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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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Between the Ears

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Innovative and thought-provoking features on a wide variety of subjects

Innovative and thought-provoking features that make adventurous use of sound and explore a wide variety of subjects. Made by leading radio producers.

Between the Ears: Child of Ardoyne

Factual: Politics

Child of Ardoyne

07/05/2011

BBC Radio 3 - Between the Ears, Child of Ardoyne

A meditation on 'the Troubles' from the viewpoint of north-Belfast children.

A feature composed from the testimony of children through Northern Ireland's three decades and more of conflict.

Ardoyne, in north Belfast, lies at the heart of 'murder mile', the working class community where there were more deaths per capita than anywhere else in Northern Ireland during thirty years of 'the Troubles' And at the centre of Ardoyne are the Holy Cross primary schools, one for girls and one for boys.

Of the ninety-nine people killed in Ardoyne between 1969 and 1997 by the army or by nationalist or loyalist paramilitaries, two-thirds attended these schools. Children like Philip McTaggart used the burnt-out houses abandoned by Protestant families in 1969 as their playground. Others like Karen McGuigan leapt from their bicycles and ran for cover as gun battles broke out between republicans and the army.

A generation later - and three years after the Good Friday Agreement - Karen and her daughter Christine, who was then in her last year at primary school, became embroiled in the Holy Cross dispute. This protest by loyalist residents against their Catholic neighbours' route to the school shocked a world that had been lulled into thinking the worst of Northern Ireland's troubles was in the past.

In this 'composed meditation', residents of Ardoyne - Catholic and Protestant, nationalist and loyalist - remember growing up during the conflict and, together with children of today, seek an understanding of the legacy that's been bequeathed to the children of tomorrow.

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