Our Generation
Dealing with the Past
Interviews from those whose lives were affected by the Troubles. Alan McBride Alan lost his wife and father-in-law in the Shankill bomb in October 1993, murdered by the IRA. “I’ve been hurt and damaged, I’ve...
Tommy Wilson
Tommy Wilson grew up on the Donegall Road in the Village area of Belfast. “We had nowhere to go, we had to run the streets. The place where I lived was just housing and there were no green spots whatsoever to play gam...
John Gray
Bernard Conlon talks to John Gray about his work as a social historian, an activist in the civil rights movement, and former Librarian of the Linen Hall Library in Belfast. John’s parents left England for Northern ...
Tura Arutura
Tura grew up in Chitungwiza in Zimbabwe during the pre-war period. He recalls it as being a “very colourful beautiful country. Very warm, very hot, it also reflects the nature of the people as well. They wear their he...
Mark Thompson
Mark’s hometown of Ballyhalbert in Co. Down proved to play a significant influence on his life, “everyday whenever we got out of bed you opened the curtains and on a clear day, you could see Scotland”. It was at th...
John Scott
“I was probably one of the first ones to bring platform shoes to Northern Ireland so that’s one of my claims to fame.” John who grew up in a family of nine on the Shankill Road, left school at the age of 15 in the ...
Jennifer McNern
Marie Breen-Smyth, Associated Dean International at the University of Surrey talks to Jennifer McNern about her experiences of the violence of The Troubles. Jennifer was injured on March 4th, 1972, during a shoppin...
Kathleen Kelly
The ten years, Kathleen spent as a teacher in the primary school in North Queen Street, brought home to her the poverty in which the children she taught, lived. Originally from east Belfast, where her father was a ...
Jonny Tiernan
Jonny remembers his time spent at school as a turbulent experience. He was taken out of one school as he felt he was being victimised and at 16, Jonny left school and enrolled in a course called Quest. It meant he cou...
Kate O Hanlon
The eldest of five children, Kate O Hanlon was born in the Markets area of Belfast in 1930. Her father worked in the Market, “That was a fruit market, where the Waterfront is today, that was all fish markets and the b...
Eileen Bell
Eileen has worked extensively in Northern Ireland politics, community work and peace activism. “I was brought up to believe that everybody was the same, that there were no differences…” Born in Dromara at the en...
Dale Harrison
Dale remembers the beginning of the Troubles. “From memory the Troubles in the Woodvale were rife. To this day some people would say that’s originally where it all started. I do remember one evening. There was a full ...