Stories from the Edge - Volunteer Now

Hugh Campbell“the payback isthat I feel good ”During the darkest days of the early 1970s, Hugh Campbell found himself organiser of a groupof vigilantes. Nowadays the word has connotations of an extreme group who seek to hand outtheir own form of justice. In the Lurgan of the time, vigilante was the convenient name given toa local community watch whose task was to act as an early warning against car bombs andassassins. Hugh’s responsibility was to ensure that his north Lurgan patch of Freecrow was covered 24 hours around theclock. It was not unusual for him to be awakened in the small hours by an agitated sentinel complaining that his relief hadnot turned up. During the early part of the Troubles, local people, coming to terms with the radical and violent disturbanceof every day life, believed gunmen and mobs were on every corner. It didn’t matter that that was not the real situation.What was real was the perception and that is what mattered. It was the best of times and the worst.Hugh now recalls almost 30 years later those times, much ofwhich has been spent in cold and often than not, uncrowdedmeeting rooms. His earliest memories are of his mother Sarah, abubbly woman who has become a community legend. In the daysbefore wall to wall television programming, she would arrangesocial evenings for the local church and Gaelic Football Club.Sometimes fifty and more people would come together for asocial in the local hall. They would pay six pence or a shilling atthe door. Tables would be laid out and the fold away chairs“he is fiercelyanti-sectarian”opened. Those organising would bring cakes or buttered soda farls freshly baked on the griddle over an open fire. Othersdonated their coppers which bought the milk and tea. For the next few hours people would sit around chatting. A localmusician might turn up and someone would sing an old comeonye as others supped on the mugs of hot steamy tea andate home-made cake from a plain white plate. Sarah Campbell was an ardent community volunteer. She organised thecamogie team for St Peters Gaelic Athletic Club.As a youngster Hugh would see his mother going around the terrace street