A Book of Death and Fish (21 page)

The letters to and from the city of Cologne brought me right back to the subject of history, pre-Uni. While I was being navigated through the likely questions for my Highers, the British Army pushed for a result in a no-go part of Londonderry. The headlines on the banned civil rights march failed to prompt discussion in our class. Of course it wasn’t history then. But it was, by the evening of the 30th January 1972. Or was it? Question: do you have to wait to the end of the day, the end of the month or the end of the year till events are indeed history? No, we never got asked that one either.

For the UK government this was a constitutional question, an internal matter. It could be a different story, abroad, if states wanted to break away or reunite. Also on 30th January 1972, Britain, Australia and New Zealand recognised Bangladesh. Pakistan then withdrew from the Great Commonwealth. For the new Secretary-General of the UN, the aforementioned former Nazi soldier, Northern Ireland was just another civil war. The United Kingdom was a bit curt (sorry) when the Austrian offered to act as a go-between.

So it was not even a thirty per cent possible question:

‘Why were thirteen civilians left dead on the streets and many more wounded by British Army fire during a civil rights March in Londonderry on the 30th January 1972?’ Let’s attempt to apply my history teacher’s methodology to the question that wasn’t asked. I’m a bit rusty on how this is done. History was a bit of a different subject, at Uni. How far back can we go in the attempt to determine a cause for an effect?

The deaths and woundings which occurred in Derry on 30th January 1972 were the result of a complex combination of circumstances, which had developed over a period of centuries. William of Orange’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne has remained a potent symbol, used by both sides.
‘Remember 1690.’ The vibrancy of the colour orange, as manifested on sashes worn on marches and mural paintings displayed on gables in Loyalist areas of Belfast and Londonderry, is set against the intensity of the colour green, which features prominently on murals in Republican areas.

Musical rhythms provide a further manifestation of two opposing cultures. The Lambeg drum has long been used by the Protestant side to project a steady, military and very loud beat, offset by high-pitched fifes. These expressions of the localised domination of one group over another are bound to lead to a series of reactions and counter-actions.

In contrast, Republican songs often work within a Celtic ballad tradition, where narrative and lyrical phrasing is to the fore. Often the lyrics are sentimental. There are many historical precedents for the use of an anthem by a group regarded as ‘Rebel’. Despite the horrors of a more mechanised warfare, there are still romantic songs relating to the ‘Rebel’ forces in the American Civil War.

An additional tier has been brought into the tension by the military traditions associated with particular regiments, deployed with the aim of enforcing the UK government’s policies in Northern Ireland. The distinctive maroon berets of ‘the paras’ or the green and black of Black Watch tartan bring their own associations into the complex mix.

The process of colonisation has left inevitable resentment. There are clear parallels between the encouragement of the Planters across the north of Ireland by King James I/VI and other historical situations.

Right, that’s enough of that. I just don’t get it that the Jewish settlers took over Palestinian farms and properties. Just like the Nazis gave confiscated lands to ‘ethnic Germans’ in Czechoslovakia after murdering or deporting the ‘inferior’ folk who were in them.

It was maybe inevitable that the Army would come to be seen as a force of occupation. Violence escalated, in the form of killings and explosions. The degree of ruthlessness, in bombing ‘campaigns’ which were bound to lead to high numbers of civilian casualties, is World War Two again. The failure of successive UK governments to instigate enquiries into the conduct of their troops was another factor. On the thirtieth anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ it’s still not easy to decipher it all. Let’s fucking try.

Civil rights, in matters of arrest and justice, had been withdrawn as a security measure. One side said that not enough terrorist convictions were being made under the normal judge and jury system, so suspension of these rights and adoption of ‘internment’, was a necessary measure. The policy of imprisonment without trial and its apparent application to one sector more than another, led to the decision to organise that civil rights march through Derry.

Now how the hell do we change tack on this argument? The slick teacher did indeed give us a choice of four phrases but I can’t be arsed planting one in.

What about Heath’s memories? It was the Wilson government which first ordered the troops across the North Channel. But Heath was at the helm when it became a war. Sorry. My chronology is arse about face. We’re going backwards and forwards. But we’re going to Derry now.

So, let’s think of the paras in their signature maroon headgear, cooped up and hearing the usual rain of bricks. You’re behind a hot metal wall, in a powered steel pram. You’ve been issued the rounds and told again. You are the agent of delivery. In your warpaint, psyched for the game, this is it. It’s come from the highest authority that you ‘scoop up the yobos’. Once you’ve got separation from the rest of the crowd, you go in. If you see anything, let this be clear, you shoot first.

The boys’ bellbottom jeans are no longer flapping. The old guy who’s gone to help the wounded chap on the ground is killed with him. The priest is waving the hankie that’s more red than white. He’s as near immortal as you can get. He’s an image of the day. He stays at the age he was, on that day.

If the march hadn’t been declared illegal; if the organisers had responded to the risk; if the Army had responded to the Constabulary; if the boys hadn’t started throwing bricks; if the difference between the British Army’s shots and the IRA’s was clear; if the major had stood up to the brigadier; if the sergeant-major had more control; if the mother’s sons under maroon berets hadn’t been psyched up for a result.

The film-makers have taught me better than the historians. Two works appeared in close succession to mark the thirtieth anniversary. McGovern
and Greengrass. They are both documentaries but events are dramatised. Is that fiction or non-fiction?

I don’t know. There’s a few things we can’t know. What would have happened if…?

If the single inquiring judge hadn’t been only one; if he hadn’t been personally briefed by the Prime Minister; if the conclusion had not been composed before the evidence was heard… Maybe people in the streets might have thought they could still influence the course of history, without guns and bombs. Hell happened on the streets of more than one city and town and village and prison and home.

What about all the mother’s sons dragged out from in front of the telly and shot on their own front doorstep by the guys who thought they were heroes? What about the bairns blown to bits? It wasn’t till the 21st August 1976 that Betty Williams and Mairead Corrigan led the Northern Ireland Women’s Peace Movement through the Belfast streets. It was out of desperation. The casualties that year reached the worst since 1972 with 175 killed and 1,470 injured. There’s no statistics can get us into the minds of those who issued the orders. On best available information, at the time. That, of course, is information selected by higher authority.

The man at the helm, Edward Heath, must have had his own private hauntings in the years to follow. The latest version of the offshore yacht-racing gospel, according to Sparkmann and Stephens of New York, was commissioned by the then Prime Minister.
Morning Cloud II
went down, with loss of life, during a delivery trip in 1974. Crew had signed up for wages and no doubt for the kudos of sailing the PM’s yacht. I can’t even start to imagine how the ‘highest authority’ looked back on that decade. Remember that my own father was trapped in both a tank and a ship. I’m guessing that Heath was also troubled by the deeds of the paras but, politically, he could only pay his condolences to the crew he’d personally hired. There was no apology for Bloody Sunday, not in his lifetime.

At what point do you know that a plunging yacht is not going to recover? Maybe he could see the sheets being let go. Everything flying free but the sea still pouring into the cockpit and the heeling continuing to that
point of no return. Or maybe the lads just heard a sudden bang. Then they were upside down with broken gear everywhere. Hissing electrics. The conscious ones braced, holding breath and waiting to see if she would come back up. Maybe she did but the mast was down, fractured, so the sharp bits were knocking holes in the hull. Where were the wire-cutters? But the noise factor would be knackering your normal ability to think it out. The skipper’s voice would probably be calm. ‘We’ll deal with this.’ But everyone would know that
Morning Cloud II
wasn’t coming back from this one and some of the lads wouldn’t get out.

No Foul Play was suspected. It was an accident, not an act of revenge. I don’t believe it was a supernatural event, divinely inspired to remind the powerful that it is human beings who drive racing machines, and human beings who comprise a march.

And the conclusions? Not sure I believe in conclusions, now. Not sure I did when I was sitting Higher History. But trailing ends are slack bastard things that foul your prop. So let’s look at a few strands again.

An obituary in the
New York Times
quotes the historian Robert Edwin Herzstein’s conclusion on the war record of the former Secretary-General of the UN:

And let’s look again at the careers of two teachers, one in the new (West) Germany and one who found his home on a Hebridean island. So what happened to the masculine man in the brown tracksuit? No-one complained, to Gabriele’s knowledge. He continued to teach, as far as we know. And the man who taught us to arrange summaries of historical data in mechanical order? He got results, as assessed in exams. So if that is the aim of education, he was indeed successful. He was promoted to the highest level. He was promoted out of teaching. A strong case could be made out for that being a good thing.

You’d been all through the Outer Hebrides, Butt to Barra, on a sit-up-and-beg roadster. Over the Clisham, with the German equivalent of three Sturmley-Archer hub gears. You might have been lean and streamlined before but you were the build of the average racing snake afterwards.

You ate at my mother’s table and rolled out your sleeping bag in our living room. This was our normal way. Our house had a trickle of visitors, met on ferries, or friends of friends, who’d been given the address.

You were getting your kit together for the Keep Nato Out demo at the gates of Stornoway airport. You talked about getting ready for water cannons, in Germany. An anti-nuclear demonstration. My olaid was kind of impressed with your story of all these women borrowing oilskins. The guys making a token attempt at sewing up their own banners then making the tea while the women got practical and just took over. The first time we lay down together was like a real old bundling. It was a public place and we were pretty well insulated by layers of clothes. I had taken the Mark One oilskin coat, with rotting cotton lining, from a hook in the byre at Griomsiadair. Laid it on the mud, the town side of Branahuie. A standard Lewis Crofters galvanised gate to the park that was mapped out. Stage One of the ‘Extension of Runway, Expansion Of Facilities’ at Stornoway Airport. We were joined by a group of settlers from across the Minch.

Scoraig Peninsula, Little Loch Broom. Disparate souls, scratching out a crust from this and that enterprise, across the loch from Dundonnell. The very area my fishing mate Torcuil was from. My young mentor in fly fishing became a gaunt man with a problem. The musician’s problem. His face came to me when the name of his father’s homeland was spoken.
Where was he now? Maybe he’d survive me. They say it’s not the drug that kills but the associated lifestyle. Maybe mates I’ve lost touch with will show up at my own funeral.

These cool guys from Scoraig had long since swapped sandals for wellies. We were called Rent-a-mob by the contractor until he saw faces like mine. He had to stop to think then, tracing us to the housing Terraces of Stornoway, the suburbs of Sandwick, Peninsula of Bhaltos, Inlets of Lochs.

We were the latter-day locals, with all democratic processes duly done and won, the QC hired by our elected Council outdoing the QC paid by the MOD. Gladiators in suits had done the fighting on our behalf, mincing words. But the findings of the Public Inquiry, which, it seems, we needn’t have had in the first place, were overturned by the Secretary Of State.

Our little local battle is a significant part of European history. The North Atlantic Gap made our Island’s airport important. Excuse me if I go into some detail on our own strategies of defence?

Some were talking about night-visiting to put sugar in the petrol tanks. Others considered running a JCB through the whole thing. The trouble with Direct Action at an airport, with all these runways in civilian use, is that some daft cove would be bound to stumble around in the dark and damage something so some innocent somebody would get hurt the next day. I don’t think the idea of yellow road paint on the runway would have done any harm though. What was the text, yes, NATO DEMONOCRACY. Not a bad scheme but we never did it.

Instead, we took part in one organised, symbolic day to say that we were taking action because the great democracies weren’t behaving well, in our name. Hence the oilskin coats so we could lie down in front of the contractors’ vans, when they arrived. We weren’t expecting water cannons. We pitched my ex-hire Blacks of Greenock tent and spent much of the night talking to a strong old man from Maine, more about wooden boats than this heated-up cold war.

There are some strange heroes in the twentieth century and the one of this day was a visiting Chief Inspector of Police, imported from the Mainland
for the big do. Along with video cameras and reporters from the Nationals. It seems there wasn’t going to be a delivery of aggregate by the contractors that day. They shrewdly thought they’d just lose a few hours, rather than have all that hassle for a small result. Sensible, really. Things were still pretty small scale. The heaviest plant was coming in to the Island in dribs and drabs. These special flat landing-craft, hooting at the small boats, in no hurry to get out of their way, here in the Approaches to Stornoway.

The engineers didn’t realise that the remnants of vast shoals of herring were still running, under their chartered vessels. So there was a flotilla of small craft, jigging lines of shimmering hooks in the dusk. The subsistence fishers were asserting their right to be on the water.

All the aggregate required for extending the runway was being removed from Carinish, the southwest of the Lewis mainland, then trucked through Glen Bhaltos and on to the outskirts of Stornoway. The local contractor had got done for running lorries without tail-lights.

That’s why there wasn’t a lot happening behind the gate, when morning light came to the flat sky. Even the single enemy vehicle, still operational, was trapped in rather than trapped out. The guys imported with it had read the signs and assumed there was no chance of overtime this first Saturday. So they’d all hit the spots the night before, while we were conserving energy.

But this blessed Inspector used all his contacts to get some action going. We hadn’t thought to guard the side entrance and that one truck got out and filled up from the depot with its single load. Then it showed up at the main entrance we were blockading. To us, it looked as if this lonely wagon really had made the dawn journey from Carinish quarry.

The Inspector’s motive was complex. The word is that he felt the police force in this whole area were a bit lacking in experience of crowd situations. None of them were veterans of Toxteth or Notting Hill, Wapping or the Murdoch Empire. Police, the country over, needed a bit of training. This was the local opportunity. A show-down with the miners was on the cards. And this was a mobile service.

It’s possible that he was also being considerate to us, knowing that the Catch 22 at the tail-end of the Inquiry (verdict overturned in view of
the National Interest) had detracted from the principal purpose of letting everybody let off steam. So he could allow folk to lie down in front of a lorry for a day and then they’d really feel they’d done all they could. As long as everybody behaved themselves.

As the actions of Messrs Bonaparte and Schicklgruber indicate, historical missions are beyond reason. The latter is Hitler to us. His olman changed his second name thirteen years before Adolf was born. That small action might have had a huge effect. Heil Schicklgruber just doesn’t have the ring. Mind you, Comrade Stalin wasn’t always called that either.

But Russia was the enemy now. That’s why Stornoway could plug the Atlantic Gap for Nato.

Our own small historical event was a good day out. Lewis light finally broke on the zinc of that gate. The Inspector used his tannoy to voice the contemporary version of the riot act. We calmly followed, in the ritual, as arranged.

The old oily proved inadequate. I remember the initial cold, seeping through to the backside. Then I was past caring. A policeman’s voice in my ear, still quite reasonable but a bit cheesed off. ‘Don’t you think you’ve made your point now? My back’s not that great.’

‘No, sorry, not really. We’ve got to follow this through. Careful with your back, though. Remember to keep it straight while you’re dragging me.’

I remember the smell of the diesel and the sound of the engine but didn’t see the wheels turning. Maybe the driver had been asked to rev the thing for a bit of realism. That cop really did me a favour. It was getting cold again from underneath. He’d hoped to avoid this – it wasn’t just getting your hands dirty but everybody looking at you and cameras and things. Probably a crofter’s son who’d been sickened of tattie-planting and peat lifting and gone for a clean job. So he manhandled me to the van, quite gently, really.

‘Is your back still OK, mate?’

‘Aye. We’ll survive.’

I was in the first batch of the arrested – six or so of us in the Sherpa. I’d been separated from Gabriele. Our lot was driven towards the quay.
‘How do you like driving the diesel, then?’ somebody asked and the woman constable at the wheel said it was OK on a long trip, a bit heavy round town.

‘And are we going on a long trip?’

‘Only as far as Barlinnie,’ she said.

We were driven to the quay.

‘The ferry leaves in half an hour,’ said the constable in the back. One of the arrested replied, ‘Are you keen on Westerns, then?’ And the woman constable turned to say, as it happened she loved them and did we know that John Wayne was from Ness. I did, the others didn’t. Maybe that was a police trap for finding out if you were local.

So we were out in the sun at Number One pier, where the Queen had landed and a decorated lamp had been long since installed to mark the spot. There was no rule of the game to say you couldn’t go back for another shot. This was like the cooling-off period in ice hockey. So we started to walk. We were recognised by a sympathiser driving a van and given a lift to do it all again.

That’s why we missed the chocolate digestives which the second arrested party, including Gabriele, were treated to, at the station. She told me they were apologetic at Kenneth Street, not really prepared. So they handed round the cups of tea and the sergeant got the cleaner to run across the road to J and E’s for the biscuits. A human touch, though we were all running through this exercise like hamsters.

No-one did anything sillier than getting their arse wet in public. More importantly, the course of the Inquiry slowed everything down long enough for further histories to play their part. The runway and the pier were completed and very welcome too, for civilian use. Installation of the hardened shelters is still somewhere on the books as a NATO project. Each year, the matter has been quietly shelved. But maybe we can risk saying that the idea of Stornoway as a key operational Nato airbase has died a death.

There was the Saddam factor, the Gadaffi, the proliferation idea but everyone except the UK government seemed to realise that the
multi-warhead
system developed against you-know-who wasn’t quite the thing for other threats. The hard old reds might make a comeback on a tide
of disillusion, the magic market being kind of a fickle business – but it’s difficult to see how all these Tridents, aimed at all these cities, in all these new countries, could change things.

Those first stages, at the airport, gave us a new fishing mark. You could now line the grey and white shack, conspicuous at Branahuie with the third pillar of that amazing Nato pier. Then you kept Arnish lighthouse open on Holm to let you drift over a bank which can still yield a few small whitings. If the trawlers haven’t been over them first.

Maybe by the time I shed the mortal, the trawling will be over. We’ll be back to hooks and lines and small fish swimming free.

Who knows, maybe the Nato pier and pipeline is taking all the fuel for the Island, safely clear of the harbour terminal that’s only a whispering distance from the town centre? There might be coin-slot telescopes organised by the Holm Community. German and Japanese and maybe Russian tourists could be scoffing their fill of mussels and scallops and razorfish, further down the pier.

You can just see all their heads turning to look seaward, out on a bearing to the Shiants. Catching a glimpse of a white-beaked or a white-sided dolphin. A pod of the heavy grey Risso’s dolphin was resident, between Holm Point and Tiumpan Head. That was in the year we kept Nato out. But there have been few sightings since. We don’t yet know all the factors which determine the migrations of these fellow mammals.