WE look back at the stories that were making the headlines this week in the Andersonstown News in 1982
St Joseph's Slate Street Girls with Jim Gillen (Liberty Financial Services) and Eugene Haren (GRC) at the Falls Inter-primary schools’ sports day at Grosvenor Recreation Centre
British Army and RUC lead destruction
THE destruction of a Twinbrook home in front of the owners was the most serious excess in a week of intensified heavy-handed tactics by the RUC and British Army.
Reports during the week reflected a stepping up of P-checks, four hour detentions, attempts at census gathering raids, and illegal house entries by the British Military. Even in this context however the extent of the damage caused to the Thornhill Crescent home of Mr and Mrs McCarthy was awesome.
Two different press reporters as well as Housing Executive employees, all with experience of observing the aftermath of raids, described the damage as “among the worst they had ever seen in the last 12 years”.
And the wrecking activities appear to have been motivated not out of any desire to locate arms but out of plain vindictiveness.
Said Mr McCarthy: “At 9am (the raid began at five in the morning) an RUC detective told me that instead of taking me away to Castlereagh for three or seven days they were going to make sure I spent that amount of time cleaning up.”
The officer in charge then gave the raiding party their head and using pickaxes, sledgehammers and iron bars they set about their ‘work’. Holes up to three feet in width were smashed in bedroom walls – in spite of the fact that the same walls had earlier been checked with metal detectors. One hole was forced through two layers of brick to the outside.
Other destruction included a staircase torn apart, a hole dug in an inbuilt concrete cupboard and floorboards ripped up. At one point the raiders broke the door off a wardrobe and tossed it out a window into the back garden. Clothes, toys and personal items were strewn on the floor by British soldiers who ‘joked’ Mrs McCarthy about the tidiness of her home.
Speaking later a shaken Mrs McCarthy said she “had seen pictures of things like this before but never thought it would happen to me”.
Mrs McCarthy said of her two young children, whose bedrooms had been destroyed. “I never taught them to hate anyone but I imagine what they feel after seeing this.”
Committee members Jim McIlroy, Charlie McBride, Geordie Kingham and Billy McCormick at the New Lodge Celtic Minibus Supporters’ Club Fundraising Appeal for St Patrick's School
Spamount Street action on repairs demanded
“They’re not slow when it comes to upping the rent, but try to get repairs done and they don’t want to know you.”
This is the view of one Spamount Street housewife, faced this week with a £1.32 rent increase despite the fact that for over a year no improvement has been made to the ‘scruffy’ condition of the street.
Administrative red tape and a clash over where responsibility for repairs lies, has meant that the drains, pavements and road of the New Lodge street have been left, as one local said “in a shameful mess”.
Redevelopment work has been going on in the North Queen Street area for a number of years now, but residents still feel that this doesn’t excuse the DoE, NIHE, and Water Board for “ignoring our complaints”.
“The pavements have no kerbs in places and consist mainly of bumpy tarmac,” said one local housewife. “This makes them dangerous to old people at night, especially since the lights are often out of order,” she added.
Another lady bemoaned the drains that were not placed correctly. “As a result,” she said, “they had to pull up the pavement but after fixing the drains they never replaced the pavements correctly.
“The drain on the road,” she went on, “is clogged up with sand and cement so the water lies in pools at the drains and in the holes in the road.”
Rodents are also posing a headache for many families, and again the claim is made that the corporation is not doing its best to eradicate the problem. One woman spoke of finding three dead rats in her back yard but she still has one in the cavity walls.
The local Sinn Féin group has been lobbying the relevant bodies for almost a year now to get repairs carried out on the street. Said a spokesperson: “We find that repairs are carried out in most streets once complaints are made but no-one seems willing to tackle the repairs in Spamount Street.”
Gerard Pettigrew, Anne Kearney, Louise Piumlott, Gerard Farrell and Marie McNally at St Oliver Plunkett football presentations in Tullymore Community Centre
Travellers threatened
PLANS are afoot to launch a ‘Travellers Platform’ to look into and solve the immediate and long-term problems faced by Travelling people on the Glen Road.
This body would be responsible not only for finding a suitable site for the Travellers but also for ensuring that basic sanitation and water facilities are provided.
At present the occupants of the Glen Road site find themselves in a limbo – they wish to fulfil a promise to move away from their present encampment but have no alternative site. Last week Sinn Féin obtained a field at Colin Glen for the Travellers but after the first families moved on to it strangers “in suits and with iron bars” arrived in “fancy cars” and intimidated them.
Not surprisingly then the frightened Travellers returned to their Glen Road encampment. Little is known about this threatening gang but it is not thought they come from Andersonstown.
Billy Fennell, Brendan Tully, Mal Donaghy, John Smyth, and Peter Dunlop at the St Oliver Plunkett presentations in Tullymore Community Centre
