To ask what it was like living in NI during the Troubles

[ViscountTheVoraciousVampire]

Growing up and living in Northern Ireland during those turbulent years before the GFA, whether the GFA had much of an impact?

I watched the documentary last night, there was one years back on BBC1 on Panorama which looked at how the Catholics were treated. If you were around during the 1970's, the media portrayed it as if the Catholics were the problem, they were causing the problem. I remember as a child / teen, we were put off going places due to attacks in the Mainland. It's interesting to see a side that was never really reported. It must have been hell to live through for everyone?

From the little I know, I think it's the Historical Enquiries Team working for families to get answers to questions.

Is life better now, is there more integration? Do you think a hard border would reignite tensions? Did you want to integrate before, or was it a no go situation?

Many a good night spent in the coach. When we were younger we'd go to Gosford.

I grew up in ni during the 70's and 80's. Regular army stops, what's your name, where are you coming from and where are you going? Once when we were going shopping, with my mum, granny and I in the car my mum told them we were going to a disco. Raised eyebrows, but let us drive on.

Things are much better now, but I'm still a bit 🙄 when friends who are now in professional jobs etc post photos of themselves marching on the 12th.

Oh - and of course the limelight for night out in Belfast.

Again apologies again for going off topic but want to address Racecardriver’s assertions.

Mandela was personally involved in a plot targeting a school. He was a terrorist regardless of how noble his motives or how he was treated afterwards.

@Racecardriver, which plot targeting a school are you talking about?

As I said above, Mandela was in prison from 1963 -1980. Before prison he was one of the founding members of the armed resistance arm of the ANC known as MK. When he and others led MK before he went to prison he and his fellow members with much reluctance chose the path of sabotage with bomb attacks on government targets. (Reminds me of the arson attacks by suffragettes here in the UK at the start of the 20th century). There were no deaths or injuries when Mandela led MK before he went to prison. A list of all MK operations over several decades can be found here omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv02730/05lv02918/06lv02949.htm

By the 1980’s there were bombings by the MK in civilian areas and loss of life. However, by this time Mandela had been in prison for years and it is believed it was highly unlikely Mandela was able to have direct contact with the MK and was not believed to have ordered any of the bombings in the 1980’s. I think I recall in his autobiography saying how deeply sorry he was for the Church Street attack in 1983 and did not support it. In the 60’s when head of MK he supported sabotage only but it’s not on record he definitely ruled out Guerilla warfare in the future. He did not want people killed when head of the MK before he went to prison, but probably realised there was a risk when carrying out sabotage.

Jesus, where to start. I grew up in belfast inthe 70/80/90s I’m ‘catholic’ with a catholic parent/family and a protestant/family on the other side. Which meant every fecker wanted to kill us my parents and Dsis just for existing as a family. We were targeted by bombers twice but survived.
Bombs. Constant bombs, sometimes they killed people, sometimes they didn’t but caused destruction. Day in day out. I’ve been in several. I’ e lost family members (children) innocent family members. Week in week out for YEARS. Can you imagine that in any other UK city?
Soldiers in the streets, constant stop and search - security forces, police. All armed.
The soldiers called us all F-Ing paddies. I was more frightened of them as a young kid than terrorists because I never actually saw the paramilitaries but paras were everywhere.
If we drove more than 5-10 miles we would almost certainly hit a road block.
We drilled in school for emergencies, for bombs, fire.
The last thing we did at the end of the day at my Saturday job was to check no incendiaries had been hidden that would burn the building down when we left.
Shootings - tit for tat shootings, innocent people murdered for being catholics, then more innocent people murdered for being Protestant.
And no-one had any money. Not surprisingly companies didn’t want to invest in a city in the throes of a bloody conflict so there were far fewer opportunities for people, for children than even the most deprived English cities in the 80s.
The GFA changed our country, transformed it and if this Brexit and border nonsense doesn’t get sorted out it’ll be catastrophic.

I moved here (to NI) by choice when I was 17, myself and my friend took over a house which belonged to her uncle, we paid a nominal rent, £5 each per week and covered all other bills ourselves

I have stayed in a small area even tho I have moved towns 3 times, the first was a place which was famous for all the wrong reasons,

It was the worst place a British soldier could be sent, the safest mode of travel was a helicopter, well for those who were on a tour of NI there were 3 dreaded assignments, the Antrim Road, the Falls road both in Belfast and the general area but the town itself was the most dreaded area,

I shared a house with a friend and we were approx 250 meters from the barracks, it was attacked many times (the barracks not us) we were put out of the houses many nights with the whole estate being sealed off and all of being sent to sleep in the school up the road outside the cordon. It became normal.

I carried ID constantly and you kept your head down, ignored the soldiers and didn't generally make eye contact and to be honest at times I felt sorry for them as they were younger than me and lying in the dark in ditches with guns.

I was working in an office directly across the square from the barracks when a soldier was killed and another one lost his hand, someone who was coming into the town the following day asked at a checkpoint and told us.

That was the first time I had heard a bomb go off and sadly wasn't the last. The only thing that surprised me was that while we grabbed our bags and closed work down as fast as possible, there were people in the pub downstairs under the office who all came piling out of it and adjoining pubs and ran towards the barracks to watch, I got as far away as possible.

However, I should add I originally came from the Republic of Ireland to live there but it was 5 miles cross country to where I lived originally. So I always lived close to the border.

The GFA marked a change but change doesn't happen overnight and while I still live the area nicknamed Bandit country - the town I live in had a bomb attack on the police station as recently as 2010. It's a small town just over 3000 people including the surrounding area.

Would I like to go back to the time of the troubles? Absolutely not, no way.

The way forward is working with peace and communications, give and take and understanding.

I still remember how incredibly odd I felt the first time I went into M&S in the Centre of Belfast after the got rid of the heavy security at the shop door. Have a wand waved over you and your bag going into big shops in the city Centre was just such a part of life it was weird when it went after the ceasefires.

And no-one had any money.

@postcardsfrom that simply isn't true. There were some very wealthy people (still are) in Northern Ireland. I think this one of the main problems. There were a whole swathe of people who were not directly affected and when they were it was a minor inconvenience (bag searched going into a shop etc). So for them there's no buy in to the GFA as it made no difference to them. They lived in a nice middle class bubble.

I was born in the early 80s. I lived in a very well off village outside of Belfast, we definitely were not a well off family.
My family were Protestants, but not bitter or anything. We socialised mainly with Protestants as that was the main religion in our area, however there were of course Catholics within the area and I'm sure we also socialised with them, when a child we didn't ask those questions. We led a sheltered life when it came to politics. Yes, we knew there was stuff going on between the teo religions, but we weren't ever made to feel like we had anythinf to worey about. There were a few bomb scares close to where my sibling went to school, which I remember very clearly and it scared the life out of me. A local town was blown up and i knew people wgo workes in the area which was frightening, but we were very lucky to never experiece what so many of those people experienced.

I met my now Husband in high school (mainly protestant but a few catholics) and gradually as I got to know him i learnt so much about about the troubles. He was brought up in much more scarier circumstances. I cant go into detail as I think it would out me and cause problems. He also didn't live in a dangerous area but the situation he lived in meant things at home were tough. I am so thankful I didnt have to go through the upbringing he did. He will never say he had a tough upbringing or he didn't enjoy his upbringing, but the stories I've heard make me so thankful I didnt go through what he did.

We are a protestant family and have family members in the Orange Order etc... and we are proud of who we are. We have Catholic friends and wouls never be nasty or awful to them. We bring our children up to be kind to everyone they meet.

We never really went anywhere on family days out because like postcardsfrom, we had no money, if you managed to get where you were going there was a risk you wouldn't get back and because if the adults were "lifted", the children were just left to make their own way home.

WipsGlitter maybe I should have said on my working class run down housing estate no one had any money.

I quite literally didn’t meet ‘middle class’ people until I went to university in England

Sorry for my typos, am on my phone

I think that's one of the big issues. It's such a segregated place with very little social mobility.

@Ginmakesitallok Yuck. I'm very grateful to work in a place where marching is definitely looked down upon. Pretty much everyone I know sees it as the total embarrassment it is. FIL is a Protestant minister and on his first 12th in his previous parish, they came marching up the manse drive so he could give them his seal of approval or whatever. He came out and in no uncertain terms told them never to come again and that God played no part in what they were doing. I'm very proud to know him.

I had a middle class upbringing just outside Belfast (regular attendee of the Coach). I am a prodestant and to be honest I was fairly sheltered from it all, beyond a child in my class at primary school being murdered by the IRA, but even then it was all kept very hush hush- we planted a tree and Margaret Thatcher visited. There were army everywhere but I don’t remember ever being intimidated by them, and when I was a teenager my mother did tell me to ‘never get involved with a squaddie- they have a horrible life’ but that’s about it. My friends were all middle class prods with a few middle class catholics but they also hated the IRA. Being middle class we had no time for loyalist paramilitaries either and our parents voted official unionist and wouldn’t have dreamt of voting DUP.

And a bit like a reverse of someone above- I didn’t meet anyone who lived in social housing or went to a secondary a secondary school until I was an adult- there is very little social mobility.

I didn't grow up in Belfast, I was out in the country. So I didn't see the day to day horror the way other people here did. But I did see awful things a couple of times, and that was enough.

The army on the streets was a funny thing. As Protestants we were brought up to see them as 'the good guys' but you seemed to either get lovely wee polite lads who looked terrified (and who as teenagers we took great delight in flirting with when they searched our school bus) or you got belligerent arseholes who loved the fact they were wielding a gun and knew they could say whatever they wanted to you.

Day to day things that I remember:

TV programmes being interrupted to warn of a security alert, and ask key holders in whatever town to return to their premises.

The towns being shut at night so that you couldn't drive into them. Maybe with one gate open, with a checkpoint, and you would have to stop and explain yourself as to why you wanted to drive into the town. O believe that further back, you had to have a permit.

Not being able to park a car and leave it. If someone needed to go to the shop, and it didn't have a car park it was always 'who's going to come and sit in the car?'. At primary school we used to compete to be chosen by the principal to sit in his car whilst he took the dinner money to the bank . I remember as a child going on holidays to England and being terrified at seeing cars parked in the street with no one in them, because at home an unaccompanied car was a cause for concern. I still don't like walking past cars parked in the street...just in case.

My DP had a very different childhood, he attended private school and grew up in the grounds. He was aware that stuff was happening in Belfast, but it didn't really impact him.

Our experiences of the Troubles could not be more different.

I am namechanging for this.

I live in a very loyalist paramilitary run protestant housing estate. I was born in the late 70's so missed a lot of the "troubles" as my parents protected us from most of it.
However I still spent my teenage years in the company of known members of organisations. They protected us, they look after the estate, they were the good guys to us.
I worked locally and every Friday one of these men came into my work and collected protection money. This was meant to protect the premises from being robbed, but it was the same men that collected it that would have robbed us if it wasn't paid.
I grew up drinking in a working mans club that was a cover for this organisation. It was normal to see someone being taken into a back room and come back out covered in blood. It was normal to hear that someones home had windows broken in the night, or their car was destroyed, or they had been beaten. Our first question was always, what did they do to deserve it.
I now have a young son and am so glad that although I still live in the same place, and the same paramilitary organisation still runs it to a certain extent it is calmer now, they don't sit outside the local youth club trying to recruit anymore.
The Good Friday Agreement didn't really change much where I live, the paramilitary organisations haven't went away, they still lurk.
However, I will never move away. I know everyone local to me, I know who I can trust and who I can't. I know who will protect me and who won't.
Northern Ireland is a strange place.

Treacle I had totally forgotten about the car thing! I thought my parents were just wanting company at the time...

Thanks for sharing experiences, it’s really interesting to hear them.

I notice some here refer to NI as “The North of Ireland” rather than Northern Ireland. I haven’t heard it said that way before, is it a turn of phrase, or is there more to it than that?

Ilive- interesting to see you think they protect you. I am also a Protestant and to me they are essentially scumbags who have destroyed lives with their drug dealing and racketeering and intimidation, who think they are above the law.

The North of Ireland is how some nationalists refer to it as they don’t recognise it as being part of the UK

A previous poster said " a shitty normal"

That's what it was. There were things you went through every day-car checked, bag searches, army patrols, constant helicopter noise, sirens.

Most mornings there would be something on the news that was personal. Someone you knew, a place you knew, someone you'd worked with.

The GFA was huge. I was in the city centre when the newspaper boys ( 6th teleeeeee!" ) came marching out en masse with the headline on the paper reading " it's yes!" And everyone cheering and crying.

I was very involved in integrated schools, but they haven't taken off as much as hoped.

A hard border? Absolute chaos.

We didn't have much direct exposure to violence, so just the subtleties - many of which are already mentioned here. Checking cars, checkpoints, gun-toting army guys, being always aware of where you were, who you were with, having a plan in case of a bomb or other attack. I always remember the news being on, everybody was mad keen on keeping up to date with what was happening in politics.

Though I live in England now I'm always ready to run at a moment's notice, which DH finds amusing. It was so surprising to move to England and see police stations in little village houses instead of the forts we were used to. GFA really did change everything - I'd be gutted to go back to those days, especially due to fucking Brexit. Though my folks are ardent leavers and insist NI was way better before we joined the EU - (yeah, at the height of the Troubles in border NI must have been BRILLIANT).

I don't think we'd move home again, although there is much to love about NI my DH would always be 'English' and different.