We look at the stories that were making the headlines in the Andersonstown News this week in 1984...
Benefits go unclaimed in the West
AN estimated four million pounds in unclaimed social security benefits will come to West Belfast this year because of the efforts of local welfare rights centres, according to the Falls Community Council.
“The official government figures we have received,” a spokesperson said, “refer to one area of benefits only (single payments) and show that since the first benefit campaign in Ballymurphy in 1982, £three-and-a-half million has been paid out with the number of claims for these single payments jumping from under 3,000 in 1980 to 25,000 this year so far. These figures alone demonstrate clearly the tremendous success the campaign have had. We have no doubt that if similar figures for the other types of benefits were released these totals would be double. On past trends we would confidently predict that £2 million in Single Payments will be paid out by the end of this year as a result of approximately 30,000 claims with another £2million being paid for other benefits obtained by those in need – all due to the efforts of local groups.
In 1981 the DHSS spent thousands of pounds in prosecuting 800 people in the whole of the North for ‘doing the double’. 1981 is the same year when in West Belfast alone only about 3,000 claims were made for Supplementary Single Payments compared with almost 30,000 by the end of the year.
Editorial
WRITTEN by John Mitchell, this piece about the famine of 1847 in Ireland, gives us some idea of what the people of Ethiopia must be suffering at the moment, and just like Ireland of 140 years ago, thousands are dying in the midst of plenty. That this should be the case in this age of space travel is a crying shame, and the major powers of the world that have the resources and expertise to prevent it all, have to be held responsible. There has been much controversy in the Roman Catholic Church of late about "Liberation Theology" and the establishment has been urging caution, but if the object of this theology is to put an end once and for all to the agony of Ethiopia and other Third World countries, then not only is it our duty to accept it, but actually encourage it.
"But why do we not see the smoke curling from those lowly chimneys? And surely we ought by this time to scent the well-known aroma of the turf-fires. But what (may Heaven be about us this night) – what reeking breath of hell is this oppressing the air, heavier and more loathsome than the smell of death rising from the fresh carnage of a battlefield.
Oh misery! had we forgotten that this was the Famine Year? Yet we go forward, with sick hearts and swimming eyes, to examine the Place of Skulls nearer. There is a horrible silence; grass grows before the doors; we fear to look into any door, though they are all open or off the hinges; for we fear to see yellow chapless skeletons grinning there; but our footfalls rouse two lean dogs, that run from us with doleful howling, and we know by the felon-gleam in their wolfish eyes how they lived after their masters died. We walk amidst the houses of the dead, and out at the other side of the cluster, and there is not one where we dare to enter "God save all here!" - No answer – ghastly silence, and a mouldy stench, as from the mouth of burial-vaults: Ah! they are dead! they are dead!
"We know the whole story – the father was on a "public work" and earned the sixth part of what would have maintained his family, which was not always paid him; but still it kept them half alive for three months, and so instead of dying in December they died in March. And the agonies of those three months who can tell? – the poor wife wasting and weeping over her stricken children; the heavy-laden weary man, with black night thickening around him – thickening within him – feeling his own arm shrink and his step totter with the cruel hunger that gnaws away his life, and knowing too surely that all this will soon be over."
BIG HEARTS: John Magennis and Mark O'Brien from Twinbrook made their own effort to relieve the famine in Ethiopia by collecting £102.75 from the residents of the Glasvey area of Twinbrook. The boys, pupils of the CBS Glen Road, who were moved by television pictures of the famine, decided to do something by themselves.
Opposition to public house in A’town
LOCAL people and shopkeepers have expressed opposition to a plan to build a public house at the Andersonstown Road end of the Busy Bee carpark.
They have already presented two petitions to the Council Planning Department on the grounds that the proposed building will be detrimental to the area.
Explained one businessman who is opposing the scheme: "We feel this is the last thing the area needs, and will only cause distress and inconvenience to local people and shoppers."
The Belfast Planning Committee has met with a deputation of residents opposing the scheme and the issue is on the agenda of the Town Hall Planning Committee's meeting tonight.
However, the planning applicant told Andersonstown News that people were pre-judging the situation and that the development would actually increase car parking space at the Busy Bee.
"I am complying with all the regulations," he said. The applicant added that the pub would cater for adults and not attract teenagers. A petition in favour of the bar has also been lodged with the Planning Department.
An Andersonstown Councillor said last night that there were a "lot of objections" to the development.
He said the matter would probably go before a full council meeting.
