retreated and escaped.
Early one morning, I came upon the charred ruins of a car that must have been highjacked the night before. Later that day, while I was at the home of one of the city councillors from People’s Democracy, there was a loud explosion nearby. We raced outside and discovered that the Irish Republican Army had fired a mortar at a Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks a few streets away.
From the window of my hotel room, I could see the letters “FTQ” in white paint on a red brick wall that ran alongside the roadway. I found that perplexing because those were the initials of the largest trade union federation in Québec. I knew the hunger strike had generated a great deal of international solidarity in the preceding months, including from some labour organizations in Québec. Nonetheless, I was surprised to see the FTQ’s initials on a wall in West Belfast. One day I mentioned this to someone. When the laughter subsided, I was told, “FTQ stands for Fuck the Queen.”
During my stay, the local H-Block committee that was campaigning in support of the prisoners’ demands decided to stage a demonstration in front of Belfast city hall. Any such action was likely to meet with swift repression. The demonstrators chose not to march down the Falls Road towards city hall because they would be stopped before they got there by the police or British soldiers. Instead, people entered the city centre in small groups, and then at the appointed hour, emerged in front of the city hall for a rally where a sound system suddenly appeared.
I arrived just as people converged on city hall. Fergus O’Hare, one of the PD councillors and a spokesperson for the national H-Block committee, approached the microphone. Before he said more than a couple of sentences, police emerged from all directions. He was grabbed and tossed in the back of an armoured police van. Someone else began to speak and he, too, was nabbed. O’Hare tried to escape from the rear of the vehicle but was roughed up and pushed back inside.
I had borrowed a friend’s camera 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, 