Another Face From Childhood

By AM Monday, December 9, 2013

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Guest writer Davy Carlin with the final extract from Part 1 of his story about life in West Belfast where as a black child he was exposed to the racist violence of the British Army.

*****

‘Ok, away you go’ came the voice of the Peeler, a voice that shook me again into present reality as the taxi was waved through the police stop. ‘About time’ came a reply from within the Hack of 2004. The peeler was in a nice fluorescent yellow coat and even tried a smile at us passengers within, as we went by. Now we were on our way down the final stages of the Rock and for a brief moment I thought about that peeler’s attempt to be civil, however fake it may have been. Therefore, for that brief moment I drifted again in time back to the late seventies, and this time back to the very Road in which I presently was being taxied in 2004.

‘Get your fucking hands up against that wall’ the Brit had said to my relative as they stopped us, while another aimed a gun at his head. My uncle’s legs were kicked open while the Brit roughly searched him. The Brit then made a remark about me and the resemblance he thought I had to a monkey. My uncle’s reply in defence of me won him a rifle butt to the side of the head and blood began to trickle down. I prayed in my mind that my uncle would not say anything else no matter what the Brit said about me. Another Brit then grabbed his colleague sleeve and told my uncle, and therefore I, to go on our way. That day taught me two lessons that I would take into my childhood understanding in the short time ahead.

I gave my head a shake and looked out the taxi as we neared the bottom of the Rock. Looking ahead and to the right I saw the house that has a plaque over it which acknowledges that James Connolly had lived on the Falls Road. James Connolly was a great Socialist and trade union organiser who was executed following his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, and much has been and no doubt will still be written about him. I had just come on to the Falls Road deep in thought as to the man and what he stood for when I looked directly to the left of me.

I had been thinking about how the Falls Road also holds so much history of struggle when my eyes met Sean Graham’s bookmakers which is at the junction of the Rock and the Falls Roads. Sean Graham’s bookmakers on January 13th 1990 had seen three men go into it to do a robbery. Undercover Brits from 14th Intelligence Company apparently aware of the robbery in advance waited until they had come out of the bookmakers then gunned them down. Eye witness state that the men were again shot as they lay on the ground while wounded. The driver was the first to die with no warning given. He, also unarmed, was shot at very close range through the window of the car. One of the three men had remained inside the shop and so survived. Those that were killed were the getaway driver, John Joseph McNeill, as well as Edward Hale and Peter Thompson. I had looked at that time at each of the faces in the paper until I set eyes on the face of Peter Thompson, and in doing so, I had seen another face from childhood.