FEATURES
Volume 3 Number 7
Bombs, Barricades and Buildings
01 July 1990
Derry's city walls loomed over the Bogside. Some wanted to destroy those symbols of 350 years of oppression, but Paddy felt they could be seen, not as a noose, but as a necklace, enclosing `a learning cell for something new'.
By PETER HANNON
Paddy Doherty, 'Prime Minister' of 'Free Derry', stood on one side of a broad white line painted on the road in Northern Ireland. On the other side stood a British Army colonel, careful not to cross `the border'. It was a unique situation as they negotiated. For nine weeks in 1969 the writ of the Crown did not run in four square miles of the United Kingdom. From Paddy's home, 10 Westland Street, the Bogside Defence Association administered law and order. It was another milestone in centuries of clash between Irish and English.
350 years previously, the ancient Irish settlement of Derry had become the new walled city of Londonderry, manned by English Protestant settlers. The conquered Catholic Irish were shut out each night by a curfew bell, but, still needed as workers, they lived outside the walls in the Bogside area.
Uprisings followed, but the settlers survived sieges and remained in control. When Ireland became an independent Republic in 1922 the Protestant majority in the North forced the partition of the country, the North remaining part of the United Kingdom. Those Catholics who remained in Northern Ireland felt they were treated as second class citizens.
Paddy grew up in the close-knit Bogside community. `There was poverty and hardship,' he recalls. `My father was a docker, one of the few men in work.'
Paddy's strongest memory of home was the emphasis put on telling the truth: `It didn't matter what you did, you had to own up. Any trouble could be sorted out, but not if you lied.'
At 13 he left school, getting a start in the building trade. During World War II, he spent two years in England, clearing bomb damage. `Till then the English had just been oppressors to me. But now I came to respect their courage and determination.'
Returning home, he married and applied for a house from the Protestant dominated city council. They told him that if he came back in nine years, he might be put on a waiting list. Believing he was the victim of a policy deliberately designed to encourage Catholics to emigrate, he set to and built a house with his own hands. It was the start of joining what he calls `the pulling-yourselfup-by-your-own-bootstraps brigade'.
Paddy recalls going into a bank for the first time to cash a cheque. He was brusquely asked, `Do you have twopence to pay the commission?' Not having it he walked out humiliated. Paddy, John Hume (now Leader of the Social and Democratic Labour Party) and others decided to launch their own credit union. `I'm sure we broke every banking law to start with,' he says, `but we felt the cycle of debt and dependence must be broken. Character became our collateral.' Today his local branch has 14,000 members and £6 million capital.
In the late 1960s a coalition of forces launched the Civil Rights Campaign, demanding fair housing and an end to `gerrymandered' control of local government (where the electoral boundaries were drawn in such a way that the Protestants stayed in the majority). Paddy became chief steward of the mass marches. TV carried to the world pictures of police confrontation, flying batons, broken heads. Step by step, despite legislative reform, violence escalated into the present 20-year-old round of `the troubles'.
In 1969 barricades went up in the Bogside and the threat of full-scale civil war loomed. The Bogside Defence Association, with Paddy as Vice-Chairman, assumed authority and confronted the Government.
Prospect of bloodshed
So a white line was painted right round the Bogside and no one was to cross. For weeks, peace was maintained by trust.
Radical students flooded in from other parts of Europe, determined to be in on `the revolution'. Conservatives, liberals, Marxists and old style IRA all intermingled. `But the ordinary people of Derry were the real strength,' says Paddy. `I suppose I represented the wheeler-dealer pragmatist element. Politically I have always felt that for our two islands to work together in mutual respect, English control of any part of Ireland must be ended. But here we were faced with the prospect of large-scale bloodshed. Some wanted that for their own ends. I didn't. Negotiation was essential.'
A German student, objecting to this approach, took over one of the barricades with his friends. Haranguing the crowd, he told Paddy, `You do not speak for the people; I do.' Paddy enlisted his docker friends to eject them.
Finally a resumption of normal authority was negotiated. To this day, the gable end of a house at the edge of the Bogside stands with `You are now entering Free Derry' boldly painted in feet-high letters.
Paddy, exhausted, jobless and in debt, took a high-paid building job abroad for two years to recoup family resources. Returning in 1974, he was offered the leadership of various schemes for community upliftment. `But,' he says, `I discovered that a pattern emerged. There would be initial enthusiasm, lots of activity, then decline and finally corruption.'
In 1979 he considered afresh - with male unemployment in the Bogside approaching 60 per cent - what could be done with those who had never had, and in some cases feared, responsibility? Offered the use of a derelict college, he started a series of training workshops in practical skills, where all decisions had to be taken by the young people who came. `Sometimes it meant things took longer, but a new spirit began,' he says. They restored the college building itself.
Then he took a look at the old city whose heart had been torn out by bombs. Derry's city walls loomed over the Bogside. Some wanted to destroy those symbols of 350 years of oppression, but Paddy felt they could be seen, not as a noose, but as a necklace, enclosing `a learning cell for something new'.
Paddy approached the Catholic and Protestant Bishops who agreed to head an Inner City Trust. With Paddy's young workforce, rebuilding began. Now, ten years on, they have restored 26 buildings, mostly in their original Georgian style. A craft village adjoins the city centre with ten new ventures and ten houses. Paddy's team have also created a heritage centre for emigrant Irish. And a 15th century medieval castle, which will be a visitor centre and museum owned by the Derry City Council, has risen on the site of an ancient Doherty fort.
This castle typifies the mixture of romantic and realist in Paddy. The romantic in him conceived such a project amid so much devastation; the realist uses its potential to attract investment from abroad. Two thousand overseas Dohertys came to Derry for the castle's inauguration, and other Irish Americans contribute funds. Finance also comes from government and bank loans, each completed building helping to finance the next. Where the Trust led others followed and the atmosphere of the city centre has been transformed.
In 1987 the Derry Project won the top Royal Institute of British Architects award for urban renewal schemes out of 180 entries. This faced Paddy with a dilemma - how could he, a life-long Republican, accept the presentation which was to be made by Prince Charles? `Some accused me of betrayal,' he says, `but I saw it as a recognition for the community. I don't defer to anyone, and my heritage is as long as his.' Saying that he respects the Prince's philosophy and his courage as a breaker of moulds, Paddy adds with a twinkle in his eye, `The only person in England who seems not to believe in the divine right of kings is the Prince of Wales!' Paddy insisted on taking with him to the award ceremony a Protestant city councillor who had often made life difficult for him.
This year, at Prince Charles's invitation, Paddy took part in a conference on community responsibility in the USA with 100 business magnates.
Many times it has been tough going for Paddy Doherty, dealing both with bureaucracy and with continuing sporadic violence. One of the first buildings to be restored, the Heritage library, was blown up again soon after completion so he and his team immediately rebuilt it.
`How do you keep going when such disappointments hit you?' I queried.
He laughed: `I have a very tolerant wife! Eileen is great. And I don't like to be beat. If you are part of God's design, it has to be about the use of talents. I don't want to go to him with hands empty.
`Sometimes I have problems with God - as I suppose he has with me,' Paddy muses. `Christ must have felt the disappointments when the people turned on him for not giving them political answers. I try to act the best I can in the circumstances and sometimes things don't work out as planned. But I would consider it the ultimate betrayal to do nothing to bring about change.'
When asked about violence, Paddy says that he believes in the sanctity of human life -`You must not take it at any stage.' He adds, `I know I am capable of killing and I suppose I could as a last resort to defend family or friends. But when a crowd wanted to kill an unarmed British major I had to intervene. If they had killed, how would those 200 have handled it the next day? Would they push blame off on others? We cannot hide our sin in the group.'
And Ireland? `The Irish are no different from anyone else - as prone to anger, envy, oppression. We are very fortunate that we have never had the chance to be colonizers ourselves, for we would have been just like the others.
`I don't know,' he adds thoughtfully, `when we will make the quantum leap to where we do the right thing. Meanwhile, perhaps, I can go back to my mother and father - "No lies!"'
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