Word: belfasts
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Explo '71. Despite this endemic hostility, few Ulster Catholics would readily give up the British welfare-state benefits available in Northern Ireland for life in the poorer Republic of Ireland. "Why don't I go down South?" asked a Belfast longshoreman. "That's just what the Prods want us to do. Well, it's our country too." But with distrust turning more and more into open hostility and with minor street incidents turning into major riots, the prospect of civil war is becoming ever more likely...
...volatile as it is, the Unionist government-incredibly -has gone right ahead with its plans for "Ulster '71," a summer-long festival to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ulster's founding. Unless things cool considerably by May, the affair could well earn the nickname suggested recently by Belfast wits: "Explo...
...burly man called "Beer Belly" stood on the wooden stage. He glowered through the smoke-filled hall that was once a Catholic church and is now a shebeen (illegal drinking club) in the middle of Belfast's Falls Road Catholic ghetto. It was Sunday and the wooden trestle tables groaned under the weight of Guinness bottles, but no police or military would dare enforce the law that closes pubs on Sundays. The place was packed with laughing, plotting Irishmen, nearly all working-class, some of them members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army. As Beer Belly began to recite...
...Dublin from 1916 to 1921, there were only 83 true terrorists. In Belfast today, there are perhaps 50. Author J. Bowyer Bell characterizes them in his book on the I.R.A., Secret Army, as "knights templar." Writes Bell: "Certain of a true cause, possessed of the moral justification for the use of force, intimate with the long tradition of the struggle, comfortable in the company of proud men, an I.R.A. volunteer often lives a life not so much of denial as dedication, a laic pilgrim on the road to the Republic, a knight templar justified in the use of his sword...
...cellar of a pub, a provisional spoke of the hatred for the British "army of occupation." "In the beginning our only weapons were 'Belfast confetti'-rivets, bottles and stones-but now we have guns and plenty of ammunition. And I'll tell you this: we won't be wild geese [exiles] no more. We are going to fight this through till...