Belfast Flashbacks: Stories From Both Sides

Bill Meulemans is an American author with no ties to Ireland. He lived and worked with working-class folks on both sides of the sectarian walls of Belfast during some of the darkest days of the conflict, building extensive personal friendships with both Catholics and Protestants.

Meulemans did not waste a minute of his 14 years in Belfast. He was out on the street every day talking with the most vulnerable folks in town. Each of the 28 stories in this book gives a personal account that spans all his paramilitary connections, along with Irish and British officials, as well as the police.

But he did have his share of close calls, including a time when Protestant loyalists thought he was a spy, and when a police commander intentionally knocked him down at an IRA funeral. But there were non-political times as well, when he brought a Trappist Monk and an Irish prize fighter together who had not been in touch for 54 years, and when he likely saved the lives of a young Irish couple who were being hunted by family members who planned to kill them.

Yet there are tender moments in the book including a time when the author took an apprehensive, working-class Protestant mother from Belfast on her first visit to the South of Ireland where her son was to marry a Catholic. There was never a dull moment in his effort to make as many friends as possible.

Bill Meulemans was a visiting professor of politics at The Queen's University of Belfast for 11 years, which gave him access to a wide section of young people across the province. When he wasn't in the classroom, he was on the street in the small neighborhoods that dot the Belfast sectarian landscape. He was trusted by folks who seldom trusted anyone.