‘They had walked up to the bar counter and asked him, ‘Are you John Toland?’ ‘I sure am,’ my John said, and they just riddled him with bullets. They shot him in the neck and blew the roof out of his mouth, they shot him in the stomach, which got his kidneys, the lot, and then a third time in his chest, too. He was destroyed, shot to bits. He was only thirty-six.”
It's the first time Marie Newton (formerly Toland) has publicly recounted how her husband, John, was murdered by the UFF in their bar 40 years ago. Hers is just one of the powerful testimonies collected in Beyond the Silence: Women's Unheard Voices from the Troubles.
It's the result of Derry-based Creggan Enterprises' Unheard Voices programme which – with the support of the International Fund for Ireland – has been working with almost 1,500 women directly or indirectly affected by Northern Ireland's Troubles "to give a voice to those whose voices were silenced". Theirs are the untold stories of the Troubles, the familiar names and places – Sammy Devenney, Greysteel, Bloody Sunday – so often used as a shorthand for suffering, now reclaimed by the powerful voices of wives, mothers, sisters and daughters.
One of the first victims of the Troubles, Sammy Devenney, was beaten by the RUC and fatally injured in his home in William Street in Derry in 1969.
His daughter, Colette O’Connor, who was 10 at the time, recounts how she became covered in blood when a neighbour who was trying to protect her was beaten about the head. Her father was lying injured on the livingroom floor. “Our Harry said there were eight policemen on him in the end, all battering him . . . the hearth was filled with my Daddy’s blood.”
Lorraine Murray and her mother had gone for a drink in the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, Co Derry, on Halloween night, 1993, when UDA gunmen burst in and opened fire. “As we walked towards a table, the gunmen came in behind us. One of them shouted ‘trick or treat’ and a young girl said to him, ‘That isn’t even funny’, and he just shot her where she sat. Shot her in the face or head.”
As one human tragedy follows the other – the family burnt out of their home because of their religion; the mother who saw her husband shot dead in their livingroom by paramilitaries; the older brother kidnapped, tortured and killed by the IRA – the overwhelming effect is of sadness at the lives lost and the weight of the trauma carried by those left behind.
The rawness of these accounts, often told first-hand over a cup of tea in a livingroom and faithfully transcribed by editor Julieann Campbell, give their words an impact that is both inspiring and challenging.
As one woman who spent 17 years as an RUC reservist reflects, “It’s hard to think that this is such a tiny island, yet there are people doing that to each other”.
That chronicle of devastation, Lost Lives, puts the death toll from Northern Ireland's Troubles at more than 3,700 in a population which even today stands at only 1.86 million people.
Almost everyone in the North was affected, either directly – as were many of the women featured in this book – or indirectly, and today their children and grandchildren still live with that legacy.
As Marie Newton puts it, the deaths “had a ripple effect, and that ripple doesn’t stop”.
It’s a theme which crops up time and time again as the women tell their stories – the extent to which the death of a loved one destroyed families.
An anonymous contributor tells how her family was burnt out because they were “the last Protestant family left” in what had become an exclusively Catholic estate. “My Da hit the drink . . . we ended up in a children’s home.”
Another contributor, “Rebecca”, tells of the impact on her family of her father’s imprisonment. “So many families were destroyed, so many families lost their loved ones, and for what?” she asks.
As so often, it was the women who were left to cope.
“We look back now, and wonder how we ever survived,” says Ruby McNaught, whose mother was prominent in the early peace movements of the 1970s. “It was our mothers – these same strong women – who led the way through those awful times.”
It is only now that many of them – including Lorraine Murray – feel able to talk about what they experienced.
“The time is right to talk about it now . . . I knew I’d feel some kind of relief . . . While it hasn’t been easy, I feel like I’ve managed to confront the past and will hopefully be able to move on or at least deal better with what happened.”
This is the collection’s achievement, to end the silence which is so often a feature of post-conflict societies and shed light on the experiences and traumas suffered by the women who lived through the Troubles.
For many of those involved, it is clear that telling their stories was a moment of catharsis which allowed them to achieve some measure of personal peace as well as creating the opportunity for public reflection.
As Maya Angelou, who is quoted in the preface, says, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you”.
The past, and how to deal with its consequences, remains an unsolved problem in today’s Northern Ireland, and the absence of a “truth and reconciliation” process, or indeed any agreement, makes the role played by projects like this invaluable. By acknowledging everyone’s suffering, it challenges those who talk of “sides” or of a “hierarchy of victims”.
Peacebuilding
It is no coincidence that many of the women involved in this collection are now actively involved in peacebuilding, and most of them feel that times have changed for the better.
One former RUC wife says: “I think it’s lovely that a person like me – someone from the Waterside – can rush over to the Creggan to be here, like I did today for this interview. We’re not isolated like we used to be. We’re all working together now, and we work well together.”
Not everything is different – she and others in this collection still have to keep their identities secret – and there are some who still feel that nothing has changed.
Another anonymous contributor, “Eileen”, says: “There are houses and families still being raided in Creggan to this day . . . people still live in fear here, be it fear of cops or fear of benefit cuts . . . people are still afraid to speak out because they’ll be labelled a dissident.”
Given the nature of the project, it seems only appropriate that the final words should go to two of the women themselves.
“It’s sad that it took so long for us to talk about it,” reflects Marie Newton.
Jane McMorris is more positive. “It’s good that women are beginning to talk now. We have a lot to say.”
Beyond the Silence is free from the Ráth Mór Centre in Creggan in Derry. Freya McClements is a writer and arts journalist based in Derry
