Many people will remember this week as the anniversary of a pogrom, an attack on Catholic homes by the massed ranks of the RUC, B Specials and Loyalist paramilitaries.
Two great lessons were assimilated by many Catholics from that experience, or that understanding of their experience. These were that the Northern Ireland state was hostile to them and that the IRA, which had failed to defend them, would have to be beefed up so that it could do a better job the next times the prods went doo lally and descended on them.
The flaw in this version of August 1969 is that it takes no account of the plain fact that it was rioters in Ardoyne and the Falls Road – Catholics – who started the Trouble in Belfast that week, and it was very big trouble they started.
Of course, violence had been building since October 68 when a Civil Rights march in Derry was broken up by the police wielding clubs and a succession of marches had turned into major riots since, particularly in Newry, Armagh and Derry.
The rioting in August was part of a plan to overstretch the police who had been drawn into a huge riot in Derry after the Apprentice Boys parade on August 12th. No shots had been fired in Derry.
I watched the Falls Road part of the operation on the second night of rioting, August 14th.
The plan there was, apparently, to burn down a redbrick police station at Hastings Street, situated just where the Westlink now comes off Divis Street.
The rioters would chuck stones and petrol bombs. The police fought with a combination of baton charges and ‘whippets’, Shoreland light armoured cars with mounted Browning machine guns, designed for use against an open field cross border attack.
As the rioters inched closer, the whippets would prance out of side streets to scatter them and then the baton charge would go forward and try to grab a couple of them. The other part of the rioters’ plan was a squad at the top of Divis Flats with petrol bombs. I saw them drop a milk crate of unlit bombs onto the road and when the police ran after the rioters, someone dashed a proper petrol bomb on to this to set the whole lot alight.
This was entirely a Catholic attack on the police. It was clever and it was dangerous.
The Minister of Home Affairs later shed tears on television for not having been able to cope with this without the use of guns.
There was an audience of about a dozen of us watching this. I had joined this group after leaving my girl friend to the bus station at Smithfield so that she could get the last bus home to Rathcoole.
I watched the B Specials arrive in a civilian commercial van and make their way along the wall of the station with their rifles.
An inspector came out and told us that things were getting very dangerous and we should disperse. I went down Durham Street and up the Grosvenor Road.
I was in front of the Royal Victoria Hospital when I heard the first machine gun shots. They were so loud, I thought they were close by me and I ran. A man grabbed me into his car and drove me home, where I listened to the shooting from my bed.
That night wee Patrick Rooney died in his bedroom in Divis.
I had never heard any shooting before in real life and the scale of the gunfire – as often afterwards – seemed such that dozens would die.
Next day I walked across the Falls to the Shankill and up Agnes Street to the bars my father managed on the Crumlin Road. There was wreckage on the Falls and the normally friendly customers were cold with us so we left. I walked back across the Shankill with my sister and watched the first contingent of Brighs soldiers march up Durham Street. That night the two bars were burnt out. My father kept Paris Match photographs of those burning bars for years.
That afternoon, Protestants rioters burnt Bombay Street, and that attack became the symbolic moment of the whole period, according as it did with the easy myth that innocent Catholics were swooped on by Protestant bigots and barbarians.
Indeed, for many who had stayed at home that night, that is exactly what their experience was.
They should not pass the story on to their children however, that it was a one sided fight. It was the Falls that started it.
The Pogrom Myth
August 12, 2009 by Mal
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Welcome
This is the blog of my journalism and recordings, with some extracts from my books too. I tend to sound off on Northern Ireland Politics and Culture. Some of the work here will be recent journalism, articles that have appeared in the Belfast Telegraph or elsewhere, but there is a lot of material going back a couple of years now, so please hang around and browse. Malachi
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Malachi,
you mention events were building from 1968, does that mean that the Malvern Street murders, the killing of the pensioner on the Shankill road, the murder of John Scullion, Paisley rallies, and the bomb attacks on the city reservoir and other acts of violence by loyalist terrorists pre-1968 and after, aren’t really factored in here at all?
Did the Catholics just riot for the good of their health?
That is what comes across in this piece.
I was about to type ‘stick to journalism as historiography is not your thing’, until I remembered that despite evidence on the ground in the North, journalism is meant to have some discipline and integrity too.
You mention journalists – and discipline integrity too
Did Mr Max Hastings have those – yes
Was he on the Falls and in the area when the troubles – the ‘catholic’ trouble broke out? Yes
Does he agree with Malachi – no he does not
Because he distinguishes between the fight for Civil Rights against a reactionary state and its police (irregular) forces and their victims.
The catholic community was in the throes of revolution against the state. Loyalism was and still is part of that state and the polic aided and abeted them.
Not only houses were burnt that weekend – illusions went up in smoke too.
Events had been building from October 68 around the civil rights campaign. That statement does not obviate the lesser relevance of the killings in ’66 not does it ignore the loyalist/paisleyite actions. Why6 would you assume it does unless you want every historical detail included in any article about the past?
‘Did the Catholics just riot for the good of their health?’
No, though most didn’t riot at all. Some of those who organised the riots on that night were clearly seeking a major escalation of what had preceded it and they got it.
They may have thought that they could bring down Stormont or that they could have created a situation in which the Irish army would cross the border. They were within reach of the total humiliation of the police and they went for it.
That doesn’t justify the burning of Bombay Street or the police/B Special brutality, but it does acknowledge that the events were all interrelated. If the pitch for chaos had not been led from the Falls, chaos would probably not have followed. There are events in history when different decisions could have been made and outcomes would have been different.
Are you saying that you think Catholics had a legitimate right to try to burn out policemen at work and that Protestants were governed by different rules and didn’t have a similar right to use violence?
Or do you have problems with the integrity of that question?
malachi,
problem:
your ‘recollection’ of the falls ‘operation’ is at odds even with the scarman evidence, which is itself as neat a work of apologetics as you’re likely to come across.
specifically, scarman records two waves of attack on hastings street, one at 10.40 and the other at 11pm; the second was more serious, they record, and the whole of it was made up of ‘three sorties’ or attacks on the barracks, during only the third of which petrol bombs were used. according to scarman, the second of these attacks on hastings street occurred simultaneously with the first burnings of catholic-occupied homes in conway street.
now, i’d like to pursue your memory of these events, because there are very many points where your own recollection diverges from the testimony of dozens of witnesses take much closer to the events, and because your account reeks of apologetics. but first i’d like you to clarify. how much of the rioting did you sleep through? when did you leave the vicinity of hastings street?
I don’t see how my account is at odds with Scarman. Probably what I watched was the second wave, if there were waves.
I saw petrol bombs being thrown and a crate of bottles dropped from Divis Flats to create a wall of flame when it was ignited afterwards.
It doesn’t damage my account in any way to say this coincided with an attack on Conway Street. I have no principled need to say it didn’t.
This was, after all, the second night of rioting on the Falls, the first night having been directed, I believe, mainly at Springfield Road RUC.
My account ‘reeks of apologetics’. Well, you’re entitled to your opinion. I would say that the experience of watching the rioting that night and hearing the propaganda afterwards, which would have had us believe that the Falls had suffered a premeditated attack by RUC, B Specials and Loyalists, put me on my guard against propaganda after that.
It is reasonable to surmise that if the rioters on the Falls had not being trying to kill RUC men that the Loyalists would not have thought of attacking that night.
I left Hasting Street after 11.00, perhaps much later.
I had been taking Jackie my girlfriend to catch the last bus to Rathcoole from Smithfield. I guess that bus left at about 11. After parting from her I stood and watched the rioting until just after the B Specials arrived. I watched them make their way from a commercial white van, along the front of the police station, with their rifles.
Then a high ranking officer came out and told us we should leave for our own safety.
I was at the top of the Grosvenor Road, outside the Hospital when the first blast of shots from a heavy machine gun came. I presume that those shots were RUC shots from a Browning mounted on a Shoreland. At the time, I had had no experience of being close to gunfire and assumed the shots were much closer.
When I had left, it was relatively safe for a group of us to stand on the city side of the police lines and watch the riot. Once the shooting started, I imagine most people took cover.
I was whisked away from the front of the RVH by a driver who stopped to take me to safety. I remember his name. It was Murray. I think he was from Mooreland.
Strangely we passed people standing at bus stops on the upper Falls, still hopeful that the buses were coming.
There have been snide remarks on Slugger about me having been in bed. I was home around or shortly after midnight, and the continued shooting was audible from my bedroom.
I should perhaps have put myself forward as a witness to Scarman. I thought about ti and concluded that there would be plenty of others available to describe the events. I haven’t checked what I saw against the Scarman report. maybe I should. maybe I would find that it is wrong in some details.
maybe if you read transcripts that noted that upwards of 2000 rounds of .30 caliber ammunition were fired from brownings on that very same night, and that 3851 rounds were unaccounted for, you might not say that the shorlands ‘pranced’ around the falls. but maybe you would anyway….
or do you have a problem with the integrity of that suspicion?
BTW.
My father managed two bars, the Cliftonville and the Enfield at the top of Agnes Street. These were burnt out by Loyalists on the night of Aug 15, for no other reason, I presume than that Catholics owned and ran them. I worked in the bars myself. I crossed the Shankill Road on the afternoon of Aug 15 to visit the bars and I stayed there an hour with my brother, discussing whether to close up because many of our formerly friendly customers were now growling at us.
I walked back down across the Shankill Road with my sister Brid and we stopped to talk to people along the way about where it was safe to walk.
I blame the people who burnt the bars for what they did. I don’t absolve them. But I believe you don’t poke the sleeping tiger, especially when it is having nightmares about being attacked.
Nationalists and republicans have too long excluded the actions of Catholic rioters from the story of August 69. They have to be put back into that story, not to absolve Protestant bigots and political opportunists, but to complete the picture. The Provisional IRA was born of a myth that it was needed as a defender of the Catholic community. That myth is its own creation in its own self interest.
[...] August 2009 (73)July 2009 (157)June 2009 (177)May 2009 (190)April 2009 (181)March 2009 (126)February 2009 (51)January 2009 (13)December 2008 (4) "The Provisional IRA was born of a myth that it was needed as a defender of the Catholic commun… [...]
whether you’re engaged in apologetics is not merely a matter of opinion, malachi. its fairly easy to figure out when one compares your own highly selective and embellished recollections with the closest thing we have to the establishment’s ‘official’ report on the events, itself culled together (selectively) from about 130 plus volumes of testimony taken fairly soon after the events, and involving testimony from nationalist and loyalist eyewitnesses, police and specials, government ministers and army officers, etc.
it strikes me as strange that you remember your girlfriend’s name but cannot recall the sequence of events in ardoyne, (scarman: “The Protestants began the fighting and were responsible for most of the destruction”) or even recall that there were a series of extremely vicious loyalist and police-led attacks on unity flats led by mckeague (later present in lower falls) that preceded bombay/clonard and yes, even the assault on hasting street, by more than a week.
this flagrant selectivity on your part, along with the glossing over of extensively-documented state collusion with loyalists in the lower falls, suggest strongly that you are deliberately engaged in apologetics. that would be consistent, in my view, with your entire ‘journalism’ career.
do you think they pay you because you write well?
Are you saying that you think Catholics had a legitimate right to try to burn out policemen at work and that Protestants were governed by different rules and didn’t have a similar right to use violence?
Or do you have problems with the integrity of that question?
I never suggested for one moment that one side had a ‘right’ to use violence at all.
I simply took issue with the heavy bias in your article which inferred to the casualy reader that Catholics started the troubles.
And really, if you’re being honest with yourself, that is what you were trying to convey to the Belfast Telegraph readership.
As Juno points out, your ‘recollection’ is at odds with Scarman and with the experience of my family who are not republicans, but who had to endure a loyalist invasion of Ardoyne.
Malachi,
I’d also like to retract my comment about integrity and discipline. It was written in the heat of the moment and I now regret it.
I enjoy your writing a lot, and I like the fact that it challenges my preconceptions.
This article just made my blood boil and I wrote that line in haste – only to repent at leisure.
I am not questioning your integrity or professionalism, and I am sorry if I gave that impression.
The Telling Year and The Trouble With Guns are fantastic books – and although I may not agree with everything in them – it is refreshing to read such a challenging counter-argument to accepted ideas.
So – yes, this is a backtrack on that line about integrity.
I apologise for it.
But in this article, and not to deny your experience, I think you are wrong in where you place emphasis.
AOJ.
Anthony,
Fond memories for me with your references to Leeson Street, Albert Street, Malt Street etc. I lived in Cyprus Street and to us kids in terms of what was going on back then it was the centre of the universe!
Cyprus Street between Varna gap and Plevna gap seemed to be the unofficial rallying point for the ‘boys’ when the gear came out and as you said not a mask in sight. To be lucky enough to get within a few feet from someone without being chased, blasting away at a corner with an armalite or garand was for me one of the most exhilarating experiences I can remember!
Your mention also of the riot at Albert Street/McDonnell Street revived a vivid memory of that day. I was there when the bottle store in McDonnell Street, (it was actually a bonded warehouse), was cleaned out to attack the brits. Inside the yard one ‘entrepreneur’ rammed a heavy steel storehouse door a few times with a forklift truck just enough to knock it off it’s hinges creating a narrow opening at the bottom which was enough to precipitate a scramble of mostly adults to get in. They actually had to go through one at a time on their hands and knees! ( Including a middle-aged woman wearing a headscarf and a pair of slippers).
On their way back out they were each shoving a heavy case of spirits in front of them with the wee woman in particular having a hard time of it! Things took a turn though when the cavalry arrived in the shape of Darkie Hughes who after calmly assessing the situation loudly announced to the throng that they were looting and that they were to ‘desist immediately’ (or words to that effect). Anyway this request was ignored and their attention was only brought to bear when a colt .45 was promptly produced from under Darkie’s coat .
Looking back now it seemed almost surreal considering that the riot proper continued unabated outside the gates in McDonnell Street. A number of them sullenly put down their boxes in the yard and made for the gate but Darkie was having none of it. Tapping the .45 on his thigh for emphasis he insisted that they put them back where they had got them i.e. the store, which of course would entail a return trip on hands and knees. This was duly done and none were exempt including the wee woman who was trying to hide behind a pile of wooden crates with her booty!
To all who witnessed this, adults and children alike it was an abject lesson in how community order should be maintained in the midst of a crisis and doubtless Darkie knew this. It also demonstrated, to me at least, the decency and steadfastness that the young Brendan Hughes possessed, core values that he would retain through all his days.
As you said, facts on the ground are the true measure of things.
Malachi,
I was a kid of 10 that night and I remember myself and a crowd of us disobeying our parents orders not to ‘leave the door’ and decided to go on a tour of the district because we knew something was up. By that I mean there were hundreds of young men milling around in Leeson street some wearing hard hats others carrying bannister posts and the appearance of crates of petrol bombs sitting in Plevna Street opening.
Dandering down the road we noticed planks of wood with rows of nails sticking through at the top of Peel street, Balaclava Street and Lemon Street to do the armoured car’s tyres in. So for me it is a no- brainer not to accept that trouble kicked off on the Falls with the intention of drawing RUC back from Derry. In fact over the years I have had heated rows with people who refuse to contemplate other than the ‘official version’ i.e. that the Prods and B-specials swooped down on the Falls ‘out of the blue’. In your reply to juno jones you state that;
‘It is reasonable to surmise that if the rioters on the Falls had not being trying to kill RUC men that the Loyalists would not have thought of attacking that night.’
I disagree. I think it is far more reasonable to surmise that having watched the nightly news about what ‘they’ were being allowed to get away with up in Derry it was payback time. I much prefer the notion that the attacks from the Shankill came about as an attempt to bring the ‘uppity taigs’ into line for daring to start trouble on their own road.
Now had the ‘uppity taigs’ attempted to charge up Percy street or Cupar Street for example, hellbent on torching the nearest Prod houses instead of tackling the heavily armed and armoured RUC and B-men I could maybe give some credence to the Prod ‘we was provoked’ theory but unfortunately this wasn’t so.
August 69 was part of a narrative that all were party to that summer (except of course us 10 to 14 year olds who got those bits later) The events at Burntollet, Duke Street and Unity flats etc prior to August laid the groundwork. The ‘sleeping tiger’ that you alluded to was up and running by then .
Incidentally I have never shied away from telling my children the whole story. To do otherwise would be a cop-out.
.
Catholics did start the riots on the night in question, as you said to take the pressure off the people of Derry. However Catholics did not attack and burn Protestant homes or even attack Protestants. Loyalists had been attacking Unity Flats earlier in the year and had also carried out the Burntollet attack and needed little in the way of excuses to attack the Catholic areas.
Malachi,
There is a special issue of the History Ireland magazine out at the moment that deals with August 1969. Some of what’s in that tallies with your recollections.
There are MANY myths in Ireland. There seem to be more from the 20th centuries than in all the previous centuries combined.
Hopefully one day most people will realize that all parties have been manipulated in furtherance of the anti-Christian, anti-human agenda of the real powers-that-be.
[Hint: What's with the so-called "Star of David" on the NI flag and the Masonic thesis-antithesis-synthesis Tricolor?]
Always the same: Divide and Conquer.
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/nwo/
Perhaps this will come in handy in dispelling some other modern myths:
http://brianakira.wordpress.com/2009/02/05/the-constitutional-status-of-northern-ireland-the-republic-of-ireland/
Great fascinating stuff Malachi, and a hat tip to AOJ.
I was too wee to remember those particular days myself.