Transcript
INTERVIEWER
Moving on up into around about '69, that would have been sort of a real bad interface area where maybe a lot of the trouble would have kicked off?
BEATRICE
Yes, yeah. Especially around the Kashmir Road [off Springfield Road on the interface between the Falls and the Shankill] around that way. I remember the 13th August, that was 1969. My husband, he came home that night and he said, ‘There’s trouble on the Springfield Road,’ I think they were attacking the police station then, that was the 13th of August. And then the 14th I think it was the factories and all got it, the Falls Road factories and all round that way, and then the trouble just erupted. Then Bombay Street [a predominantly Catholic street], it was attacked. We were told the Catholics were coming down to put us out so my husband got me and my two children then up to Finaghy where mother and father lived, they lived up in Taughmonagh which was a mixed area, and I stayed up there for two days.
And I came back home. And when I came back home I went round to North Howard Street [on the interface between the Shankill and The Falls] because the Catholics were getting put out of their houses, the houses were burning, and I just stood shocked, I was more mesmerised than anything, when I saw the police sitting with their ties open, their shirts open, their ties hanging off them, and they were exhausted. And the wee ferret cars, we called them then, the wee ferret tanks, they were driving about and people were taking their furniture out of their houses and, just, houses on fire.
INTERVIEWER
Was this both Catholics and Protestants?
BEATRICE
Yes, they were both Catholics and Protestants, because they lived beside each other in Cupar Street [where the current wall is]-- next door to each other, before all that happened. Even the Catholics had their union jacks out and their streamers and all up celebrating the twelfth. They’d have joined in dancing and all like that, had all night music and parties for children.
INTERVIEWER
So what about, as I say the Troubles started then, how did you really feel about it then? Did you feel bitter against the Catholic community or any sectarianism towards Catholics? What way did you actually feel about it?
BEATRICE
I felt shocked that it was happening, but I didn’t think it would have lasted as long as what it did. And it wasn’t till one night, we were watching TV, now it was black and white TV we had then, that Father Philbin, I think, Philbin, you called him, he called for the Army to come in. Then I realised it was going to be serious. When the Army started to come in.
INTERVIEWER
What about your own children, your three daughters? Would you have been bringing them up in a way, during the Troubles, against Catholics or letting them make their own decision?
BEATRICE
Oh, I brought them up not to be hating anybody, to try and just to get on with people, make their own decision, you know. There’s bad and good on both sides, no matter what their religion was.
But when they were young, the things they seen, like you know, especially my older daughter in Kenmore Street, you weren’t allowed out to play after a certain time. Then when the Army there, the curfew was on and children weren’t allowed out and then, every night nearly, you just heard bombing and shooting and it just went off every night. And then the strike came on and trying to get food in and trying to make a fire and it was hard going, hard going for the mothers, like, with families. Not so much for the men, for they were out.