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Contents (Volume 2) 9780230_553057_01_prexx.qxp 8/23/2007 14:15 Page vii Contents (Volume 2) List of Maps ix List of Abbreviations x Acknowledgements xii Introduction to Volume 2 xvi 1 Name upon Name: 1975–1986 1 I: A changing map (July 1975–December 1979) 1 Benedict Kiely, Proxopera; Jennifer Johnston, Shadows on our Skin Michael Longley, The Echo Gate; Brian Friel, Translations II: The hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and their aftermaths (January 1980–November 1986) 36 Bernard Mac Laverty Cal III: Fiction, drama and poetry (1980–1986) 55 Una Woods, The Dark Hole Days; Anne Devlin, ‘Naming the Names’; Deirdre Madden, Hidden Symptoms Graham Reid, The Billy Plays; Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Paul Muldoon, Why Brownlee Left, Quoof 2 Towards an Ending: 1987–1995 98 I: From Enniskillen to the ceasefires (1987–1994) 98 Stewart Parker Pentecost; Tom Paulin Fivemiletown; Peter McDonald ‘Sunday at Great Tew’; Ciaran Carson, The Irish for No, Belfast Confetti; Glenn Patterson Burning Your Own II: Reconfigurations, and early poetic responses to the peace process and ceasefires 143 Medbh McGuckian, Captain Lavender; Word of Mouth; Eilish Martin, slitting the tongues of jackdaws; Gráinne Tobin, Banjaxed; Ruth Carr There is a House. Sinead Morrissey, There Was Fire in Vancouver; Michael Longley, vii 9780230_553057_01_prexx.qxp 8/23/2007 14:15 Page viii viii Contents The Ghost Orchid; Frank Ormsby, The Ghost Train; Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level 3 A Longer Road: 1995–2006 172 I: Struggling towards closure (1995–2001) 172 Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness; Seamus Deane, Reading in the Dark Gary Mitchell The Force of Change II: Roadblocks, roadmaps (2001–2006) 215 III: ‘Falling Into Light’: new generation poets 225 Sinead Morrissey, Between Here and There, The State of the Prisons; Nick Laird, To a Fault; Leontia Flynn, These Days; Alan Gillis, Somebody, Somewhere Notes 239 Chronology 279 Maps 303 Bibliography 306 Contents Listing for Volume 1 318 Index 321 9780230_553057_02_cha01.qxp 8/23/2007 13:48 Page 1 1 Name upon Name: 1975–1986 I: A changing map (July 1975–December 1979) Benedict Kiely, Proxopera; Jennifer Johnston, Shadows on our Skin Michael Longley, The Echo Gate; Brian Friel, Translations II: The hunger strikes, the Anglo-Irish Agreement, and their after- maths (January 1980–November 1986) Bernard Mac Laverty, Cal III: Fiction, drama and poetry (1980–1986) Una Woods, The Dark Hole Days; Anne Devlin, ‘Naming the Names’; Deirdre Madden, Hidden Symptoms Graham Reid, The Billy Plays; Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme Paul Muldoon, Why Brownlee Left, Quoof I A changing map (July 1975–December 1979) High levels of violence continued in the province throughout the second half of 1975 and most of 1976; the toll for 1975 (267 fatalities) was 40 less than the previous year, but in 1976 killings again reached 1974 levels. The fact that the majority of these casualties were civilians, murdered in para- military and sectarian attacks,1 is strongly reflected in the literature of the period, particularly in its poetry and emerging fiction. Amongst the most notorious killings were those of three members of a Dublin group, the Miami Showband in late July 1975; their murder by the UVF near Newry prompted a moving, angry elegy by Paul Durcan.2 A fortnight later five Protestants were killed and 60 were injured in a PIRA bomb and gun attack on a pub in the Shankill Road. The republicans’ intended targets were the UVF, whose members were said to frequent the bar. None of the dead were linked to the loyalist paramilitaries, however. Although the Provisionals’ 1 9780230_553057_02_cha01.qxp 8/23/2007 13:48 Page 2 2 Northern Irish Literature, 1975–2006 leadership repeatedly claimed that their organisation was above sectar- ianism, the fact that the gang involved, while making their getaway, shot at women and children waiting at a taxi rank suggests otherwise.3 Throughout the autumn of 1975, tit-for-tat killings and bombings occurred almost daily, and reached a deadly climax on Thursday, 2 October, when the UVF launched a wave of attacks which left 12 Catholics dead. One of those responsible for four of these murders was Lenny Murphy, the leader of the Shankill Butchers; seven of the 19 Catholics for whose deaths this gang later stood trial were slaughtered with butcher’s imple- ments.4 Not surprisingly, as a consequence of the horror these crimes evoked, abattoirs and allusions to butchery feature frequently in Northern Irish literary texts.5 By the close of the year a further 70 people in the province and in England perished in the violence; 130 of the year’s 267 fatalities are estimated to have died at the hands of republican paramili- taries, 121 at the hands of loyalists. Multiple killings in Armagh and Down marked the beginning of the new year. On 4 January 1976, six men from two Catholic families were shot in their homes by the UVF. In retaliation, the following day, a local IRA group calling themselves Republican Action Force ambushed and then massacred ten Protestant linen-workers at Whitecross, South Armagh. On their way home from work, their minibus was flagged down by a dozen figures wearing combat gear. At first the workers believed they were British soldiers, since the man addressing them had ‘a pronounced English accent’.6 Having asked each of the occupants to state his religion, the paramilitaries told the driver, the only Catholic on board, to ‘run up the road’. The remaining 11 men were then lined up by the road and machine- gunned down; amazingly, though struck by 18 bullets, one man survived to give an account of the killing.7 From the spring onwards, the British government initiated a policy which would be later dubbed ‘ulsterisation’, and which saw responsibility for secur- ity passing increasingly to an expanded RUC. This strategy, pursued first by Merlyn Rees and then his fiercely anti-IRA successor, Roy Mason, resulted in a decline in the number of Army deaths and in loyalist para- military membership.8 Throughout the summer, meanwhile, sectarian assassinations continued unabated, along with murders of RUC officers and reservists. In late July, at Sandyford, Co. Dublin, the Provisionals planted a 200lb mine which killed Christopher Ewart-Biggs, recently appointed as British ambassador to the Irish Republic, and Judith Cook, a 27-year-old civil servant. Their original target was Merlyn Rees. A last minute hitch led him to postpone his visit to Dublin, otherwise he would have been travelling in the ambassador’s convoy.9 9780230_553057_02_cha01.qxp 8/23/2007 13:48 Page 3 Name upon Name: 1975–1986 3 In late summer 1976, hopes were raised that the carnage might be brought to an end. The emergence of the Women’s Peace Movement (later called the Peace People) came in the wake of an appalling incident that occurred on 10 August in West Belfast. Three children, Joanne Maguire (aged 8) and her brothers, John (aged 2) and Andrew (six weeks) were tragic- ally crushed to death when an IRA getaway car careered into them; its driver had been shot dead at the wheel by soldiers. Within days, in what Bernadette Devlin termed ‘an explosion of female rage’,10 thousands from both communities were marching through Belfast to demand a ces- sation of violence. Peace rallies were held on 12, 14, 21, 28 August and 4 September, organised by the children’s aunt, Mairead Corrigan, and Betty Williams, both of whom had witnessed the deaths, and Ciaran McKeown, a journalist who wrote for the Irish Press and Fortnight. The scale of the Peace People’s success can be deduced from attendance figures at their events; a rally at Ormeau Park on 21 August drew an estimated audience of 20 000; 25 000 people marched from the Shankill Road to Woodvale Park on 28 August; the 4 September rally in Derry attracted another 25 000. Hardline republicans and loyalists were disturbed by the move- ment’s popularity and its cross-communal bridge-building, and as a result increasingly resorted to intimidation to deter its supporters. In a letter to the Irish Times in the late autumn, the poet Robert Greacen describes how at one rally in Falls Park the Peace People were spat upon and had mud, stones and eggs thrown at them.11 Hostility towards their campaign grew in republican areas, according to two histories of the IRA,12 when Corrigan and Williams encouraged Catholics to inform on the paramilitaries, and described ‘instances when members of the secur- ity forces may have stepped beyond the rule of law’ as only ‘occasional’.13 A sudden, steep decline in killings in December 1976 persisted into the following year and beyond, leading McKittrick and McVea to conclude that this period marks ‘the end of the most violent phase of the Troubles’, though ‘no one could know it at the time’.14 They attribute this in part to the appointment of Roy Mason as Northern Ireland Secretary. Formerly a defence minister, Mason adopted a simpler, military approach to the province’s problems. Rather than expend energy on grand political ini- tiatives ‘that might lead to failure and leave people in deep despair again’,15 he concentrated primarily on security policy and economic redevelop- ment. Promising to roll up the IRA like ‘a tube of toothpaste’,16 Mason implemented a range of rigorous measures: intelligence-gathering was improved, along with co-operation with the Gardai; arrests increased, and detainees held for longer periods; new interrogation centres were set up, like the one at Castlereagh, where terrorist suspects were subjected 9780230_553057_02_cha01.qxp 8/23/2007 13:48 Page 4 4 Northern Irish Literature, 1975–2006 to intensive grilling by rotating teams of detectives often for up to eight hours and throughout the night; the rate of convictions rose, many as a result of confessions made during ‘protracted questioning’.17 Mason’s period of tenure also saw an expansion in SAS operations, particularly in South Armagh.
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