jslarkin

In Part One of explaining The Unpatriot Game series, I mentioned that in the first three books, that the main characters are young teenagers. I’d like to add that you’ll either love or hate some of them, and for those of you who grew up in the early 1970s as a teenager, may well find your own stories told to your kids and grandkids of those times, confirmed.

I also believe I’ve managed to recreate the atmosphere that existed then, and the characters, good, bad, indifferent, and underhanded, all reflective of the times, and looking forward to some feedback from the readers.

However, it should be said that in the aftermath of the 1969 Pogrom, the British Army within hours of their arrival, were not only welcomed, but were befriended by the Catholic people as their saviours, and soon many young soldiers were enjoying the hospitality of their adopted families in many streets of St Peter’s parish. Some becoming constant visitors to numerous homes for evening meals for quite a while after their arrival, all somewhat distasteful to the older republicans, who craved a war with the enemy, namely the British government. So, even though British soldiers had not attacked anyone, the old historical grievances remained, and soon enough fraternising with the enemy became an issue to be confronted.

Problem was though that no one knew the army was the enemy. They certainly didn’t, and young women were enjoying these new people, many of them around the same age as they were, and all of them familiar with the new pop-music scene. No less so than in the army discos frequented by some young girls, and in Republican Belfast; seen as a serious violation of a code that they were as yet unaware of, and when paramilitary injustice came, it was swift and ruthless.

The accused were subjected to kangaroo courts were found guilty, even if they were Innocent, then they were beaten, tarred and feathered, and if there was no tar, paint the substitute. A number of them had heir hair hacked from their scalps with Stanley blades when no scissors were available, and a Placard either placed in their hands, or taped to the lamp post they were tied to, declaring them Soldier Lovers.

But, what the armchair generals failed to understand was the fairy-tale scenario and magic attached to these heroes. Not only from the young women and teenage girls, but some Irish Mothers, who believed a debt of gratitude was owed to these saviours with different accents. To them the soldiers were saviours could do no wrong, and they didn’t – until the honeymoon period ended due to an illegal curfew put in place in St Peter’s parish, not just the lower falls part of it.

For those of us who went through that war, The Troubles as it is known, is not the complete story, and while some so-called experts think it is, they didn’t live among us and didn’t go through what the people who lived there went through. There’s also those who want anything and everything to do with the Troubles, to disappear, people who were double agents, their handlers, particularly those connected with republicanism, and we now know that the british agencies, and members of special branch controlled people within republicanism, and loyalism, at the very top.

There’s been quite a number of stories that have popped up from time to time through the years about those troubles. Some were in regard to interviews with people who were born around 1988/89/90, and who related their stories of ‘the war they grew up in’ when they actually missed the main part of that war which was the 1970s, and the early part of the 80s. A war that was basically over with the coerced deaths of Ten Hunger Strikers. Pawns sacrificed in a number of dirty side-deals that saw republican gangsters enhance their own selfish futures.

Although The Unpatriot Game Series, is fictional, you’ll recognise much that is in them if you were a witness to those times, not something you could ever forget, and our city was never the same, the people were never the same. Families and communities suffered so much, and they still do, because the GFA only really benefitted those now known as ‘Government Paramilitaries’ that’s those who signed up to the GFA. I call them criminal cartels, gangsters, and 24 years on from that Bad Friday Agreement, the scumbags work together in the distribution of drugs and continue to ensure that families on both sides of the communities not only suffer, but control them through fear and violent promises.

I love the city of my birth, and it pains me to see how those scumbags control the communities and poison our children, poison our future with drugs, but that part of that GFA was affording the gangsters ‘pass by jail tickets’ that they can wave at the police, ensuring their freedom to do whatever they want. That they’re new scumbag recruits since 1998 can also get away with nasty things because they are covered by the dirtier-underhanded, side deals of that GFA, that protects their overlords, is wrong, and time those tickets, and the dirty side-deals were removed. They are nothing more than cartels, they know nothing about real work, and they control the areas, not the cops. They laugh all the way to their bank books, their holiday homes, and time shares. Fact is even when they are caught red-handed, they are free to go on a holiday, doesn’t that tell you something? Think about it…