Ireland//ART 246
On Friday I managed to get myself on my way to Ireland, doing a job for an old boss. I couldnt see a better opportunity to do some first hand research on the IRA from real Irish people, in teh town called Newry. I only had a few hours so I had to work quite fast.
I was wary, the friend I was visiting, Erin, said a lot of the Irish disliked the English because of their unwanted involvement in the civil War. I could only find a few people to talk to, older men, who i didn't want to audio record or take direct notes from, so I wrote the notes up on the ferry home. I did some background research to help inform the answers I was given, and the questions I was asking. I asked about one particular bloody incident that happened in Belfast. On Friday 21st July, in the afternoon in the Summer of 1972, the Provisional IRA exploded 19 bombs across Belfast in little over an hour. Nine people were killed and 130 injured. The dead included four teenagers, the youngest a 14 year old schoolboy. The British government responded by organising a major military operation to take back the 'no go' areas in towns across Northern Ireland.
When I asked the men I'd been speaking to, they all said the same thing. That it was horrific, and while none of the people I spoke to were present, they rued the day. It was a botched job by the IRA, they weren't supposed to kill anyone, it wasn't meant to happen. The IRA issued an apology shorty after, not that it made a difference of course. Those times were hard for all the Irish people. It was difficult, not as easy as dealing with the likes of Al Queda and ISIS, mostly because they are easily identifiable. The men said themselves that they could possibly have had terrorists within their homes, their streets their towns. People you'd known all your lives could the next shoot you in the back.
After saying this the men I was talking to left. I felt like I'd infringed on a very private this, only for their country. It felt insensitive to be curious. For more information I trawled the web and found this statement from an eye witness, a police officer. Twenty-five years after Bloody Friday, this police officer who had been at Oxford Street bus station described to journalist Peter Taylor the scene he came upon in the wake of the bombing:
"The first thing that caught my eye was a torso of a human being lying in the middle of the street. It was recognisable as a torso because the clothes had been blown off and you could actually see parts of the human anatomy. One of the victims was a soldier I knew personally. He'd had his arms and legs blown off and some of his body had been blown through the railings. One of the most horrendous memories for me was seeing a head stuck to the wall. A couple of days later, we found vertebrae and a rib cage on the roof of a nearby building. The reason we found it was because the seagulls were diving onto it. I've tried to put it at the back of my mind for twenty-five years."
^^ Taylor, Peter (1999). Loyalists. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc. p.108. ISBN 0-7475-4519-7
An old teacher of mine, who taught my friend Science, spoke to her once about his experiences as an Irish boy growing up during the time of the IRA. She said that sometimes when he woke up, petrol bombs were being set off outside his house. Cars were being blown up regularly. A friend of his had a petrol bomb thrown through his window. He had to move to London to get away from all of the issues.
Some of the stories I've read are absolutely horrific, and sad, and painful. Its brutally unfair.
For more information visit this site
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/bloody_friday_belfast#p00wbbt1
http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/events/day_troubles_began