We look at the stories that were making the headlines this week in the Andersonstown News in 1982
Tin whistle class at Mac Airt Community Centre
Anger as British soldiers go on orgy of destruction
THE marauding Fusiliers had their hands full on Tuesday morning. At 6.15 a.m. they raided the Kirby home in Ramoan Gardens, and in the ensuing search, damaged carpets and a bath surround, as well as breaking a washing machine that they tried to dismantle. In what appears to be an unprecedented move, soldiers drew sketches of all the rooms. In areas where pro-British assassins have on occasions shown extensive knowledge of the layout of their victims' homes, this procedure can only cause disquiet.
At the same time as the search at Ramoan, another raiding party was engaged in wrecking the home of the McCleave family in Lenadoon. Here the floorboards in two bedrooms were ripped up with pickaxes, a hole was driven through the living room ceiling, and lino torn off the bathroom floor. Cupboards and a bath surround were also torn apart during the dawn raid.
Soldiers of the Fusiliers' Regiment caused extensive damage to a Lenadoon house during two 'searches' at the weekend.
The house at Carrigart Avenue is occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Magill and their ten-months-old child. During the first raid on Friday January 8th, a new settee was ripped apart, carpets were torn up and floorboards lifted.
Most of the destruction occurred during the second raid which began at 1 a.m, on Monday morning. Fortunately the family was not at home that night.
During the next two hours the soldiers dug holes in the cement floor of the kitchen and bathroom and ripped up floors in the bedroom, leaving another gaping hole
To gain entry on Monday morning the soldiers smashed a front door window. The father of the young family was sent for and with a next door neighbour, stayed to witness the soldiers' orgy of destruction.
An unlocked bedroom door was quickly kicked in and while one group set about digging up the floorboards, others attacked the kitchen and bathroom.
Wallpaper was removed from the walls and a bath surround wrecked in the bathroom. In the kitchen a meter box was burst open, a cupboard punched in, tiles ripped from the floor and a hole bored right through the kitchen wall to the street outside.
At 3 a.m. one soldier commented 'third time lucky," a reference which Mr. and Mrs. Magill fear may indicate another raid is imminent.
Liam Higgins, Roddy McCorley Social Club chairman, and committee members John Sands, Sean ‘Red’ and Michael McMorrow, present a cheque to Green Cross secretary Gonne Roe from Daniel O'Connell AOH of America, New Jersey
Living in fear
ALMOST 20 old and infirm people living in pensioners' dwellings at Beechmount have been left without the essential assistance of a warden for over 16 months now. Our reporter who went to investigate this matter, unearthed other aspects of the conditions there before he was ordered out of the flats by the Assistant Principal Social Worker for the Falls area.
Without a warden the occupants of the pensioners' dwellings at Beechmount Pass are, during emergencies, denied easy access to the phone in the warden's flat or the help of an inter-com warning system linked up to the warden's flat.
A crisis is not a rare event in the flats, as illustrated by the hospitalisation of three pensioners who took ill since Christmas. Most of the pensioners suffer from some type of illness or disability (ranging from diabetes through heart conditions, to blindness) and at the moment one old woman is bedridden.
The absence of a warden in itself would seem to indicate a serious case of neglect and incompetence on the part of the social services board in the area. The Board's approach to this problem, however, and their apparent lackadaisical attitude to the many other difficulties experienced by the flat dwellers, gives serious cause for concern. This concern is heightened by their refusal to allow representatives of the press into the flats.
It is only possible to run a pensioners' dwelling properly and safely with a warden in residence. There has been no warden in the Beechmount flats since late summer 1980. In the absence of a warden the Social Services gave the flat keys to a 75-year-old occupant of the flats, and asked her to perform various warden type duties, e.g. locking and opening the main door, ringing the hospital during emergency. This woman was very wary of talking to us but we have gathered that she performed these warden type tasks for nine months. After that period her doctor insisted that she return the keys to the Social Services because of her deteriorating heart condition. The keys were then given to a 75-year-old man, who for the last nine months has been doing his utmost to perform the warden's duties, e.g. odd-jobs, chasing off vandals, looking after the bedridden. This man is harassed daily by thugs, who knowing he has the flats' keys, throw at his window and generally taunt and abuse him.
Thugs from all over Belfast congregate behind the pensioners' flats every night. Here they sniff glue or get drunk, before stealing cars or attempting break-ins. In all, there have been five burglaries in the pensioners' flats in recent months. One of these occurred when 'hoods’ burst into the flat of a blind man and kicked in his television set as he lay petrified and helpless in bed. It is believed that the presence of a warden would deter these people from preying on what they see as easy pickings.
Eddie Keenan, Eoghan Ó Neill and Paddy Ó Clérigh were at the Long Kesh republican prisoner fundraiser céilí and Irish language quiz organised by the Gaeil Bheal Feirste at the Martin Forsythe Club in the run-up to Christmas 1981
Editorial
"NOW that the horse has bolted, let's defend the stable" would seem to be a suitable slogan for the Catholic hierarchy's campaign against the Chilver proposals for the amalgamation of the teachers' training colleges.
Having accepted for years the total anglicization of the Catholic school system in the North and connived at the cultural assimilation of our people with the British, they now have the affrontery to call on us to man the barricades to defend their vested interest in the British school system (albeit a Catholic interest.)
It comes as no surprise to us that our English overlords should feel that the time may be right. The last move in their cultural assimilation programme, which began with the setting up of Maynooth College to combat the influence of continental trained priests and which has continued unabated to the present day.
The Catholic Church as an institution has been the most single influence in the almost total destruction of the Irish as a cultural entity. The individual exceptions to this rule, strengthen rather than diminish the truth of this statement. Individual members of the clergy and exponents of Irish Nationalism have often been harassed, ostracized and frustrated in their efforts to stem the tide of anglicisation, usually by fellow priests and bishops who believed that Irish culture and characteristics would best be sacrificed if we were only left with "our Catholic faith”.
How wrong they were. If the Catholic religion remained intact in Ireland throughout the long Penal period, it was because of the strong independence of the Irish people, strengthened as they were by centuries of Irish culture and learning, and unbowed by a foreign oppressor with whom they had nothing in common.
The English realised this and embarked on a new course of cultural destruction which has almost been completely successful. and which was helped to no small degree by the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Six Counties today, the difference between Catholic schools and State schools is so insignificant that the call for a separate system would be termed ridiculous by any ordinary society.
The anglicisation of our school system has been so complete that the orchestrators of the present anti-Chilvers campaign have not been able to even mention the cultural aspect of education here, which is in our view, the only legitimate reason for having a separate system.
As we said last week in this page, by all means let's have separate systems, and not only two but maybe three or four. But let's take the opportunity to wrest control from those who have connived at cultural destruction and subservience as a nation.
The Roddy McCorley Social Club Christmas dinner in the Kerri Inn was well attended
