Did I get a hell of a dressing from the old woman coming home ’cause I wouldn’t stay in. I said, “Lord Jesus, I didn’t want to lose my head! I got a slap in the mouth so I got the blazes out of there. Perhaps the next one would’ve put me out.”

I’m not saying a word against it but it was an awful surprise to a young kid that’s never seen it before. I thought the woman went crazy, see. I

didn’t know about the taking the works.

A Divided Community

I will give you a few remarks about the Belfast Riot‘.

My adopted mother told me that her father was in that. He was only a kid of a boy but he was there. I questioned her quite a bit about it and I’ve listened to a lot of stories and, you know, there was a little bad feeling. There was a little bad religious feeling all right. But I’m still convinced from what I can find out that 75 per cent of the trouble was rum. Them was the days of the open vote, long tables. The Liberals were there; the Conservatives were there. If you lined up and you voted Liberal, you got to drink out of that keg; you voted Conservative, you had to drink out of that. The storekeeper was standing there and if you didn’t vote the way he wanted you to vote you got your bill the next day. I personally believe that there was some hot blood. But 75 per cent of it was rum.

It was a strange thing. There was a lot of bloody heads and a lot of sore bones. There was only one Scotchman died from it but he didn’t get it at the Riot. He’d be a close relative of Lester MacRae. Some of the Irish met him on the road in a sleigh and they beat the devil out of him. He died from that.

But there was a lot of the Irishmen laid out. Nobody ever found out if any of them died. In the morning they were all gone. Everything was cleaned up. And, thank God, from that day to this the Catholic and Protestant in Belfast has lived in peace. And pray God they’ll always do the same. A man’s religion and his politics are his own business and I got no right to interfere with it. That’s the way I see it....

But I know darn well that a lot of that was just a little bit of bickering and then a few drinks of rum. And it don’t take much to start a riot. It’s too bad it ever happened but it did.

1. See Introduction

120 BELFAST PEOPLE