hemmed in and hacking it -
The Gobnascale Interviews

The Gobnascale Interviews


First Gobnascale Woman Interviewed


I wouldn't live anywhere else.
The people are great
and the view is beautiful.
The family are all nearby -
all on the Waterside.
Around the Top of the hill,
they can call on me.
I'd do anything for anybody.
but I wouldn't let nobody abuse me
or my family.
[The boys used to stand up here
throwing petrol bombs]
I went over across the way,
I says to the boy,
"Where do you come from?"
He says, " Anderson Crescent,"
I says
"well get tae f... out of here!"
My daughter
she had a wee baby,
she was upset.


I had worries
when one boy
was going with a girl
over by Woodburn.
The shortest way home
was through Irish street.
I stood watching
afraid he would get a hiding.
He would say,
"I never done nothing -
nobody will touch me."


I don't think there are
any Protestants left in the area.
There might be
a few mixed marriages.


To be honest,
there are two laws -
one for Protestants
one for Catholics.


Somebody called and told me
"Your son's stopped down the road'.
I beat it down and says,
"What are yous doing?".







[photo]







They says "We are checking him out."
I said
"The fella's been away
since seven this morning
working with patients in the hospital
and you have him standing here.
Away and do your bloody duty right!"
I gave off to them.
No time for them
because I think
there are two laws.


Politicians are the cause of this bother.


Nobody is prepared
to give an inch.


interviewed 1995

Charlie Hillen


I come from the other side of the water
the Derry side.
I feel at home here now.
This is a very
picturesque part of Derry
The scenery alone
is breath taking.



[photo]





Gobnascale estate is a very close community.
The inhabitants are nearly
all inter-related
strong family ties.
A lot of people in Gobnascale
were originally from Top of the Hill-
original Waterside people
that have lived here for years.


In the seventies we had an unsettled situation -
people moving in and out.
Because of the scarcity of houses
people had to move over.
Those coming over from the Derry side
in the late sixties and early seventies
stayed.


Other people came over
in the late seventies
and tried to settle in
but it didn't work.
They felt very isolated
and they moved back out again
over to the Derry side.


The Derry people never mixed
with Waterside people.
Waterside people never mixed
with the Derry people.
Meanwhile, the people that came stayed
families were growing up
getting married,
reluctant to leave Gobnascale.


At one time, it was a desolate estate
over a hundred and twenty houses lay empty
because of the fuel situation in Bard's Hill.
The Housing Executive
decided to put in electric fires.
It didn't work.
People got the first fuel bill
for nearly £300.
They just got up and left Bard's Hill-
which was tucked away
into the back of the estate -
to disintegrate.
It was empty for nearly 10 years
until a private developer came in.


I am getting less conscious
of Protestant estates around me
as the cease-fire goes on.
But back in the seventies
Gobnascale felt very isolated,
surrounded by New Buildings,
Irish Street and Tullyally.


People living on the outskirts
towards Irish street
were on the look out
all the time
and had their windows boarded up.


Mountain View and
the far side of Anderson Crescent
lay desolate for many years
because Catholics had to leave
and be rehoused inside the estate.





photo





[Newspaper extract]
Caption: Derry Journal Friday 4th February 1972
Coverage of one of the Bloody Sunday funerals





photo]





[Newspaper extract]
Caption: Derry Journal 22 December 1972:
Coverage of Annie's Bar killing


The people in Mountain View
were stuck in the middle.
People had lived there for generations
and were very reluctant to leave.


Some owned their own house.
Whereas, the Housing Executive
was under an obligation
to get you out.


What we didn't realise
Irish Street, our closest neighbour
were the same as us -
watching, looking over their shoulder.
At that time,
it was a built-in defensive mechanism
to watch your neighbour.


At one time there was
a siege mentality here
because of what happened
in Annie's Bar.
If there was a border line
between (here and) Irish Street
Annie's bar would be just slightly this side.


Bloody Sunday happened (but it)
was a different sort of situation.
One was perpetrated
by government forces
and public opinion would keep
that sort of thing at bay.
The other was perpetrated
by a loyalist organisation
which was proven down through the years
to have happened
over and over again.


Annie's Bar was the local bar
for generations.
One night just after Christmas 1972,
loyalist gun men came in
and murdered seven men.


The young people here
were on what you would call
a war footing
because nobody
was brought forward for it.
The people were uptight.


Somebody had to pay.
The army and the police coming in
had to pay the price.


Redevelopment on the outskirts
of Gobnascale
meant
the old original Annie's Bar
is now gone
demolished.


You had this waste land
left open for battling.
It's still there.
We have big boulders in the middle now.


Annie's Bar
started to take on
a siege mentality again.
When loyalist gunmen
were going into bars - like Greysteel -
The Rising Sun was a replica
of what happened way back in 1972.
People started
to barricade themselves in
floodlights
and everybody was checked.


Since the cease-fire
that has relaxed.


This part of the world
is ninety nine point nine percent nationalist.
There's no problem talking
about Protestant and Catholic here.
You are talking to your own side
- the converted.
You can say what you want
as long as you don't say nothing
against the status quo.


Our problem
was the SDLP-Sinn Fein split
until a year and a half ago.
You'd wake up on Easter Sunday morning
and the place would be covered with
green, white and yellow markings
all over the place.
As Easter started to go, the paint got very drab.
At the finish up it
was more a mock to the colours.
The SDLP crowd would say,
"All that painting - that's terrible!"


It was just the older generation
they were apprehensive.
"If them boys weren't throwing stones
the army wouldn't be coming in."


The republican vote
would be higher in Gobnascale -
but the SDLP councillor
was always able to get in.


The Family Centre
started off with a nun from
Good Shepherd Laundry.
She started filling in forms.
She couldn't cope with so many people
she went to the Housing Executive
and rented a flat in Virginia Court.
The Family Centre took off from there.
The nuns have left -
it is civilian-run now.
At this moment
it is the hub of Gobnascale.


Back in the eighties,
the Family Centre
contacted the Housing Executive
and the DOE
to try and get some input
into the estate.
Re-development in the middle of the city
was going on
millions of pounds were getting pumped in.
We weren't looking for anything gigantic.
Rose Court was the first thing
we tried
to pin the Housing Executive down on.
It took us many years
to get the Housing Executive
to move on small things -
the grass cutting.


The powers-that-be were very reluctant
to pump money in.
All of a sudden things
started to move.
We were getting promises
of starting dates
for this and that.
Then all of a sudden they said,
"We have sold this to a private developer."
That knocked us back
because private developers is a different game.


The result is Rose Court
is one of the best corners of the estate.
For a long time, Rose Court
was an eyesore.
The reason why Rose Court was
left the way it was
(is because) any rioting
occurred there.
The army came up in patrols
from Chapel Road towards the estate,
the young boys met them -


bang!


The young fellas would retreat
into the back of the houses
and throw petrol bombs
over the top.


It was harassing for the people
living in these flats.
One by one they drifted out.
That was the first part of the estate
to collapse.
Young people discovered that the army
was using it as a look out post.
The young people tore all out
and left four walls.


With the troubles
Gobnascale never got off the ground.
That can be said
for every nationalist estate in Derry
caught up in the troubles.
The forces of law and order-
namely the army -
made it rough for us at times.
The government (see the area)
as a Sinn Fein republican area
which helps keep them down.


At times we were saturated
by the British Army -
houses getting raided.


We were the enemy.


No respect was held by the police.
They came in,
roughed us up
and wrecked houses.


You and I would have known
by the looks of it
that the fireplaces was
never interfered with
but they pulled them away
to see if any ammunition was behind it.


It was badness.
It was just to show who was boss.


Intimidation went on in Gobnascale
fellas were shot dead
out
on what they thought
was their duty.


But families stood their ground.
Families, not republican minded,
were (also) harassed by the army
put up against the wall.
But nobody ever said,
"I must leave because of the army".


Where are you going to go?


The army is harassing your son
but he could be shot dead
in Shantallow or Creggan.


People originally from
the Derry side wanted out.
They moved out
to Shantallow or Creggan.
Gobnascale was only a stopping point
until better things came along.
They needed a house
until they could move or swap.
Their heart and soul wasn't in Gobnascale.


Growing up in the Bogside,
I knew there were Protestants.
But talking to people
who lived in the Waterside
there was this atmosphere
between the Catholic people
and the Protestant population
that stayed for two or three days
before and after the twelfth.


Then it disappeared
until next time around.


The nearest I got to a Protestant
was standing at Rossville Street-Lecky Road
looking up at Derry Walls,
at the crowds of people looking over the walls -
as if there was a feeding day at the zoo.


I never had this Protestant-Catholic feeling.


I just had to deal with one side of the house.
until I started to go outside
the world of work.


The only thing I discovered
when you were talking to Protestants -
they were a bit reserved.
They would never come right out and say
[that]something we did was absolutely wrong,
whereas
we would have said something like
"That's an eejit that you's have talking for you!"
They would never talkabout the troubles
as freely as we would, like.


I think we, as Catholics
have a lot to learn from Protestants
and vice versa.
At eleven or twelve years
if you have a teacher that tells you
that it is a sin
to go into a Protestant church -
that makes a big impression.
I would go now,
knowing it is not a sin
but no priest has ever come back and said,
"Forget what we said in those days -
it was wrong!"
I still have this mentality
that to go to a Protestant wedding
you had to get special permission.


People say about "the Protestant Waterside" -
that might have been alright a few years back.
To my mind, that has all changed.
The Catholic population of the Waterside
has grown fantastically since I was a kid.
Moore Street, Robert Street, Strabane Old Road
these were all Protestant.
Now you would be pushed
to find a Protestant in this part.
I do not feel a minority in the Waterside -
I feel more in the majority.


In Derry it will take years
before we are in a minority again.
I would feel in the minority
in the whole of Northern Ireland.


We should have a great say in Northern Ireland

Living in Derry is (part of) my identity.
I belong to Derry
to Northern Ireland, to Ireland.
I feel sorry for people of the other minority
that can't recognise their identity.


When I listen to Protestants
talking about their identity -
they seem lost.
They keep bouncing off this British thing.
I can say to a certain extent
I'm British because of where I am born
Protestants have wanted to be
more English
or British
than Irish.


Personally
I don't know Protestants from the Waterside.
I am sort of segregated, sort of alien.
I know of Protestants who left Gobnascale
for the same reasons that Catholics left Irish Street.
The troubles
were the instigator of the fear
Protestants were feeling.
Bloody Sunday, Annie's Bar and other things
were happening.
Protestants felt intimidated -
felt somebody is going to take it out on them -
they were going to get hit for it.
I would probably have done the same.


The Protestants seems to be going
more and more out towards Eglinton
out of the city boundaries.
If we are segregating people -
it's a sad thing -
we are pushing them to the brink.


We had good teachers.
The Corporation for years segregated us.
They taught us, you know.
When Protestants come back
over the bridge again with confidence,
it would give the bigots a kick.


Gobnascale is my stopping point.
I'd like to see it getting off the ground -
coming up to Creggan standards.


The young people
don't have an established place -
a drop-in centre.
Parents are reluctant
to let kids trip out to the
Chapel Road youth club -
a trouble spot.


We may be a small community
but we are growing.


We have to look to the future.


interviewed 1995

Second Gobnascale Woman


Derry would be more Catholic
than Protestant.
I would be concerned
about my own area-
my own family -
rather than the issues.
I don't think deep about it.


You hear cityside Protestants
are moving to the Waterside,
now its spreading to outlaying areas -


Whose fault is it?


Who decides?


I was born in Irish Street -
a really Protestant area -
just opposite Gobnascale.


I came to live here
at the start of the troubles
when neighbours were getting geared up
in their B special uniforms.
There are a few Protestants here -
they are very much a minority.


From the middle of Fountain Hill,
everything to the right
is Catholic.


My husband, who was reared
in a totally Catholic area
would see Gobnascale as an enclave.
The more politically minded
would see it like that...


Maybe its fear.


I remember someone saying,
"If anything happens
we've had it in Gobnascale
because we are surrounded."


Born in a predominantly Protestant area
I wouldn't be as afraid.
I would be inclined to say
that Irish Street have the same fears.






[photo]






The only reason I moved
when the troubles were bad,
is fear
not for myself
but for my children.


If we were somewhere else
they wouldn't be seeing the masked man -
the patrols getting stoned.


When they ask questions,
what do you say?


Because the children are boys
made it worse.
You've a fear of them
joining an organisation.
Since the peace
you have a fear of drugs.


I couldn't have afforded
to move to the places
my husband would have liked.
He didn't like the places we could afford.


We wouldn't have moved to another estate -
out of the frying pan into the fire.


My sister lives in Lisamore.
She says you hardly see a being.
At least up here
no-one's out on a limb,
no-one thinks they are better
than anyone else.
You have the friendliness
closeness and support.
My mother, father,
my husband's family
and extended family
all live in this area.
I hadn't any problem with baby-sitters
and my children have their cousins.


No-one really moves.
They move from a flat to a house.
Nineteen years ago
a lot of families moved to bigger houses.
They don't move out of the area.


A lot of people look down on Gobnascale.
But where would you get a view like this?
It's convenient
to the schools and chapels.
People from the Derry side
don't think it's convenient.


The downside is
we don't have any youth facilities.
There is a youth club in the school
but who wants
to go back into a school environment
after school?


In some people's eyes
Gobnascale has a bad reputation.
People ask, 'Where do you come from?"
People say "Top of the Hill" not "Gobnascale."
People from Hollymount say
"We're from Hollymount, not Gobnascale."
There was trouble in the council estate.
There is a stigma,
but umpteen people who have been involved
haven't come from Gobnascale -
and come from good families!
It's not as bad as they think.


Government agencies
think we don't need anything.
Because they pay benefit
they think they are doing enough.


interviewed 1995

Cyril Henderson


I would have no hesitation
telling people to come here.


The majority are good people.


You are not stuck in the town -
five minutes walk and
you are in the country.
It's reasonably quiet.
There's not a lot of
police and army now.


The area is improving -
they are doing up the old houses
that were lying derelict.
There's still some vandalism -
coming down from chapel,
the other night, two boys
standing up on top of a car
jumping up and down
kicking in the windows.


You could say we are an enclave
because the Waterside is
mostly Protestant.
Irish Street, across the way,
is mainly a Protestant estate
and the hinterland - Tullyally
and around Newbuildings
is sort of all Protestant.


If I walk around from say, Irish street
when I hit Irish street proper
to come in here
I don't say
"Thank God I'm here,
I'm safe now!"


You would have been sort of frightened
about the boys
getting caught up in something -
not so much the girls.


The whole basic thing
boils down to
The Man Above.
I always say
He was the first real communist.
There is no sense in saying "I'm a Catholic!"
then going out to shoot a policeman.


Only one daughter moved
out of the area.
She lived in Derryview.
It happened to lots of people -
when they came to the door
with hoods on,
the gun,
wanting the car.
I won't accept that
that anybody would tell me what
I had to do.


The population
doesn't really matter to me.
I can make it my business
to get along with anybody.


People should mix together.


There's youngsters growing up
that think Protestants
or Catholics have two heads
because they are stuck
in an area where they don't meet
the other tradition.


In our day,
unless you were of strong nationalist tradition,
which we aren't,
we had friends of all traditions
and we moved around the city.


Now, in the middle of town,
youngsters get beat up
because they are a certain religion,
as they stand waiting at the bus stop.
Which is wrong.




[photo]





I was reared in Spencer Road,
brought up with Protestant neighbours.
They were the best.
No hassle.
The man across the street
used to go out
on the 12th of July and 12th of August.
He'd come over to my mother's
to see if his sash was on straight.
It didn't cause any problems.


It's not that you feel part of a minority -
we are part of a minority
in Northern Ireland as a whole.
It was worse in my younger days
than what it is now.
Catholics weren't getting jobs
weren't being housed properly.
Thank God that is all changing now.


In fact, the Protestant people
will tell you we are getting too much.


In the times of Civil Rights,
the Protestant majority were conned
by their higher echelons
into thinking
they were the bees knees.


The working class Protestant
was no better off.


To me, nationalism
is the scourge of the world.
I think of myself as Irish.
The Protestant people might think of themselves
as British, as English.
It's good to be proud to be Irish
or proud to be English
but not to force that on anybody else
or to say I'm better than these guys.
This leads to war eventually.


This man, on this morning,
talking about the Gaelic GAA thing
the ban, the law 21
gave a different view.
He's an Irish speaker
and says that no way
should anybody be discriminated against
whether they be a policeman or a soldier.
The only thing
that should ban a man
is if he is a dirty player.


I would be afraid
of some of the Catholic population saying,
"We have the ball at our toe
and we'll rub it into these guys now!"
It's like when the peace broke out.
There shouldn't be any triumphalism.
They should accept
that they have to live with one another.


The Protestant population in the town
is going down.
It's sad. It's sad to think
that to some extent
it was our side that caused that,
in the form of the IRA
or Sinn Fein
or whatever.


On the other hand
you have areas were Catholics
have had to move out
and Protestants have moved in.
Which is wrong too.


Once the cease-fires came
there shouldn't have been any dilly-dallying
about any conditions.
Eventually, everybody has to sit down -
the IRA, the INLA, the UVF, UDA -
they all have to be involved
because they are part of the problem.
Are they going to agree
with Sinn Fein or UDP?
They should be there too
to solve the problem.


It has happened in Cyprus in South Africa...
the way they are going about it
it is going to take longer than it should.
Hopefully, they will get some settlement
even some Sinn Fein men are saying
that it can't be a united Ireland -
but some sort of an agreement.


What I would like to see
is that they will be happy
to accept Protestant people here -
or Catholic people in Irish Street.


interviewed 1995

Third Gobnascale woman


I grew up in the Top of the Hill.
I moved here from a farmhouse.
We had to walk three miles to school.
I'm here
as long as nobody pushes their point of view.
The troubles have touched everybody
but you can't let other people's view
dictate your way of life.


It was a different place.
We moved here. It was more rural.
We lived in Strabane Old Road
but we had children
and the road was dangerous
and the house was cold.


It was restless in 1983
but the restlessness didn't affect
my decision to move.


My husband
came from the Derry side
plays for Derry teams.


Maybe my mother and father
wouldn't have been in the Top of the Hill
if there had been a boy in the family.
There's no way a Protestant fella
could walk up through the estate.
It was hard enough for us girls.
But we were independent souls.


We didn't come across through Anderson Crescent
because they called us names


and we called names back.


They could tell by our school uniforms.
They called us Jaffas.


The old area wasn't like that -
the men played rings round the back.
It was strangers that caused hassle.
Imports gave us a hard time.
Boys would have had gotten
into physical fights.


I don't know of any Protestant families
who have sons.
As soon as sons get any age
they move.
My father
having only five daughters
kept us here.
He had his own tradition.
Everyone knew what he was.
They respected him.


There isn't many Protestants in the area.
They did try to make Gobnascale
a mixed area.


There was families that came in,
but they left.


The Waterside was always
deemed to be a Protestant area.


I understand why Gobnascale is
the way it is.
Gobnascale had such a bad press.
You have to be in here
to understand that it has changed.
It used to be a no-hoper place.


It has pulled its socks up.


We want to be proud of our own area.


Everybody will say
Gobnascale is a Catholic area
it was neglected by all bodies.
The women want what's best
for their children.







photo








We have no economic development.
This supermarket is the first.
People want an education
a job.
My preference will be for family life -
my children.
If there is a cause I'll fight for it
but it will be something personal to me.


I can walk everywhere.
The bus service isn't brilliant -
it doesn't come by Hollymount.
You try carrying
six bags of messages
up that hill.
You haven't the money for taxis.
I would walk down Irish street.
It was a short cut - handy.
I never felt any sense of danger.


Maybe Belfast is different.


Staunch Catholic areas
they don't know the other side.
Throwing bottles and stones at your house -


we went out in the morning
as if it hadn't happened.


It wasn't people from Top of the Hill.


There is Catholics living in Protestant areas
and their houses were stoned -
that doesn't give them the right
to stone our house
because we are Protestants
living in a Catholic area.


A time ago,
people had to take a side.
I don't see why.
I'm glad I live the way I do.
It doesn't matter
if you are born into a different religion.
I am a strong woman.
This is home.


Me daddy had a real sense
of belonging to Top of the Hill.
It passed on to me.
It was wild
shifting from Strabane Old Road.
Hollymount is far quieter.
I couldn't settle to begin with.
It's sad people can't relate to me
because I was born a Protestant.


There is no real winner
in the whole troubles.
People are rotting in jail.
I'm sure boys who get sentences
come out shaking their fists.


There has to be more to life.


interviewed 1995

Third Gobnascale man


Other people call it Gobnascale
or the Gob. But anybody asks me
I say Top of the Hill.


When I first came over here
most of the people
were old time residents.
Outside people thought of this
as being a particularly rough area in Derry.
Run down.
The people were sort of rough
capable of holding their own.
Very clannish.
Even if
they didn't like the person getting turfed over
by some crowd
they wouldn't let that happen.


I'm not from the Waterside.
I just happened to arrive here.
I moved to Spencer Road in 1967.
I moved up here in September '71 -
from Creggan originally.
People used to think Creggan was bad.
But Creggan people say,
"How do you stick it over there?"
"Do you not find the Waterside strange?"


The Top of the Hill was quiet -
the usual new estates -
a lock of builders rubble.
It was threw up quick.
The actual houses weren't that good.
It was all back to front.
The front door goes into the garden.
The back door is actually the front door.


But I'll be wearing a wooden coat
that's the only way I'll be going.


I'm longer now in the Top of the Hill
than I lived in Creggan.
There were a few Protestant families in Creggan.
I never seen any real sectarianism
until I came to the Waterside.
I seen boys chasing
whether it be a Protestant or a Catholic..
They were fighting amongst themselves
because they were two different religions.

My wee flat was attacked a few times.
That was from 1969 to about 1970 or '71.
We got out of the place then.
It was at the bottom of Moore Street
Moore Street was
at that time
a predominantly Protestant Street.
I got married in March and the street
was all decorated with Union Jacks and bunting.








photo







I drunk with a few people that lived in Moore Street.
I had never any bother that way, you know.
It was mostly lodges coming from the Memorial Hall
across the bridge.
They started after '69
throwing stones at the place
roaring and gowling and kicking the doors.
That was my first trip down the sectarian road.
I just went to the end of Bond Street
and beat the crap out of the boys that was doing it.
I had no bother after that.

The shooting in Annie's Bar
I was up in the Telstar the night it happened.
The only thing that stuck me as funny is
you could walk into Gobnascale after the shooting
but you couldn't get out of it.
The police, the cops wouldn't let you.
But I wasn't actually in it,
I just knew a couple of people to see.
People were very afraid.
Some people up stakes and moved out.
They couldn't hack it.


About three years ago
the police arrived.
I was at work as usual.
The cops says to my wife
to warn me that my name was on the hit list
for the Loyalist death squads.
So I had to upgrade my security.
I could have went to the Housing Executive
and moved to whatever area I wanted.
There were a few people up here that did.
But I wouldn't move.
My attitude was if they are going to get me
they were going to get me.
They gave you a hundred and fifty pounds
she got a phone in
and that was it.


I have been trying for years to get things going.
If everybody just moved -
went back into a wee corner
then things would get worse
instead of better.
You make a stand.
You walk away from it
and you can't influence people.
I had a bit of hassle from the police
I think they just gave out the details to the Loyalists
and that was it.
I firmly believe that, you know.


No matter what,
if you were trying to make change,
if you didn't tow a conventional line
in the SDLP or in the church
then you were suspect of being in the IRA.


"Are you working for the IRA or Sinn Fein?"
"Are you controlling the area?"
"Syphoning money?"

I never asked anybody their beliefs -
all I wanted to know [was]
if they were to help the community.


The wife started up a park in 1981
with a wee ACE scheme.
That collapsed.
It was harassment from the word go
from the police.
Harassment -
it happened to plenty of people up here.
The harassment I got -
the army would be more joking
but the cops were inclined to get nasty.


They knew rightly who I was,
they used to come up and say
"You'll have to give us your name and address, Eddie!"
Many times, walking down the streets
I wouldn't move out of the way,
and he wouldn't move
the two of us ended up
having a whole shuffling match.
There was passive hostilities
from both sides -
sometimes open hostility.
They started on my sons as well.


My mother said
"You will have to get moved out!"
My father was the same -
never liked the Waterside.
"You will be safer over here."
I pointed out
if I move
what is going to happen to the people left behind?
The next time
it is going to be your neighbours
getting the threat.
Then all of a sudden, there's nobody left.


The last two years
before the cease-fire
you would lie in bed at night
and wonder
you would listen.
"Are the young fellas getting a taxi home?"


I always told them
never to walk home
straight up the Strabane Old Road.
Always walk the side streets.


Years ago
there was a drive-by shooting
a house in Strabane Old Road -
the house above mine.
Boys got out of the car
smashed the windows
and jumped in the car again.
I gave the police
a description of the car.
They stopped the car in Irish street
but nothing was done.


People seem to be pushing cross community contacts
like going to Corrymeela.
They have to start somewhere
but it seems very structured -
like getting led down the garden path.
You have all these people
being very nice and watching.
You really need to meet people
warts and all.


If you are not working,
you don't have a life.
if you are young now
you have all those micky mouse jobs.
It's dead-end stuff.
Ace and a tenner on your dole -
just a whole scam.
The young fellas are cannon fodder.


There was a few problems with drugs -
only about two years ago.
It wasn't cocaine or heroin -
it was with speed and LSD.
There was quite a few
and it was a big shock.
I didn't think it would happen here
but it did.


When it happened
you'd be sort of dumbfounded -
how do you handle it?
Life is a balls-up now
buggered before it really got started.


I never thought I was in a minority.
I thought I was treated badly
in my own country.
I was treated badly education-wise.
The Catholic church had a lot to answer for.
the only things I have learnt
I have learnt myself.

When we grew up
the Unionist Corporation ran Derry.


I was born in 1945.
Even now I can see
the wee man coming down
the street in Creggan.
He wouldn't survive 10 minutes now -
but he was in the 'B' Specials.
He used to walk down with his rifle.
Nobody would have said boo.
You always got the message
that they were the people
and you weren't.
Your view didn't count.


Then, you were having
manys an argument with priests.
I was told I was nothing but a communist.
I wasn't allowed to think like this
and
"Who give you the right to talk like this?"
I always had the attitude
that things weren't right
on both sides.
I always had resentment
against my school and church over it.


Just after the Hunger Strike
I thought the whole place
was going to end up
the way Bard's Hill did.


I don't think the Catholic church
has really helped us.
They stood back, were afraid to.
They didn't get in with the people
and try to help.


It was easy enough to sit in a chapel
saying you broke this commandment
or you shouldn't be doing this.
They have ignored the area.
A guy reckoned, the new chapel
built down on the Trench Road
was to keep Gobnascale people up there
so all the middle class Catholics
could go down to the old church.
I don't think any of the priests
were up to the job
to lead the people.
They talked down to them.
They gave them nothing.

The colonial era is coming to an end.
It is more complex than this
but you can understand.
Like if you were in control of a country
for many years
and you think it is slipping away
well, there is a lot of psychological barriers
and you are going to say
"I am going to have to move."


I think the ordinary Protestant thinks
he is going to be treated
as bad as what we were.
If we got control that we are going to screw you.
There's no way.
I'd have to chop my own leg off.


I have no time for the theory
about Catholics and Protestants.
When they came from England or Scotland,
the English government said
they aren't Black -
the only difference is they are Catholics
so we will play on that.


If the Protestant population left
it would be like losing your brother.
You might have fell out with him
but you don't want to see him going.


Equal terms
cut out the terms Protestant, Catholic.
You invest in the future.
You say what you want.
I don't want to see
by a quirk of fate
us ending up like the Fountain.
I wouldn't like to see people saying
"We have to keep the Fountain Protestant!"
or, "We have to keep Gobnascale Catholic!"
I can understand it
yes
and I'd say
certainly, if you want it
but you are going to pay for it.


interviewed 1995

Fourth Gobnascale woman


At long last
the majority in the city
has been recognised for what it is -
a Catholic majority.
Gerrymandering has come to an end.
Protestants have moved to outlying areas.
I think they are moving because
they don't want to live in a Catholic city.


This "predominantly Protestant Waterside" gets me -
Where do they get their numbers from?
All my life, I have been part of a minority,
as a Roman Catholic in a predominantly Catholic town,
with less rights.


Now you say a majority
has a responsibility to a minority?


Twenty years from now, will a Catholic majority
be as hard as a Protestant minority?
We never want to go back to the 60's.
I think to myself
if we had more female politicians from 1969
willing to put themselves up front,
maybe we wouldn't have been in the situation we were in
for twenty five years.


This [area] right round to Irish Street
where I was born and reared
is Top of the Hill.
From I've been no size,
I said, "I am going across to Derry,"
thinking in my head
that Derry was two cities.


One time we considered
buying a house in Abercorn Road.
I was broken hearted at the thought
of having to leave the Waterside.
I'll tell you why we were buying [that] house.
We had bought one in Violet Street.
It was a great big house -
I fell in love with it.
We were to move on the Tuesday.
On the Sunday we got word
we weren't getting the house.
All was signed and delivered
but they backed out in the end.
They didn't make any bones about it.
We were Catholic and we didn't get it.


Doing the deal
we were dealing with the mother
but the son
who was unionist minded
had objections.
He blatantly said
he didn't want a Catholic in his house.
I was hurt and vented my anger.
He wasn't man enough to face me.
I went to see her and explained,
they had shattered my illusions
and being raised in a Protestant estate,
I couldn't understand their objections.
She said she'd taken advice from her son.
I think it was her feelings as well
if she was that easily swayed.

The day we went to view Abercorn Road
we got word we had been offered a house
in Bard's Hill.
I took it.
The worst mistake we ever made.
Electric bills were astronomical.
No hot water bar the immersion heater.
With four young children
I was using the immersion
for every drop of hot water I had.
My first quarter electric bill was
two hundred and eighty two pounds.
That was 1978.


[My husband] had a pretty good job
but I have a son with asthma -
the dry heat was killing him.
There were no parking facilities
near the house.
Access to the house -
you had to go up or down stairs every time.
The Housing Executive
neglected to do any landscaping at all.
We deserved more
for the money we were paying.


If I could buy a house in Irish Street-
if I could be sure I could live safely
in a ninety nine percent Protestant area
and feel as if I was part of the community
not as a token Catholic
I would buy it.


It's probably just nostalgia.

We left Irish street
under strange circumstances.
We had to get out overnight.


When none of your neighbours
comes out to defend you
or to ask you to stay
you know where you stand.


It was the early months of 1970 -
the height of the Troubles in Derry.
My youngest sister
had been stoned on the way to school.
It got to the stage where she was afraid to go.


We woke up one morning
to huge red, white and blue letters on the path
"Get out Fenian bastards".
That [was] the last straw.


We swapped with a Catholic family
from Gobnascale,
that left to move to Nelson Drive.
Nelson Drive at that time was fifty fifty.


A Protestant family, naturally enough
from Nelson Drive,
moved into Irish Street.


Granny couldn't risk anything happening to us.
It broke her heart leaving Irish Street.
It was her first house.
She had had nothing
and Monseigneur O'Doherty demanded
she be re-housed
from a Duke Street tenement.


Her heart and soul was in Irish street.
We had Protestant and Catholic
coming in and out of Irish Street.
People had known Granny for years.
In Gobnascale,
you hadn't the same community feel.
It was simply a house.
She had no feeling for it.


In a way I was glad to go.
I remember the night
Stevenson's Bakery burnt,
standing in Bann Drive
you could see the smoke
coming up from the Bog.
There was about 12 people standing.


It was Stevenson's Bakery but
this particular woman
thought it was houses.
She said,
"Good enough for them,
they are burning the houses
we gave them!"
We were Catholic bogwogs,
burning houses they gave us!
Such a stupid, ridiculous remark -
and she believed that.


I didn't want to live with the tension.
My granny thought she could have moved on her terms
not having to go and get emergency housing.
I feel a bit cowed down for moving.
Maybe if we had dug our heels in...


Bar putting a huge barricade round the house
having a security escort
I don't think there would
have been anything anyone
could have done.


Protestant families were glad to see us go.
They could say what they wanted,
do what they wanted
when we weren't there -
a thorn in their side.


I think we would have moved in the end.


The Protestant families in our street
would have given us lip service
trying to find out what Granny thought.
The Catholic population in Irish Street
was so small
a token Catholic in every street.
Rowe Gardens had more.


Within three weeks of us moving
every other Catholic family
in the street had to move.
The situation was so bad,
it would have taken the whole estate to get together
to ask us to stay.


We moved to Gobnascale.


The devil you know is better
than the devil you don't.


My husband was in a precarious situation.
He worked as an Ordinance Surveyor
for the government.
He was a Catholic
drawing maps for the army.

Somebody's prayers were with us.
The day he was to start in Belfast
he got word to start in Dupont.


How could we have lived in Belfast?
A Catholic working for the army?
What area would we have lived in?
We would have been neither fish nor foul.


I still felt afraid in Gobnascale.
I knew nobody.
A lot of people had moved over
from the Derryside.
I was a fish out of water.
One particular situation -
there were rumours that spread
and got out of hand
that gangs were coming in
from Newbuildings and Tullyally
to attack Gobnascale.


The people in Gobnascale were terrified.


A friend of mine
a Protestant fella
joined a vigilante group.
There were no weapons involved
simply street patrols.


The people organising it
were the forerunners of Sinn Fein.


My husband refused to take part in it.


It got to the stage
where a few snide remarks were made to him
about not pulling his weight
turning his back on his own.


The people in Gobnascale
did live under fear.
The attack on Annie's
proved
there was a threat
to the Top of the Hill.


This particular night
a friend of mine
came running into the house
and said,
"There's been a shooting in Annie's.
They are carrying out bodies,
nobody know's who's who
or what's going on!"


I'll never forget it.


[My husband] and three friends
did their training every Wednesday night
and then went to Annie's bar for a pint.


I ran down in bare feet.


It was total mayhem.


I saw Barney Kelly
coming out of the bar.
He shouted across the street,
"Tell me mammy I'm all right,
I've just got a graze."


He died on the way to hospital.


[My husband] came around the corner.
He said he had gone down to Annie's
but something prevented him


and he went on down
to Iona House.


After that
people were living
on their nerves.
It was so unexpected -
so unbelievable.


It was Annie's Bar because it was handy.
It could happen again.


It shook the whole community
to the core
especially with Charlie Moore
a Protestant fella
being killed.


Nobody has ever been brought to task for it.
People reckon
they hadn't tried hard enough.

Being reared in Irish street,
I never had any fear of the police.
Several of our neighbours were policemen
most were 'B' men.


In Gobnascale
I see it from both sides -
policemen being taunted
and policemen taunting young fellas and girls.


Who do you turn to?


Do I turn to the men coming round the doors
saying we are organising groups
to do this and that
when you don't trust them?


Or do you trust the people
you ring nine nine nine for?


You are stuck.


All you can do is watch yourself
and tell your family to be wise and vigilant
but let them know their own minds.


I found it difficult to rear boys
on the straight and narrow
without smothering them.
They are making heroes
and [my sons] listen to their peers,
to the TV.


One of my sons said about Bobby Sands, -
"the bravest man in Ireland."


I think if I had reared them in Gobnascale -
an area
where there is stylized pictures of the Hunger strikers


whether you like it or not


in a street
with slogans painted on your walls


whether you like it or not


they would have had a one-track view of the troubles.
The boys would have come home
and said
"Up the Ra!" and asked,
"Why's my daddy not in the Provos?"
"Why does my daddy work for the government?"

We have never had any serious run-ins
with the police.
But the army
used to give my son a rough time.
The patrols used to be think and fast.
On the bridge and every morning
on his way to college
he was told to take off
his trainers and socks.


They searched his bag
everything.
He said,
"They will get fed up before I get fed up!"
They did stop doing it.
It's difficult being an adolescent boy in a housing estate.
They are expected
to be tough
to drink
try drugs
leave girls pregnant (like me)
and face the police and army.


After Annie's
the unarmed forces
turned into armed forces.
Who were they helping?
People were used as shields.
I had a gunman in my house,
shooting down at an armed patrol.


We were laid flat on the bedroom floor.
They didn't care when the army patrol shot back.


I wanted out then.
I could afford to get out.


If my husband had been unemployed
I would have made the best of it.


But I wanted to take my sons
from Gobnascale and trouble.
They wanted to stay and resented moving.


interviewed 1995

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