Title: Ardoyne Resident

Subject: Cowboys and the Ulster Workers Council Strike.

I lived in the Ardoyne until I was 16 leaving in 1975 and have many personal recollections of the ‘Troubles.’ Some good; some bad; some sad. Perhaps I could indulge in a few minutes of your time to allow me to recall to you one brief example that sticks in my mind to this day.

It was the summer of 1974, during the Ulster Workers Council Strike, when many areas of the city including ours and indeed the entire country were barricaded; preventing vehicular and security force access. Water, gas and electricity supplies were disrupted with drinking water having to be collected in buckets and pots from a standpipe at the top of the street. I remember my Mother having to cook food over a coal-fuelled fire in the back yard. During this period, many of the local ‘hoods’ would parade within their own streets, as if they were totally untouchable. On one particular day a local well know hard man was walking down the street with a revolver strapped to his side like something out of a wild west movie.

There was no effort on his behalf to conceal the weapon; in fact, quite the opposite. This man was making a visual statement to the local residents; they were safe; he was going to protect them from the other side.’ I remember thinking at the time, even though I was only 15, how bad things were getting; however neither the sight I was witnessing, nor my thoughts at the time prepared me for what happened next.

As this ‘cowboy’ proceeded to walk down the street, his 6 year old son saw him and ran towards him, from his friend’s front garden where he had been playing. On reaching him the young boy exclaimed ‘Hey Daddy; are you going to shoot a fenian?’ The child’s father simply laughed and carried on walking with even more strut in his step, no doubt satisfied and proud in his own mind, of his excellent nurturing and parenting skills.

The strange thing is, although I witnessed many different events, for some strange reason this one always sticks in my mind. I think, because for me at the time it reflected the hopelessness of the whole general situation, how far bigotry and sectarianism had rooted itself in the upcoming generation, and the total lack of value for human life; it seemed there would never be an end to it all.

Little did I or others at the time realize that it would be another generation before we would begin to experience some sort of normality in the fragile peace we currently enjoy. I was lucky and I am thankful that my experiences were never really life threatening

There are many thousands of individuals within Northern Ireland today, who simply by “getting on with their life” and not letting events dictate and push them to become involved in worsening a troubled past, became the real heroes, their story needs to be told. And “A Troubled Past” is their means to do so.