WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
All my Dad’s extended family are Belfast to the core, the Ardoyne mostly. He left for Glasgow early 60’s but the two cities have deep ties (Dal Riata, ship building etc). Aunts and an uncle, cousins who live all over these days, another diaspora. They pretty much all have ptsd at different levels. My uncle got blown up by provos for attempting to run a non-denominational football team, but they hit the wrong car and killed his best mate. Got his hearing blown to fuck, loads of surgeries. That was 1982. So many near misses but every person has a threshold. Every time the phone went it would be someone from Eire with another casualty update. I used to dread the phone ringing on Sunday evenings because it was nearly always bad news.
 
Oh really, I'm just ten minutes walk from there. Difficult to get your head around what that generation went through isn't it, we don't really talk about it too much.
 
On being trapped by your version of history. For some people in NI that takes the form of a wilful amnesia, a refusal to engage with the worst aspects because it's too messy. for plenty of others it's clinging to particular events or symbols like old toys, like it's all they have
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
All my Dad’s extended family are Belfast to the core, the Ardoyne mostly. He left for Glasgow early 60’s but the two cities have deep ties (Dal Riata, ship building etc). Aunts and an uncle, cousins who live all over these days, another diaspora. They pretty much all have ptsd at different levels. My uncle got blown up by provos for attempting to run a non-denominational football team, but they hit the wrong car and killed his best mate. Got his hearing blown to fuck, loads of surgeries. That was 1982. So many near misses but every person has a threshold. Every time the phone went it would be someone from Eire with another casualty update. I used to dread the phone ringing on Sunday evenings because it was nearly always bad news.
Fucking hell, that's insane!
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
@Mr. Tea - The blessings come in the form of friendships from across both communities that have lasted into today‘s world. Belfast is like a dream compared to previous decades, although as Shiels states there’s a ways to go. @shiels i had my first holy communion at Holy Cross, small world.

My grandfather and his colleagues had to use different entrances and exists at Harland and Wolff to their Protestant counterparts, despite serving in WWII. This contributed to them getting involved in the Border Campaigns of the mid 40’s when they were home on leave, organisations like the Ancient Order of Hibernians. You don’t want to radicalise munitions experts. The price of those involvements converted many toward peaceful civil rights movements. This was all before ’69. Community action projects like food deliveries, housing, education mostly and a more secular worldview. Self taught, zero funding, but they played a significant part in de-escalating reprisals through youth work and teaching which the Catholic Church was (no pun) a bit touchy about, ie this is a religious calling and/or vocation, not a civilian one. Territorial, small-mindedness.

My Dad simply had enough though, saw no future, told us straight as lads not to be drawn into savage causes and that’s why he wanted to raise a family away from it all. Glasgow proved as testy, so on to London, then north. Celtic Park season tickets and all Eire hurling and Gaelic football finals were his only real vice, good events to catch a few pints, meet visiting relatives, find out what had happened to who etc etc. I still have all his old match programs, score notes and my grandfather’s Hibernian memorabilia.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
My uncle got blown up by provos for attempting to run a non-denominational football team, but they hit the wrong car and killed his best mate.
ain't really any way to follow any of that up, just to say good that things are so much better (if still, a ways to go)

have you or @shiels seen this? one of the best historical films I've seen, I think
 

WashYourHands

Cat Malogen
@padraig (u.s.) Apologies no (something to remedy) although I’ve read around it. Ken Loach’s Hidden Agenda (1990) is worth finding if you can track it down


There’ve been some outstandingly good documentaries in recent years. The Funeral Murders stands out because of direct memories from the time and Michael Stone’s cowardice.


Spotlight on the Troubles probably trumps it due to a much broader scope, whereas The Funeral Murders is a microcosm from a few repugnant days.

 

catalog

Well-known member
Ive not read that article but i do think its pretty poor how you can go through the scool system in this country and study history at gcse and a level (in my case) and learn nothing about miners strike and ireland. I mean fucking ell. If there was an ep thompson around today, this is the sort of thing that should be covered. Its left to dimwit artists like deller to pick up the pieces (on miners). Says a lot about how scary these two things are for the establishment.
 

version

Well-known member
I've been reading a bit about Vico. Interesting bloke. Apparently he saw the cycle as being made up of three ages - the divine, the heroic, and the human.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I've been reading a bit about Vico. Interesting bloke. Apparently he saw the cycle as being made up of three ages - the divine, the heroic, and the human.
Probably some confluence here with James Frazer's three phases of humanity: the Age of Magic, the Age of Religion and the Age of Science.
 

version

Well-known member
E5ht-N3k-XEAI-5-PR.jpg
 

sufi

lala
feels to me like we are revisiting a lot of twentieth century issues atm about identity and so on, lots of echoes of 80's radicalism, 90's resistance to the tories etc,

only now things have moved on so those issues are now more settled and mainstream - for instance anti-racism, LGBT rights and so on, but they are still being fought over this time because a rearguard of reactionaries won't let go of their white supremacism - some are very powerful and rsourceful (& many under the banner of centrism fighting wokeness of course)

a big simplification obvs, but ...
 
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