The Times We Lived In: November 27th, 1978

Somewhere in caption heaven, there exists the perfect line to accompany this news photograph. You’re welcome to have a go at finding it if you like. I’ve been at it for a while now, and the best I’ve come up with is “Cur-few” (not bad), or “Paws for thought” (groan). So I’ll desist before I even mention “guard dog” or “line of dog-gone duty”. Or worse.

The story in November 1978 was that despite advance sabre-rattling and a heavy police and British army presence, a banned Republican march in Armagh passed off peacefully.

Our photographer, who had been despatched northwards and was doubtless preparing himself for scenes of confrontation, violence and distress, instead recorded this eye-opening image. At the police barricade on Armagh’s Ogle Street (another caption possibility) a stern line of uniformed RUC men are fearlessly heading off, well, a harmless mutt.

While they stare at the camera, a phalanx of hostile body language - folded arms, grim faces, leather gloves – the dog watches them as it high-tails it smartly across the road. The fact that it’s one of those scruffy, ultra-cute dogs with unruly, curly coats who often land the lead role in Disney movies about perky pooches shouldn’t make a difference – but it does, somehow.

So, too, does the fact that the photographer places us behind the animal, and quite low down, allowing us to see what the dog sees, just for a second. But the uncompromising horizontal line of police and barricades pulls the eye back to the bigger picture. The errant pet becomes a symbol of normality in the midst of a situation that is anything but normal.

It’s easy, nowadays, to smile at a picture such as this: which tells a story in itself – of just how far we have come since the dark days of the late 1970s. At the time, there was little to smile about in the North. No wonder the sub-editor, on the day, simply added the following caption to the picture: “Police barricade in Ogle St”.