Shudder at the thought of school tomorrow again. I’ve a lack of interest in going back for the first time. I can’t even find my pencil case. I hope to get half day – if so, I’ll be able to get done some of the work that I intended to do over the holidays.
A great escape bid from Crumlin Road jail was foiled last night by the discovery of 3 underground tunnels. S. Kelly, a neighbour and welfare worker, was lifted on Friday and not released after 48 hours. Interned on the Maidstone – shocked to hear this.
At sixteen and a half, I was midway through my Lower Sixth year at St Dominic’s Girls’ Grammar School – a diligent student, proud of the exam grades I achieved the previous summer. The start of the autumn term had seen me happy to concentrate single-mindedly on the English, French and Maths I was studying for A-Levels. But, as the world I knew began to disintegrate, I became easily distracted.
With class tests imminent and A-Levels just over a year away, a conscientious voice in my head told me that I should be applying myself seriously to homework and revision. Instead, I was becoming more and more obsessed with what was happening around us.
My father, like many working-class Belfast men of his generation, left school at 14 and was self-educated. My mother, by contrast, had the benefit of a full, convent-school secondary education in Dundalk. What my father lacked, though, in terms of formal education, he more than compensated for through his passion for literature, history and politics, and books were always present in our home. Ensuring that my brothers and I got the best education possible was a priority for both my parents. My father especially urged us to read newspapers, to take an interest in and listen to ‘the news’ and care about what was happening in our troubled city.
He self-deprecatingly described his job in the Post Office as that of ‘a minor civil servant’ and claimed the position prevented him from ever becoming publicly involved in party politics. I suspect it suited his modest personality to commit himself instead to decades of unpaid, behind-the-scenes involvement in politics, civil rights and social justice issues.
He and my mother were involved with the constitutional, nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party – the SDLP – since its inception in 1970, and he was a member of the Citizens’ Defence Committee – the CDC – for roughly the same time. The latter organisation, which included local business people and members of the Catholic clergy, set itself the tasks of highlighting nationalist grievances, and campaigning peacefully for civil rights and an end to internment.
Night after night – sometimes dodging bullets to get there – he attended meetings of the fledgling SDLP or spent hours with his CDC colleagues in their cold, draughty offices at the bottom of the Falls Road ‘trying to keep a lid on things’: intervening with the security forces when their behaviour was excessive; recording allegations of army harassment and brutality; detailing sectarian attacks by loyalists; supporting internees’ families; and helping to re-house families who’d been intimidated from their homes.
I was proud and excited to accompany him, at the beginning of January, to my first political rally. Both of us were equally curious to hear at first hand, and see in the flesh, some of the public figures who were making the news.
Mon, Jan 10
Back to school but we got half-day. Spent afternoon in the house alone, terrified in case someone should attempt to break in. It was bucketing all day and freezing cold.
There was a big explosion and fire in town – Talbot Street. Building went on fire – just got a slight mention on the news, so commonplace now. Oh! In Derry, 157 pairs of army trousers and 160 flak jackets were stolen from a drycleaners – and then the following day, a riot begins where rioters fired CS gas at the army. Very suspicious!
Denise F. came into school wearing an engagement ring – at least, so we thought. She was only messing by wearing a ring on the wrong hand – gave us all a bit of a jolt.
Tues, Jan 11
The fellow who was shot last week is buried today, so the buses were taken off. It was pouring rain and we had to walk home. We were soaked to the skin, even the lining of my coat got wet.
An explosion shook the school this afternoon but turns out it was only a 2lb bomb at Campbell’s shop on the Springfield Road.
Sister Virgilius gave us the cheerful news that our exams start on the 4th. We nearly died of shock but at least we will have half-days off in between them (something to look forward to).
At the moment, I should be attempting to do some revision. I’ll have to force myself to do it before it’s too late.
Dragging myself out of bed on those dark, dank mornings, to don my maroon-coloured uniform and go to school, was invariably a chore. The prospect of having to make the two-mile journey to or fro on foot, because the bus service was withdrawn, made it ten times worse. There were many such occasions in 1972.
Our 100-year-old convent school, St Dominic’s, graced a sprawling site on the front of the Falls Road, the main thoroughfare from the city centre to West Belfast and the cockpit of much of the unrest. At the first hint of stone-throwing, rioting, hijacking or burning, Belfast Corporation withdrew its buses to protect both passengers and vehicles.
Regardless of the weather, hundreds of students from St Dominic’s, St Louise’s and St Rose’s girls’ schools, and St Mary’s and the Christian Brothers boys’ schools would be left with little choice but to trek up or down the road. We would set out from school in groups of five or six: those of us living in the West, like me and my classmates Eleanor, Oonagh, Maire, Liz and Frankie would head up the Falls Road towards Andersonstown; others, like Agnes and Jackie, who lived in North Belfast would head for the city centre.
Hordes of bedraggled teenagers, in maroon, brown, navy or black uniforms, trudged along wearily, weighed down with books, files, bags and sports-gear. Our outdoor shoes and staid gabardine overcoats would be heavy and sodden from the icy downpours.
On only our second day back at school after the Christmas break, transport was withdrawn because of the disruption likely to be caused by the funeral of a young IRA man, shot dead in a gun battle with the army a few days earlier. We completed our journey on foot, as we would many times that year.
Week in and week out funeral processions passed the front gates of St Dominic’s on their way to the vast Milltown Cemetery, halfway along the road between my home and school. There were funerals of IRA men, killed by the police and army or by their own bombs exploding prematurely; of men, women and children shot or blown up by the IRA; of innocent civilians shot dead by the security forces in disputed circumstances, and of victims of loyalist bombers and assassination squads. The coffins might be draped in the Irish Tricolour, buried beneath mounds of plain white flowers, or adorned with colourful family tributes. As the mourners dispersed, it wasn’t unusual for a full-scale riot to erupt, especially if the deceased had been killed by the army or the police.
Sometimes we were lucky and succeeded in waving down one of the dilapidated London Hackney cabs which were introduced to the local transport scene around that time by a group of entrepreneurially-minded republicans. Soon there were dozens of these clapped-out vehicles ferrying men, women and children up and down the Falls in droves – to Whiterock, Glen Road and ‘Andytown’, with drop-offs everywhere in between. As young and old alike embraced this unique, innovative and cheap transport system, ‘the black hack’ became the most popular and dependable means of transport in and out of West Belfast.
It was not unusual for eight people, laden with bags of shopping, to pile into one vehicle. Friends and relatives sat on each other’s knees and toddlers were placed wherever there was room. Three people would squeeze onto the two, fold-down backwards-facing seats, with one of the trio straddling the