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Divis kids, Belfast

In the 1970s, during ‘The Troubles’, I spent a great deal of time in Northern Ireland. This is a group of kids in the Massereene Club, a community centre in the Divis Flats complex, West Belfast, on 4 January 1974: (l to r) Sean McKinley, Arder Nesbitt, Martin McGuinness and Patrick McKinley. It's hard to imagine these youngsters are now men in their 50s and beyond.

 

The Divis Flats were a sprawling, run-down development comprising 12 eight-story blocks of terraces and flats, plus a tower block of 96 flats. During the Troubles, the British Army was omnipresent, giving rise to enormous political and social tensions. The entire complex was regarded as a slum, not least by the tenants, and by the mid-1980s most of the flats had been demolished.

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Uploaded on December 29, 2007
Taken on January 4, 1974