TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/061890/0618009.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 13.8 KB | 283 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 36

COVER STORIES

NORTHERN IRELAND

Death After School


By Alessandra Stanley


    Every war has rules of engagement. Even the random bursts
of street violence in Belfast follow a certain code. Chuckie,
11, explains how it works. When instructed to blockade a
street, it is O.K. to steal public vans and buses but not
private cars, because those, he says, "could belong to one of
your own." The summer he turned ten, Chuckie came upon three
teenagers in ski masks hijacking a plumber's van. He
impulsively flung himself into the back of the truck; after the
hijackers crashed the van and set it on fire, Chuckie helped
pour gasoline on the wreck to make it burn faster. He was
operating in strict accordance with I.R.A. guidelines, but his
smile betrays his outrageous good fortune. "They let ya burn
it."

    Blessed with a sweetly impudent face, Chuckie looks like the
kind of kid a homeroom teacher would put in charge of the class
when she had to leave the room. But the I.R.A. is never far
from his mind and suffuses nearly everything he does. Chuckie
delivers the pro-I.R.A. Republican News on his paper route and
twirls a baton at the head of an Irish Republican marching
band. I.R.A. men in the neighborhood all know him. Chuckie
comes from a long line of I.R.A. fighters, from his
grandfather, who fought the British in the 1930s, to four of
his five uncles. He is entrusted with small errands --
delivering a message, watching police and British army patrols
in the neighborhood, watching the neighbors.

    Lowering his voice, he admits he wants to join the I.R.A.
Would he be willing to commit murder? "Kill Orangemen and
Brits, aye," he says with relish. He pauses, then once again
lowers his voice. "But I wouldn't kill one of my own." One of
his I.R.A. uncles was killed by one of his own, shot through
the head for acting as an informant. Chuckie is always mindful
of that.

    The I.R.A. claims it no longer uses children in the war
against Britain, and in a sense that is true. The war in
Northern Ireland has changed since the early 1970s, the days
and nights of street fighting that any child could join. The
bomb attacks and assassinations that the I.R.A. carries out
require only a few specialists and a degree of secrecy that
kids could only jeopardize.

    When "the Troubles" flared anew in 1969, children who were
under 16 and too young for the I.R.A. rushed to join the Na
Fianna Eirann, a group created in the early 1900s as an Irish
patriot's answer to Baden-Powell's John Bullish Boy Scouts.
Members did a lot more than sing folk songs and hike; they
fought, and the authorities made no distinction between Fianna
and I.R.A. suspects. Fianna members had their own uniform, and
the black shirts, berets and sunglasses gave even small
children a scary paramilitary look. The youngsters became a
macabre part of the pageantry in every I.R.A. funeral cortege.


    The I.R.A. broke up the formal structure of the Fianna after
the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and British intelligence
forces had too often managed to squeeze information out of its
members. The numbers of Fianna children who were killed, not
just in riots or military operations, but in accidents as well,
were also bad for public relations.

    The I.R.A. still has a youth wing to instruct the sons and
daughters of Republican families in Irish history, teach them
the shadowy rules of urban guerrilla warfare and screen them
for paramilitary service. John, 16, joined the youth wing when
he was 13, and his early years mainly consisted of reading
books, learning Gaelic and, to his frustration, painting
posters and marching. "We've been protesting for 20 years
against the Brits, and they've never taken any heed," he says.
"They take heed of war."

    John plays drums in a Republican band, the only legal way
for kids in Belfast to flaunt their defiance. Like almost all
Catholic ghetto kids, he's been in and out of trouble with the
law since he was a child, but he has been extra careful since
his last arrest two years ago. He wears his brown hair short,
but not punk short, and he has no tattoos or earrings. He wears
a blue Windbreaker and jeans. He is earnest, painstakingly
sincere and a walking encyclopedia of the I.R.A. party line --
he has carefully shed any trace of the sly, irreverent wit
common to his neighbors. John has been trained in firearms,
explosives and withstanding police interrogation, and admits
that he has assisted in a few "operations." He won't say a word
about what or when or how.

    Even in his pro-I.R.A. neighborhood, John is an exception.
Most kids linger on the periphery of war, bystanders steeped
in inherited hate, armed mainly with taunts and rocks, whipped
into street violence when the I.R.A. feels the need. In
Republican families, loyalty to the cause is instilled by
grandparents, fathers, aunts; family scrapbooks are filled with
snapshots of funerals and marches, and fading newspaper
clippings of killings and arrests, not weddings and school
recitals. But kids take to the streets primarily because it's
"good crack" -- Irish slang for fun. To the kids, throwing
stones and bottles is a game, an illegal act sanctioned by
adults, and the best release from boredom. Six-year-olds will
scoop up a stone and hurl it at a passing police van as
smoothly as a beachcomber skips stones across the waves.

    In the Belfast neighborhood of Ardoyne, a brick wall
separates the Protestant and Catholic working-class
neighborhoods, concealing the fact that the terraces of narrow
houses are the same on each side. There is a small door in the
wall, but the children never pass through it. Ciaran, 12, who
was all swaggering belligerence around the British troops,
mimicking an English upper-class accent to shout "Bloody
buggers" as they passed, goes within 5 yds. of the door, then
stops. He won't say why; he just knows that behind it lies
danger.

    In fact, there is nothing but stillness behind the wall. The
streets are empty save for two Protestant boys, Robert, 13, and
Frankie, 15, sitting on a stoop, doing nothing. Neither one has
ever gone within 10 yds. of the wall. Even at 20 yds., the
slightest sound from the other side prompts them to run like
startled deer.

    They are bored. Protestant neighborhoods are not patrolled
by the British army or the RUC; there is little street life and
to the residents, the enemy is an invisible force behind a
wall. Robert, younger but more spirited, wants out of Belfast.
He hopes to immigrate to Australia someday. Frankie is less of
a schemer, more of a follower. His father is a member of the
U.D.F., the Ulster Defense Force, one of the Protestant
paramilitary groups. He doesn't know what he will do when he
grows up, except perhaps end up like his father. "I dunno," he
says listlessly, "maybe I'll join something."

    There are Protestant paramilitary groups, and they have
their own youth wings, but there is no occupying force to
oppose. Kids in Protestant neighborhoods do not riot or throw
stones. Attacks on Catholics have decreased over the years, and
the assassinations are carried out by the men. "We've never
been able to mobilize the young the way the Catholics have,"
explains U.D.F. leader Tommy Lyttle. "There never has been that
same depth of feeling. Fighting against something is more
attractive than defending it."

    There are plenty of kids in Belfast who reject either
option. Some of them opt for "joyriding," a relatively new
plague, a widespread, nonpartisan and deadly display of
juvenile delinquency that equally confounds parents, the
paramilitaries and the police.

    Joyriding in Belfast is a very different sport from American
Graffiti-style cruising. Kids steal a car, then speed through
the streets, too often crashing through police barricades or
into oncoming cars. Because the cops tend to start shooting at
the first glimpse of a careering stolen vehicle, joyriders will
place a four- or five-year-old up against the back window to
discourage the fire. Afterward they often strip the car and
sell the parts. The joyriders grab cars from Catholic more than
from Protestant neighborhoods, so the I.R.A. has taken to
kneecapping those whom they capture. For every child who wants
no part in civil war and wants to go to America, for every
child who dreams of joining the I.R.A., there is a ghetto kid
who has no dreams and who lives for the present, finding the
instant, brief thrill of joyriding worth the risk. It's
senseless, except that these kids have become inured to risk,
and joyriding is the one violent activity in Belfast where the
kid is in control, steering his own danger.

    Joyriding has become an addiction among the hoods, as the
hundreds of repeat offenders who have been arrested by cops or
shot through the knees by I.R.A. gunmen attest. It's also a
curious form of rebellion; to most hoods, both the "peelers"
(the cops) and the "Provos" (Provisional  I.R.A.) are hostile
authority figures, equally loathed and feared.

    Yet the hoods are always conscious of the rules. Simon, 15,
a Roman Catholic and a car thief, passionately insists he hates
the Provos, hates the cops, but he still knows what side of the
civil war he is on. He was in the neighborhood of New Lodge the
night of the biggest riot in Belfast last August, throwing
rocks alongside the pro-I.R.A. teenagers he normally shuns. He
makes a distinction between the thrill of joyriding and that
of rioting. "Joyriding is for fun," he says earnestly. "Rioting
is because you hate."

    Barricading streets, burning cars and tossing petrol bombs
are mostly summer events, when there are anniversaries to
commemorate, school is out and nights are warm. It's a time
when the air of Belfast is thin with the promise of excitement,
and mothers pray for rain. "The lads don't go out and fight as
much when it's raining," says Betty, 33. Four of her five
brothers have done time, and her three sons are all adept at
making petrol bombs. Even the six-year-old, whose forehead is
blackened by a burn mark he got while making a petrol bomb,
won't stay inside when a barricade goes up.

    A hurricane could not have prevented the riot in New Lodge
that took place that summer night. Aug. 8 was the 18th
anniversary of internment -- the day the British carried out
a mass roundup of suspects -- and it was marked with blazing
bonfires in every Catholic neighborhood. For weeks, the kids
had been preparing for it, collecting wood, tires, old
furniture, anything not nailed down. That afternoon the children
had also been gathering milk and beer bottles to make petrol
bombs for "after." The police came by at 5 p.m. and smashed the
bottles with their rifle butts, but the kids still had nearly
1,000 hidden away. "Enough to last the night," as one
17-year-old, a ski mask tucked in his back pocket, cheerfully
put it.

    At midnight neighbors stand around, talking, drinking beer,
watching as the bonfire bursts into a wall of heat and forces
the crowd against the houses. Older people step back with the
aplomb of suburbanites watching Fourth of July fireworks, while
children gallop through the sparks. The crowd screams with
pleasure when flames shoot upward and set ablaze the Union Jack
atop the heap.

    As the fire subsides, so does the crowd. A few boys start
throwing petrol bombs, forcing the police vans to rumble
forward. Then the etiquette of the riot begins, as predictable
as it is dreary. Teenagers turn back and hurl more petrol
bombs, the police reply with rubber bullets, and the rioters
hide in alleys and doorways. One or two smaller boys reappear,
picking their way through the narrow cracks in the violence.
Brendan, 12, delivers a report. "Peelers coming up Sheridan
Street." When the bomb tossing and running resume, he vanishes.
The younger boys keep the danger in mind. "Rioting is good
crack," Brendan later says sarcastically, "as long as you don't
get hurt."

    Seamus Duffy, a 15-year-old boy from the nearby neighborhood
of Oldpark, went to New Lodge that night looking for
excitement. He never came back. Sometime around 1 a.m., he and
a friend were walking down a street in New Lodge, headed for
the epicenter of the riot. He was hit in the chest by a plastic
bullet, crumpled to the ground, blood oozing from his mouth,
and died before he reached the hospital.

    Overnight a shrine rose at the place where he was killed,
a lace-covered altar laden with plastic flowers in vases,
Madonna and Christ icons, and a photograph of the boy. Above
it a cardboard plaque read, S. DUFFY MURDERED BY RUC AUGUST
9TH, 1989. Along a wall near Duffy's house, someone wrote in
giant white letters, 20 YEARS ON AND STILL MURDERING CHILDREN.
His funeral, a nightmarishly slow procession, overflowed with
grief.

    To the cops, Seamus Duffy was a rioter who got what he was
asking for. To his parents, he was an innocent bystander,
gunned down by the heartless enemy. To the English public, he
was all but invisible. The Sunday Times of London issued a
happy postmortem on the anniversary, calling it "one of the
most peaceful fortnights in the present troubles . . . only one
British soldier was killed, as a result of an accidental
discharge of his gun."

    The afternoon after Duffy's funeral, three teenagers
hijacked two postal vans, drove them to the spot where Duffy
had died and set them afire. Liam, 13, one of the car thieves,
watched the flames with quiet satisfaction. He was not in very
good standing with "the lads," having been thrown out of his
Republican band the previous year for joyriding. But this
hijacking was approved, and this time Liam was working within
the rules. "It's 'cause the wee one was killed," he said. Liam
was back with his friends, and he was happy.