FIFTY years ago today, Joey Clarke died from gunshot wounds he received when he went to answer a knock at the door of his Rushfield Avenue home off the Ormeau Road.
Two UVF gunmen fired several shots into his body and when his brother and mother went to his aid one gunman turned his gun on them, but the weapon jammed. The 18-year-old battled his wounds in hospital for over a week but eventually succumbed on March 12.
Looking back on the evening of March 4, 1975, Joey’s brother Paddy says it was not the first time that Joey had been targeted. Over the previous years the Catholic community living in the Ormeau Road district was under siege. Homes were being attacked on a regular basis; young people ran the gauntlet from Tartan Gangs; and there was always a fear of a drive-by shooting whenever a car slowed down.
As a result, Paddy says Catholics learned to stay away from the Ormeau Road, instead using the side streets to go about their business.
“We were one of a few Catholic families who lived in Rushfield Avenue at that time,” Paddy recalls. “By 1972 there was a marked change in atmosphere in the area and friendships changed, particularly after William Craig’s Vanguard rallies and his infamous ‘Liquidate the enemy; speech.
“There was a significant increase in intimidation, harassment, sectarian attacks and Tartan Gangs trying to march up the street terrorising residents.”
Joey Clarke during his schooldays
The Clarkes were a family of seven children whose parents had originally moved to Ballynafeigh from County Tyrone.
Joey was the second eldest, having attended Holy Rosary Primary School before moving to Oxford Street CBS Primary School and then CBS Hardinge Street in North Belfast.
Paddy, two years younger than Joey, said that after starting work as an apprentice electrician in Bradbury Engineering in Cook Street, Joey bought a motorbike. He was a familiar sight riding his bike with the sleeves of his denim jacket cut off and an image of Che Guevara on the back which his sister had printed for him.
“He was very much his own man, and in many ways had a passion and maturity beyond his years,” said Paddy. “He was strong-willed and had quite a black and white view of what was fair and what was not. That was why he couldn’t accept a society which tried to treat him as a second-class citizen – he was never going to be made to sit at the back of the bus.
“He was fearless and got into many a confrontation defending his home and friends from loyalist attacks. Many’s a time a Tartan Gang would come down the street and attack the house and Joey would be first out to defend the street. This made him a target, not only of the loyalist gangs, but also of the police and army.”
Joey played in goals for the school team
Joey had been shot at twice before he was killed. The first time was in 1972 during the Ulster Workers’ Strike when loyalists attempted to burn Catholics out of their homes on the Ormeau. A bullet grazed his head and he received 15 stitches. In October 1974 he was standing outside his home talking to friends when he was shot at from close range from a passing car, but escaped injury. The family home was attacked on several occasions, as were other Catholic homes in the area. Paddy vividly recalls one day when he and his friends were sitting on a wall talking after leaving Mass, when a car pulled up and a revolver was pointed at them with the gunman holding the weapon with a handkerchief before firing at the crowd of young people. One friend was grazed on the side.
Then came the fateful day of March 4 1975.
“We were all watching TV and Joey got up to answer a knock at the door and then there was this almighty noise – seven or eight times,” recalls Paddy. “Of course you knew straight away what it was and we ran out into the hall and Joey was lying there and one of the gunmen was still standing there with the gun. He just turned the gun around and pointed it at myself and my mother and started pulling the trigger but it either jammed or there were no bullets left. He turned and I went after him and he got into the car and there were four of them in it. And these weren’t young fellas, they were 35 or 36. Witnesses said they saw them get out of the car and looking at the houses before coming to our house.”
Joey was rushed to hospital where he clung to life for eight days. There were times that the family visited him and he would be sitting up and talking, but on March 12 he passed away.
A few weeks later, two UVF men were arrested in possession of loaded guns on their way to kill a leading UDA figure. One of these men was later picked out of a police line-up by Joey’s mother and another eyewitness, yet a few months later the murder charges were withdrawn following what Paddy says was interference from a high-ranking police officer who would later become a senior figure in Special Branch.
Joey, back right, with his mates
Paddy says that when his father came to pick him and his mother up from the police line-up, to her disbelief his mother saw her husband speaking in the public area with the man she had just identified as Joey’s murderer. Outside she asked him who he was just talking to and he replied that it was a work colleague that he sometimes gave a lift to work at Sunblest Bakery.
"We subsequently discovered that one of the guns used to kill Joey was also used to kill another Catholic man in Sunblest Bakery a few months prior to the attack on Joey," said Paddy. "He was the second Catholic man to be murdered in the bakery."
The man who the family believes was one of the gunmen who killed their brother has since died. He lived two streets away from their Rushfield family home. The Clarke family worked with the Historical Enquiries Team (HET) through the Pat Finucane Centre but found these engagements unsatisfactory. Paddy says they have no interest in working with the new Independent Commission for Reconciliation and Information Recovery which has been set up by the British government to deal with Legacy killings. He's branded the new body “a farce”.
Joey's sleeveless denim jacket
The family are convinced that collusion lies at the heart of Joey’s murder and that the man who his mother identified as his killer was a police informer and that’s why charges were eventually dropped against him.
Today, on the fiftieth anniversary of his murder, the Clarke family and his many friends will hold Joey’s memory close to their hearts as they remember the young man they knew and loved. Time has not diminished their loss.
“As a family we are as committed as ever to seeking the truth in relation to the killing of our brother Joey," said Paddy. "He most definitely would have done the same for any one of us.”
