This is Charlie Bird by Charlie Bird

Author:Charlie Bird
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gill Books

I will always look back on Bertie Ahern’s years as Taoiseach as the time when the peace process in Northern Ireland, through many twists and turns, was eventually bedded down. Another association I will always make with the Ahern years will be Drumcree, a picturesque location outside Portadown in County Armagh which greatly exercised the minds of Ahern, and his counterpart in London, Tony Blair.

I covered the controversial Orange Order parade for a number of years in the 1990s. I was first asked to cover the Drumcree weekend in July 1996 although there was no indication that it was going to emerge as a big news story. I travelled to Portadown a couple of days before the Drumcree march. Johnny Coughlan, RTÉ’s cameraman in Belfast, did the driving. I wanted to get an impression of the area and see for myself what was going on. We drove around the whole town and the surrounding areas. I was very taken by the small Protestant Church at Drumcree which is set in a quiet rural area. But not far away, two communities were very much intent on shattering any illusion of tranquillity.

As Johnny Coughlan was driving thought the loyalist Corcoran housing estate in Portadown, I saw a group of tough-looking young men hanging around one corner. ‘Let’s see if any of them might talk to us,’ I said.

They looked fairly relaxed as I approached them. ‘Do you think there will be trouble with the parade at the weekend?’ I asked.

‘Who are you?’ came back the reply.

I made a nondescript response: ‘Charlie Bird, from Dublin.’ I knew that mentioning RTÉ might bring an immediate end to our conversation. ‘Is there anyone prepared to say a few words for me?’ I enquired.

A guy with shaved hair and an earring stepped forward. ‘I’ll talk to you,’ he said. We did a short interview.

Back in the car, Johnny Coughlan said to me, ‘I think that was King Rat.’

My response best illustrated how Drumcree and its cast of characters had yet to become national news. ‘And who the hell is King Rat?’ I asked.

It seemed we had just interviewed Billy Wright, the leader of the Loyalist Volunteer Force. I decided to check, so I got out of the car and walked back to the group on the street corner. ‘I need names for identification purposes on the TV,’ I explained.

‘My name is Billy Wright,’ the man replied.

When we got back to Belfast, I told Gary Honeyford from Sky News who we had got talking on camera. Sky News has offices on the floor below RTÉ in Fanum House in Belfast. The two broadcasters often swap footage. Gary was impressed with my minor scoop. ‘I’ll have some of that,’ he said. Wright was a notorious loyalist paramilitary who was later found dead inside Maghaberry Prison in December 1997, having been murdered by a republican prisoner.

Drumcree was a powder keg of a story. The unionist protests at not being allowed walk down the nationalist Garvaghy Road brought much of Northern Ireland to a standstill.

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