Village Mentality

By AM Tuesday, February 21, 2012

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Not long ago we read of a vicious sectarian attack in the Village area of South Belfast. A teenager was set upon by a hate filled mob, beaten and left for dead. One of the attackers was reported as having said ‘that’s enough I think he he’s dead.’ Maybe we should read into that some form of moral restraint: an appeal to those in the mob who felt that death wasn’t enough and that maybe the body was in need of some form of desecration. Perhaps they were of a mind to take it to a local club where it could be placed on display like a trophy for the drooling drunks to slaver over.  Margaret Wright was beaten and shot to death in a band hall not too far away so that Ulster would not surrender. 

Bob Stoker, an Ulster Unionist councillor, claimed the attack was absolutely despicable: 

I think it is nothing short of wanton thuggery and these people have to be dealt with by the community, by the police and by the court system. They are in no way representative of this community. We need people to stand up and have the courage to say, 'I saw them doing it and I'm going to identify them'. The community will be completely in support of anybody who does this.

I wouldn’t be too sure about that. One woman amazingly complained about James Turly being beaten in her garden and demanded that the mob get him out. Beat him somewhere else dears but not in my garden please. They duly obliged and took him to an alleyway.

In my primary school days I used to spend summers in the Village with my grandmother who lived in Glenmachen Street. It was the street closest to the M1 Motorway. It was while sauntering along the side of the motorway around the age of five with someone else whose identity I no longer remember that I was first ‘arrested’. A cop took us to my grandmother’s home for being so close to a road closed off to pedestrians, particularly ones so young. But my real memory of the Village was the naked sectarianism I experienced there. There were plenty of good neighbours but the young lads of around my own age who hated with biblical intensity stand out in my memory. On more than one occasion I was beaten by people whose names I still remember. I wondered where they got their hatred from; if there was a factory in Benburb Street, where one of my assailants lived, which churned out hate as easily as Kennedy’s Dairy in nearby Tate’s Avenue produced bottled milk.

Of course it is not only Catholics that certain denizens of the Village spew their hate towards. People of foreign origin do not seem welcome there either. Age is no defence against hatred. That terrible lesson has been absorbed at great cause down through the centuries.

The Village was a source of many happy memories. That was before Jimmy, Fat Colin and their gang discovered that I was a ‘Fenian.’ After that the joys of exploring the Bog Meadows was never the same. Trips to the shop for sweets unless accompanied by an adult were a tense experience. Even journeying to adjoining Lecale Street was not without trepidation. Tavanagh Street shop was off limits. My orientation was outwards and towards the other side of the M1 where wall murals of King Billy were non-existent and it was well away from Frenchpark Street and its associated misery. Nothing there to proclaim 'This we shall maintain.'

Seems the Village mentality is as entrenched as ever.