I’ve been savouring a few biographies and autobiographies lately and the one that I have really enjoyed was ‘Belfast Child’ by John Chambers, a boy born to a ‘mixed faith’ couple and who grew up in the very same era as myself.

Chambers describes a Belfast I remember quite well, even though it was 50-60 years ago now – a place where alignment with the wrong tribe could bring some heavy punishment. As a 7 or 8 year old I remember walking through a park and being stopped by two older boys who asked me if I was a protestant or a catholic… The wrong answer may have resulted in a flogging, but fortunately my ‘protestant’ response was what was needed to keep walking freely.

Seven years old… You can understand how living in a city that divided forms a deep sense of ‘good and evil’. We were good.. and them… well, they were catholics and were clearly evil. So it goes in the mind of a young child. Chambers articulates the tension very well as he describes the moment he realises that while he is growing up in a loyalist protestant neighbourhood and ‘identifying’ as protestant, his mother is a Catholic. She is the enemy.

Eventually ‘the family’, insist that mum and dad separate and mum is given her marching orders. She leaves for England and the children are told that she is dead. For all intents and purposes she may as well be dead as she is not welcome back in Belfast again. The book follows the young boy’s journey from growing up in a militant protestant community, taking part in riots as just weekend or after school fun, witnessing violence of all forms and then eventually being enlisted in the UDA – the Ulster Defence Army – a paramilitary organisation dedicated to keeping the north of Ireland protestant and ‘pure’. Along the way he discovers the truth about his mother – a secret he must keep for his own personal safety – but so begins his quest to find her and be reunited with her.

I have memories of this tragic city that I simply accepted as normal as a child, but which are utterly bizarre now. Armoured cars at the end of our street, barbed wire and armed soldiers checking you as you passed. Lying in bed at night and hearing bombs explode in other parts of the city or being in the shops and hearing a bomb alarm sound and then running for the exits. This was all ‘normal’ in my childhood – but of course it is far from normal in any other peaceful part of the world.

The 12th July is the annual celebration of all things protestant, with the Orange Order bands provocatively marching the streets and reminding catholics of their minority status. My grandfather was in the Orange Order so attending these marches was a thing for us kids, albeit from the sidelines rather than direct involvement.

I remember being taken to Ian Paisley’s church one evening – (why – I have no idea…) and listening to this politician / pastor rant and rail against the evils of popery and all those associated with it. Looking back I wonder how it ever came to this – how Jesus words in the sermon on the mount could somehow be aligned with the sectarian and divisive theology that infected the churches of my childhood. I imagine had I stayed in Belfast I may have grown up and continued to think that way. Interestingly, Chambers records his own experience of Christianity, firstly in his local community church and later in a Pentecostal gathering. Clearly any understanding of faith was going to be filtered through the lens of the cultural and political situation in Belfast at the time. It seems drug taking replaced faith in Chambers’ later years – which isn’t surprising as faith that is sectarian and aligned with politics over Jesus is never going to satisfy.

On my last visit there, about 10 years ago we visited a centre that was focused on peace and reconciliation where I read that it takes around 400 years for a nation to heal and move on from the kind of trouble that had framed the 60’s and 70’s in Belfast. That’s a long time… 400 years… But when hostilities run so deep it kinda sounds about right.

I will always be grateful for my parent’s decision to remove us from that world and bravely make the move to Australia in 1974. The early 70’s was the height of the trouble, but we left on a ship firstly to Stranraer in Scotland followed by a second 28 day journey from Southampton to Fremantle. We literally began a new life in Australia – a place that had no knowledge of our inbuilt prejudices and biases.

The book finishes with an older, wiser John Chambers also beginning to see the world differently, as the fundamentalism of his youth is slowly stripped away. But it took a literal re-location to England (as a way of escaping the paramilitary org) to give him the space in which to re-think his worldview.

While I don’t think of Ireland as ‘home’, it is still a significant part of my heritage. The tensions have eased in the country now, but I’d bet if you walked into either a long term loyalist or republican neighbourhood that it wouldn’t take long to realise that this worldview is still there even if it isn’t being expressed in violence. 400 years is a long time…

If you want to read a sample of the book then you can do so here.