So Tourism Minister Arlene Foster isn’t happy with the commentary on a new podcast designed to make visitors to West Belfast enjoy their experience even more.

It seems that she believes telling people that shots were fired from the Shankill on to the Falls is liable to give the impression that one side started the trouble.

Well minister, we have news for you. In West Belfast the loyalists did start the trouble in August 1969. The violence was horrifically one-sided and when dawn broke the following day, the houses left smouldering and in ruins where the Shankill meets the Falls were not Protestant, but Catholic. If she’d like the pictures, we’ll be happy to provide them; if she’d like the eyewitness reports, too many of our readers will be happy to provide them. Taking tourists along the Falls Road without referring to the pogrom of August 1969 would be like bringing them to the Cregagh Road without mentioning George Best. 

There is no point in pretending that it was some tit-for-tat confrontation. Loyalists poured down from the Shankill – no mobs went the other way.

We’re keen to hear any commentary that Minister Foster is happy to sign up to. It might well be a fascinating little bit of history in itself.