August 1969: A New Football Season…

The priority for my family in August 1969 was getting a new house.

Our house in that “mixed” street in West Belfast was falling down. Literally. As you walked into the street, you could see a row of houses lean backwards. The house, like most in the street was “condemned”. Sooner or later it would be knocked down, either as slum clearance or “for the road”. Ah yes, “the road” was a big thing in 1969. There were plans to link the M1 at the Donegall Road to somewhere down around York Street and there would be another motorway heading north. All very fanciful.

It actually made a difference whether the house was knocked down as a slum or for the link road. Compensation. You see, it was a hovel. But it was OUR hovel. We actually owned it. My maternal grandmother had bought it as a wedding present in 1951 for about £400. We were people of property. And if the house was knocked down as a slum, then we would get a new house and some form of compensation but we would get more…we kept hearing sums of £700 and a new house.

Really we wanted a new house. We seemed to spend a lot of summer Sundays taking the #9 or #13 bus to St Theresas and walking up the Glen Road. The walk got longer as the 1960’s went by. Rosnareen,  Shaws Road, Lenadoon, Suffolk. And sometimes we got a bus to Glengormley and walked down past these new houses at Rathcoole. Closer to home, they had built blocks of flats at North Queen Street and at Divis Flats and the maisonettes. Back then, Divis Tower was known as The High Chapparel and there was that big worry that it swayed in the high winds. But a man, who seemed to know what he was talking about came on TV News and told us that it was supposed to move in high winds.

I remember a councillor, Paddy Wilson (later to be murdered in 1973) coming to the house and talking us thru it all. I dont remember the big court case. I suppose I was just a self-centred teenager and I was unaware that at one point there was a serious proposal that we pay for the privilege of knocking down our own house. But in the autumn of 1969, there was some kinda compromise. Our house would be knocked down and we would get a council house (about 20 years old) in a  “mixed” area in Upper Springfield. Compensation? None. Not a penny. But we did get £32 expenses to help us move (March 1970).

In many ways, August 1969 was not much different to August 2019.

A new football season would be starting. And having seen Manchester United play twice in early 1969, I was looking forward to some more trips on the old Heysham boat.

Manchester United had had a poor season. Finished 11th. And the manager Matt Busby was standing down after 24 years and a former player Wilf McGuinness was taking over.
Hmm this does sound like a familiar story.

Catholics in Norn Iron had little interest in local football. But in the mid 1960s, my classmates took a sudden interest in Glentoran, solely because they were doing well and they were not Linfield.
As the 1960’s were ending most teens around the Lower Falls took a sudden interest in Distillery. And it was solely because they were doing well and were not Linfield.

Distillery actually reached the Cup Final in 1969. Played Ards in a 0-0 draw. I was there. Boring match but it was enlivened by Ards and Linfield supporters, including respectable adults in the good seats in the main  stand pelting Whites fans with bricks and bottles and the RUC wading against innocent fans.

Did the pre-Troubles (1966) or this sudden interest in football make football and sectarianism toxic?

Certainly in the earlier part of the 1960’s, Football seemed harmless enough. “Blue men” regularly walked thru our street for the bus in Albert Street to take them via Northumberland Street home to the Shankill. Only once do I recall bad behaviour when some windows were broken in McDonnell Street on a dark winter night.

As our teacher put it at the time….Mary runs into the house and says to her husband, the Orangemen (sic)  are attacking the chapel so Paddy grabs a hurley stick and runs out into the street and then turns back……..”Mary……where is the chapel?”.

But certainly it was getting toxic.

I did not go to the replay in 1969 (Ards won) but I did go back to Windsor Park for a pre-season friendly. Linfield and Liverpool.

The really odd thing was the abuse heaped on a Linfield player, not because he was playing badly but he had a “f+++++ girlfriend”.

I suppose there has always been an element in local football where the fans live beside and work alongside people who are in the team.

The respectable people in the stands were on best behaviour for the visit of Liverpool. There’s an old cliché for the Troubles that Sport is a unifying factor…it brings us together. No it doesn’t.
That’s what Norn Iron still does……..on its best behaviour for MTV Awards, Tall Ships, City of Culture, Open Golf……..but as soon as the visitors go home, we are back to the squalid sectarianism.
So how would Man Utd do in 1968/69? It all started with an away draw in London (was it Fulham or Crystal Palace?)

And politics…well there was going to be a march in Derry and we knew it would be bad. There had been two deaths related to RUC riot control in Derry and I think Dungiven in previous months.
To this day I don’t know whether Tuesday 12th August was celebrating opening or closing the gates of Derry but there was always the likelihood of a familiar pattern. Not unlike Armagh or Dungannon.

Marches take place. They are “provocative” or they are “attacked” and the RUC wades in on one side. The marchers go home on a bus. Some residents get arrested. And well it ends.

The thing is that on the News that night or the next day (Wednesday) the script had been torn up. The RUC were getting a hiding. And yet, somehow I thought that eventually they would get into the Bogside. It would be really bad but it would end.

Tuesday 12th August turned into Wednesday 13th August and they were still fighting in the Bogside. And the residents were rapidly becoming folk heroes. But we saw no real connexion to them. I had plans to go up to watch practice for the Ulster Grand Prix but my father said it would not be a good idea. In the early evening mobs of youths were gathering and roaming on the Lower Falls. My friend Tony and I went up to see them. Later maybe around 9pm , still in daylight people were out chatting and we heard some shots being fired. People seemed to pause and a single voice said “the guns are out”.

In the evening Jack Lynch appeared on TV News and made that oft misquoted speech. More so, it was misunderstood. I might have thought the Irish Army was coming into Derry, Armagh and Newry but my father knew that they were not. But Field Hospitals and refugees in army camps was bad enough. Even in 2019, the word “refugee” seems odd in the context of modern Europe.

Later that night I was listening to the radio. Everton had just beaten Manchester United at Old Trafford. One point from two games. It was a bad start to the season.

There was supposed to be a confrontation at Roden Street/Grosvenor Road and a few people walked to the spot. But it was harmless stuff. Just some youths taunting each other. Rangers had just beaten Celtic. Someone mentioned that the shots we had heard earlier were fired near the Falls Library.

POST SCRIPT….I am basing this on Memory. I don’t remember which London team Manchester United drew with on that opening day of the 1969/70 season. It would actually change this memoir if I looked it up on Wikipedia.

Yet some aspect of this needs context. History says that the leaders in the Bogside called out civil rights support in Belfast (and other towns) to add pressure on the RUC. But dont get conned by revisionists saying this was civil rights or republican “protestors”. This was a mob who burned a car showroom.  I have seen protestors and even been one. And I have seen thugs. And I know the difference.

Likewise Lynch’s speech is routinely mentioned as making things worse. It did not.

And lastly, the gunman who fired some shots that night was neither starting a revolution (as loyalists like to think) or defending the Falls against the RUC (as republican mythology would have it). He was just a buck eejit who was showing off. He was “the big lad in the big picture”. Nothing more. Nothing less.

It was going to get a whole lot worse.

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