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Goretti McDonnell (righ foreground| at her husband's funeral Des = stred car outside Provisional Sinn THE Lower Falls is a shabby, derelict area very bear the city centre. Here can be found the H Block beadquarters and the offices of Provisional Sinn Pein.

The latter are protecled by large boulders along the kerb outside, a wire bage over the door which is •pened electronically from Iside the building and two dosed circuit TV cameras.

We go in and fix a time be our interview with Sinn Rein.

Shortly after we leave an Irmy frot patrol comes dong the Falls Road. One f the soldiers pauses riefly to peer into the Sinn lein bookshop next to heir effices. We walk up to be Royal Victoria Hosital on the corner of Falls red and Grosvenor Road. Ihere we take a taxi to indergonstown ["'AndyThe Falls Taxi Associfon (FTA] provides cheap sport from Castle beet in the city centre to lest Belfast.

Busy Bee You just find a taxi that's ing your way and all pack • anything up to nine at a bat it's cheaper than the es which are always ng cancelled anyway. Daly London's West End • have more taxis than nu Belfast!

We get out at the Busy • sbopping centre where ples Democracy share bookshop with the H Block committee. • shop fronts are ered with boards or • mesh and make a messing sight relieved • by the Tricolours I slogans which create atmosphere of resisbe to British repression. aday is the funeral of McDonnell, and the le area is decked out in kflags. le meet PD councillor McAnulty and •ger OUr interview • him. Then a local • whose brother is on blanket in Long Kesh • us on a tour of Town. • re walk around the huge council estate on our first day in Belfast the massive support for the hunger strikers is apparent everywhere.

400 black flags have been hung up overnight from lamp posts, and the Tricolour flies from several buildings including the newly built Andersonstown Leisure Centre.

Posters

Walking around the estate of red brick council houses with small, neat front gardens we could be on a working class estate on the outskirts of any British city. Except for one thing:

in every window there's a poster. And on the poster is a photo of a hunger striker.

And underneath the photo the hunger striker's name and the words 'We support the hunger strikers' There isn't a single house that hasn't got at least one such poster.

Walls are covered with elaborate murals of flags and slogans. From time to time the Brits come along and throw white paint over them.

But the mural painters are not deterred and new murals soon appear.

Everywhere you look you see the open defiance of the Nationalist people in the face of repression.

By lunchtime the coffin of Joe McDonnell has been moved from his house up the road in Lenadoon to the local chapel. While the Mass is being said a huge crowd gathers and the streets are lined all the way down to the Milltown Cemetary.

Widow The coffin is brought out of the chapel and Joe McDonnell:s widow, Goretti and their two children, show the only signs of emotion they are to allow themselves for the whole afternoon.

line of stewards stretches across the road in front of the fureral cortege, forcing the 40 or so members of the press forward ahead of the procession and keeping them at a distance.

The coffin bearers are flanked by masked, uniformed members of the IRA and every few minutes four new men step forward to relieve those carrying the coffin.

Overhead several army helicopters follow the procession on the lookout for the IRA firing Every so often the stewards out front stop and crouch down. Everyone wonders whether the volley is about to be fired and TV camera crews ahead of the cortege rush back to where the stewards are crouching.

But it is another false alarm. The stewards are waiting for the cortege to catch up.

Goretti: McDonnell, holding her head up high and looking calm and dignified, leads the mourners with her two children. Her daughter is 11 today.

Local youth predict that the volley will be fired at the Busy Bee where they volley was fired for Bobby Sands. They prove to be right.

Volleys The crowd surges forward, young people scramble on to the shop rooves and in front of several thousand people three masked, uniformed IRA men step forward with rifles and fire several volleys over Joe McDonnell's coffin.

There is a spontaneous burst of applause and cheering from the whole crowd.

And as the firing slips away there is spontaneous applause.

But within minutes soldiers move in to try and arrest the firing party.

Immediately hundreds of young people rush up the side street to protect them. Shots ring out and children begin to cry. Parents grab their kids and carry them away to safety.

Grounds In St Agnes Drive the troops open up with plastic bullets and live rounds. They leap over garden walls, guns firing as they pursue the young people.

RUC vehicles - grey armoured Landrovers with narrow slits through which they fire plastic bullets - charge along St Agnes Drive and down into Andersonstown Road where the funeral cortege is still moving slowly towards Milltown Cemetary.

The RUC fire plastic bullets indiscriminately into the main road and suddenly elderly women and children are being carried, injured, into nearby houses.

The funeral procession is all but broken up and the local community - despite 12 years of repression are clearly shocked by this attack on a cortege in which thousands of women and children are participating.

Later the most appalling stories of army brutality are recounted.

The funeral cortege regroups and moves on to Milltown Cemetary where the Republicans have plot for members killed in action.

That very morning 16 year old John Dempsey -a member of the Junior IRA shot dead by British troops- had been buried. A few yards from his grave, the freshly-dug earth now covered with flowers, Joe McDonnell is lowered into the ground.

It is hard to imagine a more moving sight than to watch a young boy shovel earth onto his father's coffin. Little wonder that new generations of Irish republicans take up the struggle against British As we walk back up to the Busy Bee rumours fly. Had three people been killed? Had all the firing party been arrested?

In the event Patrick Adams, brother of Provisional Sinn Fein vice-president Gerry Adams had been seriously wounded, shot four times in the back and a woman and four men arrested.

The IRA try to put a brave face on it, claiming that the army was reduced to attacking funeral corteges to capture a few guns. But there can be no doubt that the IRA's security for the firing party was very popr.

St Agnes Drive is sealed off for several hours. A dozen or so Brits crouch behind walls and in gardens and half a dozen Saracens are parked menacingly in the street.

The army are gloating at their success. And as we turn on the radio we hear the chief of Belfast RUC telling us that they had to go in to "protect the community"!

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