You could hear the windows shaking

Londonderry

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Northern Ireland

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You could hear the windows shaking

Before you listen

In some countries, your religion decides who you can be friends with. There may even be violent conflict between different religious groups. What is it like growing up in this kind of situation? Write down your ideas. Then listen to Elaine talking to Lindis about her life as a teenager in Belfast during the Troubles.

Lindis: You come from Northern Ireland, don’t you, Elaine?

Elaine: That’s right, I do. I come from Belfast, the capital city.

Lindis: And when you were growing up in Belfast, er, were you affected by the Troubles in any way?

Elaine: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was impossible not to be affected because things were happening all the time. Erm … there were bombings and shootings and er … it was on the news and sometimes you could even hear the bombs going off, er … the windows shaking, so you knew that something had happened in the city and er … So it was unavoidable. I think everybody was affected.

Lindis: Erm, what about at school? Was that a place where you could relax or was that also affected by the conflict?

Elaine: It was also affected because occasionally there were bomb scares. We basically had to evacuate the buildings and the army would come and check the building, er … the army disposal unit er, but in most cases they were sort of er … some kind of pretend, scares where someone had phoned into the school just as a joke. Erm … but, of course, people got worried and they had to take it seriously because of the situation. Erm … and also er, the schools were segregated. So that means that we had like single religion schools er, either Protestant or Catholic.

Lindis: Which kind of school did you go to?

Elaine: I went to a Protestant school, yeah, Primary school and Grammar school level. Er … we had a Catholic school next door er, and we actually had c-, a little bit to do with them. We had what you call an, an inter-schools movement which was a voluntary organisation run by the pupils who wanted to kind of like er … cross the religious divide.

Lindis: And did your parents approve of this?

Elaine: Oh yeah, they did. They did. I mean, I think that most people in Northern Ireland wanted to have normal lives and live in peace. And er … it was only really a minority, we felt there was only a minority that were stirring up trouble.
So basically er … we felt it was a way of kind of stretching ac-, our hands across to people on the other side of the religious er, divide and trying to kind of improve er … relations. So we organised er, discos, debates, quizzes – and that was really nice.

Lindis: Do you think that your school was typical in that? I mean if you think of all the children going to school in Northern Ireland, how many would mix with someone from a different religion?

Elaine: Erm … it really depended on where you lived. Er … there were cert-, certain areas where maybe people didn’t really want to mix as much. Erm, but I feel that most people did have a, a sort of a desire to get to know people on the other side of the community.
Erm … we had Brownies and Girl Guides and Boy Scouts. And that was also mixed religion, amazingly enough. Er … so that was very positive. But there were lots of cases as well where young people just didn’t have time for the other religion.

Part 1: Bombs and discos

Now do Part 1: Getting the gist.

Lindis: I was just wondering, if someone like me who grew up in England erm, came to Northern Ireland, to Belfast, during the Troubles – how would people react to me and my accent? What was the attitude to England then?

Elaine: Erm … well, I don’t think that it would have been a problem. Absolutely not. But at the same time, you would probably have to mind your step, mind where you went er … be careful about which parts of Belfast you went into. There were certain areas, certain streets which were partly no-go. If you wanted to avoid trouble, you wouldn’t go into those areas so you probably had to know a little bit, do your homework beforehand and find out where it was safe to go to.

Lindis: And how did the Troubles affect you at home? What you were allowed to do when you were growing up, for example.

Elaine: Well, when I was growing up, I know that er, my parents were concerned about where I went out to in the evenings, especially when I was a teenager. They always asked, “Where are you going to?” And at that time you weren’t even able to go into the city centre because it was er, barricaded. There was very strict security, so young people usually went to some of the little towns outside Belfast er … and that was safer. So – there wasn’t really any choice, actually.

Lindis: You said there were no-go areas in the city of Belfast. And I remember from when I was growing up at that time we heard news about the Falls Road and the Shanklin Road. Could you tell me a bit about that? What happened there?

Elaine: Yes, erm … you might say in a way that these two roads signalled the kind of the main divide. You have the Shankill Road, that’s where the Loyalists lived, where the Protestants -, erm … and the Falls Road, that’s where the kind of the Catholic Nationalists er, lived. And these two areas were very segregated. If you were sort of from one religion, you didn’t go into the other, and vice-versa. And often there were conflicts with kind of young people throwing stones and bricks at each other, so there were a lot of er … there was a lot of fighting between gangs in that area. And of course sometimes – I shouldn’t say of course, but er – maybe cars were set fire to and er … windows were smashed, erm … even – when I grew up there were a lot of buses that were hijacked.

Lindis: What happened when they were hijacked?

Elaine: Well, erm I remember my sister, she was on a bus that was hijacked and basically a gunman came onto the bus and er … threatened the bus driver and er, every, all the passengers had to get out of the bus and er, they just took the bus to some area and set fire to it.

Lindis: That must’ve been very frightening for your sister.

Elaine: Yeah, it was, yes. So I think she was quite desperate to get away from Northern Ireland.
Erm … and there were certain … I mean, I know some young people who were er, killed during the Troubles. Erm … one girl who was actually shot in her home and er …

Lindis: Oh, no.

Elaine: Yeah, erm. They shot the father, he was the, the target erm … and she happened to be in the way. Er … and a, a boy who I knew quite well, he was on a train that erm – wh-, a bomb went off. And I had spoken to him a couple of days beforehand, and so that was very, very kind of heart-breaking.

Lindis: Absolutely.

Elaine: So, but I think everybody was affected. Everyb-, it was unavoid-, unavoidable really, and everyone knew somebody that had been affected. It’s such a small country. It’s impossible to not be affected by the-, what went on.

Part 2: Minding your step, losing your friends

Now do Part 2: Checking details.

You could hear the windows shaking

You could hear the windows shaking

Before you listen

Part 1: Getting the gist

Part 2: Checking details

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