Belfast Flashbacks, Free Chapter

By Bill Meulemans

On my first full day in Belfast, I went to (what I had heard) was the headquarters of the Ulster Defense Association (UDA) the largest Protestant paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. As it turned out, the UDA had a very modest, dingy, unmarked headquarters in East Belfast with a closed-circuit video camera on the outside wall. I knocked on the door several times before a man in camouflaged clothing opened the door a crack. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him my name and said I wanted to come in to talk about the UDA. He shook his head and said “No” and closed the door in my face. I knocked again and another man came to the door. He said the same thing. This time I added that I just wanted to come in for a cup of tea. His response was, “Nobody just comes to our door for a cup of tea,” but after I refused to take “no” for an answer, he finally let me in.

The place was a mess, with empty beer bottles and pamphlets scattered over the table and militaristic posters hanging on the wall. It was about 11 o’clock in the morning and there were several men inside, mostly dressed in military-type clothing with tattoos on their arms. They all looked at me with disbelief, asking me again, “Why did you come here? Are you a journalist?” Finally, one of them (who seemed to be in charge) washed out a dirty tea cup in cold water with his fingers, poured a cup of hot water, and offered me a tea bag.

Our conversation was strained from the beginning. He introduced himself as “Joe,” and it was three days later that he finally told me his real name was Raymond Smallwoods. Within a few days I discovered that Ray was the major spokesperson for the UDA. It was pure luck on my part that I met him that day. I was full of questions, but on that first morning, he asked me just as many questions about myself. It was the beginning of an unusual friendship that was to continue for several years until Ray was killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

That morning, I developed a personal policy even on minor matters – to always tell the complete truth when dealing with people who operate in the shadowy world of paramilitary fighters. They will find you out, and it is hard to say what they would do if they caught you in a lie. I soon learned that Belfast really was a small place where people watch strangers (like me) who prowl around their neighborhoods. Days later, Ray told me that people down the street had called them on the telephone that morning to tell them about a man with a beard and a camera around his neck who was walking up the street. (I had the camera so everyone would think I was a noncombatant tourist, meaning no harm to anyone.) Sometimes I took photographs, but the camera was really a prop.

I remember them asking me that day if I knew my way around the neighborhood – in truth they already knew the answer, they were just checking me out. On this same practice, years later, I showed one of the UDA people a chapter from a book I had written on American politics. He said, “Oh I read that long ago, we ordered a copy of that book to see if you were on the up and up.”

My relationship with Ray Smallwoods grew into a rather odd friendship that was completely unexpected. He was leery about me from the beginning, but we soon got to know each other better. That first day we talked about an hour at the UDA headquarters before he said he had to leave. I was on foot, so I asked him if he would drop me off in the city center. Before he unlocked his car, he got down on his knees and looked underneath the car, looking for a device that might explode. He explained to me that the IRA used bombs with a mercury-tilt switch that was designed to detonate when the car leaned a bit as it turned the first corner.

During the next week, I discovered that Ray was a marked man. The IRA had tried to kill him several times and they finally would succeed a few years later. But on that first day, I discovered he was also a bit lonely. Ray was very vague at first, but he slowly lifted the veil of secrecy around his personal life. He told me that his youngest son had a learning disability. Ray also admitted that he wasn’t the best husband or father-figure in the world. He had served time in prison for attempting to kill Bernadette Devlin who was one of the best-known Irish republicans. I was to find out later that Ray Smallwoods was known most of all for that unsuccessful attempt on Bernadette Devlin’s life. Also, I was to learn that my association with Ray would be a problem when dealing with Irish republicans. But on that first day, none of that came up.

There is something about riding together in a car for several miles that causes people to talk. At first, we talked about everything, but nothing of any substance. Later, however, we actually became guarded friends. During the next few months, I met his family, went with him into paramilitary drinking clubs, and accompanied him to the prison to meet his friends who were serving time for paramilitary offenses. We became an unlikely duo, talking about the Troubles, always from a Protestant perspective, even though he didn’t believe in God and never went to church.

There were times I had to interrupt him and his friends and remind them not to tell me certain things because I never wanted to hear things I shouldn’t know. We often met in a pub in Lisburn (just 8 miles from Belfast). Because I was with Ray, I was treated as a friend by everyone. The topic usually turned to current problems within the UDA. Most of it was just idle chatter, but sometime I felt they forgot I was an outsider who might have contacts with the other side.

At the same time, I was building my contacts with the UDA, I was trying to develop relationships with Irish republicans in Catholic West Belfast. Again, I used a direct approach, but it fell flat. People who had an association with the IRA were much more difficult to meet because they were constantly under threat by undercover police officers and British agents who were trying to infiltrate their operations. When I tried to “visit” Sinn Fein headquarters on the Falls Road, I met with complete resistance. There seemed to be no way to get past the front door. My old ploy of wanting to come in for a cup of tea was not even close to being successful. The door keeper had dealt with too many clever pretenders. He offered me no hope of getting through to anyone who would talk with me so I had to try something different.

I knew that the Austin black taxis on the bottom of the Falls Road were associated with the IRA, so I started talking with a man who guided people into the proper taxis that would take them into specific Catholic neighborhoods. Charlie Gilheaney (who died later of natural causes) was a friendly man who obviously knew a lot more than he would say to me. My comments about the weather or Catholic neighborhoods were always met with the same smile and nervous laugh. He never told me anything of importance, but he soon got to know my name, and he seemed to enjoy our conversations. It was clear to me that Charlie must have been trusted by the so called “hard men” within the IRA, in part because he knew how to avoid answering questions while appearing to be friendly and open to a complete stranger.

The first day I met Charlie he suggested that I take a tour of Catholic West Belfast in a black taxi. Not knowing anything about this particular driver, I sat in the front seat and began making conversation. I asked if, by chance, he knew a Belfast Catholic musician named Noel (last name omitted) that I happened to know back home. To my complete surprise he said he had gone to school with Noel and had just been talking to Noel’s father that morning. Again, it was dumb luck that “opened the door” through the taxi driver. Within minutes he dropped me off at Noel’s parents’ home in Catholic West Belfast.

Noel’s mother and father were delightful. When I told them I knew their son, they invited me inside and later, on that sunny afternoon after we had lunch, we sat out in the back garden and had a few glasses of white wine. On about the third glass, I told them that Noel had told me a story that I didn’t really understand. He said his father had always presented a pro-British point of view at the dinner table even though Noel knew his father had “no time for the Brits.” Noel didn’t offer a reason, but he said, “When you go to Belfast, look up my da and ask him.” Noel’s father listened carefully to my account from his son.

After hearing the story, he went back inside the house and brought out a single piece of paper that had been folded and unfolded so many times that it looked as though it would fall apart. It was an essay Noel had written years ago when he was in school. The title was, “Why I Know My Parents Love Me.” In the essay, Noel said he thought his father had always taken a pro-British point of view because he didn’t want to increase the anti-British sentiment in the household. Noel went on to write that his father was trying to discourage his son from joining the IRA. The essay ended on the sentence, “I know my parents love me because they don’t want me to “get involved” and end up in an “early grave in Milltown Cemetery.”

As I completed my reading, I looked up to see both of the parents with tears streaming down their cheeks. Noel’s mother said, “After Noel went to bed each night, we looked through his pockets and found out he was already going to IRA functions.” His father added, “We didn’t know how else to stop him so we borrowed money to get him out of the country.” So that’s why Noel ended up in Portland, Oregon.

Later, I recounted that story to Charlie Gilheaney, who showed a wee bit more trust in me as he introduced me to other black taxi drivers who were slowly beginning to tell me about their own lives. It was a very slow and careful process. I applied the same rule I had developed with people in the UDA – always tell the complete truth.

From the beginning, I told the Catholic black taxi drivers that I had contacts in the Protestant community as well. It surprised them at first, but looking back, it was important to be up-front at the beginning because if I were not, the word would soon be out and other drivers would no longer talk to me. Also, I found they had a natural curiosity about the folks who lived across town. After a week or so, they asked me some questions about my “friends” on the other side.

As I was to find out later, political activists in Belfast kept their eye on a person (like me) who asked a lot of questions. The taxi drivers were careful not to make idle comments. I was an unknown character and no one knew for certain why I was so eager to talk with them.

Just from listening to brief comments, I could tell that all the Catholic black taxi drivers I contacted had either served time in prison or had some association with the IRA. But unlike Protestant paramilitary members, these men played their cards very close to their chests. They were slow to trust a stranger. It was a very cautious situation. The drivers were courteous, but purposefully distant. I could tell by the expressions on their faces that they were checking me out. But within a few weeks they began to call me by my first name as I showed up each day at the bottom of the Falls Road.

I was surprised to learn that if I were introduced by one of them as being “a friend,” others would extend themselves immediately. I soon discovered that the Catholics of West Belfast were distrustful of strangers generally, but willing to accept someone who was known by other Irish republicans. As I met more of them, I discovered they already knew quite a bit about me. They had been discussing me when I was not around. It was a slow start, but I actually built some close friendships during several years among those who had learned the hard way not to trust a stranger. In some cases, it took more than a year before they felt comfortable with me.

One of the drivers, who was also a published playwright, wrote a stage play about me in which I (as an American professor) became deeply involved in the Irish Republican Army and a woman who was a double-agent for the British. It was full of intimate details. It almost made me blush when I discovered the things I could have done in Belfast. But near the end of the play, I was ambushed and killed by loyalist gunmen. I read the entire script, but I never showed it to my wife. By comparison, my real life in Belfast was rather dull.

Eventually I developed tentative friendships with several black taxi drivers on the Falls Road. Looking back, I think they came to trust me because I always told them the complete truth about who I was, and my affiliations with Protestants paramilitaries. It would have been so easy to lie or leave out information about my other contacts in Belfast, but I knew that my long-term success was based on being truthful. I never departed from that self-imposed personal policy.

From the beginning I knew that Irish republicans had been involved in a world where a few idle comments could endanger their own safety. I knew if I told them just part of the truth, they would likely find out what I really had done. They were much more careful with me than the men I had met in the UDA. In the earlier stages of our conversations, I avoided controversial topics when I spoke to my contacts on the Falls Road. We talked a lot about the United States and my life as a college professor in Oregon. Our friendship came first, the conflict in the North came up later.

But both my Protestant and Catholic friends were a bit surprised, and a little suspicious, when I told them I had developed friendships with police officers in the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). At first, my paramilitary friends had facial expressions of disbelief, but they were all very interested. I think they were amazed that contacts of this kind in Belfast could actually occur in an accidental way. I shared the stories with my new acquaintances in the UDA and IRA of how I met with the police.

To begin with, one of my relatives back home was a police officer in southern California. When I told him about my travels to Belfast, he asked if I would trade some police insignias and emblems with officers in Ireland. With these badges and pins in hand, I walked into, what I knew, was the most fortified police stations in all of Belfast. There were sandbags all around the building. The station had been bombed recently. I was carefully frisked at the door. Everyone gave me a strange look. They must have wondered: who was this guy with an American accent who had no business coming into a place where everyone was armed? And why is he talking about trading police memorabilia?

The officer at the desk showed no interest in what I was saying, but my voice is loud, and our conversation was overheard by a police officer in the back room who wanted to see what I had. At the beginning, I felt like a door-to-door salesman placing my police insignias on a table while several officers came out and looked on with interest. I gave away all the badges and insignias I had on that first day with the promise I would get something in return from them next time I dropped by. We soon developed a barter system that was agreeable to everyone. The next time I came in they gave me police emblems I could take back to my relative in southern California. It was a very slow process, but it worked.

Purely by accident, I learned that police officers around the world see themselves as part of an international brotherhood. I met several officers that first day (who were collectors) who became friends of mine during the next few years. I probably was the first and only person that came through the door with “free” police badges from the Escondido, California Police Department. The end result was that I soon had a small, but eager clientele of police officers who asked for specific items from the United States. I became the go-between-guy for officers from southern California and Belfast. Who would have imagined that arm patches and official hats would become a currency that opened some doors with the defenders of Protestant rule in Northern Ireland?

Each time I came back to Belfast I carried all sorts of bits and pieces of police uniforms that I traded for police articles of every description. It raised many eyebrows with custom officials when I tried to explain why I had all these objects among my personal belongings. One of my prized possessions today is a police whistle that dated back to 1919 when the police across the entire island were called the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC).

The last year I was in Belfast, one officer gave me a complete RUC uniform. (I had trouble packing the bulky jacket in my suitcase before I returned to the US.) He said he trusted me not to let the uniform fall into the hands of paramilitary members. He jokingly said, “The IRA could cause all kinds of trouble if they got their hands on this uniform.”

After a few weeks, several of the officers knew my name and my association with American police officers. They introduced me to other officers who were also collectors of police memorabilia. One officer took me to his home several miles outside of Belfast to show me his entire collection of uniforms, weapons, and documents that proved the authenticity of each item. There were many items from England, Scotland, Australia, and South Africa.

He kept his collection inside a locked room in his home because he said the IRA were known to pose as repairmen so they could get inside someone’s home and find out whether they were members of the “security forces.” The officer told me that none of his neighbors knew he was a policeman. I found it hard to believe, but he said he never brought his RUC uniform home. According to him, this was common practice among the police, who constantly worried about becoming personal targets of the IRA.

To counter this practice, I found out later that IRA men would park outside RUC stations and follow men home who had probably just taken off their uniforms inside the station. In fact, there was an IRA unit in Belfast that spent a lot of time finding out where police officers and prison warders lived. It turned out that the home addresses were sometimes in error, resulting in some people being killed that were not connected to the security forces.

I had a friend in North Belfast who was shot and paralyzed from the waist down because of mistaken identity as he opened his front door. To make matters worse, his father was inside the livingroom and saw the whole thing and dropped dead from a heart attack. My friend moved out into the country, but his life was forever changed. Sometime later, he and his wife invited me for dinner at their home. I was amazed that he was not embittered by his experiences. Like a lot of folks in Belfast, he adjusted to his new life as a disabled survivor because he had no other choice.

I was surprised by how many folks were eager to tell me their personal stories. One of the RUC men I knew was a police commander. He had about 25 officers in his unit. For some reason, we struck up a friendship. He told me I was the only person he knew that wasn’t British or Irish. As our friendship grew, this officer talked about the dangers of being a RUC man in Belfast. I learned a lot about how it felt to be a police officer in a war zone. I didn’t ask him questions, he just started talking. Slowly his guard went down as he offered his own point of view of why there was a conflict and how he felt about being caught in the middle.

The last time I saw this RUC commander he told me something he said, he just wanted to “get off his chest.” He said his son was a student at Queen’s University and had met a Catholic girl in one of his classes. The son brought his new girlfriend home to meet his parents and they had a nice dinner in which they avoided talking about the conflict. The commander said, “I think my son is going to marry her.” Then he turned his head away from me and said, “If they have any children, I’m not sure I will be able to love them.” He said he was ashamed of what he had just said, but wanted to tell me and see if I thought it was terrible for a man to talk about how he might not love his future grandchildren. At that point I didn’t know what to say.

I never mentioned my personal conversations to anyone nor did I reveal the names of any particular officers. The police, like everyone else, were under fire in Belfast. I found it very important to not provide details to anyone else because the information might get back to the wrong people. For example, one of the RUC men confided in me that he had suffered minor seizures because of a head injury. He told me that he would be laid off if his superiors realized that he sometimes forgot where he was, even when he was on duty. The officer has since then retired and he feels much better.

I wonder whether he feels safe now. I’ve never asked him.

It soon occurred to me that the conflict had three distinct corners: the republicans, the loyalists and the police. All of them were victims in the sense that they felt like they had a target painted on their backs. There were individuals in all three groups who were “marked men.” There had been attempts on their lives. One officer told me that his wife had been shot and wounded when she opened the front door to their home. The damage to her face and shoulder was extensive. Other officers said they moved to new houses several times to avoid being targeted by paramilitaries.

In some respects, the police were more isolated than anyone else. They had no natural support group. They were hated by paramilitaries on both sides and disrespected by many regular middleclass people on both sides of the conflict. Being a RUC officer was a dangerous job with few friends outside the police force.

It was a strange relationship I had in Belfast between myself, the loyalists, republicans, and the police. Many things I knew I had to keep to myself. In some respects, I was three separate people. As I look back, I can see that knowing certain things made it possible for me to understand comments made by someone on the other side. The fact that I was trusted made me very aware of the special situation I had within these three groups. I would never betray my friends in any one of these camps.

But this three-cornered relationship was very sensitive and could be taken the wrong way if I were seen in public with someone from the other side. The most embarrassing example of this happened one day while I was at the Northern Ireland Parliament building at Stormont in Protestant East Belfast. A media friend of mine introduced me to the RUC Chief Constable. He was a very well-known figure who had testified that day at a legislative hearing inside the building. A local TV crew apparently needed some additional silent film footage so they filmed several minutes of the Chief Constable and I shaking hands and making small talk.

That evening, I was with two Protestant friends in a loyalist drinking club. The three of us were sharing a pint and were interrupted by a fourth person who yelled, “Look, Bill’s on TV talking to the Chief Constable!” Protestant paramilitary members regarded the RUC Chief as an enemy. I had a hard time convincing everyone that it was a chance meeting and that I did not know the “top cop” in the RUC. My two loyalist friends kept saying, “It sure looks like the two of you know each other pretty well.” They commented that the hand-shake “lasted a long time.” I don’t think I convinced them that I had no connection with the RUC leader. I was reminded again that Belfast is a small place and people notice who you talk to in public.

As I look back at my time in Belfast, I remember that I was on guard nearly all the time. I was always aware of what part of town I was in, and who I knew that lived nearby. Often, I could feel the stress levels rise if I met someone unexpectedly. One particular day I was walking down the street with a Protestant journalist that I met just a few days earlier. As we walked along a downtown street, a well-known Sinn Fein member peddled by on his bicycle and shouted, “Hey Bill, how are you keeping?” The journalist looked at me with surprise and said, “I thought you were neutral on this conflict.” He hesitated and then added, “Are you one of them?” I assured him that I was not, but I could feel that he didn’t believe me.

There was another chance meeting that caused me real personal embarrassment. A Protestant friend of mine dropped by my apartment for a cup of coffee in the morning at a very inopportune time. It was 15 minutes before a Catholic West Belfast taxi driver was due to come by to pick me up. I was looking at the clock and trying to end the cup of coffee conversation, but I couldn’t break off the meeting. We got outside my apartment door, but as we were standing in the street, my Catholic friend pulled up in his taxi. I was mortified and didn’t know what to do.

The two men knew of each other because I told both of them about my contacts with the other person, but here they were, meeting for the first time, and I had to introduce them by name. Despite the tension in the air, my Catholic friend (with a smile) reached out his hand. The Protestant man shook his hand, but as he did so, he said very purposely, “So what does the IRA have planned for you today?” I was utterly embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say. I just froze and mumbled something about the car was doubled-parked and that we must be going.

As I rode down the street with my Catholic friend, I apologized for the rude remark made by the Protestant man I knew. My Catholic friend just smiled and said, “It’s not your fault Bill. They’ve done worse to me in my lifetime. Don’t worry about it.” But of course, I did worry about it. There were enough hard feelings in Belfast without me causing a new situation full of tension.

But I end this chapter by pointing out that there was one place where sectarian politics didn’t come up at all. It was in a really small city center back-alley pub. The bartender there was a member of the Irish Communist Party. He always wanted to talk to me about the Proletariat and the Ruling Class. When he found out I came from Wisconsin, he asked if I would address the local Communists on the Joe McCarthy era in the United States. (The Communist barman knew that Joe McCarthy came from Wisconsin.) I agreed and spent a good deal of time preparing my address. I knew there would be a lot of questions from the floor.

The meeting was held in a large dingy building down by the docks. The air was blue with cigarette smoke. Despite the atmosphere, I was in reasonably good form. I was surprised that the members were so well-versed on recent American history of the Communists Party in the United States. They knew that the US Congress required every Communist to register as an agent of a foreign power. None ever did. They also wanted to know if I had to sign a loyalty oath before I could teach in an American university. I told them that I did sign a loyalty oath and that it still bothered me at a personal level. The 1950s and 60s were a difficult time in American universities.

But here I was speaking to the only group in Belfast that no interest in the sectarian divide. The greatest concern in that hall was the international struggle of workers around the world. Everything was viewed as a world-wide struggle. They saw the “Irish Troubles” as something that distracted people from the “real conflict” with the British and Irish Capitalists.

The Communists were a small, but militant group in Belfast. They even had their own small pub in a city-center alley that I mentioned earlier. That little (hole in the wall tavern) was the unofficial social headquarters for their party. I never encountered anyone there who even mentioned Catholics or Protestants.

After visiting the pub several times, I was always greeted at the door by my man, the main bartender. One evening he announced that I was being inducted into their “Movement” and given a new Irish name: “Comrade Liam O’Meulemans.” Every time I went to that pub I was called by my new name. We talked only of the Class Struggle. It never occurred to me to find out whether he had been born a Catholic or a Protestant. But later, I assumed he must have been born a Catholic because “Liam” is a Catholic Irish name.