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Nuns Car Hijacked and set on fire
I roll in the aisles with laughter every time I think of that poor wee nun’s car being hijacked and her being trailed out by the wimple and forced to watch her only means of transport burn before her eyes. It was many Augusts ago - the weekend of August 9th, 1976, to be exact, the fifth anniversary of internment, long before Feile an Phobail supplied a festive alternative to being shot with plastic bullets whilst watching a bonfire at the corner of your own street.
There had been rioting that weekend and Maire Drumm was arrested after addressing a Sinn Fein rally in Dunville Park. The following day on the front page of the ‘Irish News’ appeared the headline, ‘Nuns Car Hijacked and Set on Fire’, along with these details: "One of the motorists to lose a car to the hijackers was a nun, stopped while she was driving along the Falls Road and ordered out of the vehicle. Like the others it was set on fire."
Had you been there you could have cooked spuds in the chassis. Yum, yum, Sister. Have a roastie.
The German writer Erich Kastner wrote a novel, ‘Fabian’, about the life and death of an advertising copyrighter in Berlin in 1929, set at a time when civil and public life were breaking down. One of the scenes takes place in the offices of Fabian’s newspaper. Munzer, a journalist, is stuck for a column filler as the paper’s deadline approaches so he writes: "Street fighting between Mohammedans and Hindus has broken out in Calcutta. Although the police soon had the situation in hand the casualties were fourteen dead and twenty-two injured. Order has now been fully restored."
A colleague questions the ethics of inventing news but Munzer indignantly takes him to task: "No fighting in Calcutta? Will you kindly prove that? There’s always fighting in Calcutta… Besides, why all this sympathy for the fellows? They’re still alive, all thirty-six of them, and sound as a bell."
Try as I might I could find no trace of the nun. I telephoned all convents in Belfast. Yes, they had read the story but they were as baffled as I was. I phoned Bishop Philbin’s residence. "We’re puzzled ourselves. If it were to be reported to any authority it would have been reported to us," I was told. Then I did something I shouldn’t have done. I phoned the RUC information office. I swear, I only collaborated for a minute. Plus, I used a bum name. They had no reports of the incident either.
I telephoned the ‘Irish News’ and was told that Tom Samways wrote the story. Eventually I got through to him. He said he stood over it. Where exactly did the hijacking take place, I asked. At this stage Tom decided that he was no longer having this conversation with me. When I complained to the editor that the incident never happened he told me, just like Munzer, to prove that a nun’s car hadn’t been hijacked and burned!
Then I was told by somebody on the Road that something had happened to a car belonging to a nun who was staying in the parochial house beside St John’s Chapel. I telephoned and the nun in question agree to meet me. She told me that one night over the weekend a youth was discovered trying to steal her car radio but was chased away. The following day a journalist telephoned, asked her had she been hijacked and her car set on fire and she said she hadn’t, but explained about the break-in, and that was that.
Enough bad things happened during the Troubles without journalists embroidering details or inventing stories. Of course, the most inveterate liars were British journalists, as they sat drooling in the Whip and Saddle bar of the Europa, deadline approaching, desperately staring into the mirror, only to be struck by a brainwave. Republican Source would suddenly appear on their knee, or his grandfather, Senior Republican Source.
"It is believed," whispers Senior Republican Source to Intrepid British Correspondent, "that we are moving explosives through Stranraer this very Saturday on coaches carrying duped Celtic fans to the match. It is thought that we particularly hate the Royal Family and it is suspected that we are planning to bomb London on the Queen’s birthday, though if this gets out, thanks to British Newspaper Exposes Cowardly IRA Plan, then Operation Pint of Guinness for Darby O’Gill and the Little People will be cancelled.
"The Security Forces," continues Senior Republican Source, as he jealously spots his cousin, Source Close to the Army Council, on the knee of the man from the ‘Daily Mail’, "have long believed that it is thought that tougher measures are feared by the IRA. I can confirm this fear, off the record.
"I can reveal that at least five members of the British Labour Party are if not almost in the IRA then they are almost sympathetic to some of our actions. It is thought we are no longer involved with the Angel Dust scam or pirate videos but have moved on to the more lucrative e-tab and counterfeit CDs market.
"Shergar’s dead, my friend. An asthmatic attack.
"Senior Republican Source can confirm to you, and you alone, that this week’s Chief of Staff is a Maguire from Fermanagh. Keep that under your hat. A former Benedictine monk and chess grandmaster, he owns five hotels in Bundoran, is a Marxist hardliner, speaks eight languages. As we sit here, fifteen Volunteers are on their way to Libya to be indoctrinated. It is understood that Nor-Aid has been kept deliberately in the dark.
"Senior Republican Source says get yourself another glass of Black Bush and put it down to expenses. Rendezvous, same time, same place, next deadline. You will recognise me. Senior Republican Source will be underneath your trousers, wearing your underpants, with his feet in your socks, Kemosabe."
"Please wait!" calls out Intrepid British Correspondent. "Before you go back to the labyrinthine alleyways of your bandit ghetto where your paramilitary womenfolk bare their breasts from their bedroom windows to enable your £1,000-a-hit Czech snipers to kill naive young British soldiers keeping two warring religious tribes apart, I must put it to you, Senior Republican Source, about the nun’s car. What really happened?"
"That would be loose talk. I have no comment. I refuse to be drawn. Republicans are remaining silent. I am tight-lipped. No one was available. I have gone to ground. We have closed ranks. Prove it."
This article originally appeared in the Andersonstown News 3rd April 2000
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© 2007 Irish Author and Journalist - Danny Morrison