The burning of Bombay Street

Posted by admin on October 13, 2015

 

In 1969, a sectarian mob burned 1,500 residents from their homes on

Bombay Street, Belfast, 44 years ago this week. Out of the ashes will

arise the Provisional IRA. Originally recorded in 1999, the following

are the recollections of people who bore the brunt of one of the worst

loyalist pogroms of the recent conflict.

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RITA CANAVAN

 

“We lost everything but our sense of humour,” says Rita Canavan. In a

photograph taken in August 1969, two small boys are standing outside the

burnt out facade of what had been the Canavan family’s Bombay Street

home. Short trousers, spindly legs and cropped hair, one child stands up

straight for the camera, but his face seems pensive, anxious, unsure.

His companion, hands on hips, strikes a more defiant pose.

 

Behind them, a row of modest terrace houses, fire gutted, roofless,

without doors or windows, stand in silent testimony to the sectarian

hatred in which they had been engulfed. It’s a simple snapshot but all

the elements are there, fear and defiance, vulnerability and courage.

For the last 30 years, the image of Bombay Street has haunted not only

the memory of residents whose homes were destroyed but the Northern

nationalist psyche. And not without reason.

 

Between 1969 to 1973, it is estimated that 60,000 Six-County Catholics

were driven from their homes. Last year, over 1,600 residents, the vast

majority Catholic, requested rehousing following sectarian intimidation.

To the present day, the petrol bomb remains a pivotal weapon in the

loyalist arsenal of sectarian violence. Just over a year ago, the burnt

out image of a house in Ballymoney was also accompanied by a photograph

of small boys, three faces just as well scrubbed but whose fate was less

kind.

 

Thirty years after the Bombay Street pogrom, children are still found on

the front door step of Rita Canavan’s home but the scene is no longer

one of desolation. Now 73 years of age, Rita is a proud mother of five,

grandmother to ten and “I’ve one great-grandchild,” she says. Outside

the youngest members of the family are playing in a street bathed only

in the light of summer sunshine. “Take our photo,” they call to An

Phoblacht’s photographer.

 

As newlyweds, James and Rita Canavan moved into Bombay Street almost 50

years ago. Today a roof high wall straddles the two communities, it’s

presence affording a measure of protection from the loyalist gangs who

still regularly pelt nationalist homes with bricks, stones, paint bombs

and less frequently petrol bombs. Thirty years ago there was “no peace

wall,” says Rita. “Protestant and Catholic houses were back to back.”

 

Rita remembers the area as a “quiet community of decent hardworking

people.” The largest factory, “Mackies”, despite being located in a

predominantly Catholic area of West Belfast, drew its workforce almost

exclusively from the Protestant community, the vast majority from the

Shankill. Catholics were more likely to be employed in unskilled, low

paid jobs, as store keepers in warehouses, in the mills and at the Royal

Victoria Hospital.

 

Whenever there was trouble brewing, Catholic families lived in fear of

Mackies’ afternoon shift finishing before the local men, forced to work

outside the area, had returned home. When on Friday 15 August, 1969,

hostile loyalist crowds began to gather for a second evening running,

“there was an insufficient number of men to defend the area,” says

Rita. “Some women wanted to put up barricades but we were persuaded

that everything would be alright by a local priest who was in contact

with members of the Protestant community.”

 

Outside a shoe shop on Cupar Street, members of the RUC and B Specials

were standing with a crowd of loyalists. “We thought the RUC were there

to stop the loyalists invading the area,” says Rita. “We were wrong,

they gave us no protection at all.” As fears of a loyalist incursion

increased, the decision was taken to evacuate Bombay Street and a number

of vulnerable streets in the surrounding area. “Crates of petrol bombs

had been seen by one of my neighbours.” Residents boarded up windows

and barred their front doors. “Mrs McCarthy and I were the last two in

the street to leave,” says Rita.

 

St Paul’s parish hall was overflowing with refugees. “There were people

there from Ardoyne and other areas of Belfast where Catholics were being

attacked,” says Rita. Despite the noise and smell of burning, the

refugees at the parish hall did not anticipate the scale of the

destruction which would greet them the following morning. “A priest

told everyone to go home except those families from Bombay Street,”

says Rita. “We thought the house had been looted, we never imagined the

whole street had been burnt to the ground. There was nothing to salvage.

All we had were the clothes we stood up in.”

 

With four young children and expecting a fifth, Rita and her family

stayed with relatives until they were allocated a caravan in Beechmount.

“It was like a refugee camp,” says Rita. “We stayed there throughout

the winter of ’69. It was so cold even the toothpaste froze in the

tube.” But as well as the hardship, Rita remembers a sense of community

and individual acts of kindness with affection and praise.

 

The young men who held loyalist gangs at bay while their families saved

what they could, “they were heroes,” says Rita. The Travelling

community who faced loyalist violence to collect the furniture of

fleeing Catholic families in their lorries, “they were great,” says

Rita. And the many thousands of people who contributed time and money to

rebuild Bombay Street are also remembered. “I moved back into Bombay

Street on 11 July 1970,” says Rita, “and I’ve lived here ever since.”

 

SEAN MURRAY

 

“Bombay Street was a watershed for me and many of my generation,” says

Seán Murray. “It started in Derry, but at 16 years of age it wasn’t

until I saw what was happening on my own streets that it really hit

me.”

 

When large scale riots broke out in Derry after the first civil rights

march in October 1968, it seemed to one of the organisers that it was

“all out of proportion” to the housing and employment issues they had

been protesting about. After all, sectarian discrimination had been

borne quietly by the nationalist community for decades. They had seen,

as the song goes, “it through without complaining.”

 

In his study, ‘From Civil Rights to Armalites’, Niall O Dochartaigh

identifies the actions of the RUC and B Specials as the key factor in

the escalation of the conflict. “From the outset, the response of the

state and its forces of law and order to Catholic mobilisation was an

issue capable of arousing far more anger and activism than the issues

around which mobilisation had begun,” writes O Dochartaigh. “Police

behaviour and their interaction with loyalist protesters probably did

more to politically mobilise large sections of the Catholic community

than did any of the other grievances.”

 

On Tuesday 12 August 1969, an Apprentice Boys parade through Derry

clashed with nationalist residents. The RUC responded by baton charging

the nationalist crowd and armoured cars roared into the Bogside. In the

Bogside, the RUC encountered fierce resistance from the residents, who

forced the RUC into retreat armed only with bottles and stones.

 

August 13 and with Derry still under siege, RUC barracks in nationalist

areas in Belfast were stoned in protest. On 14 August, loyalist mobs

responded by burning Catholic houses in Belfast. “It was rumoured that

loyalists were coming to burn down Clonard,” says Seán, “I remember a

lot of people being on the streets and the priests promising to ring the

chapel bell if the area came under attack.”

 

The loyalists didn’t attack Clonard that night but from the chapel

grounds, Seán watched houses burning as loyalists attacked other parts

of the district. “There were houses burnt down in Dover and Percy

Street, down facing Divis Street,” says Sean, “Catholic homes in

Conway and Cupar Streets were also attacked. We stood and watched in

sheer disbelief.”

 

“One particular lorry was piled high with the belongings of a family

forced to flee for their home,” says Seán. “As it was turning from the

Kashmir Road into the Clonard area, a loyalist threw a petrol bomb onto

the lorry and the whole thing went up in flames.”

 

Using Browning machine guns mounted on Shorland armoured cars, the RUC

fired indiscriminately into nationalist areas. In Divis Flats,

nine-year-old Patrick Rooney was killed as he sheltered in his back

bedroom. Four high velocity bullets pierced two walls before striking

the child in the head.

 

As morning broke on Friday 15 August, the scene in several nationalists

areas of Belfast was one of utter devastation. Six people had been

killed, more were injured. Catholic homes across the city were burning;

in some districts entire streets had been destroyed and hundreds of

nationalists had been force to flee their homes.

 

“After the Mackies men got out of work on Friday afternoon, loyalist

crowds started to gather,” says Seán, “and the scene was set for

further sectarian attacks that night.” Families living in Cupar Street,

Bombay Street and other vulnerable areas had already left their homes.

The loyalist invasion of Clonard began early Friday afternoon. The RUC

refused to come into the area, they gave the loyalists a free hand.”

 

“We had to defend ourselves,” says Seán. “People came out and did the

best they could. Gerald McAuley, a 15-year-old member of Fianna Éireann,

was shot dead defending this area, others were shot, some seriously

injured. Alex Robinson and Eddie Donnelly were two of several seriously

wounded.”

 

d for many young people at the time, once the disbelief had been

dispelled, a grim determination to make sure it could never happen again

set in.

 

“We were politicised overnight,” says Seán.

 

NELLIE McAULEY

 

“He’s not coming home,” says Nellie McAuley. “They were the words

that confirmed my worst fears.” A large black and white pen portrait of

her son hangs in the living room of Nellie’s terrace street home. “It

was drawn by one of the prisoners in Long Kesh,” says Nellie, “and

given to Gerald’s uncle. It’s a good likeness.”

 

Gerald McAuley was 15 years old when he was shot dead while defending

the Clonard district from loyalist attack. The likeness shows all the

optimism and confidence of youth. The kind of face which should have

been more at home on a GAA pitch challenging his peers, than facing a

pitched battle against a rampaging Orange mob.

 

At 7am on Friday 15 August, Nellie was in Belfast city centre where she

was working as a cleaner in one of the big stores. “I was working when

I heard the news that a wee boy, Patrick Rooney, had been shot dead by

the RUC in Divis Flats the night before,” says Nellie.

 

There were no buses for the return journey home. “A young woman was

standing at the bus stop in the town,” says Nellie. She was a

Protestant, the girl told Nellie, and was too afraid to walk home

through West Belfast. “I told her she’d be alright with me, and we

linked arms and walked home together.”

 

Years later, the two women met again. “She remembered me and also knew

that my son had been shot dead just hours after we first met,” says

Nellie. She thanked Nellie for her kindness and said she had been sorry

to hear Gerald had been killed. “It was ironic,” she said. “No, it

was tragic,” said Nellie.

 

“I’d been out queuing for bread,” says Nellie, “and when I returned

home there was a commotion at the house. Someone said Gerald had been

shot. Another neighbour said he’d only been hit with a stone.” With an

increasing sense of foreboding, Nellie began a desperate search for her

son.

 

“I heard some of the wounded had been taken to the Royal Victoria

Hospital. I pleaded with a nurse to let me search the wards.” A

neighbour waiting in Casualty for his injuries to be treated confirmed

that Gerald had been shot but he wasn’t at the Royal.

 

Back at home, news reporters had visited the McAuley’s, asking for a

photograph of Gerald. “He must be dead,” Nellie told her daughter

Frances. Finbar McKenna’s father took Nellie to the City Hospital. “A

sister at the hospital said Gerald wasn’t there but there was a

19-year-old youth in the morgue at Musgrove Barracks,” says Nellie. “I

knew it was Gerald; he was only 15 but he was big for his age.”

 

Returning home, the reaction of people manning a barricade at Kennedy

Way added to Nellie McAuley’s fears. “They moved so quickly and quietly

out of our way.” From across a road a priest called to Nellie. “Are

you looking for your son?” said the priest, “He’s not coming home, go

home now, he died for his faith.” Later that night Gerald’s father

travelled to Musgrove to identify his son’s body.

 

“I didn’t know Gerald was a member of the Fianna,” says Nellie. “He

was often away from home cycling and camping but I never thought

anything of it. I was told later that he had been helping evacuate

families, loading their furniture onto the back of a lorry.”

 

The McAuley family’s ordeal did not end there. Three weeks later a

British army captain knocked on their front door. “He asked for my

husband and told him he was wanted down the barracks to identity his

son,” says Nellie. “My husband told him Gerald was dead and buried but

he insisted. ‘Is it Jim?’ he asked. At the barracks the RUC roared with

laughter. It was their idea of a joke, a sort of initiation stunt for

the British army officer.”

 

PATRICK McPARLAND

 

“They were a few men with very few weapons but they fought bravely to

defend this district,” says Patrick McParland. Patrick was a young man

of 20 when he watched a handful of IRA Volunteers repel an armed

loyalist mob intent on driving Catholics out of the Clonard area.

“Bombay Street had already gone up in flames,” says Patrick, “but I

tell you it could have been a lot worse.”

 

Patrick describes the attack of 15 August 1969 as “well planned” by

loyalists and endorsed by the RUC. “In the early hours of Friday

morning, the RUC raided a house in Kane Street, arrested two men and

‘recovered’ the only weapon in the district,” says Patrick. The RUC’s

action suggests they not only knew of loyalist plans to attack the area

but also colluded by disarming nationalists in advance.

 

At Mackies factory, the loyalist workforce held a secret meeting. “A

Catholic working in the factory walked into the meeting in the tool room

by chance,” says Patrick. “The room fell silent and he was questioned

about what he had overheard.” When Mackies afternoon shift finished

work, the workforce was strangely quiet and quick to leave the district.

 

“Trouble started as soon as Mackies workers were away,” says

Patrick,” as if they had waited until everyone was safely home on the

Shankill before turning the heat up.” The Catholic district began to be

showered with hundreds, perhaps thousands of petrol bombs.

 

“They must have been up all Thursday night preparing that amount of

petrol bombs,” says Patrick. “This was not a spontaneous riot.” The

RUC had guaranteed Clonard Monastery that they would defend the area

against any sectarian attack. “The RUC lied,” says Patrick. “They did

nothing.”

 

As residents desperately tried to defend their homes, fires began to

take hold in some houses under petrol bomb attack. “At Teddy Lynch’s, a

loyalist threw a grenade and the whole house just went up.” says

Patrick. Teddy later came back to collect his motorbike – “Motorbike?

there was no bloody house!”

 

“Geordie McMahon took the initiative,” says Patrick. “He hijacked an

articulated lorry and threw it across the bottom of the Kashmir Road.”

At a gap between the back of the lorry and a wall, a loyalist gunman

appeared.

 

“He was dressed in a black hat and black tunic and his face was covered

with a hankie. He was carrying a sterling sub machine gun.” As the

gunman appeared, nationalist residents at the top of the hill ran to the

left. “Gerry McAuley ran to the right, he made it as far as Waterville

Street, but there was a burst of fire and he fell.”

 

The gunman who killed the 15-year-old was a well known local loyalist

whose family lived next door to a Catholic-owned bar in Cupar Street.

Three other people were shot and seriously injured by loyalist gunmen in

the Clonard district that day.

 

As Bombay Street began to burn, firemen refused to drive into the

street. “I think they must have been intimidated by the loyalists,”

says Patrick. “Colm Meehan drove one of the fire engines up himself. We

didn’t know how to use it but it was worth a try.” The fire engine was

abandoned when loyalist gunmen fired through the windscreen.

 

Then the IRA arrived. “A handful of men and they weren’t very well

armed ” says Patrick, “but what they lacked in manpower and firepower

they made up for in courage and tenacity. The men who fought that day

became the founding fathers of the Provisional IRA of today.”

 

MARTIN MEEHAN

 

“A .303 rifle with eleven rounds of ammunition saved Ardoyne,” says

Martin Meehan. “In August 1969, the IRA of that time left nationalists

in North Belfast defenceless.” Trouble had been brewing in the north of

the city for weeks. By August, as sectarian attacks on Catholic areas

intensified, the steady flow of families fleeing their homes became a

tidal wave of refugees.

 

“It was like something you would see in Kosovo,” says Martin, “wave

after wave of refugees fleeing to relative safety within Ardoyne and

further afield to West Belfast.” Every classroom in the local school

was sheltering families with their few belongings.

 

In early August, the then IRA leadership decided to move any weaponry

held in North Belfast into a central pool in the west of the city. “It

was all done very quietly,” says Martin. “They disarmed the area, we

were left defenceless and we didn’t even know. It was to cause a lot of

resentment later.”

 

On Thursday, 14 August, the RUC and B Specials “came in very heavy”.

Catholic homes and businesses were burnt along the front of the Crumlin

Road. The decision was taken to use buses at a local depot to barricade

the district against further attack.

 

“About 50 buses were used,” says Martin. “They were used to block off

as many roads into the Ardoyne as possible. It was our line of

defence.” That afternoon loyalists opened up with shot guns,” says

Martin, “20 people were hit and Ardoyne was in turmoil.”

 

Martin remembers with some amusement the casualty ward in the Mater

Hospital. Injured nationalists and loyalists sat within spiting distance

of each other “and never a word was spoken,” says Martin.

 

Snipers had climbed to the top of mills overlooking Ardoyne and were

firing at anyone who moved. Unarmed and under fire, a few local men

later set fire to the mills as a defensive measure to deny the sniper a

vantage point.

 

“Someone produced a .303 rifle and 11 rounds of ammunition. That rifle

saved this area,” says Martin. The weapon was moved from street to

street and “the roar of it gave the impression that we were well

armed.”

 

Both loyalists and the RUC did not attempt to invade the area beyond the

barricade of buses. “Catholic homes on the other side of the barricades

were attacked and burnt but on this side we were able to defend the

district.

 

“In the immediate aftermath Republicans paid a heavy price for the then

leadership’s decision to take weapons out of the area. The seeds for the

split which gave birth to the Provisionals were partly sown in North

Belfast in ’69.”

 

ANN McLARNON

 

“My husband was murdered for being a good neighbour,” says Ann

McLarnon. In the front parlour of the McLarnon family’s Ardoyne home,

Ann recounts the night when as a young wife she was robbed of a gentle

husband and her three small children lost a father they were too young

to really know.

 

On the wall hangs a small snapshot of a happy couple on their wedding

day, holding hands as they walk together down a terraced street. Above

the television hangs a much larger framed newspaper cutting of Sammy

McLarnon’s funeral cortege.

 

As Ann tells her story, her voice is trembling and there are tears in

her eyes. If Sammy and his bride’s joy had been brief, the grief of his

widow has been as long as the trailing line of grim-faced mourners

carrying Sammy’s coffin along a winding road.

 

“We heard shooting earlier that night but I didn’t know what shooting

was and when Sammy dismissed it as only blanks I was reassured,” says

Ann. “Sammy wanted me and the kids to go and stay in his mother’s house

but I refused.”

 

Ann and Sammy moved into Herbert Street shortly after they were married.

By August 1969 the young couple had a two-year-old son, Sammy, a baby

daughter, Ann Marie and Ann was expecting their third child, Samantha.

Ann was only 20 years old, her husband just 27.

 

At the top of the street, a crowd of loyalists had gathered together

with some members of the RUC. “A house had been set on fire,” says

Ann, “and Sammy went up to help put out the flames.” Shots were fired

as a few local residents tried to save the house. “Leave the fenian

bastards to us,” an RUC officer had shouted to the loyalist mob.

 

“When Sammy came back into the house we both stood by the front window

watching two fellas standing directly across the road,” says Ann. “The

RUC spoke to the two men and they were moved away.” Ann went out into

the kitchen.

 

It was only a few moments later. “As I walked back into the front room,

three shots rang out,” says Ann, “Sammy fell to the ground.” Ann

remembers calling her husband’s name, screaming and running for help

next door.

 

Sammy McLarnon’s body lay where he fell for over five hours while the

RUC and B Specials refused to let an ambulance through to the house. In

the end, the dead man was taken away in a black taxi. Ann and her

children were taken to Sammy’s mother’s house in Andersonstown. “I was

in a state of shock,” says Ann. “I couldn’t think. I didn’t want to

believe Sammy was dead.”

 

Later on the night of the killing, the RUC opened fire again on the

McLarnon family’s home. The walls of the house were riddled with

gunfire. It was over a month later before the RUC sent a forensic team

to investigate the crime scene.

 

“There was only three shots fired when Sammy was killed,” says Ann.

“I have no doubt that those shots were aimed. The RUC deliberately

killed my husband and then covered it up. The house was riddled so that

it seemed as if Sammy had been killed by a stray bullet, an accident.”

 

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Three past members of Kings County Division 19 grew up on that street,

joined the provos, went to Long Kesh and came to Brooklyn and joined

the A.O.H. Two have sinced died. Both are buried in Miltown Cemetary,

one was buried with full  Honours. They are my friends and brothers

Eamon and Kieran Meehan. The third Colm, after Eamon died, moved

back to Belfast where he currently resides. Kings County has its F.F.A.I.

fund set up to honor Kieran and for all he has done for Irish Freedom

while in the U.S. Those wishing to donate to the Funds Christmas Appeal,

please contact Jim@ BrooklynIrish.com