Troubled Beginnings

By the time I was born in 1984, the bombing, balaclava-wearing, and road barricading otherwise known as the “Northern Irish Troubles” was fully underway. Like most children born and raised during a civil conflict, other realities outside of my own didn’t exist. For instance, it was completely normal to see soldiers with huge assault rifles rummaging through my mum’s handbag, checking for explosives every time we went shopping, or to see burnt-out cars and buses on our jaunts into Belfast or to overhear conversations about car bombs and ceasefires.

The dubiously named “Troubles” was a civil war between the Catholic IRA and the British Army as well as Protestant Loyalist paramilitary groups. The conflict lasted thirty unrelenting years and like most conflicts was rooted in events that took place long ago. It was a geo-political conflict fought under the guise of religion; a conflict so fundamentally complex that attempting to reduce it to a few sentences is literally impossible.

My younger brothers and sister and I at Christmas. I’m on the right.

The bizarre thing about growing up during the Troubles was that in many ways my life was no different to any other child my age living elsewhere in the UK. We had an idyllic life in the countryside where my siblings and I spent countless hours running through green grassy fields, climbing trees and setting fire to cowpats. We had regular hobbies and attended a small country primary school where we took part in Christmas plays and sports days. At home, Queen, Chicago and Enya were played religiously on our state-of-the-art black stereo player. For the most part, life was very normal yet only twenty miles away, helicopters circled overhead as soldiers patrolled the streets in sinister-looking armoured vehicles; the bomb blasts, car hijackings and sectarian killings were now part of the fabric of daily life in our capital city.

I vividly remember sitting in the back seat of our car travelling behind the khaki green army land rovers. The soldiers who sat holding their rifles, with the doors ajar, would often jokingly stick out their tongues. I remember at the time thinking it was amusing. Another image that remains etched in my mind is that of the impenetrable steel cage monstrosities used to barricade police stations. In Northern Ireland, during the Troubles, government, police, and army buildings were heavily targeted by the IRA. They were under constant threat of mortar attack, and some were only accessible by helicopter. It was only in my late teens that I realized police stations in most countries are just regular brick buildings.

A police checkpoint and army landrovers in the early 1990s

Crossmaglen police station during the Troubles

Despite my seemingly normal existence in Northern Ireland at the time, the deep segregation between Catholics and Protestants was undeniable. Being born on the Protestant side of the fence meant that I was more familiar with the characters of Baywatch than I was with anything remotely Irish. All I knew was that the IRA were Catholics and that meant that Catholics were bad. We attended separate schools, played different sports, learned different instruments, and were exposed to different cultures, all resulting in further alienation from each other.

The first time I properly encountered Catholics was in high school. My school was predominantly Protestant, but a few Catholics attended. At first, they seemed like an entirely different species of human. They had strange names and talked about mass, confession, and Irish dancing competitions, all of which were completely foreign to me. Of course, as time went on, it became clear that we were all essentially the same, dealing with the same teenage problems. The “them and us” mentality was so deeply ingrained that even now, although my perception has drastically changed, one of the first thoughts that come to mind when I meet a Northern Irish person is “I wonder if they are Catholic or Protestant”.

Both sides had ways of determining the background of the other without asking directly. The easiest way to do this was by asking someone where they were from or what school they went to. For the most part Catholics and Protestants lived in segregated areas, especially the working-class communities. Therefore, asking someone where they were from was much too obvious. There were other more subtle ways of knowing someone’s background such as people’s names or the way they pronounced certain words. The underlying motive whether conscious or not was to determine whether you were a friend or foe.

The “Peace Wall” separating Catholic and Protestant communities in Belfast

Looking back, it’s clear that many people lived under a perpetual blanket of fear. For those who lived in high-conflict areas or who had high-risk jobs, the tension was felt on a more visceral level. For others like me, it was more subliminal, often transmitted by family and other adults. I remember my mum once told me a story about a home raid carried out by the army when she was twelve. One day when she was at home with her mum and baby sister when soldiers showed up at her front door with a warrant. They then proceeded to ruthlessly ransack her house looking for a weapon belonging to my grandad. Not long after that, her family were advised to leave their home overnight because my grandad’s name had been found on a paramilitary death list. My mum watched every day as her dad headed out to work, checking under the car for bombs. My grandad later told her that he used to wince every time he turned the key in the ignition.

This was terrifying and incredibly traumatic at the time, but it was just the tip of the iceberg for those who lived through the height of the Troubles. As a young woman, my mum worked as a nurse in a Belfast hospital where she witnessed some victims of kneecappings; a particularly barbaric kind of punishment shooting carried out by paramilitaries. Not only were soldiers, police and paramilitary members at risk, but regular people were being murdered too, simply for being Catholic or Protestant. It was lunacy. Caught in the wrong side of town at the wrong time and you paid with your life. Many people resorted to staying within their own communities and the town centre was a no-go zone for many years because of the bombing.

The final straw and most devastating moment for many Northern Irish people was the Omagh bombing on the 15th of August 1998, when a 500 lb. car bomb, planted by the Real IRA killed 29 people and injured 200 more. Just like the death of Princess Diana and 9/11, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news. I was around 14 years old at the time and had been hanging out with my friend Laura in a car park in a seaside town called Ballygally. I remember feeling shocked and sickened to the core; I couldn’t fathom why so many innocent people had been needlessly killed. I can still remember the images from the news on TV that night as if it were yesterday. That day, somewhere deep inside of me, I divorced my country.

Soon after Omagh, the bombing stopped and after thirty long years, the Troubles were over. In theory that was the case but like with many post-conflict societies, all those years of hatred and aggression do not disappear overnight. Paramilitary activity was still rife in communities all over the country and segregation between Catholics and Protestants continued. Even after the Troubles, I remember having a distinct feeling that violence was never that far away. The murals, flags, painted kerb stones, riots, huge 12th of July bonfires and bands marching in the streets were all evidence of what was still bubbling under the surface.

It was around this time that I was entering the tumultuous mid-late teens, embarking on my own journey of sex, drugs, and punk music. The Troubles slowly but surely faded into the background as I bounded headlong into a void of self-loathing and addiction. As I struggled to navigate hormones, big feelings and being told what to do, getting the hell out of there became my biggest priority.

It was only when I came to Edinburgh in 2003 that for the first time in my life, I felt a sense of spaciousness. There were no British or Irish flags, no sectarian murals and the police patrolled the city in cars, not armoured land rovers. People knew little about the Troubles and even referred to Northern Irish people as Irish. I was surprised at how little people knew or cared about the thirty years of bloody civil war that took place just a short ferry ride away. It was only then that I was able to perceive the whole experience more objectively and reflect on how it may have affected me.

I’d be lying if I said that I fully understood the connection between my early years in Northern Ireland and my subsequent life of booze and drug-fueled mahem. Having done a lot of reading about the effects of trauma, I am willing to speculate that the heightened levels of tension during the Troubles were imprinted on the nervous systems of the young people at that time essentially determining how they engaged with life as adults. One piece of research that really brought this home for me was a study carried out by Research Matters in 2018. It found that,

“People in Northern Ireland experience 20-25% higher levels of mental health illness when compared to the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland also has the highest rate of suicide in the UK”.

As I write these words, I can’t help but feel a sense of imposter syndrome because so many others had it much worse off than me during the Troubles. Understandably, Northern Irish people don’t enjoy talking about that time. There’s a collective desire to put it behind us and get on with life. Yet, as uncomfortable as it is to write about this topic, I can’t help feeling that there is something to be gained by acknowledging this period in our history, not only for me but for everyone who lived through it. For so long, I have been disconnected from the part of me that experienced life at this time, feeling nothing when the subject arises. By reflecting on my experience of the Troubles, I can honour the ways that it has made me who I am today, for better or for worse.

In many ways, I still feel divorced from my country, and I can only assume that this has been one of the motivating factors in moving away permanently with no plans to move back. Each time I go back to visit family, I get the feeling that so much has changed and yet at the same time nothing has changed. What I am certain of is that despite everything that has gone on in my country, I’ve struggled to meet a warmer and more resilient bunch of people.

The Europa Hotel, known as the “most bombed hotel in the world” now stands as a symbol of the resilience of the Northern Irish people.

I also feel compelled to point out that I no longer think of Catholics as “bad” or an entirely different species. In fact, after having travelled and lived in places so culturally contrasting such as South Korea and Africa, it seems absurd to think that I once held that view. Now, I have the opportunity to connect with the Irish part of my identity that wasn’t accessible to me growing up. Even though Irish culture and the Republic of Ireland still feel relatively unfamiliar, I’m enjoying exploring Irish music and dabbling in Irish mythology. I’m even toying with the idea of learning to play the bodhrán!

My borthers and sister and I in 2022. My sister and I are now sober. I’m on the right.

Most interestingly, I’ve recently found out that I have southern Irish ancestry on my mum’s side. It makes me wonder how many families in Northern Ireland do in fact have mixed Catholic and Protestant heritage and if they had been aware of that during the Troubles, would they have been capable of so much hatred.

As I continue to ebb and flow along my own journey of self-understanding and learning how to be in the world, reflecting on the Troubles has compelled me to look deeper. Things are seldom what they seem and almost never black and white. And, until we have lived the life of the other, with the same upbringing, the same cultural conditioning, and the same defining life events, I question whether it is at all possible to claim that we would act differently in their shoes.

By Lauren Burnison

Lauren BurnisonNovember 28, 2023