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

by Tim Pat Coogan

For in the Catholic ghettoes, given the paratroopers’ record and the experience of the shoot-to-kill policy and all that had gone before, a very special significance had been attached to the Clegg affair. Just as when one enters the home of a hunter one can see at a glance from the trophies on the wall where his interests lie, so mural culture has traditionally expressed the strident emotions of the Six County streets. Although Tory spokespersons such as Lady Maitland flooded the TV screens to explain that the peace-keeping Clegg’s case was different from that of terrorist killers who deliberately went out with their weapons to kill people, TV images of another sort had already seared the minds of Nationalist viewers with disbelief. The huge, crude wall-painting in Clegg’s barracks, which no-one had the wit to obliterate before a visit by Neil Kinnock brought the cameras into the mess-room, is one of the best known and oft-repeated clips of the Troubles. It shows a bullet-holed, crashed car, with a bloody, dead joy-rider, hanging from an open door. The sound of bursting petrol bombs was Belfast’s answer to that vision and to Lady Maitland’s arguments.