Republican News · Thursday 20 June 2002

A dangerous journey

BY JIM GIBNEY

There are people living in Madrid Street 50 years. They might never see their neighbours or either end of Madrid Street again

After more than 30 years of involvement in this struggle, I can say with some certainty that I'm not easily shocked. I'm not easily angered. I'm not easily moved through frustration to anger. But these were the emotions racing through my body as I left the Short Strand two weeks ago on Saturday afternoon in the company of my comrade and friend Seanna Walsh.

We had spent two hours visiting the district and I can tell you it was a very unpleasant experience. Despite following the news as I know a lot of people were doing about the attacks on the district by loyalists I was not prepared for what I found when I got there.

As we approached the Strand, it was striking the large number of union and loyalist flags surrounding St Matthew's chapel and spreading well into what can only be regarded as the perimeter of the nationalist Short Strand/Ballymacarrett area. Loyalists have always used their flags to denote 'their' territory. On this occasion, they were provocatively using them to lay claim to a nationalist area.

As we turned onto the Mountpottinger Road we were faced with an alarming message on a banner tied between two homes 'End the Siege of the Short Strand'. 'Siege' - the language of the early '70s. Surely several years into a peace process this was exaggerated language? It wasn't long before I found out that it might well have been an understatement.

As we left the car, I heard the unmistakable sound of an Orange band. This sectarian music was the backdrop against which our visit took place rising and falling in intensity as we traversed the area but never fading into the distance as a band would on the march.

In broad daylight and in golden sunshine a friend, who is no stranger to violence having been shot on two separate occasions, once by loyalists, accidentally met us. He kindly offered to guide us part of the way. By nature he is animated, talks quickly and loudly and did so as he greeted us outside his home.

Within yards of his front door and along a narrow tree covered tight pathway his manner changed dramatically. His voice fell to a whisper. His body took on the posture of a man dicing with the dangerous unknown. He crouched as if not to offer himself as a target. We were behind dense undergrowth, virtually impenetrable with the eye, and two fences one bevelled like a venetian blind so that an outsider can't see in but we could see out.

A whistle blew and a startled look flashed across our friend's face. He disappeared momentarily only to reappear, assured there was no attack looming. A youngster had borrowed his mother's whistle. An innocent pastime anywhere else but not here, not now: The sound of a whistle spelt danger.

Less than 15 feet away was the loyalist Newtownards Road and less than 30 yards away was an area from which many of the attacks - gun, bomb, petrol bomb and other missiles - had been thrown for over ten days.

A few feet behind us were the devastating results of these attacks. A row of bungalows, practically burnt out in a similar attack last July, had again been abandoned by their elderly occupants. Large blocks of plywood boarded up windows and doors; large newly made grilles covered other windows. There was no sign of life from within and the talk was there wouldn't be again.

Our guide ushered us closer to the outer fence. We hunched over in total silence. Through a slit he pointed out a man walking a dog. "He's their spotter. When he's about trouble follows. He walks up and down pretending to walk his dog but he's sussing things out."

He was a well-known loyalist troublemaker, yet he walked freely through the lines of the RUC and the British Army unhindered.

I noticed what looked like a car crashed across the junction of a street on our onward journey. It looked so out of place with its windows smashed and tyres let down, sitting as it was in a spotlessly clean street surrounded by equally attractive homes and gardens. It was a strange sight given there was no evidence of a riot or other disturbance around it. This was a makeshift barrier to protect local people from the RUC attacking them from behind while they were defending their homes from frontal attack by loyalists.

The next stage of our dangerous journey took us to a house on the corner of a street a few hundred yards away. Its windows weren't boarded up. It was too far into the district for missiles to reach it but there were bullet holes in the living room and upstairs bedroom windows.

Several people who had been lured onto the street when bricks and petrol bombs were thrown by loyalists over a nearby wall into Bryson Street, where I grew up, dived for cover when an UDA gunman on top of a wall opened up on them. They were lucky to be alive.

Our friend left us and we quickly crossed over the exposed road to safety and shelter. We did it once. Dozens of residents would have to do the same several times a day. As we did so, the sectarian music took on a permanence I hadn't quite noticed before. This must be a stationary band, I thought.

The next shock to my system came when I saw the huge metal barrier across the junction of Madrid Street and Bryson Street. I came of age here as a young teenager. This was my playground as a boy. Madrid Street was a main thoroughfare. It took us wanderers from the tiny Short Strand to the vastness of east Belfast and beyond. At the height of the war, before the IRA cessation, such a barrier was unthinkable, mainly because it didn't suit the military requirements of the Crown forces.

Throughout the years there was an uneasy calm between the people who now live on either side of the barrier, but they at least could see each other. They might never have talked or greeted each other with a wave, but some did. They at least saw life as the other lived it.

There are people living in Madrid Street 50 years. They might never see their neighbours or either end of Madrid Street again.

We had tea with Belfast republican artist Danny Devenney. He has lived in the Short Strand all his life. His account of the past week was harrowing and frightening. The worst he has ever experienced. The sectarian music invaded his home and our conversation.

The phone rang. His daughter Cara answered it. "Mammy said they have thrown a blast bomb," her voice called from the hallway to her Daddy in a casual, almost routine tone. In an instant, Danny was gone as if he hadn't been there. We later found out the man with the dog had completed yet another mission close to where we had spotted him earlier.

Clandeboye estate was hit the worse. House after house had their windows boarded up. People emerged with cups of tea in their hands from behind slabs of board covering their front doors. We entered a house. It was unusually silent, the plywood over the windows killing off the noise from the street. It was like a cavern, no natural light. It had been like this for a week.

All the while the sectarian music played even louder. We finally found out why. A Protestant resident had just recently moved into Cluan Place a few feet away on the other side of a 20-foot wall. She was from the Shankill Road, was playing Orange songs on an amplification system and had been for several days non-stop.

A jeepload of RUC men were feet away. They had been challenged about getting the music stopped but were "too busy reading the paper".

Normal life for the people of the Short Strand has been turned upside down. After a day's work as housewives, community workers, bus drivers, secretaries, hairdressers, driving taxis, and as labourers, they take on another more arduous task, that of vigilantes. They put life and limb on the line to protect their families and their homes.

We had come to the end. This wasn't June 2002. This was Bombay Street, Falls Road 1969. This was August 1971 in Bryson Street just around the corner, when my family home and a street full of others were razed to the ground for fear of a loyalist invasion.

The UDA, the UVF and their political representatives have a lot to answer for. Whatever their game plan, they are responsible for the damage that was done to the homes of the people who live in the Short Strand and the homes of the Protestant people who live close by, which were used by them to launch their attacks or cover them as they did.

As we left, a group of young lads kicked a ball around, trying to reclaim life as it should be for them. Had it not been for lads like these and others who defended the district, the Short Strand might well be a lot smaller today than it is.