WE look back at the stories that were making the headlines this week in the Andersonstown News in 1982
Colleen, Sharon, Paula and Anne – the Newington All-Ireland Disco Champions
St James' residents hit out at local community association
A DECISION to call the Annual General Meeting of the Crescent Community Association next month, may stem growing discontentment in the St James’ area over the running of the local community centre.
The decision was made after a 100-strong meeting in the Crescent Community Centre on Monday night had heard strong criticism of the present Association, including an accusation that no AGM had been held since 1979. This and other allegations were made by the St James’ Action Committee, a body responsible for various projects in the area, including street clean-ups and a food co-operative.
A representative of the St James’ Action Committee has claimed the Association is mismanaging the Centre. Explained the spokesperson: “We have seen several instances where the Association were guilty of neglecting their responsibilities and the community. For example by obtaining a seven-day drinks licence for the Centre (even though the bar is open only three times a week) the Association has lost all their grants from the City Hall, including grants towards electricity bills and so on. Also, this summer there will be no VSB Scheme in St James’ because the Association did not reply to letters from the play scheme organisers.
“It also appears to our Committee,” he went on, “that the Centre is chronically underused and that most of its activities are geared for the elderly alone, meaning young people are not adequately catered for.”
However, at the Monday night meeting, the Crescent Association Executive and their supporters hit back at their critics. They explained that no AGM had been called so far this year because of a bereavement suffered by one of their officer board members.
They also claimed that the Association was faced with a general apathy in the area which hampered their work. This was borne out, a representative said, by the fact that of the 52 people from St James’ elected onto the Association in 1979, less than half had participated in the Association’s affairs.
However, the Action Committee spokesperson believes there is a renewed interest in the Association.
“A community worker at the meeting described it as the biggest he had ever seen in the area,” he said.
Whiterock Westrock winners in the Divis Darts League in the Terry McDermott Social Club
Men injured by the RUC
THE families of three young men who were injured (two of them very seriously) when their car was struck by several RUC vehicles in June, are appealing for witnesses of the incident to contact them.
The incident happened on Saturday June 19 between 6.30pm and 7.00pm on Andersonstown Road at Slievegallion Drive, opposite Corr’s Wine Lodge.
The three men were travelling towards town in a blue Vauxhall Victor belonging to one of them, when the car was struck by a Cortina, believed to have been driven by RUC personnel. The Cortina was followed closely by two RUC Land Rovers which apparently rammed the Vauxhall again.
Two of the young men were seriously injured, one had two bones broken in his back and other will have to wear a steel leg brace for two years. The third was released after two days in hospital.
Joe Mitchell, Father Raymond Murray and Pat Rice, from the Concerned Teachers committee, hold anti-plastic bullet function in the Lake Glen
Editorial: Craigavon is dead and buried
Craigavon, long dead, is now being given the final push. The towns of Lurgan and Portadown made historic and economic sense, and produced citizens with a sense of identity and loyalty. Craigavon might eventually have reached the stage though most people now agree that it never would.
Before we leave it let’s have a look at Craigavon. According to the Belfast Telegraph Craigavon was launched at time when the Six Counties was prosperous and “relatively stable and peaceful”. All this has changed, says the Telegraph, two decades later.
In the early 1960s, true enough, apparently there was money to burn; and while the money was being burned the UVF was flexing its muscles getting ready for another murder campaign. While Terence O’Neill was visiting Catholic convent schools the new university was being built in Coleraine in place of Catholic Derry, the logical location; the M1 was being laid as far as Dungannon; the new Queen Elizabeth II Bridge; and the new town of the future was being established, not in Catholic Fermanagh, the most depressed area in the ”province” with its massive unemployment and emigration, but in prosperous Protestant North Armagh. And this new town of the future was named, again despite the objection, after one of the principal founders of modern Protestant unionism. During these same early 60s, when there was no IRA and referred to now with nostalgia by the propagandists, the RUC was busy attacking Catholic people who objected to Unionist coat-trailing. A tri-colour in a window in Divis Street, unnoticed until objected to by Ian Paisley (who didn’t even live there) was removed forcibly by armed RUC men, resulting in four days and nights of rioting and destruction and many arrests, not of the unionist instigators of the violence, but of local people.
The Craigavon concept was part of that “normality”.
This kind of talk of course, is called sectarian. It’s tribal, we’re told, bigoted and backward. Alright, let’s be bigoted and backward. It’s the time of year for it. Just remember, that the attitudes and actions of the authorities in those “peaceful and prosperous” Sixties brought about the last 13 or 14 years of violence and over two thousands deaths.
Let the students of Irish affairs and the would-be historians remember that when they look at our unfortunate plight today, and when they think of Craigavon.
Henry O'Neill (St Peter's CMYS) presents to Father Paul Madden from Divis Flats at a function in Distillery Street Hall, with Paul's mother and father Jim and Mary, uncle Neilly and Claire Shortt