Two days after Christmas, on a bright icy afternoon, I crossed the border on foot and turned west away from the main Dublin–Belfast road. (Sadly, on this fortnight’s midwinter return to the North I was without Roz because of the time-factor.) As usual, I could not be sure precisely where I had crossed the border. On the bus from Dundalk my fellow-passengers had been talking about a young man who was charged in the local court with driving an uninsured car. The case was dismissed after it had been proved that when the gardai stopped him his car’s off-wheels were in the Republic while its near-wheels were in Northern Ireland.
An eight-man military foot-patrol was the first indication that I had arrived back North. Their faces had been blackened to hinder identification and render them less conspicuous as they lurked in ditches; and coming on them thus, ten minutes after leaving the normality of the Republic, gave me a mild culture-shock. Crossing the border into South Armagh is not at all like crossing into Co. Fermanagh, or even Derry. Then suddenly I discerned an element of grotesque comedy in the situation. It seemed ludicrous, on the outskirts of a quiet Irish village, to have these eight young Englishmen, in full combat-kit and armed to the teeth, moving cautiously – as though in some Burmese or Malayan jungle – between rows of neat little cottages and new bungalows where children were playing with Christmas toys in small front gardens. Then I found myself wishing irritably that all concerned would stop being so childish, that the Gaels would drop their demented posturing about an unattainable united Ireland and the Brits their provocative deploying of troops all over a quiet countryside.
Beneath their camouflage these Brits looked pleasantly surprised when I wished them a Happy New Year and the lieutenant – he had a gentle, unmilitary voice – went to a lot of trouble to explain exactly how I could find the crossroads pub I was seeking.
Half-a-mile farther on, beyond the village, I saw a solitary two-storey house with an inscription in huge white letters on the gable-end facing me: YOU ARE NOW IN PROVOLAND. Beside the inscription was an accurate painting of a rifle, three times life-size, that seemed to be pointing towards me. Round the next corner I came on another inscription, carefully painted right across the narrow road in three lines of letters two feet high. It said – THE ONLY GOOD BRITISH SOLDIER IS A DEAD ONE. The letters are so large, I was told later by one of the artists, because the message is intended to reach the helicopter crews who patrol the border and the foot-patrols who are transported from point to point by helicopter because the Provos have made it far too dangerous to move them on the ground. I looked up from the road and across the still, frost-bound, hilly terrain – poor land for farmers (which is why the population is almost entirely Catholic) but good land for fugitives. And I thought of those eight youths on patrol, who probably know nothing whatever about The Irish Problem. How do they feel, when they first come across such inscriptions? They have been sent to Northern Ireland, they often believe, to prevent the Irish from killing each other, burning each other’s houses, blowing each other up. They have not come to conquer new territory, subdue the natives or do any of those old-fashioned, imperialistic, military things. But however neutral they may feel on arrival towards the North’s various factions, so many taunting flourishes on walls and roads cannot fail to provoke a Paddy-bashing mentality – which in turn further alienates the Catholic population. In certain areas the Provos are now able to recruit from traditionally ‘moderate’ Catholic families whose sons – and daughters – would not for an instant have considered joining the IRA in 1968. Numerically the Provos have undoubtedly lost support among ordinary folk but the continuing presence of the army has ensured them a steady flow of (not always very suitable) replacements for active service campaigns.
Walking on, I reflected that it had been silly of me to feel impatient about the foot-patrol’s melodramatic progress through a quiet village. For the Brits, life in South Armagh has to be melodramatic. And it can be tragic. Not half-a-mile from where I paused to read that inscription, Captain Nairac was to be kidnapped – and apparently killed – by the IRA five months later. He had been gathering intelligence and it seems nobody warned him that his regular drinking in civvies with the locals in their pubs was literally suicidal.
In the pub, when eventually I found it, half-a-dozen men were sitting around a huge log fire recovering from Christmas. I roused suspicion at first by speaking Irish. Innocently, I had assumed that this would prove to the South Armagh people that I was not an English spy feigning a Southern brogue. But when my ‘contact’ had joined me it was explained that the Special Air Service personnel posted to South Armagh are believed to include some Southern Irishmen who speak fluent Irish. The Brits are also believed to employ Southern Irishwomen to collect information (nobody in South Armagh cares to use the word ‘spy’). So much for my little attempt to be linguistically diplomatic.
Visitors to South Armagh are comparatively rare in midwinter – or at any other season, for that matter. I was therefore welcomed as a novelty and also, when it emerged that I was writing about Northern Ireland, as a possible mouthpiece for the Republican cause. (This is not necessarily the same thing as the Provo cause; some of those men were very anti-Provo.) But my companions found it hard to believe that an English publisher would bring out a book not loaded in favour of the Brits. And they considered my ponderings and probings a gratuitous complicating of a perfectly simple situation. They had the answer: Brits out! trouble over!
A grey-faced man of about fifty sat in a corner saying very little; he was introduced to me as the father of two boys, aged fourteen and sixteen, who had been killed not long before by a booby-trap bomb left near their home – for the benefit of the Brits – in a wrecked car. The boys had been trying to remove a door-handle when the bomb went off instantly killing both. Their father, however, seemed to feel no bitterness against the Provos; or if he did he was prudently concealing it. He blamed himself, he said, for not having sufficiently warned the lads to keep away from wrecked cars, abandoned refrigerators or cookers and inexplicable milk-churns. To the company in general those two boys were war casualties, not victims of terrorism. Had they been looking for someone to blame they would certainly have chosen the Brits, arguing that only their presence makes it necessary to plant bombs around the countryside.
Tentatively, I confessed to feeling a certain amount of sympathy for the ordinary British soldier, who is only doing his job by patrolling the fields and air-spaces of South Armagh. At once three men replied simultaneously that the Brits are legitimate targets. They are volunteers, not conscripts, and when they join the British Army they know they will be sent to Northern Ireland where there is a war on and they may be killed. From the point of view of the speaker, to whom the Provos are a morally defensible army fighting for a just cause, this was sound reasoning. The whole concept of an ‘illegal organisation’ is utterly meaningless in certain areas under certain circumstances. To the people of South Armagh the Brits are the illegal army, occupying their territory against the will of virtually the entire population.
Another massive log was thrown on the fire, more pints were pulled and, outside, the last of the light drained away beyond Slieve Gullion. A helicopter snarled past overhead, very low, stopping our conversation. Then it returned, and returned again. When it had finally moved off the man beside me shrugged. ‘Annoying,’ he said, ‘but not as annoying as when they do it for an hour non-stop in the middle of the night, over a row of houses where innocent people are trying to sleep.’ I stared into the fire, saying nothing but reflecting that from the British angle nobody is innocent in South Armagh.
When I steered the conversation towards the Peace Movement the reaction was predictable; and all over South Armagh, during the next few days, I found it echoed. The Peace People were condemned and derided as tools of the British. The fact that Mrs Ewart-Biggs, Lord Longford and John Biggs-Davison shared the platform with them at the Trafalgar Square Rally at the end of November 1976, and that Queen Elizabeth mentioned them approvingly in her Christmas Day speech, completely antagonised those Catholics without whose support the Movement can never hope to achieve anything very significant. The three founders, who all come of Belfast Catholic backgrounds, have been criticised for failing to foresee this reaction. But one has to remember that at the time they were totally bemused by the world-wide publicity to which they had been exposed. The Northern Ireland Office, however, should have had the nous to muzzle quietly those well-meaning supporters whose touch was death to the Movement’s influence in Republican circles.
At about seven o’clock my ‘contact’ and I left the pub to walk three miles to an isolated farmhouse where we were to meet a young couple who would, I had been assured, give me an insight into Provo thinking.
The air was hurtfully cold as we followed a narrow side-road by starlight. Underfoot ice crackled, and overhead helicopters swarmed noisily; usually at least three were visible. Regularly their searchlights picked us out and held us for an instant in a wavering beam. They obviously intended finding out exactly where we were going and, probably, how long we would remain there and where we would go next. Twice, machines with no lights of any sort passed very close, hedge-hopping. These were big troop carriers which can put forty men out in the fields. ‘A fine file they must have on you by now,’ my companion remarked conversationally, ‘you were around so long during the summer.’ It is not pleasant to realise that in a part of the British Isles one’s movements are being closely scrutinised and tucked away in a computer for future reference. The whole process gives off an unappetising and very un-British aroma.
Again, as we walked along that road, my rationality was offended by the situation – the sheer lunacy of this tiny corner of Northern Ireland absorbing so much of the British taxpayers’ money while the local people become daily more exasperated by and resolute against ‘Brit coercion’. Perhaps the local emotion was infectious; I suddenly found myself resenting those busy machines with their snooping searchlights. When I said as much to my companion he laughed and teased – ‘I thought you were the one who felt sorry for the Brits!’
‘I am sorry for them,’ I said, ‘but don’t you ever feel two contradictory emotions at the same time?’
‘Never!’ he replied. ‘I’m a plain simple Irishman and these days I only have room inside me for one emotion – and that’s not sympathy for the Brits!’
The farm kitchen was not at all traditional, with its gas cooker, chromium sink, plastic tablecloth, strip lighting and Tintawn. But the young couple’s conversation made up for that. They talked as though we were still living in 1916, a few months after the Rising. ‘Provo thinking’ is a misleading phrase. The Provos don’t think; they inherit fixed attitudes and on the basis of those they feel deeply and act ruthlessly. They are equally impervious to reasoned argument and moral exhortation because they believe themselves to be wearing the armour of righteousness. In this respect they are much closer to the extreme Loyalists than to the bulk of the Catholic population of Northern Ireland.
Our host – we might as well call him Paddy – was a man in his early thirties with a strong square face, raven-black hair and dark brown eyes. He had a subtle sense of humour which, unfortunately, didn’t function on the political plane; if it did, he could not be a paramilitary. Humour is no frivolous quality but the ingredient that keeps us sane.
Paddy believed that the Brits are determined never to leave Northern Ireland, whatever their politicians may imply publicly to the contrary – a common conviction in South Armagh. Some Armagh people, however, prefer to think that the British are longing to go but for strategic reasons the Americans won’t let them. The thought of the once-mighty British being pushed around by the Yanks gives much satisfaction in this part of the world.
As we ate a late high-tea the too familiar Provo line was repeated several times – ‘There can be no peace till we drive the Brits out.’ After tea Paddy’s wife handed him their six-months-old daughter, to be ‘winded’ while she was undressing their two-year-old son by the fire. ‘And what then?’ I asked. ‘When the Brits have been driven out?’
Paddy looked rather annoyed but remained polite. ‘Haven’t you read our plans? The Loyalists can run their own show in one corner – we don’t want to dictate to them.’ The baby burped dutifully and Paddy beamed at her.
‘But supposing they don’t want to stay in one corner?’
Paddy laughed. ‘Leave them to us! If the British took away their support there isn’t one Loyalist would dare come near a Republican area. They’re a bunch of bullies and cowards. So long as they’ve 14,000 Brits between them and us they’ll parade around with guns – but just watch them running when the Brits are gone! Have you noticed? Not one Catholic was assassinated in South Armagh this past year. You know why? Because we executed a busload of Loyalists last January!’ He handed his daughter back to her mother and took his son on his knee for a bedtime cuddle, stroking back his hair and kissing his forehead.
I stared at Paddy in silence, lacking the courage to challenge his euphemism and wondering if he really believed that all Loyalists are cowards. Apparently he did; there was no trace of bluff in his manner. I remarked then that the Loyalists, too, remember 1916, when over 5,000 fearless Ulstermen died in the Battle of the Somme. Paddy, however, brushed that aside. One of the basic differences between Green and Orange paramilitaries is that the former live in a fantasy world but the latter do not. They do not need to; if Britain withdrew and a civil war ensued and the Republic did not intervene the Oranges would win – and they know this. Some even feel that they would win despite the Republic’s intervention. And given their numbers and equipment and fanaticism this seems sufficiently probable not to qualify as fantasy.
At midnight I stood up to go; my escort was staying at the farmhouse. Paddy, helping me on with my coat, asked, ‘Well – is South Armagh as bad as you thought?’
‘Why should I have thought it bad?’
Paddy shrugged. ‘What about the propaganda? “Bandit country” and all that … Down south you listen like a lot of zombies to what the Brits tell you. That slandering is what we won’t forgive in a hurry. It’s one thing to have taken our land and persecuted us for 800 years – we’ll forget that as soon as we’ve got the land back. But – “Reputation, reputation, reputation! Oh, I have lost my reputation! I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial!”’
‘Isn’t that unpatriotic?’ I said. ‘Quoting a Brit?’
Paddy chuckled and opened the door. ‘He’s not a Brit! He belongs to everyone!’
As I walked across the farmyard I thought what a congenial friend Paddy would make if only he could be ‘defanaticised’, as my mother used to say. More strongly than ever I felt that communication between individuals must be part of the answer to Northern Ireland’s problem. Before going North myself I had quite lost sight of the Provos as human beings. They had become mere symbols of violence and unreason, sinister masked figures without pity or love. And one can grow to hate symbols. But few people, I believe, can hate individuals whom they know – however much they may disagree with, disapprove of or dislike them.
As a Provo Paddy is doomed never to talk to anybody but his own kind, apart from a few media characters and an occasional Southern tourist. He will never have a pint in a pub with a British tommy, or talk about fishing (his favourite hobby) with an Orangeman, or speculate about next year’s harvest with an RUC man, or discuss The Troubles with the sort of moderate Catholic who might belong to the Alliance Party. If for any reason he goes to England his mental and emotional environment will not change. He will join a colony of kindred spirits in Kilburn, or some Irish ghetto in Liverpool or Birmingham, and together with his fellow-exiles will regularly bewail the events of those fictitious seven or eight hundred years during which the Ulster Gaels have been persecuted by the Brits. Yet a man who can quote Shakespeare with such relish and affection is surely not incapable – given the necessary stimulus – of moderation and change.
*
I had only been a few moments in my first Crossmaglen pub when I heard a cheerful Geordie accent which flatly contradicted my preconceptions about the bandit ‘capital’ of South Armagh. Looking around, I saw a burly youngish man standing with his pint among a row of locals and complaining that he had been ‘deceived’ the day before by a racehorse. Later, I discovered that ten years ago he had married a South Armagh girl in England and when her mother became an invalid the whole family moved to Crossmaglen. There this Protestant Englishman successfully runs his own little business and has been completely accepted by the local community. Moving on to the next pub on my agenda, I heard another English voice, this time belonging to the wife of a Crossmaglen man. That young woman has been happily living in South Armagh since 1970 when her husband inherited an uncle’s farm and gave up his job in Leeds. It is important, I was told, to understand that when South Armagh people say they hate the Brits they mean not British civilians but anybody in a British uniform – which includes Northern Irish policemen and members of the UDR, whatever their religion. Like all true Irish Republicans the South Armagh folk pride themselves on having remained faithful, through all the sectarian vicissitudes of the past 180 years, to the original ideals of the United Irishmen. More than once they quoted to me Wolfe Tone’s vision: ‘To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissensions, and to substitute the common name of Irishman in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter.’
Unless the South Armagh people suspect a stranger of spying, they will make him warmly welcome whatever his race or creed. There is no reason why the area should not have a thriving tourist industry with military activities as an added attraction; Brit-watching could become a new spectator sport. And yet, when I rang a friend in Dublin and told her where I was she exclaimed, ‘Crossmaglen! The very name makes me shudder!’ Thus, over the past few years, has this little Irish town become synonymous with treachery, cruelty and sudden death.
I myself had felt no great urge to explore South Armagh during the summer. Although I was never gullible enough to think of it as ‘bandit country’ – the Brits’ favourite description – it did seem a place where anything might happen at any time to blow anybody up. Yet within hours of arriving there my antennae told me that I had nothing to fear.
In no sense but the political does South Armagh belong to Northern Ireland. From time immemorial all its links – social, commercial, athletic, cultural – have been with Monaghan and Louth rather than with North Armagh. Its accent is similar to the Monaghan accent, its families have intermarried with Southerners for generations, its job opportunities (for those interested in conventional earning) have been greater in Dundalk than in Newry. Its temperament is conspicuously Southern – lazy, generous, evasive – and always it has steadfastly ignored Partition. Unlike many other Northern Catholics the South Armagh folk are never going to resign themselves to their constitutional fate as British subjects. No wonder, then, I felt at ease in that area; I had not really left home.
I did not argue with my Dublin friend since no region of Northern Ireland – least of all South Armagh – is amenable to elucidation on the telephone. But it saddened me to see, over the next few days, what British propaganda is doing to the ordinary folk of the area. Proud though they are, with a long history of spiritual if not political independence, it seems they are now being slightly embittered by the hostility and contempt so often expressed against them through the media.
Repeatedly one hears of British soldiers being shot dead, blown to bits or maimed for life in South Armagh. It has also been the scene of several peculiarly vicious civilian assassinations – Paddy’s bus-load of Loyalists is an example – and often the killers, if Green, escape across the border into the Republic; a quick sprint over a field or two and they are safe. (I do not understand why they are then safe, despite close cooperation between the British and Irish security forces. It has been suggested that just south of the border a considerable percentage of the population remains strongly pro-IRA and that those who fail to share that feeling are made to act as though they do. According to my informant, the percentage is much higher than in South Armagh itself, where daily life has been so disrupted by Provo activity.) The fact that snipers can go to ground within a rifle-shot of Crossmaglen’s British Army post partly explains South Armagh’s evil reputation. As one local woman said to me, ‘They come, they kill, they go – and we are left to bear the brunt of it.’ She was of course over-simplifying. It is true that most people in South Armagh have never in their lives handled a gun and would not know how to begin making a bomb. They are witty, amiable country-folk who regard smuggling as an honourable profession; otherwise the local crime rate is remarkably low. Yet it is also true that they have contributed more than their share of moral support to the Provos because they passionately and unanimously desire a united Ireland now. Throughout the area one feels that everybody’s hopes and dreams crystallised finally some sixty years ago. They cannot be changed, only destroyed. Which is sad, for those hopes and dreams are not evil in themselves though they have inspired so many evil deeds.
It is hard to disentangle South Armagh emotions for non-Irish readers; whenever a statement comes to the tip of my pen I at once see the need to qualify it half-a-dozen times. Take the very word ‘Republican’. To an outsider it might seem that there is no difference between a Republican and a Provo but this is not the case. Almost everyone in South Armagh is a Republican but only a minority approve of Provo methods. Support for the Provos is largely a creation of the Brits; so fiercely is the army’s presence resented that anybody who opposes them becomes to some extent acceptable. Those regional affinities mentioned above also explain why both the locals and outside observers feel less anti-Provo in South Armagh than elsewhere in Northern Ireland. There the Provos are not seeking to impose the will of a tiny group of extremists on an antagonistic population but are fighting to bring about what the local people most ardently desire. During the summer I had been assured by British Army officers that the South Armagh people have been so terrorised by the Provos that they dare not help the security forces, even by using the confidential telephone. This is nonsense; there is no need for intimidation on the informing issue. For other reasons – usually fund-raising or refuge-seeking – it does of course occur. But few South Armagh people could ever bring themselves to inform on either branch of the IRA, any more than your average Englishman could have spied for the Germans during the world wars.
What infuriates many British onlookers is the fact that South Armagh Republicans avail themselves as much as possible (and often much more than is legal) of Her Majesty’s lavish social security benefits, while insisting that Her Majesty’s forces have no right to be in their territory. To the British taxpayer, this is unprincipled hypocrisy. ‘Why should they have it both ways?’ he wonders. ‘Why should they live well on our money while refusing to acknowledge British courts, and openly and incessantly and often violently expressing disloyalty to Britain, and sometimes killing our young men?’ The answer is that since Partition it has been a consistently followed policy, among Northern Republicans, to milk the British exchequer by every conceivable – and some inconceivable – means. This is seen as a way of hitting back at the government responsible for depriving the Ulster Gaels – some 350 years ago – of that land which had been theirs before history was written. And on a more mundane level the Provos find the dole very convenient. It leaves them free to concentrate on ‘the war’ without having to break off to earn a living.
I successfully hitch-hiked hither and thither in South Armagh, something that would be almost impossible elsewhere in Northern Ireland because of the public’s fear of hijackers. No driver failed to stop; on these narrow, hilly, winding roads there is so little traffic that to refuse a lift would seem downright rude by local standards. Normally hitchhiking encourages confidential exchanges but South Armagh does not allow the usual degree of anonymity. For security reasons I told everybody who and what I was the moment they picked me up. Nevertheless, a farmer or doctor or van-driver tends to talk more freely in his own vehicle than in a pub.
‘I wouldn’t mind them killing the Brits,’ explained the driver of a cattle-truck, ‘if it did any good. But I can’t stomach the way innocent people get caught up in their carry-on. I’m away to Australia next year if I can shift the wife. This is no place to bring up kids. You could have them kicking a football around a field one minute and the next minute shot dead or blown to bits.’
I flew my favourite kite again. ‘But aren’t these young Brits innocent, too?’
‘No,’ said the driver flatly. ‘They’re soldiers and they know that soldiers get killed. If they want to make sure of staying alive they should be in another job not over here persecuting harmless people. Not that the lads [i.e. the Provos] are much better. But at least they’re doing what they’re doing for their own country.’
‘So are the Brits,’ I remarked provocatively.
‘Balls!’ said the driver. ‘They’re doing it for money – if you’ll excuse me, m’am.’
‘But aren’t they on the make, too?’ I persisted. (I had observed that in South Armagh one avoids using the word ‘Provo’ as though it were some sort of harmful mantra.)
The driver shook his head. ‘Maybe they are in Belfast, or other places. But all they get here is a tenner a week and a bullet in the knee if they’re found with more money than they should have. There’s no police in South Armagh – except maybe a few now and then skulking around in the back of an army vehicle. But there’s hardly any crime, either. Somebody’s looking after law and order.’ He paused to offer me a welcome swig from his pint bottle of Guinness. Then he went on, ‘Mind you, I’m not for the lads – don’t get me wrong. Sure we all want to kick the Brits out to hell but they’re going about it the wrong way. The Brits are a rare stubborn lot. And they don’t give an eff about a few young slummy bastards being killed here. They’ll never leave while the lads are playing it this way. They’ve been beaten into the ground all over the world but it’d be the last bloody straw if they let it look like a wee handful of Paddies had ’em beaten here.’
‘And what would happen to everybody’s dole,’ I asked, ‘if the Brits were gone?’
My friend laughed. ‘Maybe a lot of people would have to earn their living, for a change! Though they tell me things are catching up that way now in the Free State – they say the gap is no way so big as it was.’
That afternoon another driver aired similar views. ‘Why don’t they stick to blowing up buildings and leave the Brits alone? So long as they keep on at the soldiers, the soldiers will keep on at us. Remember how cold it was there before Christmas? Well, one of the worst nights the Marines came along and lifted my eldest – nineteen he is, and does an honest day’s work in a factory in Dundalk. And they stripped him to his underpants – shoes and socks and all came off – and then they stood him in the middle of the road for one and a half hours in freezing fog till our local curate came along to rescue him. They had to let him go – they had nothing on him. But that’s all the good killing Brits does. They can’t catch the lads who do the killing so along they come to take it out on the likes of us. And all we want is to get on with a quiet life.’
Everywhere I went, people told me about the misdeeds of the Royal Marine Commandos who had been stationed in South Armagh for four months from mid-August. I had been hearing horror stories about them, at second or third hand, throughout the autumn, but I tend to take such stories not too literally. In an atmosphere as permanently tense as South Armagh’s accuracy does not always flourish. Yet when I discussed those stories with people whose integrity was beyond question, I discovered that they were true. One charitable official, who had had considerable contact with the regiment, blamed the troops less than he blamed whatever military bureaucrat decides which regiment goes where. It would be impossible, he said, to imagine men less suited to the situation in South Armagh – ‘Those Marines made even the Paras seem effete.’ I had wondered, the day I crossed the border, what effect Provo graffiti has on the Brits. Apparently its effect on the Marines had been to release all their most violent instincts. They frequently broke street lamps with stones, slashed car-tyres, urinated on people’s doorsteps, tied dead rats to knockers, beat up randomly selected passers-by on the streets and transported groups of local men to Bessbrook Barracks where for hours they were ‘subjected to ill-treatment’ before being released without charge. As one citizen dryly expressed it, ‘In South Armagh we knew nothing about terrorism and not much about vandalism till the Brits came.’
After all that, I was cheered to find the townspeople so ready to acknowledge the good qualities of the Highland regiment that had recently replaced the Marines. Any glimmer of non-prejudice in Northern Ireland makes the heart bound hopefully. ‘They’re quiet wee lads,’ was the general verdict. ‘The most polite we’ve ever had around here.’ Evidently somebody at Army Headquarters had judged it wise to make an effort to counteract the Marines.
I went one afternoon to inspect the football pitch at Crossmaglen, which was not as irrelevant an activity as it may sound. During the Marines era the army found that it needed a helicopter landing-pad on the pitch, which is directly overlooked by the army-post. The post had recently been partially wrecked by a mortar-bomb attack which destroyed its water supply; therefore water had to be lifted in by helicopter. Moreover, the army had to have access to their new pad from the main road, which meant heavy vehicles using the expanse of wasteland across which football crowds must walk to reach the pitch.
To the uninformed, none of this might seem very contentious. But in South Armagh – and indeed throughout Northern Ireland – Gaelic football is of more than athletic or recreational significance. It is one of the most sacred symbols of the Catholic minority’s nationalism and determined non-Britishness. Consequently, to threaten the pitch, or even its access area, amounted to extreme provocation; in local eyes it was a deed scarcely less reprehensible than desecrating a Catholic church. Whether or not the army authorities were aware of this, they seem to have been genuinely unable to make alternative arrangements. When they began to use their new pad, a corner of the otherwise immaculately green and smooth pitch was badly churned up. Also, the access area was reduced to such muddy desolation that in normal Irish weather the pitch could be approached only by wellington-wearers.
The whole of South Armagh – and far beyond – seethed with fury; the Southern papers solemnly reported the outrage in detail; the President of the Gaelic Athletic Association travelled 200 miles from Cork to Crossmaglen to inspect the damage. (The GAA is an immensely wealthy and powerful organisation with clubs in almost every parish of the thirty-two counties. It was founded in the 1880s as part of the Gaelic Revival and at first it served a useful purpose in giving back to the dispirited country-folk a sense of pride in their own traditions. But during the present century its narrow nationalism has contributed quite a lot to making a united Ireland impossible in the foreseeable future.) When the President made a formal complaint to the army authorities they promised to repair the damage and left the access area in a better state than they found it. But the sacrilege of landing British Army helicopters on a Gaelic football pitch is unlikely ever to be forgiven.
As I was inspecting the pitch a four-man foot-patrol strolled through a gap in the hedge and crossed the field to inspect me. They were indeed ‘quiet wee lads’, two of whom looked almost too wee to cope with their weaponry. The leader had an incomprehensible Scottish accent and they all looked rather wistful as though they were wishing they could be home for Hogmanay. They asked no questions – very likely they already knew all about me – and when I wished them a happy and a safe New Year they smiled shyly and a little uncertainly. Possibly they thought I was being sarcastic.
Then a crackling order came over the walkie-talkie and one youth swiftly moved a few yards away, threw himself on his stomach on the grass and trained his rifle on a house in a terraced row beyond the pitch. At which point I departed with more speed than dignity, having no wish to become another ‘caught in cross-fire’ case. But maybe that was a put-up job to give the visiting writer something to write about.
Later that day I called on an impeccably law-abiding elderly couple who live some miles from Crossmaglen. They complained eloquently about army harassment, not only during the Marines era but long before it; and then the wife – quite unaware of the implications of her story – described one search.
‘Along these two came one morning to the front door, knocking and ringing the bell as if I was deaf. And there was crowds more of them up and down the village. Then this corporal says, “Excuse me, m’am, I’m sorry to disturb you when you must be busy around the house, but I wonder could we please have a look inside, if you don’t mind?” So I says to him, “There’s no good comin’ to me with your ‘excuse mes’ and your ‘pleases’ and your ‘if you don’t minds’! I know your sort and the way you treat decent people! A lot of hooligans is all you are with all your smarmy talk! And I’m not afraid to tell you so to your face! Sure you can have a look inside – I can’t stop you, can I, when ’tis you has the guns! But you may be sure if I could stop you I would, and send you back wherefrom you came!” So in they clattered and sure enough they had the place turned upside down in ten minutes. Took me a week to get it straight again. And damage was done. A wardrobe door smashed and the chair covers all torn and ripped to bits – that’s why the chairs look so shabby now. And they had my husband there stuck in a corner with his arms over his head for twenty minutes and a rifle in his ribs – and he a martyr to neuritis. Then when they were leaving one of ’em called out at the top of his voice from the street – “Thanks, m’am, for all that lowdown on the Provos!” Vicious, they are! Downright vicious!’
Her husband told me that two days later, by a coincidence that might have proved unfortunate, their next-door neighbour’s nineteen-year-old son was lifted for being an active Provo. Most of the locals had not known that he was a ‘volunteer’; people prefer to know as little as possible since they cannot then give information whatever methods may be used while questioning them.
Back in ‘Cross’, as the locals call their capital, I spent the evening in one of the village’s several pubs. The owner played the accordion for hours while his customers sang patriotic ballads. Between songs the conversation was of memorable football matches, army misbehaviour, ways of fiddling social security benefits and the classic smuggling achievements of the past. Contemporary feats in that sphere were not discussed. Much cynicism was expressed about my ability or willingness to write anything accurate on South Armagh; clearly the locals have had their fill of media misinterpretations. Yet I was not allowed to buy one drink. As a stranger among people who still respect the ancient Gaelic code of hospitality, I had to be ‘well looked after’.
In South Armagh, as in parts of Co. Leitrim, one can still hear an echo of how people were in Ireland long, long ago before our Gaelic culture was obliterated. But one has to recognise, very sadly, that these isolated traditional pockets are too tiny to survive. Already the modern tide is eroding them through the ubiquitous Box. South Armagh will probably withstand that tide for longer than Leitrim because of the challenging British presence. However, if the unification of Ireland ever did come about it would probably be quickly followed by the Anglicisation of South Armagh.
Twice during the evening, routine army patrols came clattering in, their blackened faces looking half-sinister, half-comical. They stood around awkwardly, saying nothing and seeming almost apologetic, their meek demeanour contrasting oddly with their lavish armoury. The men at the bar ignored them but sang, extra loudly, the most belligerent ballads in their repertoire. It shocked me deeply – though unreasonably – that at the Christian season of goodwill nobody could or would offer these youngsters a drink before they went out to resume their patrolling through the savagely cold night. At last their leader asked fatuously. ‘Any problems? Any trouble going on?’ Whereupon the very tall publican carefully put down his accordion, came out from behind the bar, strolled towards the slim little lieutenant and stood looking down at him in silence for a moment. Then he said, ‘We never have any trouble in this house and we never will have while I’m here – unless you make it.’ His tone was expressionless, neither threatening nor offensive. He was merely stating a fact. The patrol left then.
During the next ballad I meditated on the role of the army in South Armagh. For whose benefit are they there? The locals certainly do not need to be protected from the IRA and the army’s inability to seal off the border has repeatedly been proved. If the troops were withdrawn from the area would Loyalist paramilitaries invade and the Provos retaliate? This is just possible. But even if it did happen could it be considered a greater evil than the atmosphere of ever-increasing tension, bitterness and misunderstanding generated by the presence of the Brits?
At 7.50 a.m. on New Year’s Eve I walked from the outskirts of Crossmaglen to the featureless wide square in the town centre; the Newry bus was due to start at eight o’clock. Not a mouse was stirring, not a light showed in any house. A mass of colourless cloud pressed down on the land and the air was raw and damp. Gradually the little town began to take shape around me in that strange, reluctant dawn-light of midwinter – a light that seems no more than a weakening of darkness. Then across the square I saw grey shadows slipping around a corner from the Main Street and guns dully gleaming under a feeble street lamp. The last man of the foot-patrol was walking backwards, as usual, and suddenly I fell into a mood of despair. Unless one of the factions concerned can find the courage to lose face, this situation could go on for ever.
The bus started punctually and for the first half-hour I was the only passenger. We drove fast through vague grey light across bleak rough country. There was no traffic on the road but plenty in the air. I watched one helicopter landing in a nearby field; its doors did not open while the bus was in sight. Then we stopped frequently to pick up young factory-workers and it was nine o’clock by the time we got to Newry.
In the Belfast Express bus I found myself beside an elderly tweeded lady clutching the Daily Telegraph as though it were a talisman. She became very excited on hearing my accent and told me that for years she had lived in Co. Cork where really the people were amazingly nice! ‘But now,’ she explained breathlessly, ‘all my Southern friends are afraid even to send me a Christmas card because you see my dear if the IRA caught them corresponding with Ulster Protestants they might be shot!’ Myths do not circulate only among the uneducated.