Heart Of The City - Bombs, Bullets And Bunion

The dark nature of the Troubles in Ulster would be of such mortifying scope as to quite effortlessly infuse itself into the already grim black humour that characterises hard industrial working class life by default. Little would be ethically off-limits in this regard such as the naming of loyalist interrogation locales after a globally-franchised children's television programme Romper Room for example. The author once appeared on Ulster Television's own presentation of this broadcast brand around 1970.

While the aforesaid generic wordplay was clearly constructed with considerable native wit and ribald urban savvy the dynamics of the usage itself remains yet so puerile and crass in historical context and consideration- let alone shockingly malign and utterly bloody depressing.

Another strange interplay of humour with the unrelenting political conflict in Ireland would be the presence in the second half of Belfast Telegraph editions during the worst years of the Troubles of  a particular cartoon strip that also appeared contemporaneously across the world  in different press outlets.

Whereas Rowel Friers' renowned cartoon commentaries on sectarian violence and constitutional collapse in the same journal were so unique and insightful as to warrant compilation at the time into no less than four volumes of Blackstaff Press publications between 1971 and 1974  - Pig in the Parlour, Riotous Living, The Book of Friers or The Book of Yells and The Revolting Irish - by comparison Fun with Bunion seems to have been lost to time and space. This despite I assume having been seen by the vast majority of the Northern Ireland population at some point due to the newspaper's national reach across the River Bann.

There is little information about the cartoon character online but the artist who drew the two-to-four panel Bunion strip in the Sixties and Seventies was George Martin and it was also a regular feature of other newspapers in Britain, Northern Europe and North America - such as apparently the Bath Evening Chronicle, Birmingham Daily Mail and Stockholm's Aftonbladet. Martin produced other children's strips for the classic DC Thomson British comics The Dandy, The Topper and The Beezer from the Fifties through to the Eighties. I gather from some public commentary on websites that Martin is now deceased.

Bunion was a small rotund middle-aged man and the strip basically recounts events in his married life at home, in various work scenarios and at play on the ubiquitous golf course for example. The wife is a typical angry harridan figure of vintage comedy presentation, his extraordinarily impressive CV ranged from vicar to trawlerman to astronomer to liontamer and  there are also some fantasy scenarios where the character is shipwrecked on an island, engaged  in nefarious criminal endeavour, riding an Indian elephant or getting lost in the desert.

On a Flickr compilation of strips I found there seems to be no suggestion that Bunion was ever physically resident in Belfast when I saw his japes and pranks in my youth there - this bar launching a ship, employment as a prison officer, fixing a broken window, tossing a coin in despair in a voting booth and briefly watching a UFO land and leave as soon as possible.

There appears to be nothing sidesplittingly funny about Bunion and in hindsight it is not even touched by any particular wry charm or unique spin beyond perhaps the fact it is dialogue-free in modernist style and of course there is some residual analogy to the BBC childrens' TV classic Mr Benn. Yet like the Ulster Television transmission start-up music discussed in an earlier post, Fun With Bunion definitely triggers deep memories of both happy and tragic times alike - let alone some of the strangest days ever yet lived by any group of people anywhere in post-war Europe.

Tragedy In East Ulster January 1953 - The Sinking Of The MV Princess Victoria And The Lord St Vincent Plane Crash

In the fifty-one year history of the Northern Ireland state between 1921 and 1972 - and as standing outside civilian and security force fatalities caused by engagement in global conflict, domestic civil disorder and terrorism - the biggest death toll resulting from an accident was the sinking of the MV Princess Victoria in the Irish Sea on 31st January 1953.

Off the back of some research recently I was surprised to note how another major incident in Northern Ireland involving air traffic was so confluent in time to that major maritime disaster and indeed of a significant tragedy at a major sporting occasion back in the Thirties. These two events - in Country Antrim and County Down respectively  - are very rarely referenced within Irish social history compared to the MV Princess Victoria's fatal last voyage from Stranraer to Larne.

To provide some historical background to the period of the early Fifties, the post-war decade running up to the commencement of the IRA Border Campaign on 12th December 1956 saw Northern Ireland's constitutional position within the United Kingdom in a state of considerable security and anchorage. This following the state's belligerent status during the six year global conflict against the Axis powers and then the passing of the Ireland Act at Westminster in 1949 upon the declaration of a Republic by Eire the previous year.

The Stormont elections of 19th February 1949 had thus taken place in a tense atmosphere against the backdrop of southern political and public support for the Nationalist Party in the North. It is also remembered in the main for the fundamental undermining of the Labour vote in Ulster for the next nine years - as discussed in an earlier post on the NILP.

The Unionist Party won 37 seats in the election to the Nationalists nine - there were also two Independent Unionists,  two Independents, one Independent Labour and a Socialist Republican elected. Compared to the 1945 election therefore one Nationalist seat had been lost along with two Labour and one Independent Labour. The October 1953 election - this the year of the MV Princess Victoria and Nutts Corner disasters - saw another substantial victory for the Unionist Party. The party took 38 seats to the Nationalists seven while the other representatives elected would be two anti-partition candidates, one Independent Unionist, one Independent and three others from an extraordinary multiplicity of Labour political brands standing for office.

Some of the more well recalled Members of Parliament  sitting at Stormont from the 1949 election as 1953 dawned included Prime Minister Basil Brooke, the Belfast Socialist Republican Harry Diamond, South Fermanagh's Cahir Healey, the Shankill Independent Unionist Tommy Henderson, William McCoy of East Tyrone who had pushed for Dominion Status for Northern Ireland as the prime guarantee against future Westminster ambivalence toward the Union, the former Commonwealth Labour figure Harry Midgeley, Dehra Parker the first female MP in Northern Ireland, Eddie McAteer of Derry and two future Prime Ministers in Terence O'Neill and Brian Faulkner. The Member of Parliament for Cromac Ward in Belfast in this parliament was Major Maynard Sinclair who had been Stormont Minister of Finance for a decade, was serving as Deputy Prime Minister in January 1953 and seen as a potential successor to Brooke.

The horrendous loss of the roll-on/roll-off MV Princess Victoria ferry has been analysed in considerable depth over the years. On the last day of the month - a Saturday - it set sail from Scotland in the morning as an extraordinarily severe storm gathered pace across Northern Europe. Spray broke over the stern doors and an emergency guillotine door was not lowered. On leaving Loch Ryan conditions worsened and waves further damaged the rear doors allowing water to flood on board the car deck. Unable to return to Scotland the captain attempted to reach Northern Ireland by a course that would minimise more damage to the stern. At 0906 the ship messaged Portpatrick Radio Station for urgent assistance from tugs - a SOS transmission followed at 1032. The final morse message at 1358 from five miles east of the Copeland Islands near Donaghadee in County Down reported that engines had stopped.

Multiple rescue attempts were made - neither HMS Launceston Castle nor HMS Contest could initially locate the ship. Portpatrick Lifeboat Jeannie Spears was also dispatched in the search. An RAF Hastings aircraft did not reach the scene of the disaster in time due to other rescue work in Scotland. As the location of the ship clarified in Northern Ireland itself the emergency services put to sea in appalling conditions - four merchant vessels also attempted to save lives. Finally the Donaghadee lifeboat the Sir Samuel Kelly arrived to bring survivors on board - Jeannie Spears and HMS Contest were also there in support.

The ship sunk in the North Channel with the loss of 133 lives including all women and children on board - their lifeboat having been dashed against the hull. 100 bodies were recovered and 44 people survived. Fatalities included Northern Ireland Deputy Prime Minister Sinclair - who assisted many women and children during the incident - and also the North Down MP Sir Walter Smiles whose home was at Orlock so close to the sinking site. Both men had military records from the Great War. Lists of those onboard show that the crew incorporated residents of Northern Ireland and Scotland while the passengers came from both countries, England, Wales and the Republic of Ireland. A maternal relative of my own from Carrickfergus in County Antrim was also numbered among the dead. He was returning to Ulster from training in Scotland for a new job.

An interesting article by History Hub Ulster traces the historical footprint of the disaster with all survivors having today now passed on - the graves of the crew and the passengers visited by the author of the piece includes Sinclair's at Drumbeg Parish Church near Lisburn and Smiles at Belfast City Cemetery on the Falls Road. Two senior officers of HMS Contest were awarded the George Medal for diving into the seas during the rescue, MV Princess Victoria Radio Officer David Broadfoot was posthumously given the George Cross for remaining at his post to allow passengers and fellow crew to escape and the captains of the merchant ships were made OBEs. Captain Ferguson was witnessed at the moment of sinking on the bridgehead giving instructions and saluting. From what I can gather online Sinclair's mother-in-law died of a heart attack on receiving news of the tragedy while one of the merchant captains also died prematurely in light of the stress of involvement in the incident.

Memorials to the disaster were erected in Larne (which lost 27 town residents in the sinking), Stranraer, Portpatrick and Donaghadee where a civic campaign to preserve the Sir Samuel Kelly is ongoing. An annual memorial service is held to the present day to commemorate the victims and rescuers. A sports pavilion on the Stormont estate and a children's ward at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald were named in memory of Maynard Sinclair.

The sinking of the MV Princess Victoria remains the worst United Kingdom maritime disaster in peacetime. On 10th October 1918 a German U-Boat had sunk the RMS Leinster from the City of Dublin Steam Packet Company outside Dublin Bay leading to 501 deaths - the greatest single loss of life in the Irish Sea. The biggest disaster in Ulster resulting from an accident prior to 1953 was the eighty killed and 260 injured in a June 1889 rail accident between Armagh and Hamiltons Bawn stations - to this day it remains the worst rail accident in Irish history and the fourth worst in the United Kingdom.

Of the two other tragic events mentioned earlier the aircrash occurred only twenty five days before the MV Princess Victoria sinking - on Monday 5th January 1953. A British European Airways Vickers Viking plane Lord St Vincent flying from Northholt airport in London to Belfast's Nutts Corner crashed on approach. On board were 31 passengers and four crew - 24 passengers were included in the list of 27 fatalities including four medical students from Queens University and an eighteen-month old boy who was killed with his mother. Another fatality was Captain Thomas Haughton who was married to Lady Moyola -  the future wife of the fifth and penultimate Northern Ireland Prime Minister James Chichester-Clark. She herself survived the crash though was seriously injured.

The board of inquiry concluded that the cause of the crash was pilot error - the aircraft had lost height too suddenly on approach to the runway and hit a pole which supported an approach light near the aerodrome. Further collisions followed with more poles and a van before it finally impacted against an equipment store.

The automobile accident in 1936 which involved the general public happened during the running of the International Tourist Trophy for motorcar road racing which was then a massively popular event in Northern Ireland due to the legal slack pertaining in the province to closing off roads. In 1928 a triangular course was constructed  between Dundonald, Newtownards, and Comber under the sponsorship of Harry Ferguson and Wallace McLeod. By the mid-thirties cars had become faster and faster on the circuit and it was during the 1936 event that a Riley car lost control on Church Street in Newtownards and crashed into the crowd on the pavement after hitting a lampost. Eight spectators were killed including two fifteen-year-old boys, 40 were injured and a decision was made to end racing on the course. Several of the victims are buried in Moville Cemetery in the town while two of the dead came from Worcester and Hull in England.

TT motor racing on public roads famously returned to Ulster at Dundrod County Antrim in 1950 - the track was half the size of its predecessor though the event still attracted such famous racing names as Juan Manuel Fangio and equally huge crowds. The September 1955 event in rainy conditions lead to the deaths of three drivers - Jim Mayers, William Smith and Richard Mainwaring. The race was won by Stirling Moss but it was then decided that the Northern Irish roads were too dangerous for the sport.

No memorial exists to the Nutts Corner disaster and a very sad BBC article on the incident notes that even the specific site of the crash would appear unknown today to the general public - the airport closed a decade after the deaths there and with the field being used in the main for car boot sales thereafter. A piece of propeller from the plane is kept in the Ulster Aviation Society Museum at Langford Lodge near Lough Neagh- the organisation campaigns for a permanent memorial and held a sixtieth anniversary service in 2013.

In turn a memorial on Conway Square in Newtownards honours the original racing circuit in County Down - both the winners and those who lost their lives in general at the event. There is furthermore a plaque in Comber at the famous Butchers Shop corner on Castle Street and another marking the start of the race beside the Quarry Inn pub near the Ulster Hospital. An online forum discussion from 2003 notes how chipped masonry from the event could still be seen at that time on the approach to Conway Square close to the accident site.

The disasters outlined above cast such deeply sobering reflections on how random factors of time and place can have such fateful consequences for the human condition. This is not dissimilar to the Isle of Man's 1974 Summerland disaster which affected so many holidaymakers from Ireland - a  good friend from secondary school was inside the building when the fire broke out while I can myself recall to this day several trips to the complex in the summers beforehand.

Historical focus of course dissipates through time in truly uncategorisable fashion - one tragedy is overwritten by another in the public consciousness and therefore even something as unprecedented as the 1953 Great Storm's repercussions in the North Channel, Eastern England and Holland would appear to be relatively unknown to so many people today in Britain and Ireland. In the case of the MV Princess Victoria - and also the air disaster which preceded it -the waves of madness and division which hit Ulster's shores sixteen and half years after that day of abject horror in the Irish Sea certainly compounded this instance of strange historical distancing even further.