotland and Wales. They were packing their kit bags, readying their vehicles and saying goodbye to loved ones as they prepared to deploy to Ulster the following day, with the Royal Regiment of Wales, Royal Artillery and Prince of Wales’ Own Regiment of Yorkshire in the vanguard.
Major Ken Draycott, Royal Regiment of Wales:
On the night of August 13, we were about to settle down for a meal and I made a quick phone call to the Mrs and she had seen on the News that troops were going in the next day. I can remember as though it were yesterday saying to her: ‘It’ll never happen; if they call the troops in, it will last 30 years.’ [Major Draycott was almost prophetic; it lasted thirty-nine.] I went back to my seat but before the first morsel had passed my lips the C.O. called the entire Battalion to parade on the square in 30 minutes. We were soon at Springfield Road police station just off the Falls Road and I set off to collect food and equipment from Palace Barracks, but every unit in Belfast had the same idea at the same moment! The first night was like Bonfire night with explosions, flames and gunfire lighting up everywhere. British troops went in with steel helmets, with camouflage scrim and fixed bayonets. As we had no flak jackets – the British Army had not used them since Korea – I was detailed to go to the QM’s store and collect them. I had never seen one before, let alone used one and I foolishly tried to pick up ten at once; they weighed an absolute ton. They would shortly prove their value.
By the end of the day, they were patrolling the streets of Belfast and Londonderry, receiving, if not an exactly rapturous welcome, at least an enthusiastic one. However, even as dozens of Bedford 3-tonners drove out of a dozen Army camps on the mainland, disturbing only nocturnal creatures, the rioting continued in Belfast, particularly around what has long been regarded as the epicentre of the Troubles: Divis Street.
Trooper Hugh McCabe (20), a married father of two tiny children, was serving with the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars, stationed at the time in Germany with the British Army of the Rhine. He was home on leave with his family, living in Whitehall Row in the Divis complex, when he was seen on one of the balconies and later on the roof of what some of us called the ‘Zanussi’. This author has always believed that the young soldier was an innocent bystander, killed accidentally, thus becoming the first soldier to die in the Troubles. However, recent evidence and a belated claiming of him by Sinn Féin has left me with serious doubts and misgivings about what I had previously accepted as ‘fact’.
What is not in any doubt is that Republican gunmen – either IRA or ad hoc Nationalist defence groups – were firing towards Hastings Street RUC, which was then located on the spot where the Lower Falls Road becomes Divis Street. An RUC marksman has stated that the firing was coming both from the roof and from one of the higher balconies of the complex. He claimed that McCabe had a rifle, and whilst there is no evidence of this, he clearly was standing dangerously close to some of the armed Republicans and may even have been throwing missiles at the police below. What is beyond question is that he was hit by an aimed shot as he stood on a neighbouring roof. The high-velocity round tore into his right cheek – evidence that the round was fired from the Hastings Street area to his right – entering his neck and lung, before making a large exit wound in his back. He died a few minutes afterwards, his lifeless body being taken to the RVH, poignantly not too far from where the hospital’s medical staff were trying to save David Linton’s life. Hugh McCabe’s father later stated that his son was pulling a wounded friend to safety when he was hit.
The following is purely anecdotal and is not offered as definitive evidence in the case; ho
wever, sources close to the author believe that although the dead soldier received a burial with full military honours at Milltown Cemetery, attended by British Army personnel, some of his comrades in the regiment had grave misgivings about his loyalties. Unsubstantiated reports have emerged in recent years that he was in favour of a united Ireland, speaking to others of his major Republican leanings. Sinn Féin subsequently erected a metal plaque close to scene of his death, claiming him as one of their own. It reads: ‘I ndil chuimhne. [Life springs from death.] This plaque is dedicated to the memory of Patrick Rooney aged 9. Hugh McCabe aged 20 who were murdered in this vicinity by the RUC on the 15th August 1969. A Mhuire Banríon na nGael guigh ortha [Mary, Queen of the Irish, pray for them].’
That day wore on, but in the hours before soldiers began to make their presence felt, appearing in steel helmets and with SLR 7.62mms with bayonets fixed, the rioting continued. The soldiers met the curious stares from the residents of the Falls Road with bewildered determination. We have examined the phenomenon of the sectarian interface areas in books and times passim, but it is just that: a phenomenon. Residents of the private housing in Manston Park, Leeds, do not regard the entry to the nearby Swarcliffe Estate as an interface, no more than posh residents of Hampstead regard nearby council housing with any real suspicion. In Belfast, however, it was very real, with suspicion engraved in the psyche of those who lived in these areas. Bombay Street was one such area; situated close to Cupar Way, it still stands in the enormous shadow cast by the ‘Peace Line’, which remains resolutely and stubbornly dividing Catholic from Protestant.
In the early afternoon of the 15th, gangs of Protestant men attacked the area around Bombay Street and the Clonard Monastery. Nationalists have always claimed that the incursions occurred in the presence of off-duty ‘B’ Specials. Their anarchic brief was to burn the Catholics out, thus creating a no-man’s-land between the two communities. Several homes were torched as Catholic families, containing both young and old, were forced to flee their homes with what pitiful personal belongings as could be collected. Although the RUC were nowhere to be seen, it must be noted that many of them were injured, exhausted after more than thirty-six hours of constant clashes, and the soldiers were yet to arrive. Yet another power vacuum had been created, into which the Protestant mobs, like the IRA gunmen the night before, spilled, intent on destruction. In the early afternoon there was sporadic firing; in one such incident, three members of an ad hoc Catholic defence force, together with a member of the IRA’s youth wing – the Fianna – were hit by shots fired by Loyalists. Two of the less badly wounded men helped the badly injured Fianna member Gerald McAuley (15). He half crawled and was half dragged to the Clonard Monastery, a short distance away. He finally collapsed in Waterville Street at the head of a long stream of blood. He was given the last rites by Father McLaughlin, who had run out of the monastery, alerted by the calls of the wounded. McAuley was rushed to the RVH but he died from his wounds, thus becoming the first Republican paramilitary to die during the course of the Troubles.
The death of the young Fianna boy was not without its significance; the long blood stain from Bombay Street to Waterville Street marked not only the end of his life, but also the first cracks and later division of the Irish Republican Army, resulting in the birth of the Provisionals. Local Catholics complained that the IRA, staffed as it was then with mainly old veterans of the last campaigns in the late 1950s, had failed to protect them. Indeed, graffiti began springing up around the area that claimed the IRA stood for ‘I Ran Away’. The so-called ‘young Turks’ began the breakaway move around that time, with militants such as Gerry Adams, Brendan Hughes and the late Martin McGuinness leading the split. Very soon, there would be two Republican paramilitary groups: the Provisional IRA (PIRA) and the Official IRA (OIRA), thereafter to be derisively referred to as the ‘Stickies’.* Shortly after McAuley was taken to the RVH’s fast-filling morgue, troops began to patrol the Belfast and Londonderry hotspots. A Welsh officer described that halcyon period as a bit of a honeymoon, writing:
These early days of troops on the streets became known as the ‘honeymoon period’. Tea was brewed for the troops in huge quantities by ordinary people delighted we were there. A patrol of the Catholic Markets area of Belfast inevitably meant half a dozen stops for a drink and a chat, and several more for the loo. ‘Community Relations’ became the big Army occupation – organising trips to the sea for kids, dances for teenagers, or football matches with the local lads. And we all felt what a jolly good job we were doing. I think we were aware of the political dimensions ... We all had a feeling there was injustice over housing, jobs, education and even justice. I think we certainly felt that we were on the side of the Catholics ... there was a huge amount of sympathy for them. That lasted a long time and it was probably the ham-fistedness of the politicians that put paid to that.
As the 15th wore on, the first of the troops began the process of assimilation; they offered a grim but friendly smile to the people of the Falls, Ardoyne and New Lodge in Belfast as well as on the Creggan, Bogside and Gobnascale in Londonderry. They confronted a smouldering landscape, smouldering in both the literal and metaphoric sense. Houses still burned, the streets were full of household items, and there were wrecked and rusting cars with all the detritus associated with an urban battleground. The men were sullen, the women suspicious but welcoming, with tea and biscuits and the occasional tray of proffered sandwiches being the order of the day. The children ... well the children were the same as in the rest of the world: curious, intrigued and mesmerised by the sight of big men with rifles and bayonets, speaking in accents as mysterious as if they had come from Borneo or China. One Welsh soldier told the author:
Well, I walked along the Falls Road and there were houses just like there were back in the valleys. Not so colourful, mind, not the different colours I was used to, but long rows of blackened slums, and people were the same as back in the Rhondda; they just spoke differently. One of the men called me an ‘English bastard!’ I just smiled and replied: ‘You can call me what you want to, but I’m not fucking English; I am Welsh!’
Operation Banner, the longest-running campaign in the long history of the British Army, had commenced; it had thirty-eight more years to run.
One thing that was alien to the British soldiers, irrespective of their English, Scottish or Welsh backgrounds, was the enormous shift in population that they were about to witness. In the rioting and burning out of houses in the interface areas there was also a most deliberate and systematic eviction of families based on religion alone. It is estimated that around 3,000 to 4,000 people were forced out of their homes, given only time to carry away their few pieces of furniture, personal possessions and clothing; some were not given even that and fled in just the clothes in which they stood. Some 1,500 Catholic families were forced out of Protestant areas – and not only in interface areas – as well as 300 Protestant families who were forced to flee areas such as Springfield Road, the Ardoyne and the New Lodge, with a further 700 in New Barnsley. It was as though the anarchy and the breakdown of law and order had given bigots of both sides the excuse to wreak their revenge on the innocents of the ‘other side’. In some cases it was for the families’ own good and there are documented examples of kindly Protestants helping Catholic families to safety and, of course, vice versa. One Catholic friend of the author told him on condition of anonymity:
I lived at the time on Springfield Road, opposite Violet Street and the RUC barracks. One of my immediate neighbours was a Proddie widow woman with four wains and she was crying and beside herself, as some of the local ‘Defenders’ had threatened to petrol bomb her out. Me and my brother borrowed a handcart and we helped shift them to some of their family on the Shankill. I felt ashamed, but I couldn’t turn my back on the teachings of Jesus Christ.
Other mass evacuations and population shifts were taking place at the same time all over Northern Ireland; there was a very obvious reduction in the number of ‘mixed’ are
as, and soon such areas would become somewhat of a rarity. Within the microcosm that was Belfast in 1969, ‘Catholic-only’ enclaves were becoming more and more defined; within a short space of time, Twinbrook, Poleglass, Andersonstown, Ballymurphy, Whiterock and New Barnsley would be occupied only by families of the Roman Catholic faith. The Shankill, Woodvale and Crumlin Road would be the sole province of Protestants, and the few Catholics in Rathcoole and Rathfern who still clung stubbornly to their homes were being ‘encouraged’ to leave. Indeed, the Sands family who lived in Rathcoole were forced to leave by Protestant thugs, possibly setting in motion the recruitment into the Provisionals of their son, Bobby, who would achieve either fame or infamy as the first of the PIRA hunger-strikers to die in 1981.
In Londonderry also, the tribal areas were well demarcated: on the West Bank of the Foyle, the Bogside, Creggan, Rosemount, Shantallow and Cityside were all Catholic, with few Protestants living on that bank. On the opposite bank, the Gobnascale – known affectionately as the ‘Gob’ – was Catholic/Nationalist, with the Fountains area staunchly Protestant/Loyalist. In many ways, the Fountains, hemmed in by Catholic areas, found itself under the same sort of siege as the Catholic Short Strand area of East Belfast. Jonathan Burgess, in his informative book,* describes how 90 per cent of the Protestant population of the West Bank were forced to flee to safer areas. Indeed, he writes that by 1997 even the Chinese population of the West Bank outnumbered the Protestants still living there. The gradual destruction of the mainly Protestant-owned businesses in the city centre by the Provisionals during an incessant and vicious bombing campaign was another less subtle way of forcing the Protestants over to the other side of the Foyle. It was clear by the number of the relatively few Catholic businesses that were attacked by the bombers that it was purely discriminatory on the part of the IRA. Their intention was to bomb the city centre back into the Stone Age, making a wasteland of where thriving businesses had once stood.
