We look back at the stories that were making the headlines in the Andersonstown News this week in 1979
The transport committee at a Green Cross workers’ function back in November 1979
Terror in the night in Andersonstown
PEOPLE living in the Slievegallion/Glenshane Gardens area of Andersonstown are being terrorised by prowlers roaming the area between midnight and dawn. Daylight invariably reveals a trail of destruction left by the night time prowlers, with fences knocked down, flower beds trampled on, and outhouses broken into and ransacked.
Things have got so bad that people are being kept awake by the noises in the night, as locks on outhouses are broken off, and cars broken into. One man from Glenshane told our reporter that the lock on his coalshed had been wrenched off three times in the past fortnight and the place searched although nothing was taken.
One night last week, five cars in the one street had their sidelight windows broken to gain entry to the cars which were then searched, but again nothing was taken. One woman recalled how she had got out of bed shortly after dawn to close a window, when she spied four men climbing over her garden fence onto the roadway. Only on two occasions has anything actually been stolen.
In one incident, a bicycle was taken out of a coalshed, and in a more serious incident, a girl from Glenshane Gardens woke up to find a man in her bedroom. He immediately ran out taking with him a number of rings and pieces of jewellery.
These latest incidents in the Slievegallion area are particularly disturbing at this time, when the increase in sectarian assassinations are making people reluctant to investigate any noise outside the house after dark, and people are now pushing for some sort of a community get together to combat these nocturnal excursions, with the knowledge that they have safety in numbers.
Our crime reporter writes: What the people of Slievegallion are experiencing at this moment is probably the combined affect of British Army undercover surveillance activities and the dirty work of some local ‘hoods’. Humphrey Atkins has stated publicly that the British Army and the RUC are concentrating on undercover activities and this was borne out in the latest ‘seal off’ operation in the Beechmount area, when only outhouses and outside toilets were searched.
The Slievegallion area is adjacent to the Silver City army base and would seem to be an ideal area for this type of undercover work. The local thieves on the other hand, usually become more active near Christmas.
Susan Duffy and Teresa, Nell Rice, Kate McPhillips and Linda Mulhern at a Green Cross workers' function
Lucozade strike
Following the dismissal of two drivers because of their refusal to deliver in Loyalist areas, the pickets are still up at the Lucozade Factory on the Andersonstown Road; and as the strike enters its third week management is threatening to lay off store and other staff.
Since the beginning of the ‘Troubles’ drivers at the factory, who are almost all Catholics, have been refusing to deliver in Loyalist areas because of the danger of assassination; and deliveries to these areas have been handled by sub-contractors. In April of this year, however, the drivers agreed to service some of these calls again and they say that management agreed that should the sectarian killings resume, that the company would employ four Protestant drivers to deliver to the unsafe areas.
The drivers were worried about the increase in recent murders and when, on Wednesday fortnight, two of them refused to make certain deliveries, they were dismissed, which brought all the drivers out in support.
Rita Canavan, Kathy Scott, Margaret McParland, May Rafferty, Bernie Tohill and Cassie Campbell at the Green Cross workers' function
New homes for old homes in Clonard
Erskine Holmes, the director of the Federation of Housing Associations, was a guest speaker at the official opening of the first two rehabilitated homes of 56 and 58 Oranmore Street, in the Clonard Housing Action area.
Mr Holmes said that in no other area was the growth of owner occupation more dramatically evident than in the Falls Housing Actions areas. He said the Minister responsible for housing, Mr Philip Goodhart, recently indicated that there was still a massive Government commitment to providing new or rehabilitated rental housing for those who could not afford to buy their homes.
“However, if the new minister is looking for a partnership with owner occupiers he will have to come to the Falls Road in Belfast to see his ideals being worked out in practice.”
Mr Holmes said that in the Cavendish Street Housing Action area of 541 houses, owner occupation had double since the start of the programme to a level of 73 per cent of the households. There had been an equally dramatic take up of grants so that more than half the housing stock was being improved by home owners. In the Clonard Housing Action area, where owner occupation was at present 66 per cent of the households, the Clonard Housing Association expected that it would rise as high as 90 per cent in the next two year.
Jim and Ann McCullough and Geraldine and Donna McGuinness who were residents of NI Housing Association refurbished houses in Oranmore Street. Also present were Erskine Holmes (director NI Housing Assoc) and Andy McCallin (chairman Clonard Housing Association)
