The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

The techniques learned in such encounters might have been seen in action had one witnessed a Belfast riot in, say, the Clonard district during the early 1970s. The scene would have been one of swirling confusion, seemingly uncoordinated chaos: stone-throwing youths shouting insults at troops or police; the sight and sound of exploding petrol bombs or the detonation of coffee jars stuffed with explosive; the sound of the army riot squads beating their batons on their shields, or the cries and curses of struggling men and exhorting women. But if one looked more closely one would have become aware of older men standing along the street, or outside the door of a pub, signalling inconspicuously to the younger men. Then one would subsequently notice a bomb hurled here, a sudden surge by the rioters there. Or maybe, if one happened to be in certain houses, the crackle of a walkie-talkie transmitting a message along the lines of: ‘Another patrol coming up Dunville Street. Open up a second front on the Kashmir Road…’ There would be more crackling bursts on the walkie-talkie and suddenly a group of lads, who had quite possibly been at school with Gerard McAuley, would be rampaging down the Kashmir Road, creating a new focus of attention for the army.