Film - TROUBLED  

Transcript with TC for Speaker names, lower Thirds

 

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Belfast, Northern Ireland

 

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The Troubles, a violent conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland, started in the late 1960s and ended in 1998

 

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Nobody wants to go back to the way things were. What is needed is trust. That’s the key factor than anything else. We need to trust one another.

 

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Norman Reilly

Owner Taxi Tours Belfast, political tour guide

 

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Riots in Belfast, 2021

 

 

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Part of the agreement was that these paramilitary groups were going to disappear; 25 years they’re still going, and it is as active as they were 25 years ago.

 

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Gareth McCord

Lost his brother

 

 

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3500 civilians lost their lives. Most of the murders were never solved.

 

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The British Government now want to draw a line under the past and grant an amnesty to all perpetrators.

 

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We need a proper open investigation into the whole of what went on here in the past. Without that, it’s another cruelty that’s putting it onto the next generation of young people who are coming through, who shouldn’t have to be fighting the case for something that happened sometimes up to 50 years ago.

 

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Paul Gallagher

Trauma therapist

 

 

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If the law was passed in this form, none of the perpetrators would ever be held accountable.

 

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I think one of the most important things is we don’t ignore the past and try to forget it because I think that’s a big mistake we’ve made here. The Good Friday Agreement was signed and it was seen as a magical fix-it-all and it really wasn’t.

 

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Amy Rafferty

Activist

 

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Troubled

A film by Patricia Wagner

 

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Living in Belfast during the Troubles was a tough time for everybody but as a teenager we knew no different, so I love Belfast, I love the people. Obviously, things are a lot better than what they were before. Hate the weather. The weather is rubbish, but I love Belfast. It is my city. My home is here, my business is here and my family is here as well.

 

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Norman Reilly

Owner Taxi Tours Belfast, political tour guide

 

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It was one of the major hotspots in the UK and if not Europe, they said it was part of the 4 B’s that people did not visit. Belfast, Berlin, Beirut and Bosnia. And Belfast was one of those cities that had a lot of problems regarding terrorism, gun attacks and bomb attacks.

 

 

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I think people want to learn about it. They’ve seen this on the News through the years so it’s all about education. We get a lot of people from southern Ireland, a lot of people from the UK, Europe, America, Australia, basically all over the world and anybody who comes to Belfast, it’s the political tour, they want to learn about the recent history of what happened here.

 

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Ireland was under British colonial rule for over 600 years. During this time, there were repeated uprisings.

 

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In 1921, Ireland gained independence, but six counties in the north remained under British rule.

 

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In the 1960s, the conflict in Northern Ireland intensified. The troops sent by the British Government did not help to end the conflict. In 1998 a peace agreement was finally reached.

 

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While there has officially been peace for the past 25 years, the 800 metre Wall “Peace Line” still separates both communities in Belfast.

 

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The gates between the areas are still locked every night.

 

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This is 2023. These people here, they aren’t ready for these to come down. Still things come over the fence in these present days. Stones, rocks, bottles and this is what we need on both sides of our community to stop. Stop teaching the kids the hatred and maybe one day the walls will be able to come down and people don’t have to live in the shadows of them. But the fear is there, they’re not ready to come down.

 

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Kevin  Rafferty

Political tour guide, Taxi Tours Belfast

 

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We need trust one another. There’s always that barrier up. We are restricted to where we can and can’t go because of our religions. You know, as I said I’m a Protestant. I go into the Catholic area every day, do the tour. Would I go into a Catholic bar for a pint of beer? No, because you are worried, if somebody finds out you’re a Protestant that they might confront you, you might not be welcome.

 

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Norman Reilly

Owner Taxi Tours Belfast, political tour guide

 

 

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West Belfast, a Catholic area.

 

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Paul  Gallagher was shot in his own home in an ambush by loyalist paramilitaries.

 

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I was hit six times, so bullets came in this side and some of them came out that side. Damage to my lung, to my spleen, to my spine, to my femur; all sorts of damage. So I was going in and out of consciousness, basically dying on the chair and that was that.

 

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Paul Gallagher

Trauma therapist

 

 

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Northern Ireland at one stage was supposed to have had the most people with post-traumatic stress disorder on record. Now, it’s obviously a place that had 30 years of ‘low intensity conflict’, as it’s called. But it’s actually, to the individual it’s high intensity. It’s in your face. You live with it every day, wake up every morning. And then that gets passed on down to their children because the people can’t cope with their pain, and they can’t cope with their injury. And their children then start to pick up what’s known as trans-generational trauma too, so we are a damaged society.

 

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It’s a big puss-filled boil that keeps on getting bigger and bigger over the years and it’s full of injustice, it’s full of grievance. So what we need to do is clean the wound and then it will heal.

 

 

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Wave Trauma Centre, Belfast

 

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Family members of victims from both sides come together to watch a film about the Troubles.

 

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I think I actually walked out at one point. It just brings the trauma back really.

 

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Linda Molloy

Lost her son

 

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Victims want this over. Victims want closure. Victims don’t want to be going to the court every year, don’t want to be fighting for justice every year. They want the justice. They want the truth. They want all these things but what the Government is doing is just saying, no, victims aren’t getting anything anymore. And that’s just not good enough.

 

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Draw a line in the sand and move on. That’s my opinion. It’s not going to change the past. We can’t change the past. The past has happened. But the future. We need to have a brighter future for ourselves and for our children. But again, not everyone speaks like the way I speak. If I had… if somebody had killed my father, you know, and the murderer is still on the streets to this day, I’m wanting justice. So I can see where people are coming from.

 

 

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Norman Reilly

Owner Taxi Tours Belfast, political tour guide

 

 

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In 1997 Gareth’s brother Raymond was abducted by loyalist paramilitaries and brutally beaten to death.

 

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 What age was he there? Primary school. What age is this?

 

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That’s about six or seven. Are we the same age here?

 

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 Eight, maybe.

 

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Politicians for here, from here for years, engaged and practised sectarian politics, which my family disagreed with. Now they’ve went a stage further. The sectarian politics that they were engaged with caused thousands of murders. And now they’re saying all those victims don’t even deserve an investigation. This wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world.

 

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Raymond McCord

Lost his son

 

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It has affected my health massively. I’ve had hip replacements, spine operations, and it has been explained to me that after all these years, trauma does develop in the body and comes out in some form. It has affected my mental health. You know, I was… I attempted suicide.

 

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Gareth McCord

Lost his brother

 

 

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There have been 160 conflict-related killings since the Good Friday Agreement was signed. Those who killed Raymond were responsible for numerous other murders, which were covered up or never investigated.

 

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It’s an estate that’s controlled completely by paramilitaries; under their control with everything. Nobody can speak up about the crimes, the drug dealing, the racketeering, extortion. Nobody can say anything and if they do they get attacked and put out. So, this here, this is our local community centre; this here is meant to be for the community, but the local paramilitaries used it and the way the paramilitaries used this here is as their base to control the community, and the police allowed it to happen. Every Sunday.

 

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The Good Friday Agreement completely failed. It never addressed the issues and tensions within communities. If both our communities are completely impoverished, there’s people using foodbanks, struggling to heat their homes, everything. And focusing on these kind of identity issues completely takes away from it. And when riots and these flare ups happen, there’s almost a fetishization of the violence here and it’s “Oh, they’re going to go back to the Troubles”. But that’s not the case. Like every other week, there is a bomb scare. We are just used to that. It never went away. Those tensions are always there.

 

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Education is obviously vital but it is not mandatory at the minute in our curriculum to learn about the Troubles and the civil rights movement and it’s particularly important to stress that there was a civil rights movement. And I feel like if young people on both sides of the community properly understood the fight for civil rights and where it came from, the ideals of young people would change and there would be a lot more understanding.

 

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Amy Rafferty

Activist

 

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The statistic is there’s more people have killed themselves since the Good Friday Agreement than died during the thirty-year war. A huge reason is failure to address the conflict and the war that had happened. You know, when you put nearly two generations through a civil war and then sort of act as if it never happened, or try and pretend it didn’t happen, the impacts, PTSD and all the sort of psychological issues and problems that are going to arise from that just haven’t been addressed and all that plays its part then in us having these horrific suicide statistics.

 

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Conal MacMathúna

Activist

 

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One of the great issues with the North was when the Good Friday Agreement was signed we almost decided that that was it and we were going to move on and ignore the past, which has just left families still fighting for justice 20, 30-odd years later and it would be selfish for me to say “well, I wasn’t born then, I don’t want to think about it”. And you have to learn from the past to build a better future.

 

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A society that isn’t segregated is obviously ideal. But what you have to understand about the North and Belfast and Derry, the cities in particular, is they’re segregated on purpose and they were segregated by the British Government. So it really isn’t as simple as just saying “Right, Catholics can go to Protestant schools and vice versa” because our communities are so shut off. So it does require complete restructuring of society. So I mean I still wouldn’t really feel comfortable walking through a Loyalist aera on my own; so it’s a genuine fear.

 

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We live in a society that is struggling, and the best way to fight that is to fight it together. And I think that’s what’s going to bring young people especially together more than anything, because young people are going to university, and they can’t afford houses and they can’t afford to move out. And that’s what’s going to bring young people together rather than I’m Irish, you’re British and we’re going to argue over it. I think young people care less and less about that now.

 

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I don’t think I will see a huge fundamental change in society here in my lifetime. I just don’t think it will happen because it’s not just about identity, it’s about so many other things. So even if tomorrow we all loved each other and we all got on and we were all friends, there would still be so many issues here that need to be addressed.

 

 

CREDITS:

 

Producer and Director: Patricia Wagner

Camera: Patricia Wagner  Karin Moser  Marta Faye  

Drone: Marty Faye

Editing: Patricia Wagner

Grafic: Melinda Gelpke

Production Assistant: Sandy Haemmerle

Music:  Ramon Kramer

Archive: Peter Heathwood, CAIN Archive