Books

Local history: Reflections on Derry and Donegal’s turbulent past

Book review: Several new releases capture a diversity of viewpoints

British military evacuating Letterkenny in 1922

Paul Clements
Sat Jan 25 2020 - 06:00

The Shantallow area between the old urban boundary of Derry and the border with Donegal is a major part of the cityscape which these days is home to 40,000 people. Between the Collon & the Border (Hive Studio Books, £9.95) by Joseph Martin and Sean Quinn – a people's history brimming with anecdotes – shows that until the mid-1960s it was a rural community made up of hamlets, farms and big houses with a population of fewer than 5,000. The area has many local names, including Sean Talamh (Old Ground), the Middle Liberties, the North Ward, Ballyarnett and Greater Shantallow.

In May 1932 it was thrust into the world headlines. On her historic transatlantic flight from Newfoundland, Amelia Earhart made an unexpected landing in Gallagher's field at Cornshell. Two men, James McGeady and Dan McCallion were mending fences when the plane landed and ran to help. It was leaking fuel and as McGeady was smoking, Earhart's first words of admonishment on Irish soil were: "Put out that cigarette!" This is one of several new books about Derry on history, memoir and political upheaval, as well as the revolutionary period 100 years ago. The Troubles are rarely far away, and in Brendan McKeever's chronology If Streets Could Speak (Guildhall Press, £7.95) he provides a record of conflict-related deaths in the city over a 50-year period up to 2018. The book was published before the death of the journalist Lyra McKee in April 2019.

A reminder of all those who died in Derry and the surrounding area, it details the location, circumstances and date of the events within the political context. It includes, for example, the largely forgotten deaths nearly 40 years ago of two teenagers, Jim Brown and Gary English, in a riot during the hunger strike. They were knocked down and killed by a British Army Land Rover at Creggan Cross on Easter Sunday 1981.

Looking across the city for nearly 150 years, the statue of Rev George Walker was a landmark monument on the walls. The Walker Testimonial and Symbolic Conflict in Derry (Four Courts Press, €9.95) by Heather Stanfiel, published in the Maynooth Studies in Local History series, discusses how a 19th century memorial to a 17th century figure has been so significant to still generate debate, and how it has been memorialised through the cycle of commemorations.

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Walker was joint governor with Robert Lundy during the Siege of Derry in 1689 and was killed at the Battle of the Boyne the following year. His pillar was erected on the Royal Bastion in 1828 and was bombed by the IRA in August 1973 when it crashed unceremoniously to the ground. It has been, Stanfiel states, “a prominent lacuna in the historiography of the city”.

Its destruction came at a time of tension, a period that is examined in The Skelper And Me by Tony Doherty (Mercier, €12.99), his third and final memoir of living through turbulent times. His father, Patrick, was shot dead on Bloody Sunday in 1972, and the author is chairman of the Bloody Sunday Trust.

He lived in the shadow of his father and his release from prison where he served time for his part in IRA activity is charted, as well as the campaign for a new enquiry into the events of that January day. A helpful glossary clarifies some Derry-speak such as barrs (local news), gombeen (wheeler-dealer), gulder (loud shout), palladic (stupid drunk) and wains (children).

Growing up in Derry in the 1960s sparked Gerry Murray's Peace & War: A Maiden City Childhood (NonieG Publications, £9.99). Murray, who had a ringside seat during the Troubles as business editor of the Derry Journal, has tapped into his memory bank. His narrative is enlivened with his time at the CBS and St Columb's College where his classmates and teachers had nicknames. The geography teacher, Sean Moynihan, from Kerry, was known as "Mucker", and reminded the boys that the county should simply be referred to as "the Kingdom … on account of its mountains, lakes and supremacy in Gaelic football"; the history teacher, Dennis Ruddle, from Limerick, was called "Barney Rubble" after a character in the Flintstones cartoon TV series. A phrase by the French teacher Tom Dunbar has stuck with Murray for five decades: "Parlez Anglais, parlez Français, mais ne pas parlez Derryois" – an instruction to speak in a way that would be understood by outsiders.

As a teenager, the author helped with canvassing during a Stormont election campaign by Claude Wilton, a Liberal Party candidate and city solicitor who represented all classes and creeds. “Vote for Claude, the Fenian Prod”, was a catchphrase of both support and derision on the election trail. Although Wilton died in 2008, his name lives on in Claude’s café in Shipquay Street where his memory is honoured in the expression on T-shirts “Say nothin’ till ye see Claude”.

Forging the Border: Donegal and Derry in Times of Revolution, 1911-1925 (Irish Academic Press, £17.99) by Okan Ozseker reflects the build-up to partition in the north-west, challenging long-held assumptions about it. The area was a largely non-violent part of Ireland during this period although it was a time of huge political change with Derry and its Donegal hinterland – once a distinct economic and cultural area – becoming an international frontier and a divided borderland that still suffers the consequences today.

Although it was peripheral in the War of Independence, Donegal became significant with the outbreak of the civil war when northerners fled across the border. In London, a Times correspondent in June 1920 claimed that Donegal was “perhaps, more exactly than any other county, a microcosm of the Irish question”. The author points out that local factors, including religious demography, geography, and the persistence of clerical influence in politics, restricted Republican violence compared with what was happening in southern counties. After partition, Unionism in Donegal was isolated and faced with new realities. Due to intimidation, some people left but most stayed and got on with their lives although the seeds had been sown for a myriad of grievances and problems which would surface later.

Walkers Pillar in Derry was erected in 1828 and was bombed by the IRA in 1973

Derry features prominently in My Days in Troubled Ireland (Nazar Art, £45) by the internationally acclaimed Iranian photographer Kaveh Kazemi who visited the city, and parts of Donegal including Buncrana, in the 1980s. His dramatic images are a snapshot of a troubled country and portray a place of division and sectarianism during some of the worst years of violence. They juxtapose the political strife – whether a march or rally, a riot or a funeral – with the lives of ordinary people and reflect social issues.

Kazemi walks the streets capturing a diversity of viewpoints and political opinions and his unflinching photographs hold up a powerful mirror to that time. Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley both feature in the Derry pages while stark shots show moody locations as well as wall murals testifying to the power of art as historic document.

Paul Clements is a contributor to Fodor’s Essential Ireland 2020