As next month marks the 50th Anniversary of the Start of the Troubles, I expect there will be some reflective or revisionist discussion. As they say, if you can remember the 1960s, you were not there. And if you can remember the start of the Troubles….well it won’t stop people remembering even though they were still in their mother’s womb at the time. That’s the norm at events at An Féile anyway.
Of course many will say the Troubles started in 1966 or even centuries earlier but for the purpose of this post, I am using August 1969 as the starting point. I felt different on 1st July 1969 than I did on 31st August.
Some say that the 1960’s began in 1958 and ended in 1972.
And maybe the 1960’s as we now understand it only happened in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Carnaby Street and Kings Road.
I don’t know if the 1960’s happened in Des Moines, Iowa or Rotherham, Yorkshire but I am absolutely certain the 1960’s never happened in Belfast.
At best, we learned about the 1960’s from Radio Luxembourg and Radio Caroline and from 1967 Radio One and read about it in the New Musical Express. But Belfast was always ten years behind California and five years behind England.
At the beginning of the decade, they showed Elvis movies in the Gaumont (it was later British Home Stores) and in those days, they had still photographs to advertise the feature. My mother dragged me past the pics of girls in white bikinis.
The Beatles you say? Well initially they were not that radical at all. They had already performed in Hamburg’s Red Light District but the media drew a veil over all that as the lovable mop-top, cheeky Scousers sang chaste playground songs like “She Loves You” and “I Wanna Hold Your Hand”. One of those was #1 when I started “big” school in 1963. Initially, the Beatles were as much show biz as Arthur Askey (look him up) and Morecambe and Wise.
In 1967, we all became hippies, even at school where we just stopped wearing uniforms and the school authorities just gave up trying.
To enhance our hippyness, Radio One started in September 1967 and as every person who ever took part in a pub quiz knows, the first record played was “Flowers in the Rain” (The Move).
But if the high point of Civilisation was 1967 with “Be Sure To Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair” and “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, we rapidly went into decline. In 1968…Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Czechoslovakia, Vietnam of course, Danny the Red…….and our own Civil Rights and we moved into Crossroads Election, Burntollet and the rest in 1969. Yet there was no real communal violence. I used to walk from Ardoyne via Tennant Street, Shankill, Cupar Street, Falls Road home in early 1969.
After O Levels in 1968, our school re-located to the West Belfast suburbs. I hated it. It meant I had to get up about 8am and catch a bus to school. It meant I could no longer go home for lunch. School uniform was re-instated. And Physical Education (PE) introduced into the curriculum. And worse was to come…a swimming pool. The school canteen was not built and really the school was a still a building site with dust all over the place. At least we had indoor plumbing. And the A levels looked promising.
Seniors…..as I now was were allowed to smoke. A ground-level room (which I think became the canteen) was the designated smoking area. It was effectively a place where smokers and non-smokers gathered. But the cosiness of our fifth year class (23 boys) in a designated room was replaced by a nomadic existence as a Sixth Former and our form of about 45 boys met every day around noon. But we had no room of our own. In the summer of 1968, I had a major falling out with people and not being much of a letsgetalongerist, the rift was never healed.
For all kinda reasons, I determined to leave school in the summer of 1969. In fact I seemed to spend most of spring 1969 playing truant (mitching, playing hookey, on the hike, on the beak). It was simple enough. Walk up Springfield Road, down Ainsworth Avenue, cut thru another couple of streets and then down Shankill Road in full Catholic uniform. An hour in the central library and a bus, usually to Dundonald, a walk around what was then a village and another bus back to town. Once I went with a classmate (his older brother was in the Peoples Democracy) to the public gallery at Stormont. He lived in the Woodvale constituency and I lived in Falls constituency. We had to be signed in by our MPs…Johnny McQuade and Paddy Devlin. It was all very civilised. Paddy Kennedy asked a question and the unionist minister gave a generous reply and later crossed the floor and sat beside Kennedy and they went thru some notes together. Yes…all very civilised.
By the time school broke up for the summer, I was telling everyone I would not be going back and was applying for civil service and “corporation” clerical posts. What did I do in July 1969? Well the only TV in the daytime was Horse Racing, Wimbledon (I know an English player, Ann Jones won so the BBC was in full jingo form) and Cricket (no idea who the Tourists were that year). In early July my maiden aunt took some of her nieces and nephews to Bundoran which was nice. And then my family spent a weekend in Edward Street in Armagh. I hated it and wanted to be left alone in Belfast. But at least we stayed up one night to see Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. The event itself and Space Travel underwhelms me now as it did then. It was not as good as Fireball XL5, Steve Zodiac and Captain Scarlet. Torchy the Battery Boy has done more for me than Neil Armstrong.
There was of course trips to the Falls Park with my mate Harry and his transistor radio. And we were listening to Elvis “In The Ghetto” cos suddenly he was cool again. I think “Give Peace A Chance” came before “The Ballad of John and Yoko”. and the Beatles who were show biz in 1963 and cool in 1967 were just pretentious, self-promoting bores in July 1969. In that summer I bought “Proud Mary” (CCR). We also people-watched in the Falls Park. And the people we watched most were Theresa (who went out with Harry) and Patricia (who didn’t go out with me) or maybe she jilted me for Martin. “Martin is a moron”. I dunno.
And in July we read a headline. True believers in Jack and Bobby Kennedy were uncomfortable reading about Ted Kennedy, Mary Jo Kopechne and a drowning at Chappaquiddick.
And within a week we were reading about Charles Manson and Sharon Tate.
It was a whole new world. Something had ended and Something was beginning.
Retired man with a smartpass on public transport. Husband/Father/Grandfather. Celtic FC and Manchester United FC. Occasional SDLP member but they cant stand the sight of me. Hypocrite who despises Hypocrisy. Gets along with eveybody except LetsGetAlongerists. Wary of Conflict Resolution.
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