'Burn the Town If You Have to,'Said the Bank Manager. And so We Did [Eire Region]

Summary

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Forty years ago, I went to a bank manager in Derry and asked for a loan to build a bathroom in our family's Bogside home. He asked how the fight for civil rights was going, said 'burn the town if you have to' and gave me the money. Months later, my temporary teaching job at an end and now on the dole, I took his advice, spent what money I had on flour for petrol bombs and helped burn the town during the Battle of the Bogside, which lasted from August 12 to 14, 1969.

I was part of a community uprising against the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) which we saw as the armed wing of the then permanent Unionist government in Stormont.

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Extract

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'Burn the Town If You Have to,'Said the Bank Manager. And so We Did [Eire Region]

A British inquiry, conducted by Lord Cameron, into the RUC's treatment of civil-rights marchers in the months leading up to the Battle of the Bogside, had found that the RUC was 'guilty of misconduct which involved assault and battery, malicious damage to property in streets in the predominantly Catholic Bogside area, giving reasonable cause for apprehension of personal injury among innocent inhabitants and the use of provocative sectarian and political slogans'.

I was also a member of the Londonderry (sic) Labour Party, which was seeking full civil rights from Britain'...

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