Bombay Street Burning and My Dad, 1969

In light of Kenneth Branagh’s movie, Belfast, I’ve been reflecting with my dad on some of the early days of The Troubles. My first real memories are from the Ulster Workers strike in 1974, but dad’s stories are tied to the early days of violence in 1969. I’ll be writing a few posts related to The Troubles, all from the perspective of a middle-class kid growing up in South Belfast, and mostly on the Upper Malone area (Belfast readers will appreciate how isolated I was from the day to day issues).

It was August 1969 and the animosity between loyalist and nationalist communities was high. Catholic families were being burned out of their homes in Protestant areas of the city. On the night of August 15th a group of loyalist agitators made their way to Bombay Street and threw incendiary bombs into the Catholic homes on the street. Where were the police? They were there, they simply stood by and allowed the violence to take place.

My dad’s business wasn’t far away. Located on the Springfield Road, my dad, as the managing director of a builder’s merchants, had access to lorries. He was asked to send his lorries over to Bombay Street to assist the residents in retrieving anything that could be salvaged from the shells of their burned out homes.

He was happy to help and as a man committed to peace he wasn’t about to take a strong stand in either the loyalist or nationalist camp. As a Presbyterian from South Belfast, his dad fought in the trenches of World War 1, he lived through the German blitz of Belfast in World War 2, lost a cousin in that war, he came to abhor violence of any type.

Helping those who were hurting was just the right thing to do. Dad’s always believed that and I suppose he’s where I get a lot of my passion for justice. Of course if he reads this I’ll have to deny that!

Shortly after the events of August 15th he received a letter of thanks signed in Irish. His assumption was the letter was from the I.R.A.. He kept that letter in his desk at work, but lost it when the I.R.A. burned his business to the ground a couple of years later. That’s a story for another day.

It would be a year before the residents would start to return to their homes. They had to be remodeled and the so-called “Peace Wall” was built on the back side of Bombay Street. Where it still stands as a tragic memorial to the violence of August 1969.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.”