By Eamonn Keyes

Preamble

This follows on from a previous initial piece in the Orkney News : The Influence of Ancient Spartan Warfare in Mid-1960s Belfast

This should be read before attempting to try to make sense of what follows below, which although it might seem fantastic, all actually happened.

After the demise of the Spartans their extensive arsenal was reclaimed by the various mums and dads around the street and things were never quite the same.  Never had the phrase ‘beat your swords into ploughshares‘  been so admirably demonstrated as dustbins, mops and brushes and gardening equipment came into normal use once again.

As with the fall of all great empires, such as that of Alexander the Great and Rome, the territory was split up and fought over by small groups, and at one point The Top of The Street was involved in running battles with The Bottom of The Street, as veteran comrades who previously shared their Fruit Salad, Parma Violets or Mojos whilst on campaign fought each other instead before it was all settled with a game of street football.

In the absence of empire building the nine year old veteran Spartan soldiers turned back to the usual activities of their age group, these being mainly classified as  Doing Things They Shouldn’t Be Doing In Places Where They Shouldn’t Be.

Once again a matinee at the Forum cinema provided the main inspiration for this.

This time it was a James Bond movie, Goldfinger, with a character called Odd Job.

Odd Job was the Korean henchman of villain Auric Goldfinger, and in addition to his duties as guard, chauffeur, manservant and golf caddy, in the movie he breaks the thick oak railing of a staircase with a karate chop and shatters a mantlepiece with his foot. He has a black belt in karate, taekwondo and hapkido, is a master at archery and his special weapon is his steel razor-edged bowler hat, which he throws at opponents and which decapitates a statue in one scene. He is strong and silent, as he cannot speak, and looks suitably evil.

His chopping skills impressed us all, and simultaneously with this movie the Man from UNCLE started being shown on UK television, also featuring many scenes involving martial arts. This was unmistakeably the future for a nine year old Spartan hoplite at a loose end.

We discovered the local secondary school, St. Gabriel’s, had a Judo class on Sunday afternoons, and we decided to take the risk and see what we could learn.

I mentioned ‘risk’ because St Gabriel’s had a notable reputation, and it wasn’t at all good.

When your headmaster is known as Battler Boyd it hints that all might not be well in the school. Other teachers’ nicknames also did not fail to be suitably illuminating.

Charlie Lick the Chalk, Eddie Turds, ,Henry Half-A-Beard, Goof, Specky McGecky, Pigsy, Coconut and Flycatcher.

There were tales of every window in the school bus being smashed before it left the school gates, routine fist fights between teachers and pupils and full scale riots with the pupils of Somerdale, the rival Protestant school, on the main road, which lead to the schools having to stagger closing times to avoid confrontations. And this was before the Troubles.

Up On the Roof

However the lure of being taught to Judo or Karate chop opponents was too much, and several of us showed up at the Judo class, excited at the prospect of seeing sundry unconscious bodies sail through the air. The reality was somewhat different.

What we saw was what seemed to be two men in pyjamas holding each other by the lapels and trying to trip each other up. No creeping up behind your opponent and flooring him with a chop to the neck, as we had often seen Illya Kuryakin, the Russian master spy played by David McCallum from Glasgow, demonstrate in The Man from Uncle.

They then tried to get us involved and we would be thrown down by an experienced opponent and had to bang on the ground several times to show we submitted.

As Spartans obviously never ever surrendered we lasted ten minutes then left, walking out into the twilight in utter disgust. At the side of  the school we noticed a ladder leading up to the low roof of a classroom block, about 4-5 metres high.

Up we went, and headed up over the flat school roof, looking for who knows what.

We hadn’t gone unnoticed, and on hearing several shouts we saw about half a dozen bigger St Gabriel’s boys from the Judo class , all clad in white gym gear with tennis shoes running quickly across the roof towards us. We headed to the ladder as fast as we could, and I reached it last.

It became obvious we all couldn’t get down quickly enough, and I was certain to be caught, so I decided the only way out was to simply jump off the roof from a standing start, right down a four or five metre drop. Why? The power of literature. I had started reading DC and Marvel comics, and having spent quite a lot of time studying Superboy and Spiderman I was pretty sure that almost everybody had some degree of super power, so I should be okay.

This lasted until my feet hit the ground, then I was literally brought back down to earth.

I was utterly stunned by the shock, and the neural connection with my legs was utterly lost.

Luckily, my super power turned out to be adrenaline, and as my legs had been pre-programmed, off they went, with my upper body balanced precariously and being dragged along for the ride. The bigger boys in pursuit were amazed I’d not only survived but could still run, and set off behind me, being well equipped for the chase in their white gym gear.

As I ran my brain managed once again to make contact with my legs and steered them towards a boggy field, and sure enough after a hundred yards or so the bigger guys gave up, their gym kits being utterly plastered with mud.

I got back home and took stock of the situation and discovered that although everything was very sore nothing was broken, although I suspect that this may have contributed to my severe back pain in later life. The other Spartans were amazed I had evaded capture.

Prometheus Unsupervised

For a while after our adventure we decided to keep to milder depredations in our street, and just like Homo erectus a million years earlier we soon discovered fire.

Initially we would have a small fire by the kerbside, with crisp bags and twigs being foraged to feed it. We felt like veteran cowboys around the camp fire until our parents caught on and more and more frequently buckets of water stopped the practice- in public at least.

We then went underground. The backs of the streets had an alley running their length, locally called an ‘entry’ where bins were left out for the bin lorry, and often cardboard boxes and newspapers would also be left out for collection- rich pickings indeed. As we were now out of the public gaze we set out on an arson spree that Nero himself would have envied, and we had much bigger fires against the brick walls outside the houses’ back yards. 

We learned quickly that we needed to keep the flames less than a meagre 8 feet high as they then became visible to the house occupants and buckets of water followed with shouted threats as we ran away, jumpers over our heads to disguise our identity.

So we settled for a lower grade of fire and started using wood to sustain the burn and roast uneatable potatoes until we discovered the even more amazing properties of burning plastic.  The fact that it would melt and then burn dripping liquid fire onto anything was fascinating, and we called it ‘lava’ as a result. It was fun experimenting with it on the end of a stick up to the point when someone decided to chase me and it dripped onto my leg. The pain was incredible, and then trying to remove the hardening plastic was even worse.

After it had happened to a couple of us we abandoned our arsonist pretensions completely and went on to something potentially even worse.

Let’s All Make a Bomb

I can’t remember which one of us came up with the idea of making a bomb, but it certainly wasn’t me. To me a bomb was either something cylindrical dropped from an aircraft or the cartoon version of sticks of dynamite wrapped together with a fuse sticking out.

Sugar mixed with weedkiller or fertiliser was certainly not it, and I scoffed at the idea, not realising that within 7 years the IRA would be levelling parts of Belfast using just that mixture due to the sodium chlorate in weedkiller and the ammonium nitrate in fertilizer.

Off we went to the local pharmacy as it seemed it was the only place you could buy weedkiller because of its toxicity, and if the pharmacist was bemused by the sight of four 9 year olds wanting to buy some he didn’t show it. Instead we were subjected to a ten minute talk on handling precautions for poisons and which dilutions were best in which conditions for which weeds. We were somewhat bored, as all we wanted to do was blow things up, and this was definitely delaying the show.

Our gang explosives expert told us all we needed was some sugar, a paint tin, a hammer, a nail and a straw. We got these from various sheds and headed off to a patch of woodland behind some houses at the back of Deerpark Road, a couple of hundred yards away from one of my future addresses. We mixed the sugar and weedkiller together, filling the old paint tin with it, maybe three litres in total, and then put the lid back on the paint tin, hammering the metal lid round the seal until the metal rims had bent over it sealing it tight. We then punctured the lid with a nail until we could get the straw into the resulting hole, we filled the straw with some of the weedkiller and sugar mixture we had kept back and slid it in. The bomb was ready. I still didn’t believe it would work.

Someone lit the tip of the straw with a match and we all ran off to what we thought was a safe distance, giggling nervously.

The explosion at that close range was huge. As it went off I remember seeing a bright flash of flames and then the area filled with choking smoke and bits of shrapnel from the paint tin flew everywhere. It was incredible that at least one of us was not maimed, but we were untouched, but that was unlikely to last as the local residents came flying out their back gardens en masse yelling at us and off we quickly scarpered, terrified of being linked to such a serious event, where we’d surely be locked up.

It was the end of our anarchist phase, but an early introduction to our imminent future.

The Battle of Jamaica Street

Luckily this indolence all came to an end with the Battle of Jamaica Street.

Unexpectedly the Bottom of The Street was attacked by interlopers from Jamaica Street. Belfast is named from the Gaelic Béal Feirste, literally the mouth of the sandbar, giving rise to the name of the River Farset, a tributary of the main River Lagan. The Farset was a large stream at this point close to where I lived, forming a territorial boundary between Etna Drive at the bottom of my street and Jamaica Street itself.

The Jamaica Street army  had dropped in several breeze blocks to enable both a rapid crossing and to save their good black school shoes from water damage and had swarmed across during a street football game. Some of us were involved in the game and immediately rushed for reinforcements

We then managed to beat them back because on rushing forward we had luckily found an ‘arms dump’ on the Etna Drive waste ground, as someone had just tarmacked their front garden and left all the topsoil sods piled there. Sods were excellent on many levels. As they sailed through the air they scattered soil and grit with them, often blinding the enemy as they tried to plot their trajectory, before actually hitting them and throwing soil shrapnel everywhere, leaving the victim filthy and subject to later parental punishment as a delayed result.

We gradually beat them back across the Farset, and just at our moment of greatest triumph I saw their leader Gerard ‘Skin’ Burns, hiding in a hollow, just as he jumped up and threw something from about 30 yards away.  Although Skin Burns was only about 10 or 11, he was already about 5’6” tall with an obvious moustache. My world tilted sideways and then whirled around, as the top of my head had been hit by a large stone, and I had to be escorted from the battlefield by two comrades who brought me home, the lump already rising with some traces of bleeding.

This was the ultimate battle honour, and for days afterward I bore my wound with pride, having to display it several times a day to various friends.

We never again had to suffer invasion from the Jamaica Street army, but the final blow in that conflict only came a year later when I was 10. I was being bullied by Seamus Clarke, a boy who had fought with Jamaica Street that day, and every time I went past his house he’d try to goad me into fighting him, which I refused to do despite his constant scorn.

Eventually one day he started on me again and punched me in the left arm as I walked by. That was the final straw. I swung my right fist fully round and it landed flat on his nose, which erupted with blood, and off he ran home, howling and crying. I had no more trouble.

Today the Farset runs underground in a culvert and the scene of the battle is gone with housing now in its place.

Present inhabitants will never know the historic significance of the site where they live.

The real gun battles that would soon follow would take greater precedence in their memories.

Postamble

The leader of the Jamaica Street army, Skin Burns, had 2 brothers, one called John, unsurprisingly known as Fat Burns, and another known as Rocky Burns, who became a famous rag and bone man. Skin Burns was murdered by the INLA on June 29th,1991 for allegedly being an informer.

The boy I had a fight with a year after the battle, Seamus Clarke, almost deserves his own piece.

He was part of a notable Ardoyne Intermediate Gaelic Football club who won the League in 1968, having been given football strips for the very  first time.

He was in the team with two other boys I knew well, Maurice Gilvary and Ciaran Murphy, a soft and gentle friend of mine.

The team photograph was taken by a Holy Cross teacher, Cyril Murray, who I knew very well, having studied under him.

After the Troubles started Seamus Clarke joined the IRA and was later convicted of 3 murders during a bombing and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1976. 

He escaped from The Maze prison during a mass breakout in 1983 and was never recaptured, and over 40 years later lives in the Irish Republic, still technically on the run from the authorities.

His brother Terence ‘Cleeky’ Clarke ended up as Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams’s personal bodyguard.

Teacher and photographer of the team Cyril Murray was murdered by the UVF at his home in Belfast in 1992. He had just retired and was about to move with his sister Colette to a new retirement home in the countryside. This was a severe blow to me and has stayed with me for many years, as Cyril was instrumental in changing my life.

My friend Ciaran Murphy was kidnapped and murdered by the UDA in 1974.

Maurice Gilvary was also accused of being an informer and murdered by the IRA in 1981.

The Forum cinema closed its doors for good in February 1967, as many cinemas experienced a downturn in audiences as television became more widespread as a form of entertainment. In the 1980s it was converted in to the Crumlin Star social club and remains under that name today.

No more matinees and childhood fantasies in a world utterly changed.