Tag: Sectarianism
Becoming Irish – Stories of an Indian Community
Connections between India and Ireland have been evolving since at least the 18th century but it wasn’t until after World War Two, that people from India came to Northern Ireland in significant numbers, many of them af...
Giros
Imagine a place of freedom and expression for young people, a place to eat at a reasonable price, a place to create art and play music. An alternative space for anyone who didn’t find the mainstream appealing. Welc...
Joe O Donnell
Reflecting on the housing conditions of his youth, Joe O Donnell explains, “Conditions were all very similar in that they were terrible. Most of the small two bedroom terraced houses in all of the working class areas ...
Aodán Mac Poilin
Aodán grew up on the Norfolk Road in west Belfast with his two sisters, his mother who was an Irish speaker and his father who worked as a civil servant. His parents were avid followers of hurling and Gaelic footba...
Ruth Taillon
Growing up in post WWII Canada, Ruth left home at an early age: “I left home at a very early age following the hippy trail. I was very interested in music and it was exciting at the time. I quickly got involved with t...
Vera Henderson
Vera had a tough start to life. Her mother died when she was only one year old. Her father, unable to manage, sent her to a home until he remarried when Vera was 4 years old. “I don’t remember an awful lot about it be...
Father Desmond Wilson
Father Wilson grew up in the mixed community Ormeau Road area in south Belfast. “Belfast, to us, was an amazing place. When I was growing up I was very fortunate, I was able to go to Saint Malachys Grammar School a...
Mo McDevitt
Mo was born on the Donegall Road in Matilda Street and moved to Ashley Avenue on the Lisburn Road in south Belfast when she was 5 years old. “It was not the Golden Mile, but it was an area of warm people, again the...
Lynda Walker
Lynda Walker grew up in Sheffield, England and came from a working class background. “It was a fairly run down area, we lived in a couple of rooms in the back of a shop, but we moved onto one of the bigger estates ...
Billy Dunlop
After a pleasant childhood spent in Delaware Street on the Ravenhill Road in east Belfast, Billy entered the world of work in the post office as a telegraph messenger at a tender age, “I started at the age of 14 years...
Eileen Bell
Eileen has worked extensively in Northern Ireland politics, community work and peace activism. “I was brought up to believe that everybody was the same, that there were no differences…” Born in Dromara at the en...
Kathleen Kelly
The ten years, Kathleen spent as a teacher in the primary school in North Queen Street, brought home to her the poverty in which the children she taught, lived. Originally from east Belfast, where her father was a ...