CHAPTER 1
A Good Night Out on the Falls Road: Liberation Theatre and the Nationalist Struggle in Belfast 1984-1990
Bill McDonnell
Introduction
The experience of theatre starts long before the curtain rises and the play begins. Our theatre exists in the world in which we live, and our theatre experience, shaped by that world, rises from it and returns to it. The world of theatre is not sufficient unto itself. (Himani Bannerji)
Two continuities have defined the historical relationship between Britain and Ireland. The first is that of coloniser and colonised, a relationship underpinned by a deep and reflexive racism. The second has been the centrality of terror as a linchpin of the state's response to nationalist irredentism. The Earl of Pembroke, who landed at Bannow Bay near Waterford in 1167, set the precedent. Finding that the Irish were, understandably, less than willing to cede their land, he ordered the arrest of local leaders. Their arms and legs were systematically broken, and they were flung into the sea. As the historian Simon Schama notes dryly, 'The terror worked.' (Schama, 2000, p. 148) Eight hundred years later Britain has had more judgements bought against it for torture and breach of human rights than any other western nation. All have centred on its occupation of the north of Ireland. Irish culture has mediated these continuities of oppression. During the 'Troubles', that strangely anodyne term for the latest period of republican insurgency, 1969-1997, culture was again foregrounded as a site of resistance and liberation. Theatre was part of this resistance, and my essay deals with the work of two groups, Belfast Community Theatre and the Belfast People's Theatre. Both were based in the nationalist Ballymurphy estate in West Belfast. My knowledge of their work is based upon a relationship that was first and foremost a practical and political relationship, mediated through theatre exchanges, workshops, letters and interviews. During the period, I worked in the inner city estates of Sheffield with John Goodchild. This work, based on Freirean principles, and committed to the generation of 'amateur' theatres within popular campaigns and movements, was the basis of our dialogue with the Belfast groups.
Any study of cultural activism in the north of Ireland must necessarily conjure with the narrative of Republicanism within British political discourse. The attacks committed by the IRA on the British mainland have shaped popular perceptions of the nationalist struggle. A highly effective partnership between state and mass media in the period 1969-1997 prevented the British public from accessing even the most notionally objective assessment of the British army's prosecution of its role. (Curtis, 1984) The result has been that the legitimate grievances of the nationalist people as a whole have been overlooked. The concern of this study is with the experiences of those people. That is to say, with those who did not bear arms, but who lived in an apartheid statelet, and whose communities became a violent laboratory for British counter insurgency methods. These theatres were a response to this history, and so I have fore grounded this history and the voices of those who endured it and sought to transform it. Critical writing is always a social and dependant act. The understandings that these experiences may bring do not belong to me, but to a collective and courageous enterprise.
The Political Context
If Belfast Republicanism has an epicentre, then it is the Ballymurphy estate in West Belfast. Bounded by the Whiterock Road on one side, and by the Loyalist Spring Martin estate on two more, and protected at its base by the Falls Road, the area produced and lost more IRA volunteers than any other district in the north. It was the birthplace of Gerry Adams, future President of Sinn Fein; but also of Andy Tyrie, who was to become one of Loyalism's most feared killers. It was an estate that, long before the 'Troubles', had a reputation for social disorder and entrenched poverty. In his autobiography, Gerry Adams remembers the 'Murph' as being 'badly built, badly planned, and lacking in facilities.' (Adams, 1996, p. 5) Although Ballymurphy was a mixed community in the 1950s, by 1969 most Protestant families had moved to the nearby Springvale estate. Springfield Road, which separates the two estates, would become one of the most violent and notorious flash points of the 'Peace Line'.
The conflict in the north of Ireland was successfully naturalised by the British state as a sectarian struggle, with the British government as the neutral peace broker caught between tribal factions. For republicans and the British left, however, it was a neo-colonial conflict, whose religious and cultural dimensions (powerful and real), masked more fundamental contentions about the nature of Irish statehood, and the political identity of its people. Billy Mitchell of the Ulster Volunteer Force (U.V.F.) famously remarked that 'no one's getting shot over transubstantiation or Mary worship.' (Stevenson, 1996, p. 24)
It was a conflict rooted in the conjunction of three complex historical processes: (1) the eight hundred year old colonial relationship between Britain and Ireland, with its dominant themes of terror and the suppression of Irish nationalism; (2) the establishment of the apartheid Orange statelet and its institutional oppression of the catholic population from 1921; and (3) the industrial development of Belfast, with its concomitant exploitation of both the Protestant and Catholic working class. The Union was a capitalist and imperial construct, which maintained its power and interests through the agency of sectarianism, creating communal tensions that came to disguise deeper issues around class and nationhood. Mitchell again:
The business people were mostly unionist ... if you were a Catholic, you were being punished for your disloyalty, and we Protestants were being exploited for our loyalty ... once you started to complain about your wages and your working conditions, you were promptly told, if you don't like it there's a hundred Catholics out in the street that will take your job tomorrow. (Stevenson, 1996, p. 76)
These experiences produced powerful and defensive communal relationships and belief systems. The image of fanatical neo-Marxist ideologues wielding Kalshnikovs in the cause of Connolly and Irish Freedom that came to characterise the IRA, was a myth.
For the most part the paramilitaries on both sides were motivated by more down to earth, immediate and communal necessities. Brendan Hughes, who was to have the role of supervising the second Hunger Strike of 1981, reflects this powerfully:
I was a Catholic, and I seen the Catholic community under attack. My whole reason for joining the Provisionals at that time was not to bring about a thirty-two county democratic socialist republic, and I had no ideology at that time. We were a reactive force. (Stevenson, 1996, p. 36: my italics)
This response was echoed within Protestant communities. Ron McMurray of the U.V.F. notes that:
one of the main motives for a lot of people was that you doing something for your community, in that we perceived an attack on our community, or on our identity. (Stevenson, 1996, p. 22)
This stress on the lack of ideological and political coherence in the early phase has been well documented. (Toolis, 1995; Kelley, 1982) Indeed, Gerry Adams has argued that the civil rights movement of 1968-69 had no agenda beyond the ending of discrimination in employment, and the securing of universal suffrage in local elections. (Adams, pp. 93-94) In that sense the movement was, argues Adams, part of an international moment, which linked Belfast and Derry to Prague and Paris, and to Saigon and Berkeley. It was the violence of the sectarian state's response, and which included shootings and the wholesale burning out of Catholic families on the Lower Falls, which ignited latent republican aspirations, and brought the fact of partition into sharp focus. The ensuing war drew upon, and deepened, the ideological, religious and cultural continuities that defined the two communities. This is not to evade the ideological tensions that marked debate within either republicanism or loyalism, but to underline the dominant reality of a grass roots solidarity that was deep, potent and historically durable. This reflexive solidarity was the key to the IRA's ability to engage the British army for some 30 years. It saw itself as a community army, 'a people's army', which was resurrected in 1970 as a defence force against loyalist and state sponsored attacks on the catholic community. (Adams, 1986, pp. 63-69) The consequence of the IRA's activity was that the nationalist community became universally suspect. The goal of British counter-insurgency was the isolation of this army 'physically and psychologically from its civilian support.' (Pilkington, 1994, p. 35) To achieve this objective it utilised a range of repressive measures, including harassment, mass internment, beatings, legalised assassination, intimidation, torture, the wrecking of homes, and the separation of families. Ballymurphy was, until 1994, a war zone.
A Popular Culture for a Popular Struggle
Obliged to sustain themselves as the political price for their perceived (and unacceptable) communal loyalties (to the IRA), the nationalist peoples constructed a de facto alternative state. This state within a state had its own army, police force, and cultural and educational networks. The theatre derived from this political and cultural infrastructure. For Joe Reid, community activist and founder member of Belfast Community Theatre, the relationship was absolute:
Within the struggle for socialism, the arts, and theatre in particular are usually relegated to some sort of aesthetic void, removed from the mainstream of political activity. I believe this to be a fundamental mistake. Theatre, like all the arts, must be part of the overall political consciousness building which has to develop side by side with the political struggle.
At the hub of the educational and cultural work was Springhill Community House in Ballymurphy, and Conway Mill on the Falls Road. Surrounded when I first went there in 1986 by boarded-up buildings, and approached across debris of concrete and glass, Springhill House was the home of Father Des Wilson and Sister Noelle Ryan. This remarkable three storey council house was a centre of education and healing for the war torn community. In the small living areas of the house, some 300 adults and children a week came to attend education classes, formal and informal. The front room where visitors slept was also a classroom, church, and theatre. Goodchild and I performed there, between couch and fireplace. At Conway Mill, the network had access to more classrooms, a small theatre, a canteen and meeting spaces.
While the educational work was based on the liberation pedagogy of Paulo Freire, the spiritual dimension of the struggle was nourished by liberation theology. The Catholic Church's support for the status quo, its use of the pulpit to attack nationalists while remaining largely uncritical of the military's actions, was a deep wound within the community. The struggle, then, was conceived as a dual one, embracing church and state. Liberation theology was inseparable from the nationalist project. The iconography of the republican movement reflected this intersection of armed struggle and radical theology. Bobby Sands, the Hunger Striker, depicted on murals with his unkempt beard and long hair, wrapped in a stained blanket and surrounded by brutal guards, was readily taken for the suffering Christ of Hope.
Belfast Community Theatre
Drawn from the Ballymurphy, Twinbrook and Andersontown estates of West Belfast, Belfast Community Theatre attracted individuals for whom the theatre served a range of needs. There were those who, like Reid, saw it as a political vehicle, a means of conscientization and mobilisation, for others it offered the simple opportunity to act, for others still it was a refuge, a source of comradeship, care and support. These were ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. They would insist on the concomitant ordinariness of theatre. In the period the group was developing, Reid had started a three-year BA in English and Drama at Jordanstown University. It was there that he met lecturer Michael Klein. A New Yorker, Klein brought to his teaching a history of antiracist action and activism in the anti Vietnam and Black Rights' campaigns. He had worked for Luther King's organisation. Klein introduced Reid to the work of Piscator and Brecht, and to European and American underground films and writings. What Reid found in Klein was an empathy with the working class community that was absent from the rest of the academy. Klein encouraged Reid to write, and become involved in the theatre process as it evolved up to 1987. The result was a rich mix, which brought to bear on a politicised working-class theatre the influence of a cosmopolitan radicalism.
The initial group of Joe Reid, Marie McKnight and Jim and Pat McGlade came from the Springhill network. Jim McGlade was a playwright who would write material for the group and act when necessary. Indeed, the first play the group performed was not directly about the nationalist experience. Oh Gilbert!, written by Jim McGlade, explored attitudes towards people with learning difficulties. The production was successful and brought in Tony Flynn and Gerard McLaughlin to form a core of six performer/writers. Other activists would join for specific projects. McKnight:
People come into the theatre through working together in other community groups. It's very much a community-based group that tries to deal with the issues. Each recognised a need within their communities for things to be said on social issues, on community issues. (Belfast Community Theatre, 1986)
This organic relationship produced a critical dialogue between community and theatre which was central to its value, as Reid notes:
Theatre must stand at the heart of struggle, and the tensions performed on the stage cannot be allowed to be abstracted from the reality of the audience's experience. Our community is our stage ... Theatre is not about abstract issues or arguments about this or that theory; theatre in this context is about life and death. (Belfast Community Theatre, 1986)
Reid's comments are not melodramatic but precise. If Thatcherism had brought social conflict to Britain, it had intensified the existing crisis in the north of Ireland. The death of ten republican volunteers in hunger strikes between April and October 1981, brought her especial opprobrium, reflected in the IRA's assassination attempt at the 1984 Tory party conference. The Hunger Strike had two effects. In the longer term, Sands' election to the British parliament would mark the beginning of republicanism's dual political and military strategy. In the short term, it led to an intensification of violence on the streets. In 1981 alone 29,601 plastic bullets were fired by crown forces on the streets of the north: more than in the previous eight years taken together. (Ashley, 1985, p. 173) Sinn Fein's new political strategy led to a growth in community-based politics and cultural activism. Belfast Community Theatre was, says Reid, an example of this.
At the core stood people who were very, very committed and politically motivated, and who had, if you like, a particular vision of people's entitlement, people's rights. And although in the scheme of things people may argue the right to write a play is not a big right, to us it was a fundamental right because it stood at the very core of the struggle that was going on in this country.
One of Belfast Community Theatre's responses was what they would term 'Mixed Bags'. These were cultural events, sometimes spanning whole days, and staged at the theatre in Conway Mill. Marie McKnight offered some sense of the range and richness of the work:
Lady Gregory's plays had been written in the 1920s. We adapted them and changed the language a bit, to make them a bit more modern. But they were as relevant today as they were in the 20s. And they actually dealt with the supergrass issue, which is by no means a new thing, you know. We did a Brecht On Education, a piece on George Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, James Connolly, Willie Mandela. (Belfast Community Theatre, 1986)
