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(Belfast Born, Bred And Buttered By Joe Graham)

Chapter Thirteen

Did you see the news last night?

Getting back to the Civil Rights days, The Belfast people who attended the Civil Rights marches never got to see the news footage of the event on the “Six O’Clock News’ because we never got home sometimes until the early hours of the morning, and it was often a source of humour to hear some one in Belfast ask, “Did you see the news last night ”?, “It was bad in Derry ”!, “Peeler’s buses threw into the Canal in Newry”!, or, “Paisley’s mob” stopped them marching in Armagh” which brought me and a lot of other people to think, is that what it’s all about in Belfast, a two minute slot in the local news programme.?, it was like a game, thousands of people had been sitting round their televisions like spectators, surely the thing to do was to have them become ‘players’, for after all it was all about their civil rights too and the attention they were giving the news reports showed they were quite excited about it all. A group of us were thinking about launching some sort of Belfast Civil Rights body to bring the issues right into the heart of the colony that was practising these draconian laws. But an incident in Jamaica Street, Ardoyne, dictated the course of events and propelled the people of Ardoyne into the political arena. Since 1965 there was a bitter on going situation between the Leader of the official Unionist Party, Capt. Terence O’Neill, and Ian Paisley, with Paisley calling O’Neill a “Lundy” and a “Traitor” and ultimately launching an “O’Neill Must Go” campaign. This started back in 1965 when O’Neill angered a lot of unionists, including many in his own party by inviting the southern Prime Minister, Sean Lemass to Stormont, This gave Paisley the opportunity to spearhead an assault for the title of “who speaks for Ulster”. In the Catholic community a ‘good unionist’ and ‘bad unionist’ debate seem to be wrangling, and some were actually declaring that they were going to vote for the “Good Unionist”, Capt. O’Neill. It was indeed strange, very, very strange, Catholics were going to vote for a man who had advertised only earlier for a house maid in the “ Belfast Newsletter“, the advert ending with “..must be protestant ”, but then again, they argued, ‘he visited a convent in County Down‘, There was even a Catholic lobby trying to whip up support for O’Neill, with full page adverts carrying the names of hundreds of Catholics, individuals and companies who all declared under bold print, “WE BACK O’NEILL”, leading lay figures of the Catholic Church and middle class Catholics, were very involved in that lobby. O’Neill dangled the possibility of reform in the face of the Catholic hierarchy like a carrot at the nose of a donkey.

One lady in Jamaica Street even invited O’Neill to her home, along with him, of course, came the inevitable newspaper cameramen, I happened to be in the street that day. O’Neill’s limousine was parked outside the Jamaica Street lady‘s house, surrounded by a dozen or more heavily armed R.U.C men and armoured plated vehicles. All this to go into a street where somehow he had been he assured he would be welcomed in?. The early evening Belfast Telegraph showed a picture of O’Neill and the lady drinking tea with the headline, “He made my little home feel like a Palace”. Before he got finishing his tea a group of young men began stoning the peelers and within seconds O’Neill was bundled into his limousine and he hastily left the area. An ad hoc committee was quickly formed and a petition was agreed on, the next evening the petition, of which I was the author, was brought around the street, stating words to the effect , “ ..We the people of Jamaica Street, resent and wish to repudiate the implication in the Belfast Telegraph that we welcomed O’Neill into our area, we have long memories as regards the Unionist Party and Stormont, the on going discrimination practised by that party for decades against Catholic people on issues which are been well publicised in the civil rights demands. ” every house holder(except one) signed it and we handed the petition into the Unionist Headquarters at Glengall Street. Little did we realise that this ad hoc Ardoyne Committee was going to become almost a permanent structure in the area. With the tension of the election there were some minor stoning incidents on the main Crumlin Road between kids from either side. The committee decided to attempt to curb the incidents on our side of the road, by persuading the kids of the futility of sectarianism. Nightly we would monitor the incidents and it became evidently clear that the R.U.C. although present in numbers on the other side of the Crumlin Road, did nothing to curb the teenagers there from stoning over. Yet if one stone came from Ardoyne two or three Land Rovers roared into Hooker Street after the culprits, we approached the R.U.C about this and pointed out they were only raising the temperature and that their partisan behaviour wasn’t going unnoticed. They would not even give us a hearing and merely repeated time and again, “We are the police.. leave it to us”. Of course words got heated , they were effectively telling us straight they would ignore one crowd but slam down on the other. This went on even after the election and it even got to the point that if a Catholic lad walked out onto the Crumlin Road the R.U.C were manhandling him and telling him to “Get Back In ”. A more sinister development was the expelling of Catholic families from their homes in streets on the ‘other’ side of the Crumlin Road by mobs who would chant ‘ Out, Taig’s Out’ . Again it was reported the R.U.C stood idly by. I was invited to attend a public meeting in Toby’s Hall on the corner of Butler and Brookfield Street where the R.U.C behaviour and the urgent attention of how to help the ever increasing number of expelled families who were fleeing into Ardoyne were to be discussed. So frustrated at the behaviour of the R.U.C were the people that they packed the hall to the doors, they wanted the Committee to organise protest, I pointed out there was no real Ardoyne committee in that context, that we spoke only for and on the incident in Jamaica Street. This was a wider issue that concerned the whole district of Ardoyne and suggested that the people be given the democratic right to chose who should speak for them on this new agenda. This was agreed there and then and names were suggested from the body of the hall, seconded and voted on. Tony Cosgrove, Martin Meehan, Fr. Marcellus, from Holy Cross, Francey McGuigan and myself were elected. I proposed a name for the committee, it was seconded, voted on, and the committee became known as “The Ardoyne Citizens Action Committee”,

We drew up a list of proposed actions that we hoped would quell the rising frustration and increasing violent confrontations on the Crumlin Road, mostly at the Hooker Street intersection. We made approaches to the R.U.C at Leopold Street Barracks asking them to be more vigilant in their policing of the other side of the road and more forth coming in offering protection to Catholic families there. To say their response was dismissive would be putting it lightly, very lightly, they were downright contemptuous. We warned them that their heavy handed action on the people in Ardoyne was generating a ground swell of anger. Their response prompted the reply from us, that if they persisted in their attitude of criminalizing the people of Ardoyne they would have to stay out, either act in a civilised non partisan manner or stay out.

At that time there were still protestant people living in Hooker street and a few other families throughout the area, we immediately visited every family and assured them of their safety and continued welcome in the area. A spokeswoman arose from their ranks, a Mrs Bailey from Hooker Street, a quite articulate and outspoken lady. She thanked us for our consideration but pointed out that some of the protestant families felt they may have to move as they were being taunted by their co-religionists on the other side of the Crumlin Road as “Fenian Lovers” because they continued to live among their Catholic neighbours in Hooker Street. This issue steadily worsened, Catholic families were being evicted daily from their homes in streets on the ‘other side’, Protestant families, although repeatedly assured of the goodwill of their neighbours were beginning to leave Hooker Street. Mrs Bailey, apparently made contact with representatives of the protestant community on the Woodvale side of the Crumlin Road and collectively we came to an understanding that we could ‘exchange’ houses, Catholic families being evicted from their homes could move into the homes of the protestant families in Hooker street if they choose to leave . This all appeared very agreeable and Catholics helped their protestant neighbours pack and move their furniture, I witnessed many an emotional scene between old neighbours at the partings. On the face of it, it all seemed an amicable and intelligent arrangement, even Mrs Bailey left amid much tears and hugging of her old Catholic neighbours. Evicted Catholic families continued to pour into Ardoyne, some now from the lower Oldpark and ‘mid Crumlin Roads areas, some even from as far as Ballysillian and Glengormley. It was impossible to re-house them so one evening with the sudden arrival of about six families evicted from the Louisa Street area we took the decision to open the local school dining hall as a temporary shelter. This became a vital resource and gave us time to try and find more permanent shelter for the families, I must say, the “Belfast Corporation Housing Department” and the “Northern Ireland Housing Trust” were no help at all. None!

On top of this there was a new and startling development announced in the local newspapers by Mrs Bailey, who was now living on the other side of the Crumlin Road. She suddenly alleged the I.R.A were behind the ‘eviction’ of the Protestant people from Hooker Street and that the ‘Ardoyne Committee’ told the protestant people to get out. But didn’t explain if so how come her mother, a Mrs Gilmore, still lived and ran a little corner shop on the corner of Chatham Street and Hooker Street, and opposite her in Hooker Street still lived a very old protestant lady, next to Gilmartin’s public house, these facts did not give much credibility to Mrs Bailey’s allegations, but it did incite loyalists to increase their attacks on Ardoyne. But we had expected it was only a matter of time until the old I.R.A scare would be introduced. The media flocked to the area for interviews with the as they seen it, the “I.R.A. Citizens Action Committee”, a leading Belfast Newspaper took it a step further by publishing on its front page that Joe Graham and Tony Cosgrove were outside agitators there purely to stir trouble. And believe it or not, a leading old time republican actually told me he believed we were a breakaway group from the I.R.A and angrily referred to us as the “A.R.A” the “Ardoyne Republican Army”. This came about following a huge public meeting we called in Butler Street in which we called for all men of the area to take part in a rota system we had drawn up so that we would have vigilantes around the clock. It was explained , ‘ this is about more than civil rights now, it is about survival, about defending your homes and families’. There were three lines of men, hundreds, stretching from Hooker Street corner to the bottom of Butler Street queuing to enter their names on the rota. Later in a book it was hinted that we were signing up men to join the I.R.A which was totally ridiculous. The old republican, like many of his generation was paranoid of an alternative movement being set up, apparently because there was much discontent in republican circles. Many of its best members had been stood down for voicing out against the communist policies the movement were pushing, the legendry Jimmy Steele was one, after he said, at Mullingar at the repatriation burial service of Barnes and McCormick, “..there can be no other ’ism but republicanism”. At some republican gatherings red flags were being carried by socialist groups which never before had been done. Many people stepped out of the parades in protest, a whole branch of the movement was disbanded for their actions. But what was happening on the streets was a much wider thing than republicanism, the ordinary people were setting the pace, and of course many individual republicans were among them. Some older republicans had a problem keeping up with the rapidly evolving events on the streets and some even gave up trying. On the other hand the Civil Rights Movement were losing their grasp too as they tried to record the many incidents breaking out around the six counties. At the height of the Ardoyne riots I remember Eamon Farrell coming round with Paddy Devlin, note books in hand to take notes of what was happening. We had no time to update them and there was no real point either, before they would have got home things would have changed, and their notes would have been out of date, been old hat. Communities were raising their own civil rights issues which were more pressing,, ‘One Man one Vote ’. became more like, ‘Peeler, get your boot off my throat ‘.

The rioting broke into a nightly affair, each night becoming more violent with the R.U.C stepping up its motorised cavalcade, seven or eight Land Rovers, one behind the other, roaring through the area, often mounting the pavements to intimidate people. Young men were being arrested further down the Crumlin Road as they made their way down to sign on the dole, they were to be charged with riotous behaviour the night before. This was a sinister form of harassment, but when we noticed that everyone of the lads had minor criminal records and a magistrate referred to this, we began to realise they were setting about the criminalization of anyone who protested against the behaviour of the R.U.C. The motive was to suggest that everyone who protested were criminal. It was common knowledge that most of the lads were near the riot scenes. But there was a common denominator in all the arrests, and that was an R.U.C man by the name of Cecil Cunningham. This Cecil Cunningham , having been the local ‘beat’ peeler for about 10 years, he was stationed at nearby Leopold Street Barracks, was familiar with most people in the area. Through his time in the area he would have known any lads with a bit of a track record and he was pointing out such lads to be arrested and charged. The courts then presented them as typical of those who were rioting. We immediately engaged Fergus McCartan a top Q.C to defend them , within days the lads were released on bail and in a short time all charges were dropped against them, I must say Mr McCartan waved off any discussion about payment for his services.

Evidence of how valuable the R.U.C seen Cunningham’s knowledge of the Ardoyne people was that he was still being used as a ’spotter’ on 15^th October 1971, when he and another R.U.C man were shot dead by gunmen in a passing car as they sat in an unmarked car in Twaddell Avenue over looking Ardoyne. The official explanation was that he was discreetly keeping an eye on a bank on the main Crumlin Road at Ardoyne hoping he could protect it in the event of a robbery. The car used by the gunmen was later found in Ardoyne. It was supposed that Cunningham had been spotted earlier and the gunmen drove right round the Shankill and came up alongside his car from behind to gain the element of surprise.

Back in the summer of 1969 the R.U.C made a statement that we would not meet with them and were avoiding doing so. We took them up on what seemed to be a challenge to go to Ladas Drive, the R.U.C Headquarters, there to lay our case about the misbehaviour of the R.U.C in Ardoyne. Tony Cosgrove, Father Marcellus and myself went along to meet the then Commissioner of The R.U.C, a guy called Wolsey, (or Wolsley) and his lieutenant, a guy called Bradley. We had no sooner entered the office, sat down and started to lay out our grievances, when Bradley asked Fr. Marcellus if he could speak alone to him for a minute in another room. We did not take a lot of heed to it, thinking hell they are not going to take a priest to one side and give him a beating. Wolsely listened to our list of points, showing little interest, inspecting his finger nails as he sat behind his huge desk. Fr. Marcellus and Bradley returned to the office, Marcellus looking very strange indeed, he refused to take a seat and appeared awkward or uncomfortable as he stood by the door looking up at the ceiling. He seemed very agitated, and suddenly left the room remarking to us, ‘I will wait on you outside‘. We knew something dramatic had been said to him in private by Bradley or who ever else may have been in that room he had been taken to. Bradley and Wolsley just sat smugly looking and pretending to listen to us…so there was no point in going on, Myself and Tony left the room as Bradley was in mid sentence, slamming the door behind us. All the way back to Ardoyne Fr. Marcellus didn’t speak although we asked him what was going on, it was not until we parked in Etna Drive and some of the other committee members had joined us to see how the meeting went. As we all sat in the car, Fr. Marcellus, very quietly and without any sign of doubt in his voice, announced, “Look lads, you are all I.R.A men.. and I am not going to be used.. I am resigning my membership on the committee as from this moment.. but I will make no statements, to anyone, on anything pertaining to the committee or it affairs. goodbye”. and at that he stepped out of the car and walked toward Brompton Park. It came across as though he had been rehearsing that little speech in his mind the whole way from Castlereagh. No one attempted to remonstrate with him, for we had nothing but respect for Fr. Marcellus and I think we were all gob smacked. But it left no doubt what he had been told when taken aside by Bradley and what ever he said it sure worked with Fr. Marcellus, yet all the earlier allegations about the Committee being a front for the I.R.A, he ignored?. We joked maybe Bradley had shown him copies of our I.R.A membership cards. We certainly were not going to be put off what we set out to do by his sudden adopted views of us, or his resignation, or anything the R.U.C put out about us. What exactly was said to Fr. Marcellus behind those closed doors to make him turn so suddenly has often crossed my mind in puzzlement through the years. Fr. Marcellus did not quite step out of the picture for when the trouble broke out in August 1969. He done sterling work among the besieged Ardoyne community.