Julie Livingstone Cruelly Cut Down

Padraic Mac Coitir ✒ On this day 1981 Julie Livingstone died after being hit with a plastic bullet the previous day by a cowardly British soldier.

Julie was a child of 14 and as she walked from her Carrigart Avenue home to Greenways shop on the Stewartstown Road. Little did she know what was going to happen.

Tensions had been high in Lenadoon and other parts of the 6 Counties with the hunger strike taking place. The previous month 15 year old Paul Whitters was killed with a plastic bullet in Derry so we all knew the British army and RUC had no problem in firing those lethal weapons. However, the day Julie was shot was quiet in Lenadoon and she and her friend ran about as normal.

I'll never forget that day. Francis Hughes was in a critical condition on the 59th day of his hunger strike and as his comrade Bobby Sands died on the 5th May. We all expected the worse. That afternoon a friend and I drove down to Gilroy's petrol station and as we were ready to to pull away a man came over and told us one of 'the Livingstone girls' had been hit with a plastic bullet at the bottom of Lenadoon Avenue. We had driven down from there shortly before and it was quiet so we thought he had made a mistake. How wrong we were!

We drove back up to Lenadoon and when we got into a house we told the others there what we had heard. Most of us knew the Livingstone family and a couple of us were in gaol with Pat and Martin, both of whom were on the blanket protest. As we walked about the streets after the death of Francis Hughes we heard that Julie was shot but at that stage it was thought she would survive.

I can't remember the exact time I heard the terrible news about Julie dying but when I went back to Lenadoon many people were standing about talking about a wee girl cruelly cut down. Later that day I called to the family house and as one can imagine it was a very sad place to be. Over the following days I, and many others, called and I spoke with Julie's parents, Bernie and Archie. Because I had been on the blanket protest with Pat and Martin they asked me if I thought they would get parole for the funeral. I told them they might but I doubted it.

On the morning of the funeral three of us were driving up Glenveagh Drive when we saw Martin. We pulled up and had a quick yarn with him and told him we would call to the house as soon as possible. We met the funeral cortege at the top of Corrib Avenue and as we expected there was a very big crowd walking behind the hearse. When the family went back to the house it was then we got a longer talk with Martin about Julie.

Plastic bullets continued to be fired indiscriminately with many people being seriously injured and of course others being killed. During the period of the hunger strike the British government said 50,000 of those weapons of death were fired but it's believed far more than that were fired.

As we remember Julie today we should also remember the 16 others who were killed with rubber and plastic bullets many of whom were schoolchildren.

Francis Rowntree, April 24th 1972 (age 11)
Tobias Molloy, July 16th 1972 (age 18)
Thomas Friel, May 17th 1973 (age 21)
Stephen Geddis, August 30th 1975 (age 10)
Brian Stewart, October 10th 1976 (age 13)
Michael Donnelly, August 9th 1980 (age 21)
Paul Whitters, April 25, 1981 (age 15)
Julie Livingstone, May 13th 1981 (age 14)
Carol Ann Kelly, May 22nd 1981 (age 12)
Henry Duffy, May 22nd 1981 (age 45)
Nora McCabe, July 9th 1981 (age 30)
Peter Doherty, July 31st 1981 (age 33)
Peter McGuinness, August 9th 1981 (age 41)
Stephen McConomy, April 9th 1982 (age 11)
John Downes, August 12th 1984 (age 22)
Keith White, April 14th 1986 (age 20)
Séamus Duffy, August 11th 1989 (age 15)

Padraic Mac Coitir is a former republican
prisoner and current political activist.