Good Tuesday

Bag I used last night...made by Helen Quigley

Last night we attended a Troubles event. It was about the films of the Troubles and a journalist gave an eyewitness account of the event. Well, you know, I can't say what I really thought because this place is small and people are easily offended. but Liz, Emma and myself had a great debate after that and I think that really as many people said over and over again, it had gone on for too long. The people who lived through it - which would have been my age - call themselves the Conflict Generation. the generation born between the mid 60 to the early 80s - Gen X essentially - they grew into adulthood never knowing a day's peace. Violence and conflict was all they had known. A sectarian conflict undergirded by a completely useless British government and an Irish nation which were still recovering from 800 years of colonisation. Ireland was so so poor - unfathomably poor. Even though they had gained some kind of independence in 1916, had a civil war after that, people were still leaving it. The Irish diaspora still continued - and Ireland today is still the least populated country in Europe. It's population is EXACTLY the same since the last 19th century - before the Irish Famine took place. There are more Irish descendants outside Ireland than there are in it.

The British media - and even the local BBC here - for some idiotic reason portrayed it as two equally matched sides beating the shit out of each other. There was NOTHING equal about the entire thing. The British apparatus of state was brought to bear on the people who were directly involved in the conflict and let's face it who wasn't? People were drawn into it - willingly or unwillingly. They literally had no choice. And those who could choose often chose to leave. Suspicions were stoked by a rhetoric which did nothing to calm things. There is a darkness in all this - and it is a shame that the hell which these people preached about does not exist because certainly they would be there now.

I arrived in December 1997. The 90s were all about the Ceasefire - a ceasefire which was punctuated by continued killings - random and planned. People who had grown up in the struggle, unable to stop because of the cause they continued to believe in and transgressions which continued and people who wanted to have the thing continue. And it continued through marches, bonfires, armed colour parties, shootings. But by the time 1997 arrived the Women's Coalition, Mo Mowlam and there was enough momentum around the players who wanted peace - such as Hume, McGuinness, Adams, Irvine and Trimble. And the British government decided to overturn Widgery and the Saville Inquiry was started to look into the killings in Derry.

Prisoners were released, much to the horror of the people whose lives they had ruined, and lots and lots of money was thrown into the economy. It was the height of the Celtic Tiger which would continued to roar for another nine years. The Irish government was a more active player. It was confident. The United States with senator Mitchell worked to be the honest broker. In another time and place it would have not worked I am sure. But the exhaustion and fatigue of war and the determination of these men and women and another generation would not grow up in these circumstances changed everything. 

Even when I think about it - those days... those days that led up to it and those days that followed. Those MONTHS that followed. And the years as well. Now we are stuck at another impasse. The DUP refusing to have a Sinn Feinn First Minister. It sticks in their guts. They come up with every excuse to suspend the instruments of power sharing, cutting their own nose to spite their face. The magnificent own goal that was Brexit - what did they think was going to happen? Did they not think that Sinn Fein was unusually quiet when they were agitating for it? Where did they think this was all going to pan out and how was it all going to pan out?

I did my thesis about the nature of identity or post-identity. I looked at what consisted of identity and how identity was not a fixed thing. Even though weirdly people kept on arguing about identity ALL THE TIME. It was so stupid and painful. Through the lens of the literature of the Troubles I saw two camps - one camp were people who - mostly unioinist background who refused to talk about Troubles in their literature. They wanted to explore universal values. They were mostly based in Queens. Then there was the Derry Wans who through their plays and poems and short stories and essays spoke about the Troubles. Their art was about exploring the violence through the lens of the artist - and that was mostly Nationalist. It did not matter if you were Protestant, you could still be Nationalist - or have Nationalist sympathies. People such as Stephen Rea who acted in many Troubles films came out of the Derry Theatre tradition. They were led by Brian Friel, Seamus Heaney, etc. 

I don't know if they every worked with each other apart from being included in anthologies. I think in 1998 when I was doing my thesis it seemed that it was still so raw even though the Ceasefire had been in place for four years. I think I did not understand how new it still was though. I did not understand the context. I understand how momentous those years are now.

Derry which I lived in for three years - till 2001 - was only just recovering. The country we have today - the peace we have - is unimaginable. I remember going to a NI Tourism seminar on how to attract people to N Ireland held in Derry. I remember the despair that people had. They were we have all these beautiful places but no one will come here because of the reputation we have. We will never be able to attract people here. But then the film industry took off with the Game of Thrones... and we have never looked back since. 

I lived through the recovery process. I lived it. That is something. I brought something to that party. That was something.