The dark bad days

Roy Kerridge

Belfast

'Brits Out. Viva Argentina. Provisional .1.3 IRA.' These words were painted on a wall in large green letters at the entrance to a nar- row terraced street full of dogs and children. Ormeau Road, this Catholic area of Belfast, could be seen as a world in miniature from the Protestant side of the River Lagan. Many houses were in ruins, showing the charred roof timbers now so typical of the city, but those left standing bustled with life. Purposeful children scrambled everywhere. Some played war games, others nursed dolls, but all seemed quite independent of grown-ups and very cheerful. IRA slogans vied for wall-space with life-size paintings of Korky the Cat

and other comic characte rs.

Humming an old Irish ballad, for I had decided to be nonchalant, I ambled into thiS interesting warren.

Where Lagan stream sings a lullaby, there dwells a lily fair.

The twilight gleam is in her eye and the moon is on her hair.

The Lagan, no stream here but a full- bodied river, flowed peacefully by, ignoring the chunks of rubble dropped into it by two miniature skinheads. Instead of a lily fair, encountered a rather half-hearted bar- ricade, a row of bricks and empty 0i:- drums.

After a short exploration, I headed back towards the main road past gossipy housewives leaning on garden gates and world-weary men in dusty clothes sitting on doorsteps. An army Land-Rover swung by, With a youth riding shotgun in the rear. More soldiers appeared in front of me, led by a tall, plump negro. None of them seem- ed remotely menacing, and the lightweight rifles they brandished carelessly reminded me of black plastic toys. At this turn of events, the street perked up and looked in- terested. An amused, if not twilight, gleam appeared in the eyes of the young housewives. A rather severe young soldier With a pencil moustache took his stance at one corner, his gun pointing safely towards the pavement. Although a curly-headed lit- tle girl of three toddled over and patted the muzzle, his features did not melt.

`Do you love John Paul II?' the girl ask- ed.

'He's all right,' was the cryptic reply.

Rough young men, no doubt Provo sym- pathisers, appeared from alleys and door- ways on the far side of Ormeau Road. Some crossed over and glared, thumbs hooked into the top of their jeans, but clearly they did not mean to do anything. A rag-and-bone man, crying his wares, wheel- ed his barrow between the crowds, and a coal lorry emerged from the 'Brits Out' road just as the army were about to cordon it off with a long white ribbon of cloth. Once on the right side of the cordon, I turn- ed and watched soldiers opening car boots and peering into doorways. The ribald Friends of the Argentine seemed determin- ed not to take them seriously. I felt sorry for the lads, denied the status that 'our boys' had in the Falklands, and here simply Part of 'security forces'. Unlike the clear- cut Falklands struggle, the undeclared war in Northern Ireland is too complex an issue for the English public, confused by a mix- ture of pro- and anti-IRA reportage, to understand. Not too clear about the matter myself, I turned to a soldier for elucidation, but found him understandably taciturn.

All I could gather was that he came from Liverpool, so I began to tell him about the marvellous decorations put up for the Pope in that city, and how sad it was that the Orangemen had come down from Everton afterwards and burned them all. A look of wonderment came over his face, and I realised that he was the same man that the little girl had been talking to, and had pro- bably heard quite enough about the Pope for one day.

Five minutes' walk from Ormeau Road took me to Queen's University, where students in ermine-trimmed gowns posed for graduation day photographs, and sat on sunlit lawns eating strawberries and cream, watched by admiring parents. Caterers were hard at work, dishing out more strawberries than I had ever seen in my life before, a Most agreeable ceremony. Although I said I was from the press, they wouldn't give me a single one, saying that each berry was counted.

Another ten minutes' walk took me to 'fly boarding house off the Lisburn Road, facing a larger maze of terraces known as the 'Village', a continuation of Sandy Row. This, was Protestant country, and Union Jacks sprouted from doors and windows. Their effect on me was reassuring, the emblem of the Queen's Peace, but I later met Catholics who were afraid to go there.

What was the riddle of Ulster? How had Belfast, since my last visit in early 1969, become a place of cages, bars and wire net- ting, with armed policemen and soldiers frisking you at every entrance to a store or sealed-off shopping area? To find the answers, I decided to use my contacts with the Duke of Edinburgh's Award Scheme, whose Ulster headquarters were on Lisburn Road itself.

'We were burnt out a short while ago,' a pleasant lady told me, apologising for the soot-blackened files lying on the floor ready for sorting. 'I don't think it was sectarian, I'm sure it was just young vandals having their idea of fun. Mind you, very few Catholics go in for the award, with the Duke's name on it. A lot of children would like to, I know, and many put their names down, but their parents nearly always make them withdraw.'

I was reminded of my grandfather, who regarded the Boy Scouts as a 'para-military organisation' and wouldn't let my uncle join. In Ulster there are separate guides and scouts for Catholics and Protestants, with differently phrased oaths of allegiance.

Over a cup of coffee I asked my new friend about the changes in Belfast, and she told me that the Catholic and Protestant estates had only become clear-cut, separate 'kingdoms' since the early Seventies.

'Before the troubles reached their height, the estates were mixed,' she told me. 'Then people were evicted, until every district was of one religion. Pressure was brought to bear on those who wouldn't move, and some people were terrified into going. But please don't judge Northern Ireland by Belfast. Take a bus down the road to Lisburn and Hillsborough, and you'll get a better picture of us.'

I did so, and found two spotlessly clean, cheerful Protestant towns, all dressed in red, white and blue as a reminder of the Twelfth. Even the kerbstones in Lisburn were painted in the patriotic colours. In Hillsborough, the Prior family now dwell in Government House, a scaled-down version of Buckingham Palace, where I saw what looked suspiciously like Paisley's car in the forecourt. Looking at the royalist decora- tions strung across the road, I knew how Paisley felt. Whatever would these true- blue towns do in a green Republic?

The Ulster Defence Regiment were recruiting at Lisburn, very successfully, it seemed. A part-time soldier on joining can earn £13 a day, rising to £20 when he becomes a corporal. Two boys applied to join when I was there, but one was turned away for being too young.

'I don't suppose many Catholics join,' I hazarded, as a sandy-moustached corporal showed me photographs of young men swinging over torrents on ropes or crawling on their stomachs through bracken. 'Well, I did,' he replied with a frank smile. 'We're quite. non-sectarian, with plenty of Catholics among us.'

I was glad to hear this. Crossing the square, I met a young man with no clothes on except for a plastic fig-leaf. He was securely tied to a wooden barrow and liberally covered with pink confetti. This turned out to be a pre-nuptial custom and not an IRA outrage. 'The wedding's next Thursday,' he told me, 'and I hope my mates untie me by then.'

On my way home I met two students from Queen's sitting on a wall. They looked an appealing couple, and I lost no time in introducing myself. 'I am a Protestant atheist and she's a Catholic atheist,' the young man said, gesturing towards his friend. 'You're Protestant and Catholic here forever, no matter what you believe, even if you never go to church. Do you mean to say that you're just going up and talking to people? I wouldn't try that on the Ormeau Road.'

I told him of my experiences that morn- ing, and he said that not long ago a policeman had shot a man dead there for painting on a wall. 'He claimed he thought the paintbrush was a gun. I've seen the children stoning soldiers there, twice this week.'

'The Catholic graffiti in Falls 'Road are much better,' the girl interrupted. 'Marvellous paintings of hunger strikers starving to death — wonderful!'

'You Papists!' the boy joked. 'My grand- father was a farmer in Tyrone, and he said you could always tell a Fenian by the small squinting eyes close together and the greasy locks of black hair.'

'Steady on, atheists!' I cried, for a tiff seemed imminent. At length the Protestant atheist and the Catholic atheist walked off fondly, arm in arm, and vanished into the dusk.

My inquiries seemed to have reached full circle, and I could only turn to the works of John Campbell, the docker poet of Belfast, who now drives a fork-lift truck.

The dark bad days are here again, Once more the bards will pay acclaim To men who take the lives of men. The dark bad days are here again.

Who knows, Cuchulain or any of the other warlike Ulster heroes might regard modern Belfast as the Golden Age Reborn.