The Town I Love so Well,  by Phil Coulter.

“In my memory I will always see
The town that I have loved so well.
Where our school played ball by the gas yard wall
And we laughed through the smoke and the smell.”

“In the early morn the shirt factory horn
Called the women from Creggan, the Moor and the Bog.
While the men on the dole played a mother's role,
Fed the children and then walked the dog
And when times got rough, there was just about enough
But they saw it through without complaining.”

“But when I returned oh my eyes how they burned,
To see how a town could be brought to its knees.
By the armoured cars and the bombed out bars
And the gas that hangs on to every breeze.
Now the army’s installed by the old gas yard wall
And the damned barbed wire gets higher and higher
With their tanks and their guns.”

My first dérive was in Derry City centre, in the late 1960s, an ambulatory time traveller in the historic city and on its walls. It had many fine Victorian buildings before the onslaught of the Troubles. After school, while waiting for my father to finish work, I tramped these hills on the banks of the River Foyle. Looking at the buildings, above and the streets below, viewing from the Embassy Building. Unknown to me, I was a practitioner of psychcogeography in Strabane and then, when I went to Derry. My Dad worked in the Tax Office on the Strand Road. The building was a modern multi-storied office block, that housed a penthouse on the top floor with a spa and on the second floor, a ballroom. It was dark and inviting, a net of balloons hung from the ceiling, and the mirrored ball, often casting light and sparkle, only seen by me on television. While waiting after school, sometimes, in my father’s offices or sometimes in the car, that was parked behind the grand Guild Hall, next to the docks. On cold, wet days, sometimes the Harbour Police took pity on me and let me into the heat of a fire for a cup of tea. Next door was the cattle market. Buy the books here

The British Army used the top floor of the Embassy Building as a lookout post. It had a splendid view of the Bogside. Martin McGuinness, chief of the Irish republican Army in Derry was arrested in October 1969, after being spotted from the Embassy Building. Like the Army, the building provided me with a bird’s eye view of Waterloo Square and Strand Road below, including the police station. I spent many hours watching the goings and comings below. While watching a riot, behind the police lines, at the bottom of William Street, the rioters retreated. Something was happening. Suddenly, a gunman popped out of a roof-top window and fired towards the police and me! I saw it all. (The same thing happened on 18 April 2019, Lyra McKee, a journalist was fatally shot during rioting in the Creggan area of Derry.) The Embassy Building was bombed, so my father had to relocate to an industrial estate in the Waterside, opposite the cityside. During the 1970s, I never socialised in the Waterside, it was Protestant. After the bombing, I got picked up at the end of Craigavon Bridge for our return home to Strabane.

The seeds of the Troubles were inextricably entwined with the history of Ireland, beginning with the Anglo-Norman invasion of the island, in the late 12th century. Colonising British landlords displaced the native Irish landholders. Many Scottish settlers came to Ulster in a colonisation called the Plantation of Ulster, organised by Great Britain, during the reign of King James I. In 1613, Derry city was granted a Royal Charter by King James I and gained the “London” prefix to reflect the funding of its construction by the London guilds during the Ulster Plantation. Ireland, according to Brendan O’Leary, Lauder professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania argues, that the country has been defined by colonialism. The concept of colonialism is a structure, not just an event, its effects range across centuries. Derry-born Seamus Deane, writer, poet, and academic calls colonialism “a process of radical dispossession. …. the naming or renaming of a place, the naming of renaming of a race, a region, a person, is, like all acts of primordial nomination, an act of possession,” as in Doire being renamed Londonderry.                       

I often walked Derry’s 17th-century walls. They are about a mile around and 18 feet thick, and withstood several sieges. Even today, they are unbroken and complete, with many old cannons still pointing their black noses over the ramparts. When The city became known as Londonderry, it was seen as the jewel in the crown of the Ulster Plantations. It was laid out according to the best contemporary principles of town planning. The four main streets, radiated from the Diamond to four gateways - Bishop’s Gate, Ferryquay Gate, Shipquay Gate and Butcher’s Gate, and still exist with many other historic buildings within the walls. The City of London sent master-builders and money to rebuild the ruined medieval town. Progress of sorts. During its history, it came under siege and attack for over a thousand years. During the Troubles, these gates and the city were sealed off with checkpoints manned by British soldiers and local police. “History is not there for you to like or dislike. It’s there for you to learn from,” Lt Col Allen West, on Confederate history. More Troubles photos here. Buy the books here

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© Hugh Vaughan 2023