My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress by Christina McKenna

began in 1967 with the formation of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). The movement called for equality for the nationalist population, among other things campaigning for the right of every person to have a vote, an end to discrimination in employment, and the need for a fairer system by which houses were allocated. Catholics had been denied these basic rights for decades within the one-party Unionist state, under governments that represented only the interests of the majority, Protestant, population.
    To the outside observer this might have seemed a gross injustice that needed to be addressed. The Unionist people, however, for whatever reason, chose to believe that the NICRA was merely a front for the Irish Republican Army, whose goal was a united Ireland. Never mind that the IRA was almost non-existent at the time.
    The more militant among the Unionists therefore felt justified in attacking any civil rights marches that took place. The thugs were supported by the mainly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, who were supposed to be keeping law and order and protecting the demonstrators.
    One such march in 1969 proved beyond doubt whose side the authorities were on. I watched the television footage of peaceful marchers – both men and women, Protestant and Catholic – being attacked by the RUC at Burntollet Bridge near Derry city. I did not know then that this event would mark the point at which the Troubles went from being primarily a civil rights issue to a return to a more savage time, one in which religion and national identity were paramount. I could not have understood as I innocently watched the batons and bricks rain down – as my father swore and my mother crossed herself – that this outrage would lead to more than 30 years of conflict and the deaths of over 3,000 people. Burntollet had picked open the scab of tribal hatred so that the blood of intolerance could gush forth again.
    It was Belfast where the monster of sectarianism and bigotry thereafter chose to release most of its venom. Rarely having visited the city, my parents and country folk in general viewed Belfast as a war zone best avoided. The television brought the destruction close enough. Moreover each summer, usually on a Sunday, we received one of its citizens, a distant relative of my mother’s: Mr Edward Bradley, affectionately known as Eddie.
    In those phoneless days visitors could just appear out of the blue, which was rather distressing for mother, who could never keep a ready store of fancy food available for that unexpected guest, due to our skill at finding it. We’d discovered all the hiding places, so she’d simply given up trying.
    Mother always prided herself on her acute sense of hearing. On certain Sundays, as we all sat sated round the dinner table, she’d announce that she could hear Eddie’s bike in the distance. We’d all dash out to the yardand, sure enough, a couple of minutes later there he’d be, thundering down the lane on his big BSA motorcycle, the clouds of scree and dust billowing up extravagantly behind him.
    The bike was a bizarre spectacle to us: a precariously dangerous machine that only the most daring and courageous could handle. When we saw Eddie hurtling down the lane he might as well have been a Martian and the bike a skyrocket.
    We’d wait in suspense as he brought all that throbbing metal to a halt by the gable of the house, and watch in fascination as he performed the elaborate ritual of extricating himself from his biker’s gear. Off came the bat-winged leather gloves, then the little bald head was freed from the helmet. Finally he’d swing a short leg over the rear of the machine with a pained expression that could only mean ‘bloody sore arse’ – and it’s only now that I realise what BSA could have stood for.
    Eddie was a crusty bachelor in his early fifties who could not relate to children. Yet I