Voices of Violence in Northern Ireland

“It was pretty bad for a time there,” people say all over Belfast about the events of the spring. But there is a parochialism in Northern Ireland; what, exactly, was “pretty bad” depends on where you are.

For the Catholic Republicans, it began when their team of three was shot dead in the streets of Gibraltar by a British commando unit. The bodies were returned to Belfast for burial in the Irish Republican Army plot at Milltown Cemetery where a Protestant loyalist paramilitary, Michael Stone, threw pocketfuls of grenades at the mourners, seriously injuring many. And when mourners pursued him, he shot and killed three of them. Two days later, a pair of British soldiers in plain clothes were beaten, shot and strung up on a wall after they drove into the funeral procession of one of the Milltown dead as it made its way down Andersonstown Road.

Meanwhile, in Protestant East Belfast, “supreme commander” Andy Tyrie of the Ulster Defense Assn., a huge loyalist paramilitary organization, resigned after finding a bomb in his car. It was just like the one that had blown up his second-in-command, John McMichael, two days before Christmas. While the IRA took credit for that assassination, many suspected a UDA splinter group. The fact that Tyrie survived gave the episode, significant as it was to loyalist fighters, a back-page quality among other audiences.

Over in London, the people in charge of this mess--whose attitude toward all the Irish, Catholic and Protestant, can be regarded as racist--were searching for expletives in the House of Commons. Having just spoken after the Milltown massacre of the Irish “plumbing new depths” of savagery and bestiality, the politicians were hard put to come up with new hyperbole when the soldiers were murdered. So they spoke of still newer depths of the same being plumbed. Of no concern to Parliament was what had amounted to an execution-without-trial in Gibraltar; on the contrary, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was incensed at Amnesty International for pointing this out. By and large the English--many of whom had seen the mob-murder of the soldiers on live TV--shared her view.

Having just been exposed to London’s speechless outrage over what had happened in Andersonstown, it was a surprise to find the event never brought up--spontaneously at any rate--in Andersonstown itself. A new plaque on one of the Catholic ghetto’s entrances, listing 26 names of neighbors killed in these troubles (“they were faithful and they fought”), was being taken down so that Mairead Farrell’s name could be added. A much beloved local heroine who had spent a third of her young life in prison, Farrell’s death in Gibraltar is still freshly mourned by all: “She was such a part of Andersonstown. The whole place was devastated.” “It was a worse feeling than the hunger strike.” “Doesn’t it make you feel a coward when a wee girl of 31 has to go and die for ya?”

As her beatification proceeded, people listed her qualities: intelligence, generosity, originality, warmth: “You know you get a lot of crap said about everybody after they die, but in this case it’s 100% true.” No one knew that since her release from jail she had again become “involved”--a euphemism for IRA activity. Her own mother thought she’d gone to Spain for a holiday, while in fact evidence indicates that she belonged to an IRA bomb squad. But on the day her body went past, many houses flew black flags outside.

“Do you have a black flag?”

“Sure I made it out of an old skirt.” Meanwhile, the army went around taking down names of those displaying black flags.

In another Andersonstown household they talked about having gone down to Milltown Cemetery the day Mairead was buried with the other two Gibraltar dead, and of the three friends who were shot there by loyalist Stone. Those talking, although not “involved,” had been among 10,000 mourners that day; the crowd was so crushing they’d been unable to get in the gates. They were speculating about whether they would have been among Stone’s pursuers or among the crowd crouched behind tombstones: “You never know until the moment how you’d act.”

The other matter troubling Andersonstown was some impending social security changes since hardly anyone is employed: “People face 6 to 10 less a week--makes a difference between Sunday dinner and no Sunday dinner. But she (Thatcher) gets away with it sure.”

No one mentioned the killing of the soldiers, not 500 yards away, until the visitor asked. “They shouldn’t have shot the two soldiers,” one man said, “because it took away what happened in the graveyard.” His wife was quite annoyed to have the subject brought up: “We are sick of somehow being made to feel guilty about it or responsible for a war we didn’t start. But even if the Brits pulled out you’ve still the Orangies to deal with.”

Last year, or the year before, Catholics were still paying lip service to the idea that the Brits, not the loyalists, were the problem, and you didn’t hear much about Orangies. Strictly speaking, the term refers to the Masonic-style Orange Order, but now orange is again the color of the Protestant enemy.

Meanwhile, Protestant concerns are quite different. A loyalist, asked about the latest events, called them “good fun, a good clear-out.” But he was referring to the UDA, not the newest violence, and what the paramilitary group would amount to after Andy Tyrie’s resignation. Some other people said the change represents less “a good clear-out” than a free hand to hard-core gangsters who go in for embezzling and extortion plus random massacres of Catholics. Said one loyalist: “Since Enniskillen (when 11 Protestants were killed and 60 injured ‘by mistake’ in an IRA bombing) there is less concern than ever about whether the victim is strictly speaking a loyalist.”

The loyalist folk hero is Stone, now known as “Rambo.” All over the walls are the words “Three Taigs with one Stone,” Taig being a derogatory term for Catholic. An anonymous poem begins:

Hold your head up Rambo, keep your high hand low,

Steady your aim, live up to your name, for there’s 50 more to go.

As in Andersonstown, no one volunteered unsolicited comment on the soldiers’ deaths. When asked, loyalists come up with a new twist: “Some of the loyalists think that the police deliberately refrained from intervening because they initially believed that the two soldiers were loyalists, and that they could be taught a lesson. And loyalist fighters won’t be forgettin’ it next time they have a brush with the law.”

“Yes, it was pretty bad for a time there,” people say.

“It’s over?”

“Well, it’s stopped getting worse.”