The police were tolerated but not liked, seen as an unwelcome intrusion of the Unionist government and a symbol of hated partition which had cut off the area from its natural hinterland in Monaghan and Louth. There was a constant cat and mouse game with the police and customs officials who were trying to prevent or reduce the endemic smuggling that went on all along the border. There was a constant low level of smuggling going on in which I as well as everyone else engaged. Cigarettes and tobacco were cheaper in the south and I was often sent to buy these in a small shop just over the border a couple of miles away. Most people shopped in Dundalk.

Sometimes the balance of advantage was in the north and as a teenager I sometimes helped a friend, John Cowan, to smuggle butter to Castleblaney for sale. My father told a story about a local character, James McQuillan, who in the 1920s was fined 10 shillings for insulting the police when he announced their approach at the top of his voice,

"They're coming, they're coming - the black bastards are coming."

After the fine, somewhat chastened he would shout,

"They're coming, they're coming....

but I can't say who."

Apart from the smuggling the population was generally law abiding and I can not recall much crime in the area apart from the occasional bicycle theft. I remember my father holding a grudge for years against a man, whom he suspected of stealing a bicycle lamp while he was in Flint's public house. He never said anything to him about it and when, years later, the man came to live close to us in Creggan, the families became friends and we would play cards (mostly Twenty Five) several nights a week.

... more later ...