People we knew were rioting – fighting hand-to-hand in the street and throwing petrol bomb with a wild fury. We heard about the trouble on the news, but then the violence was outside of our front door.
Nevertheless, for all the hardships I had a good early childhood, but everything changed during that fateful summer of 1969. That brought out the worst in people and reminded us of the deep divide in our city. We knew they were different from us, but this usually only became an issue when the 12th July came around and the Orange marches took place. There were more jobs on the Protestant side but they still lived in small terrace houses like us. They had it a bit better than us but not much. I actually did have some Protestant friends when I was young. Nevertheless, we were taught to respect the other community and to never engage in sectarianism. My parents weren’t political but were avid church goers and insisted that we regularly attended mass at Clonard – every Sunday like clockwork. We lived on a side street off the Catholic Falls Road, only a few hundred yards away from our Protestant neighbours on the Shankill. Back then people really did look out for their neighbours. We were poor but so was almost everyone we knew, and we were a tight-knit community. All five of us lived in a small, terraced house with an outdoor toilet. I loved my three sisters but they often did my head in back in the day.
My old man was a joiner by trade and often couldn’t find work, while my mother worked as a school dinner lady to help pay the bills.
I grew up in a working-class Catholic family and like many others we struggled. I’m not making excuses for myself but – like many in my generation – I was caught between a rock and a hard place. It was tough coming of age in West Belfast during the early 70s, that’s for sure.
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