ra for my trip and brought it along to get some photos of the rally. I’d just taken some shots of Fergus being manhandled by the police when I heard a voice yell, “Get that man’s camera!”
Someone grabbed my left hand and dug his nail into the top of my thumb. The pain was intense. Before I could speak, the man said, “Give me the film or I’ll smash your camera.”
I was using a telephoto lens and feared my friend’s expensive equipment was about to be ripped from my hands and destroyed. “I’m just a tourist,” I said. “I was only trying to focus the camera on a telephone pole behind the police van.”
The policeman noticed my accent. “It’s illegal to take photos of the police,” he said while continuing to press his nail into my thumb.
I rewound the film, opened the camera and gave him what he wanted. As he put it in his pocket, I said, “How can I get my film back? I have some photos on there I don’t want to lose.”
The man eyed me for a moment. “My name is Inspector Turklington,” he said. “I’ll be out of the province for the next few days, but you can come by Musgrave Street RUC barracks on Thursday afternoon around two o’clock and get your film after we’ve looked at it.”
In the midst of our exchange, police were driving the remaining demonstrators back towards the Falls Road under a hail of plastic bullets. When I finally met up with Brendan half an hour later, he cautioned me not to go to the RUC barracks. “That could only lead to more trouble,” he said. But I was determined to recover my film and convinced I’d done nothing wrong.
On the appointed day, I made my way to Musgrave Street barracks and explained that I had an appointment with Inspector Turklington. I was ushered into an office and found him seated behind a large desk. His secretary asked if I would like some tea and soon returned with cups and saucers. While we sipped our tea, the inspector asked what brought me to Belfast. I explained that although I no longer had any family there, I’d come over to visit my father’s birthplace in the village of Ballygally, on the Antrim coast, and to see a house he had lived in on Percy Street off the Falls Road.
Turklington shook his head and said he doubted I would find the house on Percy Street because a number of buildings in that district had been destroyed some time ago. He was referring to August 1969, when groups of loyalists invaded several streets in the area and threw petrol bombs into Catholic homes, forcing their residents to flee. In fact, I had already found the house, and though the windows were boarded up and no one was living there, the building was still standing. I kept that to myself.
He handed me an envelope and said they had developed the film from my camera, and I was welcome to keep the enclosed contact sheet of photos. I thanked him, glanced at the sheet, and noticed that all the shots of the rally had been blacked out. He then handed me a new roll of film to replace the one that had been confiscated and wished me a pleasant stay.
Towards the end of my two weeks there, the health of Joe McDonnell worsened. He was a local man from West Belfast and one of the hunger strikers. By this point, he had been without food the longest. A rally was organized in front of the Busy Bee shopping centre to highlight his deteriorating condition. As the large crowd assembled, a British army helicopter circled low overhead. Police and British troops remained at the ready but out of sight.
Most of the hunger strikers were young men and single. But Joe McDonnell was married with two young children. His wife, Goretti, addressed the rally. She made a moving appeal, calling on the Thatcher government to grant the prisoners’ demands and save the life of her husband and the father of her children. Her plea fell on deaf ears. Joe McDonnell died a few days after my return to Canada, and other men joined the hunger strike.
One of the provisions in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which ended the most recent phase of armed conflict, provides a pathway to the reunification of Ireland. A referendum on the future status of Northern Ireland