This article is reprinted from Unfree Citizen, paper of the People's Democracy.
If you've ever opened your door at 4.30 in the morning after thunderous knocking only to find a British soldier shoving his gun into your belly, then you know what it's like to live in Andersonstown.
Andersonstown is a huge sprawling area of overspill housing on the fringes of Belfast. It is the city's new ghetto where Catholics from the decaying 19th century slums of the Lower Falls are rehoused and where Catholic families intimidated out of other parts of the city have fled. Andersonstown proper and a number of other areas such as Ballymurphy, Turf Lodge and Beechmount have been combined into a single greater Andersonstown electoral division for local government purposes. The whole division contains 34,800 electors or about 100,000 people.
Socially, the area is extremely deprived. It is mainly working class and unemployment is very high. In Bally murphy it is between 40% and 50% for men. The area has a very high proportion of children yet it has only one public park, one set of public playing fields and one swimming pool (outdoors and unheated). There is no publicly provided community centre and very few halls or social clubs. For years the people of Andersonstown have been fighting for social amenities, against local authority indifference and neglect. Now they have a greater enemy to tight.
The greater Andersonstown area is bearing the brunt of British military occupation and repression in Belfast. The area contains one fifth of the population of Belfast yet the best part of five battalions of British troops-or half their total force in Belfast-are stationed in the area. And to accommodate themselves they have established 17 different fortified posts, including 3 huge wild west style corrugated iron forts, In the process they have comman deered -and still occupy -2 schools, the grounds of a College of Education, 2 football stadiums (one of them Casement Park, the headquarters of the Gaelic Athletic Association in the North), 2 of the very few public halls in the area, and a number of private houses and flats. For one of their biggest forts they seized Glassmullan green, in the middle of a densely populated estate and built their fort within 15 yards of a row of houses and when operation Motorman began they seized and occupied 2 other schools in the area which public protest has forced them to abandon.
Besides depriving the people of Andersonstown of their open spaces and recreation facilities the British Army subjects them to a constant campaign of harassment and intimidation. The area is constantly patrolled with helicopters, armoured cars, saracen armoured personnel carriers, pigs and small tanks armed with 108m.m. cannon as well as patrols in jeeps and foot patrols and the notorious plain clothes army units. The troops are armed with rubber bullet guns, S.L.R.'s and general purpose machine guns. The army have tried to carry out a house to house census in the area demand-