A Very Funny Place

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A VERY FUNNY PLACE

Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene A Master Thesis by Dennis van der Pligt

A Very Funny Place

Master Thesis: A Very Funny Place: Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene Date: December 5, 2020

Program: Human Geography (Conflicts, Territories and Identities) MSc, Radboud University Nijmegen

Instructor: Dr. Olivier T. Kramsch

Student: Dennis van der Pligt, s4133625

E-mail: [email protected]

Phone number: +31 6 1227 3002

Front cover image was made by the author. The sign stood outside an establishment on Bedford Street, Belfast.

A Very Funny Place

Contents Preface & Acknowledgements ...... 3 I. Introduction ...... 5 i. Research Question & Context ...... 5 ii. A New Troubles Museum? ...... 7 iii. Other Projects: The Military, Society & Art ...... 8 II. Theories & Methods ...... 11 i. Basic Definitions ...... 11 ii. Imaginative Geographies ...... 15 iii. Sharing Powers, Museums & Identity ...... 21 III. Two Troubles: High Politics and People’s History ...... 26 i. What Were the Troubles? ...... 26 ii. Long Road to Peace ...... 29 iii. Where All the People Have Gone ...... 31 IV. The Troubles Displayed ...... 36 i. In the Wake of Memorials ...... 36 ii. Belfast, Ulster, Ireland & the World ...... 48 iii. Taking Sides: One, All, None? ...... 54 iv. Violence ...... 59 v. Visitors and Participation ...... 67 V. World Wars: To Divide or Unite? ...... 75 i. Two Commemorations ...... 76 ii. Constructivist Nationalism & The Freedom Museum ...... 78 iii. Ulster Identity: An Essentialist Nationalism ...... 81 iv. A Very Long Way from Tipperary ...... 90 VI. Conclusion ...... 95 References ...... 99

A Very Funny Place

Preface & Acknowledgements

“IT WAS OLD BUT IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND ITS COLOURS THEY WERE FINE” blared among the otherwise quiet student dorm buildings of Hoogeveldt. The COVID-19 crisis had kept many away from Nijmegen. Besides, it was summer. A lone exchange student looked up, but clearly did not seem to understand the music. Neither did I. Or rather: I couldn’t figure out why it was playing here, and so absurdly loud, and not “…AT DERRY, AUGHRIM,

ENNISKILLEN AND THE BOYNE”, or something like that. What the heck. Nevertheless there was an odd beauty to it. Not so much the song itself or the production values of this particular version, but that it was so out of context that hardly anyone could be offended or aroused. After all, “…THE SASH ME FATHER WORE!” is considered a sectarian song. A few days later in the middle of the night, a few neighbours of mine suddenly broke into singing the decidedly anti-sectarian composition Zombie. If anything, it proved that equalling the vocal capabilities of the late Dolores O’Riordan is tough, even under influence.

Anyhow. Cosmic balance restored, I guess.

Speaking of music related to Ireland, one of my personal favourites is The Man from the Daily Mail. I suppose you can interpret it as a rebel song. My preference is to extract from it the fundamental notion that humans, at times, tend to paint simplistic pictures of large groups of other humans and their birthplaces. “Ireland is a very funny place” and “the Irish are a very funny race”, “who are marching to the German goose step”. These connotations are presented as ridiculous and thus as myths. You could interpret it as ‘not fascists but true freedom fighters’, but I prefer to think of Ireland’s peoples are much more than warriors. As humans we have a limited and unsatisfactory capability to grasp reality in full. So strictly speaking, all our beliefs, however intricate, remain mythic to a degree. This thesis is about museums, funny places where the core business is mythmaking, also known under the more benign phrase ‘storytelling’. The

A Very Funny Place question is: what myths or stories would actually improve our societies and tie it closer together?

Although assumptions, interpretations and mistakes remain mine, I don’t have to answer that alone. I had the help of more than two dozen people who were willing to be interviewed by me, or as I prefer to say, to have a conversation with me. I hereby wish to thank them. I also wish to express gratitude towards my instructor at Radboud University, Olivier

Kramsch, who somehow continued to put up with my somewhat chaotic and irregular communications, and who expanded my horizons every time we talked about this thesis; and to Liam Kennedy, who acted as my unofficial instructor when I visited Queen’s University

Belfast in late 2019; and to my friend Jorn Bunk, who still pays for my fries “until you find a job for which you have to show your degree”; to Colm Wittenberg as well, a friend whose violin skills mask my limited capabilities on guitar. I want to thank my friend Jean Querelle, some of whose pictures I have used, and whom I visited when he lived in Belfast in 2018; and also my friend Noor de Kort for the discussions we have had about Dutch heritage of 1940-

1949. Final thanks go to my girlfriend, Aaricia Kayzer, who took the trouble of reading parts of my thesis, has supported me throughout, and who lovingly held up the carrot of going on a holiday with me should I finish this work.

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I. Introduction i. Research Question & Context

“You do know that this has been tried many times, right?”, curator Hugh Forrester asked me when I spoke to him for this research about a new Troubles museum (2019). The Northern Irish

Troubles are a subject that museums sometimes awkwardly dance around, even though open- mindedly engaging with tough historical and political questions should ideally be a hallmark of democracies. Thus, in the main, I’m posing the following question: how do the museum scenes in Belfast and Londonderry, depicting modern violent conflict, relate to the idea of a new Troubles museum? This relation is reciprocal and leads to two other questions. How does the museum scene in Belfast and Londonderry position themselves towards the idea of a new museum for the Troubles? Additionally, what is the effect of such an idea on the existing museum scene, and as such on the wider community in general? As we will see, Northern

Ireland still suffers cultural isolation. The world outside that country, the island of Ireland and the United Kingdom is reduced to simplicities and often understood through local lenses by its inhabitants. To further upset the debate, inspire new opinions and widen the horizon of possibilities, I will offer a transnational view. This thesis will also compare the depiction of war in, mainly, a Groesbeek museum (the Netherlands) with those in Northern Ireland. In

Northern Ireland, the attention of visitors is split between the Troubles and the world wars. In the Netherlands, however, most public history of war revolves around the Nazi occupation of

1940-1945. These two regions are sufficiently alike to compare them. Both saw modern violence on their territories, and both experienced the world wars. The latter they did in their own social and political context, therefore a comparison would indicate particularities in public history. The Irish-British experience of the world wars is especially particular and insular, and hardly touches on what they meant for millions on the continent. Additionally both Northern

Ireland and the Netherlands experience(d) segregation along religious lines, and have therefore already been compared to each other. An examination of world war exhibitions is used to break

A Very Funny Place open the Troubles museum discussion. Since the potential of a Troubles museum is central to the main question, Northern Ireland is the primary field of interest here, while the Netherlands serves as an auxiliary.

A Troubles museum remains a relevant topic to discuss, in part because there is no such place and such efforts fail because of political contentiousness. Northern Ireland is indeed still coping with the conflict of the 1960s-1990s. Without having experienced it themselves, a post-

Good Friday Agreement (GFA) generation is coming of age seeking to build a future on the societal rubble of the Troubles. With this 1998 treaty, most direct political violence ended.

Irredentist claims of Irish unification or a unionist Ulster changed from being explicit political objectives assumed to be sacral, into one of many potential constitutional setups. Popular support for constitutional change is acknowledged to be unknown for the moment, as only by referendum in both Ireland and Northern Ireland can these polities be joined (Bew, Gibbon, &

Patterson, 2002 (1995)). The Belfast government was dead-locked through the break-down of power-sharing between Sinn Féin and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2017. These Irish republicans and Ulster British loyalists entered new battlegrounds due to Brexit. The former are more inclined to European cooperation than the latter, yet used to run campaigns with a traditional nationalist Eurosceptic message (Murphy M. C., 2020). Now, Sinn Féin claims that stability in ‘the North’ can only be guaranteed if the region receives a special status within the borders of the EU, suggesting that the Irish nation can only be at peace when they are sufficiently united (Sinn Féin, 2016). During this research Brexit remained to be fully resolved, and Westminster sought to further that process by calling a general election for December 12,

2019. A Conservative majority in parliament enabled the UK to leave the EU as of January 31,

2020. That is not the end of it: negotiations are in progress. Since the same month, the Northern

Ireland Assembly was running again. Yet, whether this will be remembered as the start of real cooperation or a brittle truce between Sinn Féin and the DUP remains to be seen.

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Despite successful and dead-end efforts, a Troubles museum idea remains alive to this day. Historian Liam Kennedy advocated a Troubles museum in early 2018 and is still invested in the idea. Indeed, the starting point of this research was Kennedy’s plea in favour of such a place. He is part of a group of volunteers, mostly consisting of academics, exploring the possibilities and challenges of such a museum. I am writing with such efforts in mind, and theirs in particular: if one wishes to create a Troubles museum, how should it be handled and what should be taken into account? Should such an endeavour be undertaken at all? Another project that is still in its infancy is a new all-Ireland military museum. Currently, this is being managed by Lt. Col. Andy Hart (retd.), who served during the Troubles with the Royal Irish

Regiment. In the following pair of sections, I’ll discuss these ideas.

ii. A New Troubles Museum?

Asserting a new general museum was possible and required, Kennedy recognised the opportunity technology provides to move beyond traditional glass displays. Engaging with history could and should be made immersive and multi-facetted. “[P]atrolling eerie, darkened terraced streets late at night, to ambush sites and even car-bomb explosions” could be ‘relived’, perhaps making it the closest experience to the real thing. “Through the medium of public history, Northern Ireland can speak both to its own divided self and to a wider world in terms of peace and reconciliation”, Kennedy wrote, seeing a chance to promote public discussion on the conflict’s causes, experiences and consequences in a shared space (Kennedy, 2018). True, it can be too overwhelming for many to be confronted with violent scenes. Kennedy later related to me that that indeed could be too much, but perhaps visitors should have the option

(2019).

On the contrary, historian John Wilson Foster found the idea too dangerous. While he could be right to point out that “Troubles fatigue” might prevent many to buy a ticket for a

Troubles museum, as alternative he offers very little. Also true is his claim that there are places

A Very Funny Place to learn about the Troubles, but as he wrote himself, “these are localised, discreet, even tentative representations of those 30 years, which is as it should be”. Foster’s position is understandable, as he served as consultant when the historical exhibition of Belfast City Hall was created. There, the Troubles are only touched upon by a small, almost completely white room. Although emotionally powerful, the short memories on the walls send the sole message that the conflict was terrible, and hardly explain any social or political tensions. It was hard to pass anything else in the political centre of the city (Foster, 2018). All representations of history are temporal, and one could change Troubles history if the situation requires it, or argument compels it. Moreover, it is questionable whether ‘local’ is a peace-promoting geography. The sectarianism of the Troubles in part had its origin in the relatively small geographies of Irish and Ulster British working-class neighbourhoods and rural towns, and the belief that the people on the other side of the fence are fundamentally different (Donnan, 2005, p. 74).

Two leading figures of National Museums Northern Ireland, Kathryn Thomson and

William Blair spoke out in favour of a new museum. Thomson called it a “safe place to explore difficult questions”. This raises the issue of how existing museums invite visitors to engage with tough historical and political problems, and whether they stimulate questioning at all.

Blair acknowledged that objects always carry power with them, the crucial question is how you frame them. Like Kennedy, they concede that indeed one has to be very careful in letting the public engage with artefacts invoking sensitive narratives (Meredith, 2018).

iii. Other Projects: The Military, Society & Art

When I conversed with Andy Hart, he explained that there is only a limited public interest in current regimental and corps museums. A vast collection of decorations in glass displays quickly turns the medals into generic little discs and crosses. Instead, he argued, a military museum should focus on themes in which the military and wider society meet. Also, “you could show mock-ups of Belfast neighbourhoods and tell stories about the lives of nationalists and

A Very Funny Place unionists living close to each other” (Hart, 2019b) (Hart, 2019a). A similar issue was raised by photographer and archivist Frankie Quinn: “Only recently has it become more public that the

Ministry of Defence had a huge influence on urban planning.” To build on Hart’s ideas, one could open up discussions on how the particular lay-out of the Falls Road areas was, at first, terrible to control for security forces.

Quinn is a leading figure of the Belfast Archive Project. This organisation focusses on documentary photography as opposed to press photography. Popular journalism often focusses on the daily particular and epic, whereas documentary photography offers a view of the daily ordinary and systemic. “These pictures of the protestant working class people show abject poverty. And still they have a picture of the Queen in their living room. How they can relate to her is beyond me”. Showing imagery of the protestant and catholic lower strata could stress their shared economic circumstances, rather than their opposition to each other. Indeed, the images literary offer a glimpse into the intimate spaces that were loyalist homes. “It’s history, it’s people’s history”. One of Quinn’s own personal long-running projects has centred on the peace walls. These could give a visual element to the social conflict that played out between

Belfast’s inhabitants. Quinn’s opinions shine through in his work. His series on Orange Order manifestations was made in part to “subvert it” (Quinn, 2019).

But the photographs he himself made or with which Quinn works are still close to material reality. More explicitly personal, interpretative and therefore opining is the realm of visual arts. Former Belfast City Councillor Jeff Dudgeon proposed an art gallery to tell the story of the Troubles (2019). When I spoke to her, artist Gail Ritchie was in the early stages of developing a work of art or monument that seeks to commemorate all the fatalities of the

Troubles. One creative challenge is, of course, how to visualise nearly 4.000 people. Secondly, should they be visualised in an equal manner? Will not their individuality be lost to a significant degree? Do we understand the pain of the Troubles to a satisfactory degree with such a piece

A Very Funny Place of art? Although ideally an artist has individual freedom, how will all this sit with Northern

Ireland’s audiences? (Ritchie, 2019).

Many themes emerged above: the depiction of violence in exhibitions; the Troubles narrative as connecting lesson both within and without Northern Ireland; the existence of

Troubles exhibitions in more local environments; the interplay between local, regional, national and international in a more abstract sense; the safe space a museum could and/or should be; objects on display in a museum; the interaction between visitors among themselves, the museum and individual objects.

Hereafter, in Chapter II, I will put these themes in a theoretical framework. Chapter III will consist of a short history of the Troubles. It is imperative to know what is to be captured in a museum. Moreover, the chapter serves to indicate what kind of narratives remain submerged. Chapter IV will contain an examination of museum depictions of the Troubles.

Chapter V is a comparison between Ulster British, Dutch and (Northern and Southern) Irish treatments of world war history. Its aim is to lay bare particularities of these different public interpretations of what could be called the same event. Furthermore, those in Northern Ireland with living memory of the Second World War lived through the Troubles as well. Concluding remarks will be made in Chapter VI. Hugh Forrester is right: Troubles exhibitions have been tried, and some lacked success. But older generations should let go of the notion that because they failed at something, it is impossible.

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II. Theories & Methods

In the first section of this chapter, I will discuss basic definitions of a ‘museum’, ‘history’ and

‘heritage’. Museums create and spread certain historic narratives, which I will further explain in the second section. These histories create imagined geographies. This term and its father will be further discussed below (Said, 2003 (1978)). As a result, images and opinions take hold within certain social groups. By imagining Ireland-the-island as belonging to an ‘ancient’ Irish people, the Ulster British are easily excluded from a place that is as much their place of birth, and vice versa. By museums we can gauge how this process of ‘othering’ happens. By extension, the ability of one people to cooperate or peacefully coexist with another can be determined. In the third section I will deepen the understanding of museums’ possibilities, and how they can have a unifying and inclusive effect on a divided society as Northern Ireland’s.

Neil Postman argued that museums are ever-changing spaces of dialogue, and primarily should exhibit voices that counter established opinions (2005 (1994)). To build upon his message, we could say that that is much like historians do in historiographic debates. By surveying what the current conflict museum scene of Northern Ireland depicts and what its implications are, this thesis aims to answer the question of what kind of Troubles exhibition Northern Ireland lacks, and what kind of museums it needs.

i. Basic Definitions

To further breakdown the main question it must be established what is meant by Northern

Ireland’s museum sector in this thesis. For the current purposes, it consists of i) physical museum exhibitions in existence, and ii) the people that shape, propose, design, curate, manage, comment on them, and partook in activities that revolved around museums, exhibitions or artefacts. Some twenty such people have been interviewed, as well as a handful of people whose life was affected by the Troubles, though who are not necessarily linked to museums.

Additionally, some public meetings were observed in which history occupied a central role.

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Since the Troubles were a violent conflict, it is also worthwhile to analyse how other armed struggles are depicted in Northern Ireland’s museums. The entirety of Ireland’s past sometimes seems contentious: not only in academic circles, but in politics as well. Especially the world war era and the time leading up to those events will receive attention in this thesis. This historic period is of parallel interest, as it sees both the Irish and the British nations establishing their respective political histories and by extension their identities. Furthermore the world wars in particular are multi-ethnic and multinational occurrences. Individuals from across the divide, interviewed for this thesis, recognise that the Troubles have clouded the understanding of the past that came before it.

Museums present an interpretation of the past, and thus present its visitors with a history and perhaps even a people’s heritage. Explicitly or not, this is always a subjective construct.

To understand the term heritage, we must thus first pin down ‘history’ and the ‘past’. The past is all physical and mental realities that chronologically lie behind us. What we call historical sources and artefacts are gateways to those realities. History or historical narratives are that which someone makes of the past. Those stories are in part based on historical sources and artefacts, but gaps are filled in with assumptions that often have a basis in present-day political desires and culture. For the purpose of this thesis, heritage are those histories which an individual, a community or an entire society finds important. Therefore, society is prone to bestow those histories onto the next generation in the expectation that they will pass it on.

To a significant degree, heritage is still presented as a static being in many environments. That is almost inherent to what it is presumed to be: if they are important histories, they must remain unchanged for coming generations to learn the exact same lessons as those before. A poignant example is the endless usage of the poppy symbol during October and November every year. The ‘sacrifices’ made during World War I are seen as absolute rather than to be observed in the context of their times, and reinterpreted in the present. This static interpretation hinders two thing. In the first place, we fail to fully understand those who actually

A Very Funny Place did live through 1914-1918, since we deny that the decades drudge on and change our society.

Every generation has dealt with the losses of the Great War in its own way, as it looked at it from its own circumstances (Aldridge, 2014). Second, it blurs how we interpret the present- day progeny of the WWI generations. When presenting a static and timeless 1914-1918, we run the risk of projecting those situations too much on today’s affairs. But whatever the circumstances, it is always, somehow, political (Edwards, 2018). In the case of the Troubles a static understanding has emerged: it is often presented as a struggle between ‘green’ and

‘orange’, sometimes with the British state as third party. In addition, the Troubles are often seen as just another bout in the contest between Irishness and Englishness/Britishness, presumed to be ongoing for centuries, as for instance shown by Buckley (2002).

I presented a former Provisional IRA member with the statement that one could say

Irish republicanism and nationalism has been opposing British interference for some two hundred years. He then simply replied that they had “been fighting for eight hundred years”, since Norman knights set foot on Ireland’s shores (Anonymous-d, 2019). Similarly, Museum of Free Derry manager Adrian Kerr mentioned that “we have been fighting the same war again and again, only with minor variations” (2019). This thinking, however, is a very narrow understanding of the past, as it denies various socio-political issues different people in different times did strive for. Where nationalisms traditionally use history as legitimisation of a shared identity, Marxists too express an attachment to the past. During a public meeting regarding the legalisation of abortions in Northern Ireland, prominent member Gerry Carroll of the political party People Before Profits stated that abolishing the ban on abortions was to be interpreted in class-struggle terms. With the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, the British Crown had made it illegal, and therefore, a pro-choice stance is to be “anti-imperialist”. Lacking violent revolutions, twenty-first century political Marxism is borne by socio-cultural activism. Perhaps it might even be the other way around: PBP has been used as one of many vehicles by the wider pro-choice movement to reach a larger audience.

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Rather than an ongoing struggle that largely stays the same, Jonathan Mattison, curator at the Museum of Orange History in Belfast, explained that during the 1798 rising, his protestant ancestors fought each other (Mattison, 2019). The rebels’ leadership consisted of middle-class, revolutionary United Irishmen from Presbyterian backgrounds. However, its followers included catholic Defenders, a sectarian organisation whose main interest lay with contra-harassing their protestant counterparts, like the Peep o’ Day Boys. Since a few decades before the rebellion, catholics were actively recruited into the military establishment.

Especially the newly raised militia units used to defend the island from threats within and without included many catholics (Bartlett, 1996, pp. 265-268). These regiments in particular could very much be a theme to be touched upon in an all-Ireland military museum, as Andy

Hart proposes: “It could be used to show the tradition of militia, of local service, which the

UDR [Ulster Defence Regiment] continued during the Troubles”. Somewhat contrary to the above described viewpoints of an invading Britain, Hart’s understanding is that all Ireland’s conflicts are essentially civil wars. But, in addition, a submerged notion he wishes to reveal is the many times British and Irish people fought on the same side, for the same ideals. One could indeed think of the world war era (Hart, 2019b). Controversial no doubt, but UN missions too could be thrown in the mix. A volunteer at the Irish Republican History Museum in Belfast argued against static ‘England vs. Ireland’ history as well. “The loyalists celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. William [III] killed a lot of Irish people. But so did James [II].” With this anti- monarchist interpretation, he is opposing the Provisional’s reading above, even though both him and the ex-PIRA member identify as republicans.

Interpretations of the past and identities arising from it are diverse and forever changing.

New political and generational circumstances are being established, and thus society and its heritage reconfigure themselves, each other and their relationships. Thus, heritage is indeed a morphing entity, as is also recognised by Crooke & Maguire (2018).

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ii. Imaginative Geographies

Through an examination of public history in the form of museums, we can establish the

geography and community people identify with. In other words: how far exactly do Northern

Ireland’s gazes stretch beyond the person, the neighbourhood, region and perhaps across its

constitutional borders, and how? In what manner exactly do they thus feel part of a greater

imagined community beyond the self? These questions are important since their answers could

serve as a yardstick for the capacity of both the Irish and British for cross-divide understanding

and multi-ethnic cooperation within Northern Ireland and beyond it. Also, it shows what kind

of story-telling resonates with people in Northern Ireland, and which cause divisive political

narratives. A museum could very explicitly show a miniature depiction of the battle at the river

Boyne (1690) like the Museum of Orange Heritage in Belfast does. Drawing attention to the

crossing of the river, an event of great tactical and symbolic value, this object makes it

important that one side won, and the other lost; or, in the Orange Order loyalist version, that

protestant freedom overcame catholic tyranny. The museum exhibits nineteenth-century drums

that were used in marches predating the present-day ones, celebrating the engagement.

Figure 1: The miniature depiction of the crossing of the river Boyne at Oldbridge in 1690, at the Museum of Orange Heritage. The three battalions of the Blue Guard have already crossed and is to fend of a Jacobite cavalry charge, which they would succeed at. Picture by the author.

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Additionally, maps and pictures from around the world show places around the world where

Orange Order lodges have been established. In doing so, it suggests a feeling of community and continuity that stretches through time and across countries. It imagines a coherent history and a geography of friendly orange territory.

But when including some, one can easily exclude others too. One fundamental work in

‘imagined geography’ or ‘imaginative geography’ is Edward Said’s Orientalism. Said argued that imperial behaviour by the British, French and later the Americans in the ‘Orient’ was greatly influenced by the literary and scientific knowledge they had, or, more importantly, how they had constructed that knowledge, and still construct it today. Said explained that orientalist elements and descriptions in literature mainly existed for the westerners to understand themselves in contrast to those on the eastern Mediterranean seaboard and beyond. Rather than being based on empiricism, this process of creating a juxtaposed and imagined Oriental ‘Other’ often happened well inside the West. The Others were seen as untrustworthy and incapable of logic. True, the harshest racists too admitted ancient Egyptians had built a great civilisation and the pyramids, but only by authoritarian rule had such been achieved. Therefore, by the modern era, Western entrepreneurs, military leaders and administrators reasoned that projects like the Suez Canal could only be completed under white supervision.

The first of two differences between Orientalism and the current thesis is that Said focussed on poignant examples of ‘high’ culture literature often and perhaps mostly read by ruling elites: Dante Alighieri had placed Islam’s Mohammed in the eighth level of Hell, emphasising he was a false prophet (Said, 2003 (1978), pp. 68-70). In this thesis, museums are central. Given their lower threshold, they are likely to attract more attention than Dante’s

Inferno. Traditional museums not only existed for elites to understand, but especially for them to educate, mesmerise and thus control the wider public. Like public schooling systems and mass conscription did with great force, museums were tools to dragoon individuals into nineteenth-century nations. Still, in a similar spirit like Dante, William Shakespeare wrote

A Very Funny Place about Ireland, centuries before modern mass nationalism. To Shakespeare, Ireland was a place torn apart by war, which threatened England. Perhaps by a coalition of Irish lords and the king of Spain, but increasingly so by the moral and financial questions raised due to large streams of soldiers returning home. Although set two centuries before Shakespeare’s time, Henry IV was a social commentary. This play helped raise the question of who should care for disabled and socially cast-out veterans: alms houses, the Church or the Crown? It should be noted that while today Shakespeare could be considered high culture, many commoners attended stage performances in the 1590s (Spooner, 2012, pp. 60-66). In direct relation to Ireland, one literary specialist put it more poignant. Shakespeare hoped the war in Ireland to be ended in England’s favour. When the playwright indirectly but still a-historically referred to Lord Essex’s battle with Tyrone in Henry V, he came “the closest … to breaking the illusion that he’s writing about the past” (Murphy C. , 2013).

Second, in Orientalism Said only describes how by extension the West defined itself while describing the empirically unknown Orient. In Northern Ireland’s museums, the Irish and British and others more emphatically imagine themselves directly rather than through an

Other. Although not readily as imperialising entity, the nationalist Irish have had their own

Orientalist tropes. Starting as an intellectual movement around 1800, it focussed on the supposed links between Irish round towers and Indian architecture, albeit that the former happened on a smaller and local scale. Chinese and Gaelic languages were seen as related, and geographically these connections were made by the Phoenicians. Ironically, however, Irish intellectuals too mainly understood the Orient through British imperial sources. The English themselves at times used similar tropes for the Irish as they did for Oriental peoples: superstitious, illiterate, lazy, unorganised, aggressive and warlike, obedient follower at best. In the end, Orientalist tropes were both used to describe the Irish as ancient nation, but also to legitimise imperial rule over the island (Lennon, 2003).

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Although its contents are always contested, every modern state invents a history for its nation to make sense of itself, as Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger showed (1983). It would be impossible to cooperate with millions of people without some degree of shared notion of

Britishness, Irishness and so on. Yet, in this process of imagining the present-day nations, we disturb notions about the past. These ideas are abused and misused, often with violent result.

In his Vanished Kingdoms Norman Davies makes two important points. His first point is that we forget that the past was filled with states, peoples and identity markers that are no longer around. When exactly a group of individuals saw each other as a unified ethnic group for the first time (‘ethnogenesis’) is subject of debate. Or rather, we have no idea whether a people like the early medieval Scotti from the island of ‘Hibernia’ identified as such: up to the sixth century, the Romano-British wrote their history. Over the centuries thereafter, ‘Scot’ began to apply to every noble north of Hadrian’s Wall, regardless of Gaelic, Anglic or Frankish ancestry or language. And when tartan was invented, or reinvented, all from the Highlands and

Lowlands and many in Ulster and North America could claim membership of that ethnicity.

As a rule of thumb, therefore, the stronger a nationalism, the lower the respect for the problem of ethnogenesis. Since mass nationalism pushed away local identities and personal loyalties, this is extremely ironic. Nationalists have a tendency to see their sense of nation as a perpetual truth. But in reality they are transient, which is Davies’s second major point. Like organisms, state structures and ideas of nation eventually die. A less catastrophist reading would be that some states do not really experience a clear downfall, but morph into a new political body, unrecognisable from what came before. Five causes of death are identified: “implosion, conquest, merger, liquidation and ‘infant mortality’” (Davies, 2012 (2011), pp. 4, 37, 52-53,

640-649, 732). Mental merging between the peoples of Ireland, Scotland and England hardly occurred. Instead, they all possess a strong sense of separatism in relation to other nations. By infant mortality Davies mainly meant states such as the one-day Rusyn Republic of 1939. One could also think of the 1931 Spanish Republic. Although not completely innocent itself, it was

A Very Funny Place so violently butchered by Francoism and fascism (Graham, 2005). In post-colonial settings too stillborn states can be found. Dutch imperial overlords claimed to foster an emancipating New

Guinea in 1949-1962. A colonialist regime was swapped for a modernist, authoritarian and nationalist one after a short military conflict with the Republic of Indonesia. The Indonesians then black-mailed the West-Papuan representatives of the extremely short-lived country into full annexation by the republic (Hofman, 2018).

It is a description that would fit in with Irish nationalist thinking. Due to Anglo-British interference, the reasoning goes, Ireland had never evolved into a modern nation state by the early twentieth century: one of Liam Kennedy’s overlapping reasons for the sense of victimhood that constitutes Irish national ideology. England/Britain has always been the singular, consistent oppressing Other, which in turn has led to a stacking of traumatic historic events: Bloody Sunday (1920/1921/1972 – whichever one) became an even more dramatic and tragic event because of Cromwell’s massacre of Drogheda and the Famine. Kennedy shows that the belief to rank among the most aggrieved people is false, but was fostered by “[t]he insularity of much Irish thought, and ignorance of conditions abroad ... and a lack of interest in other cultures, [which] meant that comparisons could be made with impunity” (Kennedy,

2016). I will chip away at that impunity in Chapter V.

Davies worked in a similar vein as Benedict Anderson’s theory of the imagined community, even though he does not refer to him directly. Rather than horizontally positioned polities, Anderson described pre-modern Europe as a place where dynasties and religious structures imposed cross-border hierarchies on farmers and burghers. The fusing of the printing press, capitalism, market zones, newspapers and novels created regions of which the inhabitants began to imagine each other as members of the same polity: the modern nation. It differed from Christianity and Islam in that the common denominator of a nation’s members was a vernacular. Latin as language that could solely be understood by a religious (and scientific) elite was losing ground. The steady stream of newspapers that spoke of how Britain

A Very Funny Place fared in a war brought with it the idea that from Orkney to Dover, individuals had the same experience of that text. Davies and Anderson forcefully show that the pre-modern era is littered with identity markers other than present nations. Although in the main historians should steer clear of it, some counterfactual thinking explains the point: had the printing press been invented before the late middle ages, would Connacht rather than Ireland have been the primary modern node of identification? Would it, under an earlier emergence of capitalism become the main market zone in which people would begin to share economic news? To Anderson, nations did not lie dormant awaiting to awaken. Instead, they were never there, only to be invented

(Anderson, 2016 (1983)).

By focussing mostly on states instead of a literature thread, Davies differs from Said teleologically: around 937 “England was no more inevitable than Scotland was, and different turns could have been taken at every step of the way” (Davies, 2012 (2011), p. 73). Said’s entire point is about the millennia-old consistency of degrading the Orient. But while states die pretty easily by violence and the like, one literary critic wrote that “[l]iterature is not a weapon that can be captured ... No writing remains in the exclusive control of anyone from the moment it leaves the author’s hands” (Bates, 2008, p. 9). This means two things. Firstly, indeed, widespread patterns of thinking can be more resilient than any state or army. Therefore, I would argue, it becomes all the more urgent to break down the inward-looking and (self-)destructive cultural tendencies of the Irish and Ulster British, by offering more counternarratives.

Secondly, as literature is so omnipresent, both the Irish and British could and should use each other’s stories to build mutual understanding. Anna Burns’s novel Milkman garnered quite the readership and offers a refreshing new take on Northern Ireland’s conflict experience. Its main character suffers the unwanted sexual interest of a man, who abuses his position of power in a paramilitary organisation. Even those who did not care for green and orange ideologies had to deal with the consequences of wartime at the most individual level (Burns, 2018). Although an

A Very Funny Place important start, influencing the literary field alone is likely too elitist to change an entire country. A vast array of other channels must be mustered, among them museums.

iii. Sharing Powers, Museums & Identity

Shared identities as conflict resolution tool is known to Northern Ireland ever since the start of the peace process. These are said to be fostered through overlapping institutions like a shared parliament and cooperating ministers, a system known as consociationalism. Therefore the

Netherlands has served as a model for Northern Ireland. Arend Lijphart, who coined the term, did indeed ground his argument mostly in Dutch socio-political organisation of 1918-1990.

‘Confessionals’, protestant and catholic parties, formed cabinets with either social-democratic progressives or neo-liberal conservatives. By 1980, moderate Christian-democrats of both major denominations formed into one party. After 1990, the landscape lost further rigidness, as for the first time social-democrats and liberals joined in government. Among politicians, enough trust existed to exercise pragmatic do ut des cooperation: ‘we get something, while accepting that you get something too’. On the ground, corresponding civil societies existed, separate from each other. Although it has lost much of its meaning, to this day many sport clubs in Dutch Brabant carry “Roman Catholic” in their name. The same is true for national radio and television stations (Lijphart, 1990 (1967)).

However, since consociationalism constitutes cooperation between elites Kristen

Williams & Neal Jesse argue that it forsakes to address the core problem in Northern Ireland: at the grass-roots level ethnic groups perceive each other as different, even as competitors in essence. Additionally, even Northern Ireland’s party leaders show a mistrust of each other as they for example continuously admonish each other to distance themselves from paramilitary activity. Williams & Jesse therefore also stressed that consociationalism should be built upon with cross-border cooperation, as that will create another layer through which voters can exert influence, on different topics and under another democratic configuration. They argued the

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European Parliament offers one such opportunity, while the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 failed to do so. Then, only an all-Ireland body was guaranteed, and no similar British one

(Williams & Jesse, 2001, pp. 572, 577-578, 585-586). The GFA partly addressed this problem in a constitutional and high political sense. However, putting the sharing of identity in a treaty is one thing, securing that it trickles down into the minds of the majority, another.

Notwithstanding travelling exhibitions, museums are tied to a physical spot, but can still change their stories more rapidly than Shakespeares and Dantes. Especially when compared to old, authoritative and established literature, their artefacts can more directly invite a greater public and provide more stimuli than big letter-filled tomes. Museums, therefore, offer part of the solution to the problem of elitist consociationalism and high culture. In that case, rather than top-down storytelling, they should invite visitors to partake in narrative creation and offer ways to do that responsibly with the aid of trained historians and other experts.

However, although necessary to know that museums “collect, document, preserve, exhibit and interpret”, Gaynor Kavanagh argued that defining the term ‘museum’ is but a small step in understanding what they are and do. Of greater importance is to unravel their politics and worldviews (2005 (1994)).

While analysing several museums in Northern Ireland, the theory of Pierre Nora’s lieux de mémoires is of use. Although it is a country especially keen on mixing history, memory and politics, in principle history is not more important in one place than it is in another. Nora distinguished memory-history from critical history. Critical history is the practice of trying to know the past, which sparks sincere debate about what happened, how it did and why. Memory- history and memorialisation resides exclusively in the present and revolves around the people who commemorate, albeit with references to the past. The latter practice is often tied to a specific object grounded in a particular place, but an immaterial phenomenon can be a lieu de mémoire as well (Nora, 1989). Despite their own biases, trained historians serve as opposites of those who organise commemorations as a consequence of Nora’s reasoning. The political

A Very Funny Place discourse in Ireland is often grounded in historical argument (Walker, 2019, pp. 14-24).

Therefore it is right to ask whether for the moment Northern Ireland’s museums are either places of critical history, or of memory-history.

Collective memories are readily politicised, therefore it would be for critical historians in museums to offer a counterweight to ideologies that lack a firm basis in reality. When museums are done by politicians or overtly political people like the Maze/Long Kesh (MLK) project, they easily fail. During the Troubles, the MLK housed republican and loyalist prisoners. The primacy seemed not to be on the experience of a majority of those who lived through, in this case, the Troubles. Instead, the discussions ended with unionists and loyalists pulling out, concerned that the site might become a tribute to terrorists. Sinn Féin politician and former inhabitant of the MLK Séanna Walsh went further and stated that “they don’t want us to tell our stories at all”. Walsh embraced that it was an opportunity for loyalist prisoners’ stories to be told too, and underlined its importance (2019). But there is some merit to the unionists’ and loyalists’ argument. No doubt the MLK is a site that resonates more with republicans, as heroism is attached to the 1981 hunger strikes and the 1983 mass break-out.

But in the end, Northern Ireland families all dealt with the social consequences of missing a child, parent or sibling. Although less fit to be the stuff of legend, those are narratives that do deserve attention too, perhaps even more so. As we will see later, Ulster British memory of the world wars is a narrative bastion too. Like republican MLK stories, they are punctuated with a sense of heroism. While complete objectivity is a myth, terrorism and heroism are terms that lack even the slightest hint of it. These descriptions are subjective to the extent that they distract from narratives that can be shared by those who lived and worked in the MLK, or otherwise suffered its consequences.

Since the GFA important steps have already been made by organisations like the centrist and consciously inclusive Beyond the Troubles exhibition in the Ulster Museum, or the

Museum of Free Derry. The latter might be cynically described as polemical, or, with a more

A Very Funny Place positive ring to it, as emancipatory. Think also of Healing Through Remembrance. But even if that has not been the intended messages of these projects per se, Northern Ireland’s everyday political narrative is still too much clad in green and orange: narratives are easily politicised when they deal with the strictly political: museums might explain parties or politicians’ positions, or even promote a certain ideological standpoint, while exhibiting weapons, protest banners, leaflets, and pictures of public rallies or negotiations attended by leaders of several sides. This politicisation is not necessarily a problem generated by the phenomenon ‘museum’: it is hard to expect of them to engage with a political history and then leave out political developments. Instead, the mistake is often made outside museums, especially when a commentator actively refuses to engage with the narratives displayed. As such was the case with the Museum of Free Derry. Manager Adrian Kerr, though himself identifying as republican, explained his political views do not automatically transfer onto the museum. DUP politicians Arlene Foster and Gregory Campbell dubbed the place a Sinn Féin museum, according to Kerr (2019). Interestingly however, this particular establishment also suffered criticism from the community it sought to give a voice. The exhibition also mentions all British

Army members who lost their lives in Derry during the early Troubles, listing them together with all other fatalities. Relatives of some of those killed wished their next-of-kin not to be listed together with state forces. Two of them staged a week-long sit-in protest. Compromising, the museum then offered a digital display in which clear categories can be selected (Steele,

2017). Thus, the community from which the Museum of Free Derry sprang knows internal debate, and is not homogeneous.

The above episode sounds a bit chaotic. In the main, however, it cautiously suggests that the museum is evolving into a ‘forum’, even though in this particular instance not by the museum’s doing. The museum as place to meet, discuss and voice opinions is possibly supplanting the museum as ‘temple’, a place that enforces a narrative, identity and interpretation onto the visitor, often one of the supposedly sacred and unchangeable kind. This

A Very Funny Place dichotomy was used by for instance Bigand (2017). The templar view imposed on us revolves around the green and orange dichotomy. In the next historiographical chapter, I will show that that is simplistic and often false.

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III. Two Troubles: High Politics and People’s History i. What Were the Troubles?

Asking how old the Troubles are ties into the question about what its causes were. Here, I will argue that the 1960s-1990s conflict was in the main a result of competing nationalisms that have their origins in the early twentieth century. Overly simplistic Irish nationalist readings often claim the twelfth-century Norman invasions was the starting point. However those conflicts were as much internal as they were proto-Anglo-Irish (Bartlett & Jeffery, 1996, pp.

26-115). Dynastic loyalties, ethnic-religious backgrounds, theological differences and debates on kingship and kinship lay at the heart of early modern ideological conflicts. The 1798 rising saw a mix-up of liberal ideologies and subsequent conservative reactions. Its historiography revolves around the question of whether Presbyterian liberalism or catholic sectarianism fuelled that revolt (Gibney, 2017, pp. 124-141). By the late nineteenth century Irish nationalism and unionism took their modern, militant, irredentist and primordialist form. It can be argued that those movements had their origins in the revolutionary 1790s. Yet, it was a hundred years later that politics turned into their entrenched twentieth-century versions, attaching themselves to their current respective religious constituents (Walker, 2019, pp. 174-190).

The Ulster British legitimise their hold on the North through their freedom of religion which they propagate was attained during the Williamite Wars (1688-1691). However, their

Northern Ireland statelet that emerged out of the Irish War of Independence in 1921 blatantly came to favour protestants over catholics. At first still an identity that Ulstermen stuck to in the

1920s, Irishness was increasingly seen as a threat to the physical well-being of ‘Ulster’

(Kennedy, 2016, pp. 134-136) (Walker, 2019, pp. 106-120). One ancient claim was countered with another irredentism. In the words of historian Diarmaid Ferriter, “As a political philosophy, unionism did not mature, adapt or evolve beyond a defensive reaction to Irish nationalism and the belief that they were threatened by enemies both within (the Catholic minority) and without (the southern state)” (Ferriter, 2019, p. 35). Nevertheless, some of them

A Very Funny Place tried. After all, the first two post-WWII decades were a period of rapprochement as the IRA border campaign (1956-1962) yielded no military success or popular support. In 1962 catholic and protestant workers ensembled to protest the impending closure of the Belfast aircraft factory. The Dublin and Belfast governments worked towards lower trade tariffs, and explored their options with regards to joining the EEC, softening the Irish border (Ferriter, 2019, pp. 68-

71). But the reform-minded Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill met fierce resistance from more conservative unionists and Paisleyite loyalists.

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, it was at this moment that a period of détente ended, and the violence characterising the Troubles started. In 1966 O’Neill and the RUC linked the populist and demagogic reverend Ian Paisley and his rallies to loyalist paramilitaries.

Some overlap even existed between the members of these organisations and their own police officers, the RUC leadership reckoned. More importantly, O’Neill and the RUC recognised these protestant extremists as the foremost threat to stability in Northern Ireland, and thus its image on the international stage and within the UK. Since it would halt the moderate unionists’ road to reform, it is reasonable to state that the Troubles started with an internal conflict within unionism. After all, unionism does seem able to evolve, but loyalist elements on its populist and conservative flank proved more influential (O'Callaghan & O'Donnell, 2006). The lower protestant strata were operating class politics against O’Neill’s elitism, but they did so along sectarian lines and an Ulster nationalist sense of self. It was strongest in protestant areas close to catholic ones. And those in particular were eventually starting to unite and become a potent political force (Bew, Gibbon, & Patterson, 2002 (1996), pp. 171-172).

Like the unionist political establishment, its police force played an ambiguous role. In

1968, the RUC helped enable Derry civil rights protests, as together with stewards they secured the streets and squares where demonstrations could take place. However, they were also reported to join in sectarian shouts with Paisleyite counter-protesters. Moreover, they battoned down even peaceful civil rights demonstrations. This police violence became the main reason

A Very Funny Place for many to join the public manifestations (Prince, 2018 (2007), pp. 164-165). But notably, as shown by the RUC’s opinions of the Paisleyite movement, the nationalist tale of green protesters against a singular orange oppressor is heavily misleading.

Fair housing allocation, a balanced labour market and political equality for both catholic and protestant voters made up the Northern reformist agenda. When negotiating with the

London establishment in November 1968, Nationalist Party leader Eddie McAteer indeed claimed that partition was for the moment unimportant, and Irish unification ‘only’ a long-term goal. As they shook Derry’s streets, the movement that he and others had mobilised suffered greatly from internal division. Or as historian Simon Prince wrote, “differences between reformers and revolutionaries began to pull the coalitions apart. ... Without the reforms that would enable [the former] to claim victory, [prominent Nationalist John] Hume and his allies would be cast aside by the movement that had swept them to prominence” (2018 (2007), pp.

173, 176-179).

Events like the Battle of the Bogside (1969), the start of internment (1971) and Bloody

Sunday (1972) made Irish nationalists feel that British presence was the one reason for their misery. The RUC officer on the street could be harsh and authoritarian to all civil unrest, but a disdain of catholics made them choose the loyalist side too often. Imprisonment without charge of those with only negligible connections to paramilitary activity, did not stop it, but fuelled it.

Even present-day unionists admit that this practice of internment was a huge political and military mistake. Instead of protesting on the street, many nationalists started to support the

Provisional IRA, and a significant portion began to join that organisation. This traditionalist and more sectarian branch of militant republicanism had outmanned and outgunned their socialist counterpart, the Official IRA.

The simplified perception of their political opponents caused unionists to lump together the civil rights protesters, republican paramilitaries and catholics, and perhaps even the Dublin government. The singing of republican songs by protestors “fuelled the suspicions of the

A Very Funny Place unionist government that it was a republican Trojan Horse”, wrote Neil Southern, an academic who mostly blames the civil rights protesters for allowing their campaigns to escalate into riots

(Southern, 2018, p. 15). To counter Southern’s views, through harsh treatment did unionists create more of the demons they feared so much. But like the primitive unionist imagery, republicans proved unable or unwilling to distinguish between the British Army, the RUC, liberal unionists, Paisleyites and loyalist paramilitaries and so on. Consequently, both sides could only define the Other by the worst possible version of them: the ‘Irish’ would terror bomb the North into a united Ireland, the ‘Ulster British’ would tyrannically prevent that. The extremists of both sides had won, and they had rendered the conflict irredentist in essence. For decades Northern Ireland would be controlled gun in hand. Six months after Bloody Sunday, on Bloody Friday (1972), the Provisionals sought to quickly win the war through an intense and deadly bombing campaign. However, the British Army retaliated by raiding nationalist neighbourhoods and rounding up IRA men. Shifting strategy, the IRA now fully embraced what they called the Long War. By mental attrition of war weariness would they attempt to undo partition (Smith & Neumann, 2005).

ii. Long Road to Peace

Both nationalist and unionist moderates of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) and

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) tried to build a strong middle ground with the Sunningdale

Agreement (1973). It sought to reboot and reshape the Northern Ireland parliament so that nationalists would gain influence in it. Yet loyalists primarily understood it to be a step towards a united Ireland, as the agreement also provided for cross-border institutions. To counter them, they orchestrated loyalist worker strikes (Farrington, 2007). And while Richard Reed convincingly shows that in internal and outward-bound communications prominent UDA and

UVF figures agreed sectarianism was holding Northern Ireland back, they remained unmovable about the border (Reed, 2011). As a result, it remains hard to believe that loyalist paramilitaries

A Very Funny Place as well as their republican counterparts were bodies that facilitated peace. In the end, that was acquired by a more lenient take on the border. With the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) the divide was temporarily ignored in a constitutional sense, as the Dublin and London governments bypassed unionist voices when they negotiated it. Militarily and in terms of police, they agreed that they would watch the border together for paramilitary activity (Ferriter,

2019, pp. 108-109).

The Troubles had started with an attempt at reform and an outcry for social emancipation, but turned into a vicious, irredentist war over a border. Eventually, part of the nationalist community that was involved, got submerged into the extremist republican desire to unite the North with the republic. But this extremism did not yield a peace. Instead, the IRA was unsuccessful militarily as it lost the ability to exert command and control, infiltrated by

British security forces (Toolis, 2000 (1995), pp. 192-257). As the republican leadership could not stop them, actions like the revulsive Enniskillen bombing in 1987 occurred, and thus they could not influence control relations. Losing support among the nationalist community and the hope of ever defeating Ulster’s and Britain’s forces, Sinn Féin’s leadership and IRA command turned their energies mainly into forging an agreement during the late 1980s and 1990s.

Although the British government had stopped a victory for the IRA perhaps as early as 1972, they too could not completely defeat them by force of arms (Smith & Neumann, 2005). It has also been argued that the republican leadership under Gerry Adams kept the number of IRA armed actions artificially low. Those republicans who still believed in political violence would remain part of the movement, while continuing to put some pressure on the opposition. But in the end, Adams was “renegotiating the Union” rather than bringing down the border, as quoted by Bew, Gibbon & Patterson (2002 (1996), pp. 232-233).

A wider range of political players ranging from the American president, the Dublin and

London governments, and local parties created an environment for peace talks (Gibney, 2017, pp. 234-236). In the main, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 created governing bodies that

A Very Funny Place allowed British and Irish politicians to cooperate on the local and bilateral level with regards to Northern Ireland. Unionists and Irish nationalists were obliged to share power in the statelet’s executive branch. Lastly, anyone born in Northern Ireland was allowed to identify as

Irish, British or both. Thus they accepted that borders and identities are fluid and transitional things. Carried out by republicans dissatisfied with the new course the movement was taking, the post-GFA Omagh bomb (1998) was the bloodiest single attack of the Troubles. However, it ironically showed that armed struggle republicanism had lost its support basis among the

Irish populace in the North. In addition, enough unionists were mobilised to relinquish some power for peace (Bew, Gibbon, & Patterson, 2002 (1996), p. 238). Therefore, although sectarian rivalries continue to exist, we have been in another period of détente for some two decades. Like the period prior to the tensions and violence of 1912-1923, or the time between partition and the Troubles, we can now take a leap towards stability and interethnic merging and unity.

iii. Where All the People Have Gone

The above history might be true, and its message important. However, parallel to the history of ‘great’ men pulling the strings run millions of little narratives of everyday Irish and British people. Many were caught in poor economic conditions, moved around in a social environment that was local and ethnically configured, and were prone to politicised narratives that narrowed down their political opinions and choices. The objective here is not to provide a full overview of eyewitness accounts, as such would be a huge task even for a multi-volume history of the

Troubles. Instead, I seek to draw attention to a kind of history that, as we will see, might resonate with museum visitors. Instead of abstract ideas and events, eyewitness-based history opens up a route to see individuals in a holistic fashion. Rather than being presented as for example republican, individuals are restored to their complicated and multifaceted realities.

Additionally, many who experienced the Troubles do not even fit those narrow political

A Very Funny Place descriptions like ‘Orangeman’. Many people other than the politically active lived through the conflict. Also, I will shed light on the challenges that these ‘people’s history’ accounts present.

Between an individual interviewee and the eventual reader there is a middleperson, the interviewer-author. In a similar fashion, museums are such a conduit of knowledge. The conduit is not a sterile tube, but has an impact on the story. Interviewees are aware of this, and wary of whom they talk to. As a result they heavily safeguard their memories and are likely to internalise it as the absolute truth. Many groups do this in Northern Ireland, and subsequently base their politics on it, either as follower or leader.

So instead of multiple individual versions of the same past that complement each other, everyone huddles around the primitive campfires of their tribe endowed with their absolute truth. This may sound obvious, but such realisations are the ideological counterpart to the surety with which Sinn Féin and DUP nationalist thinking is presented. Sometimes, this postmodernist thinking is sometimes mistaken for the belief that every individual has an indivisible right to their own truth. Instead, postmodernism, in the more abstract and fundamental sense, merely points out that people with different backgrounds experience the same phenomenon differently. This impacts their worldviews, and vice versa. What caused the

Troubles were weak and unfair socio-economic circumstances, and an adherence to truths held sacral.

An organisation like the ‘British Army’ (broader: ‘security forces’; in republican parlance: ‘Crown forces’) or the wider ‘republican movement’ held wildly differing views within its ranks. Despite initial indifference, followed by animosity, soldiers could grow to like the catholic Irish. One soldier who spoke out against the Parachute Regiment remarked that he came to

feel sorry for the Catholic community, although not for the terrorists. They have to put up with the RUC, the army, the Prods and their own organisations ruling their lives. I feel strongly about them, it's as though I should repay them somehow for being a bastard whilst I was over there. I'd like to help them get back on their feet, rebuild trust in their community. I'm not brainwashed now. Despite all that

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the PIRA and INLA did to me out there (and it's a lot) I'd like to speak out for the Catholic community. Having lived amongst them, I feel I have had a privileged insight into their lives. They are not all anti-British or PIRA supporters, many just wish for a peaceful life (Peter, 1998).

Certain military units like the paratroopers, the Scots Guards and the Argyll and Sutherland

Highlanders differ greatly from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Unlike the UDR, they were trained for high-intensity situations of outright hostilities in a symmetric and conventional war (Burke, 2018).

The UDR was especially created to maintain order in a more police-like style, even though it took some time before they reached the professional level during the later stages of the Troubles. Stephen Herron’s history of the regiment is somewhat apologetic, but mainly offers an insight into the daily struggles of its men and women. Commissioned by the organisation that seeks to preserve the memory of the regiment, the book opens with a roll of honour. The UDR experience is mostly described in terms of military practice, techniques and tactics. They patrolled, personnelled vehicle checkpoints and searched areas. Riots were not a situation for the UDR to police. Being recruited in Northern Ireland, they possessed a lot of local knowledge. As such they were especially well-suited for reading settings out of the ordinary: cows and milk in odd places, or trampled hedges might indicate paramilitary activity.

The unit’s ethos could be characterised by restraint. Someone who threw a petrol bomb was not considered a direct threat, and surely not to be shot at (Herron, n.d.). Female members were supposed to only use the weapons of a killed or otherwise incapacitated male soldier, even though these women were trained in the use of firearms. Local acquaintance could also be very dangerous. One UDR member remembered that she recognised someone she knew from a catholic area while performing a vehicle check. Instead of normally completing the check, she quickly bungled it, protecting her identity before she herself was recognised (Anonymous-f,

2019). Especially for catholic members this could be hard, or those that lived close to IRA- controlled areas – so much for being part-timers. Psychological counselling was non-existent.

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To make matters worse still, even in British Army circles they were not considered a unit equal to regular regiments. In all, the regiment and their families lived under greater threat than most other military personnel, while observing a less aggressive stance (Herron, n.d.). By the early

1990s, the regiment was folded into the regular Royal Irish Regiment. This caused feelings of dissatisfaction within the Ulster British population. RIR member Andy Hart remembered graffiti that read “Ulster Defence Regiment not Royal Irish Regiment”, with Ulster and Irish in orange and green respectively (Hart, 2019b).

Neil Southern followed an approach similar to Herron’s. In addition to the RUC’s operational history, he described the social and family lives of serving officers, showing how the conflict was internalised by wives and children. Women were tasked with explaining to their children what their father did, why it took up most of their day (and sometimes night) and that they could not tell about that to others outside the family. Furthermore, they had to safeguard with whom their children played, and be aware of what their families were like, just in case a slip of the tongue happened. On one hand the young boys and girls themselves only got to know their fathers at a much later age. On the other, they did internalise the conflict and as a result ‘what side they were on’ as they tensely followed the news when an RUC officer got killed – it might have been their parent. Because of their secretive habits, police families often supported each other, thus furthering the inward-oriented mindset (Southern, 2018). This stance continues two decades after the GFA. RUC members appear willing to share their stories, yet they do so to a person like Colin Breen, a fellow officer compiling and publishing a collection in anonymity. While this gives a lay person the chance to get an insight glimpse into the Troubles as seen from RUC officers on the ground, they are still pretty isolated facts and selected anecdotes, often without dates. Still, they do paint a picture of camaraderie, fear, pride and at times humorous situations (Breen, 2017). Such stories can easily be found within

Irish nationalist circles too (Toolis, 2000 (1995)).

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Beyond the public eye that mainly views the political sphere, other groups like former nurses very much experienced the Troubles up-close. The realm of politics in particular is divisive, while, perhaps like no other, medical personnel experienced how destructive the

Troubles were even for those who did not wish to partake in any politics. This is because they, in this case nurses, seem to be content with coming to terms with the past at a personal level

(Belfast Telegraph, 2019). The political realm is a sphere of conflict in which players seek to weaponise their versions of history. As a result, politicians almost automatically have a negative influence on the public’s understanding of history. In the main, Troubles stories are often told with leaders and supposedly homogenous sides in mind. And while it can be a true and helpful narrative to explain the conflict, that same version of history also forced masses of ordinary people to fit into the respective side they were born in, proof that Northern Ireland is a place where individual liberty can still be expanded. One could denounce the Provisional

IRA, the RUC and so on. Yet it often were abysmal socio-economic and fearful political situations that fitted in nationalist culture that caused many to join such armed organisations, after which they went through many human emotions that accompanied their service. Being aware of this might help in breeding mutual understanding, even though intra-group preaching remains a problem. Furthermore, there are a great many people that do not fit, and would not join any of the political or armed organisations, but still suffered the violent, social and psychological consequences of the war. Amid the loud barking of political and (para)military bigshots, and the blazing of their guns, voices of the countless bystanders need to be heard too to foster a full enough understanding of the Troubles. Political legitimacy cannot be allowed to come from the fact that one already possesses the means to exert power since that would defeat the idea of a democracy in which everyone is equal, especially in the botched democracy that the UK can sometimes be. In the coming chapters I will show that the same criticism can be applied to this country’s scene of conflict museums.

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IV. The Troubles Displayed

Five elements of Troubles exhibitions will be analysed here. First I will show that museums are often located in close proximity to and in conjunction with memorials. Also, the immediate geography around museums differ along political lines. In the second section I will examine the manner in which museums create links to physical geographies and thus create images of those geographies. From it, a museum’s take on relations between peoples within and without

Northern Ireland can be distilled. The third section will deal with the portrayal of the conflict as a clash between warring sides. Structural physical violence is a characteristic that makes a political conflict a war, and therefore its depiction in museums will be discussed in section four. Lastly, a wide range of possible visitors means various modes of attraction are advocated by different museums and individuals. In this fifth section I will focus on the way in which visitors engage with museum personnel, objects and history.

i. In the Wake of Memorials

In Northern Ireland it appears to be common that museums reside in conjunction with memorials. Yet, also, especially in the republican case, they are leisurely places. Elisabetta

Figure 2: Places in Belfast mentioned in this chapter. Map by the author.

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Viggiani showed that memorials often create a sense of historic continuity (2014, pp. 69-75).

This argument could even be made stronger by stating that loyalist and republican readings of

history is static. It denies the more probable possibility that society is ever-changing, and that

cultural loci are transient. To shortly return to Anderson’s imagined communities,

memorialisation in and around museums leaves one wondering what the relationship between

the local, the national and international is. Around museum memorialisation hovers a

presumption that the locally remembered fallen are of equal import to the nation, then as now,

be it in Irish or (Ulster) British context.

The Irish Republican History Museum (IRHM) opens with a memorial to republican

women who were killed during the war. The plaque with their names and visitors are divided

by a fence, thus creating a difference in status. Not only have they passed away, they have a

martyr-like feel to them. Katie Markham rightly noted that the different contexts of their deaths

are made less relevant by listing these names as one homogenous group (2018). Causes of death

‘simply’ amount to being shot or a premature explosion. I acquainted a visitor at the museum

and occasionally met him there. One time, pointing out the bottom name of the list, he told me

Figure 3: Places in Derry mentioned in this chapter. Map by the author.

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Figure 4: The Bobby Sands mural on the Falls Road. Picture by Jean Querelle. that he had shared a childhood with that young woman. With ease he also recounted this Sheena

Campbell’s brother, who was about their age too. In 1992, she was shot dead by a UVF member

near the library of Queen’s University Belfast, where she was a student. The acquaintance then

went on to tell me how Campbell was a very vocal advocate of the transition from armed

struggle to politics and the peace process. In fact, part of Republican strategy might be

influenced by her (Anonymous-c, 2019). Loyalist paramilitaries could very well have targeted

moderates to continue the divide to advance their own agenda both against middle-ground

unionists and all nationalists. For sure, I, as visiting outsider, would be able to learn about

Campbell’s political role through a biography or unravel more details about her death in Lost

Lives. But these stories, or at least versions of them, immediately come to mind when one is an

insider that lived in the same historic geography as Campbell. That is the power of names.

However, such personal connections will fade, over time, eventually.

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The IRHM is located near the Falls Road, a staunchly republican area. In addition to an

IRA remembrance garden, the Bobby Sands mural and the Solidarity Wall on which other

nationalist struggles are supported, it is a neighbourhood where cappuccino politics are

deployed: social cohesion and political unity of republicanism are fostered not only by explicit

political rhetoric, but as powerfully through the connection of a history or memory node to

beverages and cosiness. In a more traditional sense, the inside of An Diabhol Dearg, or The

Red Devil pub, is adorned with nationalist paraphernalia from Ireland and the world over, in

addition to all kinds of Manchester United-related symbols: “This place is almost a museum in

itself”, one might indeed conclude (Anonymous-c, 2019). Located a bit further down the road

is Cultúrlann, a place that combines the study of the Gaelic Irish language and culture with

drinking coffee – hipster style, one could say. This formula is also brought into practice by the

Áras Uí Chonghaile, or James Connolly Visitor Centre, a mile from the IRHM. The attentive

Figure 5: The Garden of Remembrance on the Falls Road. Picture by Jean Querelle.

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reader has noticed that we are indeed walking through the Gaeltacht, or Gaelic Quarter.

Nationalism might be serious political business, but is can also be fun and social. This raises a

question: is it ideology that draws people to nationalist Irishness and republicanism, or a need

to belong to a social group? With the decreased threat from loyalist paramilitaries, ‘Crown’

forces and sectarian unionist politics, republican politicians need these media to attach people

to their cause. As the growth of Sinn Féin in the past three decades can attest, friendly

socialising might indeed be a stronger means than the Armalite. During several of my visits to

the IRHM, some individuals arrived not to look at the collection, but to socialise with

volunteers keeping watch over the museum. Sometimes, they brought beverages ranging from

soup to sandwiches, to be shared with the museum volunteers. “It is a social hub as well”, one

IRHM volunteer declared (Anonymous-a, 2019).

The Museum of Free Derry did not need to incorporate a memorial on its own grounds

proper, since it is already located in the middle of Bloody Sunday’s most important site. Many

visitors are likely to come from the walled centre of Derry, descending the hill, passing the

famous “Free Derry” gable wall. The fourteen civilian deaths of January 1972 are remembered

on a memorial one passes to reach the establishment, while several murals pay tribute to the

Figure 6: The "Free Derry" gable wall. Picture by the author.

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Bogside’s experience of the conflict. The fatalities occurred right outside what is now the

museum, adding to the power of the place’s message when visiting. Interestingly though, the

Bogside mostly sticks to its own 1968-1972 experience. Hardly a link with events like the

civilian deaths at Ballymurphy (August 1971) and the Shankill (September 1972) is suggested,

even though these victims were killed by that very same 1st Battalion of the Parachute

Regiment. And whereas paramilitary memorials often include the Easter Rising or War of

Figure 7: The headstone inside the Museum of Orange Heritage, alongside Orangemen who served in WWI hailing from several corners of the empire. Picture by the author.

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Independence in their Troubles narrative, a connection with the earlier 1920s Bloody Sundays is also not made, or wrongly exploited, a critic might say. Clearly, the imagined geography and community remain local, undistracted from the main objective to obtain justice and recognition for those killed as a result of Bloody Sunday in 1972. In this case, the Troubles are presented as an event more isolated from the time before and after.

Memorials in the Museum of Orange Heritage are located on its terrain and within its walls. Right outside the building is a place to commemorate members of the Orange Order. But once inside the implicit message is beyond the urge to simply respect: achievements of

Orangemen are celebrated. These include sports and arts, but mainly military achievements.

High-ranking officers and decorated servicemen in the British armed forces who were

Orangemen are emphasised figures. At the end of the exhibition’s path, visitors can use a digital pad to scan through all the names of order members killed during the Troubles. A date and a very short description of their violent deaths are added. In line with the organisation’s political stance, both loyalist and republican paramilitary killings are regarded as terrorist murders and thus as wrong and unjustifiable. But before visitors can see the main historic exhibition on the first floor of the building, they must pass this section as it is located in the stairwell leading to it. Curator Jonathan Mattison primarily attributed this to the limited nature of the museum’s building: there was hardly another place to position the display of individual, successful

Orangemen (Mattison, 2019). But in addition to ‘great men’, Grand Secretary of the order

Mervyn Gibson shows that many members could be found in various historic circumstances.

As a result, this part of the exhibition points at the many different backgrounds Orangemen could have, and thus their individual character. An issue that still remains, however, is that they are subsumed into the collective the institution is. Also, their ‘stories’ are but one sentence long here. The fact that these individual mini-narratives are next to a recreation of a generic WWI headstone, adds to the solemnity of this celebratory way of memorialisation. That said, there is also room for some humour when actually looking at some of the individuals and talking to an

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Figure 8: Detail of the wall in the Museum of Orange Heritage containing famous Orangemen. Picture by the author. insider. Gibson pointed out Ernest Blythe, who once was a member of the Orange Order, and

later the Irish Republican Brotherhood. “We sometimes say they he just might’ve had a thing

for secretive societies. You’ve got to laugh at yourself sometimes” (Gibson, 2019). The order

does not truly think of itself as secretive, Mattison explained. “We are sectarian, yes, you have

to be protestant to join. But we are open to the public” (Mattison, 2019).

The stained glass windows greeting visitors and towering over them in Belfast City Hall

primes people into concluding that we are in a city to be celebrated. The identity markers of

the city include its presumed international character, its emancipation of the working class and

technological advancements. Participation in the Spanish Civil War, trade unionism (at times

across religious borders) and the Titanic feature. These positively charged aspects are found on

the direct way to the historic exhibition, or turning left immediately after passing the reception.

When one turns right, one happens on a UDR memorial in similar stained-glass style. Even

though the placing might not be done consciously, this British Army unit is placed outside the

main narrative of the city. Beyond that memorial lies office space closed-off to the general

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Figure 10: Stained glass in Belfast City Hall referring to Figure 9: Stained glass in Belfast City Hall honouring the periods in which workers stood together, regardless of UDR. Picture by the author. denomination. Picture by the author. public. The historic exhibition ends with celebrating memorials too. Famous Belfast-born individuals are drawn attention to for their achievements in sports, culture, industry and so on.

Both the Museum of Orange Heritage and Belfast City Hall draw links between an individual’s exploits and the social loci of the order and Belfast city. The implicit message is not so much about these sportsmen and -women or artists. Rather, it is suggested that the order and the city bring forth great and successful people. Hardly is there a visible causal link, none is discernible.

But that doesn’t matter as long as Belfast’s people and Orangemen believe their communities are inspiring. Subsequently, it is likely to generate attachment to those ingroups.

Tucked away within the premises of the PSNI’s headquarters in East Belfast, the Police

Museum is a special case. Not only is the museum split from memorial areas, the PSNI and the

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RUC have separate locations to commemorate their fallen colleagues. Therefore, one 'merely’ has to pass a police guardhouse to get to see the exhibition. In fact, through the rigid compartmentalisation of the police compound, visiting the memorial garden of the RUC easily becomes a completely separate activity (Switzer & Graham, 2009). Their being closed-off is further enforced by being a very specialist organisation. Of course Belfast and the Orange

Order have very intricate relations to the Troubles, but the RUC is defined by the conflict, if only considering that over three hundred officers were killed.1 Reminiscing about the RUC must revolve around the Troubles, and thus must include paramilitary violence, whereas the order and the city can take wider historic approaches. Especially city hall has options to be more inclusive. Yet, therefore, it is also a place of polemic, whereas the order’s museum offers a specific and clearer but less inclusive narrative.

The Northern Ireland War Memorial is a place of remembrance and reminiscence, and later a historic museum element was added. When it was housed in the establishment on Waring

Street, it fulfilled a social role for veterans who would periodically meet there with old comrades in arms. These gatherings and remembrance events were hosted by the (Royal)

British Legion. The influx of historic artefacts like Home Guard uniforms, civilian gasmasks, instruction manuals for British troops abroad and shards of Luftwaffe bombs enabled a permanent museum exhibition on the Belfast home front. The remembrance element of this new venue on Talbot Street is two-fold in essence. In the first place and most prominently it consists of several works of art of various sizes: from covering walls to smaller statuettes.

Secondly, a book with the names of Belfast’s WWII dead rests within a glass display. The tome serves as a gateway to more detailed research into an ancestor, an activity that occurs with the support of the museum.

1 A similar amount of Orangemen were killed, and these two groups overlap. The author assumes that individuals were killed by paramilitaries primarily because they were RUC men, who often happened to be Orangemen as well.

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Thus, several modes of memorialisation can be identified. Both the RUC’s and the

Bogside’s are very much closed-off geographically and socially. Yet, they differ in the sense that the former police force mostly resides outside the public eye, while the Bogside remains open to travellers. Bogside memory harks back to 1968-1972, though not overtly to other historic episodes. Former RUC members have a tougher time to connect their Troubles past to the present, as the PSNI came to replace them as police force. More localised interpretations of the past might seem more correct, as they specialise. Yet they are also prone to presenting facts and feelings in an isolated manner, even though Bogside and RUC feelings of grief and anger are essential to understand the Troubles. They often leave out other facts that nuance and show the complexity of the story. Comparatively, the republican Falls Road is in reality perhaps as localised as the Bogside, yet their memorialisation does have a wider geographic and historic scope. Memorialisation symbols in the Garden of Remembrance include the heraldry of

Ireland’s four historic provinces, Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. Irish nationalism suggests a kind of internationalism, claiming to be part of an international family of historically oppressed nations. Compared to the Orange Order museum and RUC memorialisation, the geography of the Falls Road offers more accessibility due to its alliance with tea and everyday small talk. This makes for a shorter connection between politician and voter – and foreign traveller. For instance, Séanna Walsh is both Sinn Féin politician and manager of the James

Connolly Visitor Centre, where he for example exchanges ideas with visiting Australian trade unionists (Walsh, 2019). This seems more characteristic for republicans than unionists and loyalists. Andrew Johnston, a documentary photographer with a protestant background, could attest. “Republicans are there with their constituents, in the neighbourhood. You can run into them and talk to them.” Visiting Brexit-related rallies, he felt that a lot of loyalist dissatisfaction stemmed from being left unheard by DUP politicians. “The DUP isn’t on the ground with the people of the Shankill. [Loyalist voters] are always backed into a corner and they feel afraid.

Being without good leadership makes them more staunch” (Johnston, 2019).

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Figure 11: Example of a Troubles victim memorialised in the Museum of Orange Heritage. Picture by the author. In and of themselves, memorials often have a unifying impact on society, as people get

to share the burden of grief. Be they official, partisan or individual, acts of remembrance at

these sites enable finding peace for those who had to let go of a loved one. Such moments also

actively invite to a contemplation of a person who has passed away in relation to the self in the

here and now. However, while very possibly initiated from a benign position, they all too easily

become tools of political justification when the historic narrative is overly simplified during

these events. Celebrate too much, and memorials create exemplar people whose conduct should

somehow be emulated. It is positive that Sheena Campbell is remembered for advocating the

ballot box rather than armed struggle, as indeed bombings caused death and instability. Yet

commemorating her in close proximity to the weapons of the IRHM might overshadow her

stance. Moreover, stories like hers could resonate with non-violent unionists too. However,

shared spaces where that could take place are lacking, and Campbell solely resides in a

republican sphere, an environment easily shunned by those born outside it.

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Figure 12: Activists adding the call for a free West Papua to the Solidarity Wall. Picture by the author.

ii. Belfast, Ulster, Ireland & the World

Though both have an internationalist element to their ideologies, Irish nationalists and Ulster

loyalists do differ in their connection to the wider world. To put it simple: the former receive

or harvest support from around the globe, while the latter stand alone. The government in

London too only conditionally sides with Northern Ireland’s citizens that most explicitly

present themselves as British, even though Ulstermen do so more than elsewhere on the isles.

Here, I will discuss museum objects to discern how Northern Ireland connects to the local, the

national, the regional and the global.

Through Celtic crosses, harps of Erin, miniature cottages and mock weapons the inner

world of Irish Republican prisoners materialises in the IRHM. These artefacts are proof of

considerable artisan skill, yet more importantly, of a very strong romantic nationalism too.

Most are only accompanied by a few descriptive words and in some cases who made them.

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From the crosses one could distil active references to an ancient Celtic past that is filled with

mysticism. Paired with the ruralness the cottages express, the Irish prisoner was truly a

romantic nationalist. The focus on these small houses also betray a love for Ireland’s landscape:

if houses take up only limited space, then surely the vast rest of the island is filled with “Four

Green Fields”. A people that ties its nationalism to a physical geography might develop a

tendency to think in terms of long time spans. Nationalists who tie their ideology to physical

geography might borrow its speed of mind. In the human experience, glens and mountains are

slow movers if not practically static. Their inner world seems to take the pace of geological

processes. As a consequence, it becomes readily acceptable to deem one’s own political

position as natural, as quintessentially true, and therefore as unchangeable. Indeed, the

Troubles were experienced as just one bout in the perpetual clash with that other isle across the

Irish sea. This essentialist interpretation and the continuation of it make it hard to look for

compromise in political negotiations.

Figure 13: A miniature house in the IRHM, made by a republican prisoner. Picture by the author.

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Figure 14: More miniature cottages, a chapel and two harps, all made by republican prisoners. Picture by the author. In addition to a worldwide connection of lodges, the Museum of Orange Heritage

makes references to the international coalition led by William III to depose the Stuart

monarchy. They do so in explanatory text boxes on the wall, but also on their miniature mock-

up of the crossing of the river Boyne. Someone with a trained eye – or an appropriate miniature

soldier painting guide – could make out all nationalities represented. There is attention for the

enemy too, as a mounted mannequin of a Jacobite cavalryman dominates the 1690s section.

Interestingly, there is hardly any animosity towards this figure, whereas towards IRA men of

any period there is. Policemen and soldiers are ‘murdered’ by republican paramilitaries and not

‘killed in action’. Such would only apply to those killed in a war. With regards to the Ulster

Volunteer Force (UVF) of 1912 the museum is accommodating, clearly because they

eventually were incorporated by the British military. An imported carbine used by the 1912

UVF is displayed near depictions of WWI, including a reproduction of the Attack of the Ulster

Division by James P. Beadle. This painting, which resides in Belfast City Hall, is a recurrent

image in loyalist spheres. Both pro-state loyalists and paramilitary loyalists have claimed the

images of WWI to justify their contemporary politics. The 1966 UVF is presented on equal

A Very Funny Place footing with republican paramilitaries by the Orange Order, as they targeted state forces too.

In all, compared to republicans, Orangists are less inclined to show the Ulster British as part of a family of nations. Remarkably, that is contrary to the premiss of the United Kingdom, which in theory is not one people but a multinational polity. Seemingly, one has to be ethnically

British still, to an extent, and cold political allegiance is not enough. Then the question becomes who is to decide whether one is sufficiently British. Again, perhaps the GFA is solving this.

Though reframing them as not mutually exclusive, it leaves intact the ideas of Britishness and

Irishness as separate. This inherent contradiction makes orange ideology unattractive to outsiders. Moreover, its insiders are likely to view outsiders with suspicion.

The Ulster Museum houses some paramilitary art too, but such is put in context by showing the victims’ story. In part due to the absence of close-by memorials, a visitor is way less inclined to see them as objects that solely point out the awesomeness of violent organisations. Because they reside in a place where no explicit celebration or commemoration takes place, the public is left to their own thoughts and conclusions to a greater extent. The exhibition does contain a list of names, but of a mundane rather than sacral kind: the guest book of the Ulster-American folk park. The particular page displayed contains the name of twelve- year-old Fernando Blasco Baselga. Shortly thereafter this Spanish pupil would be killed by the

Real IRA’s bomb in Omagh on August 15, 1998. His and the death of 28 others in that incident cannot be claimed by a warring party. Instead, he can only be a symbol of groups opposed to violent conflict resolution. Baselga is of course commemorated elsewhere (BBC, 2012). As such, his sad passing becomes a symbol of the sacral character in which we hold life on earth.

With this artefact the Ulster Museum shows how people were unwillingly drawn from their mundane lives into the conflict. In (para)military name veneration, the cause is sacral and an individual’s being mundane. The Ulster Museum aids in turning around this reasoning, putting life before any other political convictions or ethnic background.

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The exhibition by photographer Frankie Quinn about Belfast’s peace walls in late 2019 has a similar sense of mundanity. Displayed in two rooms of the Ulster Museum, it contained pictures of the walls dividing catholic and protestant neighbourhoods throughout the past decades. Unlike press photography or politicised memorialising imagery, there is nothing directly epic about Quinn’s documentary visuals. Instead, they powerfully show the harsh every-day geographical challenge Northern Ireland’s working-class areas have to deal with.

The walls prevent some direct violence, but might silently impose suspicion of those on the other side. After all, physical boundaries emphasises the differentness between groups. Yet, perhaps such structures create a window in which peaceful resolutions can be found. In all, the meaning of the peace walls changes over time beyond the intended use, as for instance explained by McAtackney (2018). Even if not intended as such, Quinn’s visuals could be read as art rather than documentary photography. Many images follow a pattern of three fesses: a sky, a wall and the ground. More importantly to Quinn, it shows the attempts of the state to create a regimented society.

As opposed to press photography, there is no explicit drama added in the documentary style. And other than visual art, this method is primarily about being in the world and preserving a part of that. Secondarily it is about expressing and interpreting, and as such it is less constructed and staged. Of course, the difference is in the end not so stark and the various methods are interwoven (Quinn, 2019). Historical objects and imagery together can have synergetic results too. “Objects provide a feel, smell and size”, while photography induces a fuller imagination more easily, fellow photographer Andrew Johnston explained (2019). Quinn pointed out the old television on display in the Ulster Museum. He showed me several pictures of the machine being moved out after the house it stood in was destroyed in the riots of the

1960s. One such picture is indeed the backdrop of the television in the museum. Even if there is not much written narrative, this is still very powerful and vivid storytelling: the conflict stormed into people’s houses (Quinn, 2019).

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Quinn and Johnston work together in the context of the Belfast Archive Project. Barely had I asked any question, when Johnston put a picture on the coffee table between us. It showed a few of his family members, three of whom had died in the Coleraine bombing of 1973. “This is what makes it hard for me to really believe in peace and cooperation between republicans and loyalists”. Johnston’s work has mainly focussed on portraying individuals on the Shankill road. “First I have a little chat with people and only after a while I take a picture of them”.

When I asked what his perfect exhibition would look like, he said he would enlarge his photographs “for impact”, perhaps close-ups and medium close-ups of ten times life-size. “That way, you can see wrinkles, people’s life really shows in their faces”. He shows individuals in

Figure 16: Three of Frankie Quinn's photographs on display Figure 15: A poster displayed by the Linen Hall Library, temporarily at the Ulster Museum. Picture by the author. suggesting Ulster is equal to the Third Reich or Nazi More of both Quinn's and also Johnston's work can be found occupied Europe - a prelude to Chapter V. Picture by the at https://www.belfastarchiveproject.com/. author.

A Very Funny Place their day-to-day environment, be it their home, the street, a pub and so forth. Backgrounds often include Ulster British symbolism. But despite, or perhaps because of, the tragic loss that his family suffered during the Troubles, Johnston advocates an image of a plurality of identities. The exclusiveness of ethnic identities and the conflict between them mainly exists in the rhetoric of politicians. “But it does not in the everyday patchwork of identities on the ground”, the photographer remarked (2019).

iii. Taking Sides: One, All, None?

Popular histories and geographies of war too are easily simplified into a contest between clearly defined sides, and as such they are often portrayed in museums. The representation of sides takes a few different forms here. Some depict the Troubles era as having a huge variety of identities, like for example Linen Hall Library. Others show a binary or trinary narrative in the main, as done in the Tower Museum in Derry. Yet others follow a binary, but do so clearly from one perspective, also known as single-identity museums. The Irish Republican History

Museum does so, but despite their preference they do include loyalist paramilitary and state forces objects.

In Linen Hall Library a lot of public artefacts are kept, like newspapers and political leaflets, but on display most prominently are the many posters that urged citizens to all kinds of ideological corners. The building’s structure is quite apt for exhibiting these shouty texts.

Three walkways positioned under and above each other connected by stairs are effectively raining down political messages on a visitor entering through the door at Fountain street. The

“Vertical Exhibition” seems to emphasise the smallness of ordinary folk trying to make their existence liveable amidst all the big opinions. Librarian Samantha McCombe stressed there is no particular order in which these posters are arranged, and thus no particular side is presented more favourable than any other. The layout of the library allows visitors to even enter in the middle of the exhibition, stressing the idea of multiple interpretations as well. When asked

A Very Funny Place whether the library would support the idea of a new Troubles museum, McCombe showed caution. “Someone once asked whether he would be allowed to print a poster in our collection on T-shirts.” That they did not approve of, as the library could not control the spread of that particular image anymore. It could well be that indeed contentious images are best discussed under the right circumstances, in a library with knowledge of others close at hand, lest someone gives them a new radical use that goes unchecked (McCombe, 2019).

The myriad of single-sentence opinions is swapped for a more clear-cut reading of the

Troubles in Derry’s Tower Museum and the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Though minor, a point of criticism would be that their narrative of the conflict is too oversimplified. The Tower

Museum exhibits British Army combat and riot equipment on one side, and places it opposite a showcase containing both loyalist and republican paramilitary gear. Again, such setups are likely influenced by practical considerations. However, problems should still be pointed out.

First, it does suggest that the Tower Museums takes a pro-government stance. By lumping together paramilitarist loyalism and republicanism a visitor is more inclined to view them as one and the same, their common denominator being a force that challenges the state’s decisions. One might call them the ‘forces of disorder’, against the government’s desire to maintain order. Although Belfast City Hall leaves the Troubles largely unaddressed, they pit early nationalism and loyalism against each other. By the setup of the exhibition, they underline similarities between the two movements. One room is filled with political activity of both sides, like posters. Interestingly, visitors can find out whether their ancestors have signed the Ulster

Covenant of 1912. If one ever wondered whether your great-grandparents were loyal to the state, Belfast City Hall provides a simple answer. The following room centres around the wars of the 1910s and 1920s, showing that both political traditions were capable to kill and die for what they believed. In the Ulster Museum state forces, loyalist paramilitaries and republican paramilitaries are shown as separate from each other, in three displays. RUC riot gear and a

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Figure 18: Government forces were less lethal than Figure 17: This piece in the Ulster Museum very much loyalists and republicans, although rubber bullets took shows that republicans are prisoners of their own lives too. As the RUC riot helmet is damaged, this display interpretation of the past. Underneath the plaque is the might be described as 'realistic' (see section iv). Picture by car bomb. Picture by the author. the author. pistol represent the government, a car bomb is shown in the republican section, and for loyalists an assault rifle is displayed. “We wanted to show that all these organisations were involved in violence”, curator Karen Logan explained (2019). The particular choice of weaponry seems appropriate: paramilitary organisations are responsible for a majority of Troubles deaths.

Such juxtapositioning however could also cause an underrepresentation of collusion, negotiation and intelligence encounters between state forces and paramilitaries. Although hard to verify, one RUC officer estimated that perhaps as much as 80-85% of republican paramilitaries had at one point in their lives been in such contact with the police (Breen, 2017, pp. 166-167). Moreover, a great amount of factionalism within the state forces, republicanism

A Very Funny Place and loyalism is left unmentioned. For example, the security forces and the UK justice system were occasionally at odds. Internment, torture and shoot-to-kill operations did not correspond with UK law. Investigations into their conduct were sometimes met with obstruction from security forces involved (Bowlin, 1998, pp. 132-146). But the point to take away here is not to discredit the security forces, although they are deserving of some critique. If anything, it reveals that elements within the state were trying to control the violence of their armed forces.

Paramilitaries have shown a much lower degree of such internal checks and balancing. In their cases, splits and factional killings happened. Turning against the in-group was punished by the

Provisionals and other organisations, often by death (Toolis, 2000 (1995), pp. 224-226).

Figure 20: The head of a pike used during the 1798 Rising Figure 19: A Troubles era button in the IRHM referring to in the RIHM. Picture by the author, who apologises for the the Vietnam War, showing the supposed attachment to reflection. The phone has been reprimanded and replaced. other anti-imperialist struggles. Picture by the author.

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Figure 21: Symbols of the 1912 UVF shown at the IRHM. Picture by the author. With some pride, one volunteer at the Irish Republican History Museum pointed out

that they housed loyalist and state objects too. “They [loyalists] never show anything from us,

but we have it all: British Army, UVF and republicans.” Indeed British state forces uniforms

from both the Easter Rising (1916) and the Troubles easily catch the eye. Similarly, the Irish

Volunteers and the Irish Citizen Army are each represented by a mannequin. In a display on a

far end of the room, 1912 UVF webbing and insignia can be found. The 1798 rebellion is

displayed by a bayonet, the symbolic pike head and some images that include red-coated

government troops. The little library housed in the museum holds all kinds of books, ranging

from academic, popular and memoires, from republican to unionist to neutral. But in the

exhibition in itself, we are not invited to think about the inner imaginations of the Other, who

by means of armed conflict has been detached for so long from the republican in-group.

Although varied in intensity and kind, violence is the common denominator of the

traditional sides: republican rebels, loyalist paramilitaries and government forces. Violent

confrontation is also the sphere in which their differing of opinions came to the fore most

forcefully. This raises the question: how is violence dealt with in museums?

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iv. Violence

Violence is endlessly debated and a defining part of the Troubles. Becoming a member of an organisation that possibly resorts to violence is a significant moment in many people’s lives.

Mervyn Gibson joined the RUC to combat republican terrorism, as he felt his community was under threat (2019). Although acknowledging the wrongs of some actions, one former

Provisional IRA volunteer stated that “at the time I did not see any other way of bringing about change”, and to stand fast against violence from the outside (Anonymous-c, 2019). Two former members of the Ulster Defence Regiment claimed they joined to protect their family

(Anonymous-f, 2019). One of them, when after the Troubles were over and she had conversation with a former loyalist paramilitary fighter, she deemed herself and him quite alike.

He too had joined for the same reason (Anonymous-e, 2019). Feeling threatened sparks defensive, martial behaviour.

And yet, all these organisations and separate units within them have complex relations to actual acts of violence. As we have seen for example, female UDR members were in principal not supposed to use weapons. And then there is the perspective of victims. It would not come as a surprise that different museums display violence differently. A helpful framework is used by James Scott, who distinguishes three manners in which objects related to violence can be treated: celebratory, sanitising and realistic. In short, the celebratory manner is triumphalist and depicts feats of arms as heroic. Objects carried from the battlefield or a foreign land are displayed as ‘trophies’. Military medals are treated in similar fashion: in solemn cabinets, revering the deeds of masculine men against a vile foe. But as Scott rightly noted: “The problem with this approach is that the visitor learns more about the positive side of armed conflict and this can create a distorted and one-sided representation of war” (Scott,

2015, p. 491). In fact, we are to keep to the very thoughts that started and fuelled war in the first place, pretending as if we still live in a period mostly similar to the times of war. One most

A Very Funny Place interesting example Scott points to is a French Eagle captured by the British during the

Napoleonic Wars, displayed like one would a cup of a sports event. In the sanitising mode weapons and the like are reduced to their technological specifications. Round calibres are mentioned, but links to social and political developments are left out. Guns happen in isolation.

The problem here is that it teaches hardly anything new to a visitor: people into weapons already know this and are not invited to rethink violence in society, while to anyone who is not an (amateur) armourer it is just a number. The last mode is the most holistic and therefore perhaps the most desirable: realistic. It leaves out much of the technicalities and allows victims into the story. Not only does it show weapons, but also how they affect (read: destroy) the

Figure 23: An 1871 model Mauser used during the Easter Figure 22: A carbine used by the 1912 UVF in the Museum Rising, quite old even by that time. This display at the James of Orange Heritage, of similar age as the Mauser and Connolly Visitor Centre is of quite sanitising cut. Picture by equally sanitised. Twentieth-century paramilitaries were the author. often armed with the weapons of the generation before them. Picture by the author.

A Very Funny Place individual body and society. A rocket launcher or mine might be shown next to a burnt out vehicle, for example (Scott, 2015).

Sinn Féin councillor Séanna Walsh turned the display of violence as Scott understood a bit. The Connolly Visitor Centre does exhibit weapons in glass cases: a pistol and a rifle used during the Easter Rising. Being manager of the centre, Walsh stated that they did not want to sanitise Connolly’s life, his movement and the revolt itself (2019). Yet precisely this kind of display would have been classified as sanitising by Scott: not shown in any way are the

(potential) consequences to life and limbs. The line between the minimum level of realism and sanitisation can be thin. On the other hand, at the Museum of Free Derry the upper limit of realism might have been reached. Visitors can listen to British military telecommunications during the events. Several sets of clothing of those hit by British Army rounds are displayed.

Holes eerily indicate where bullets entered the body. Though still graphic, photographs displayed remain watchable for a wide audience. “I have seen the [more shocking] pictures we have”, manager Adrian Kerr explains, “but survivors and those who have lost relatives have to be able to come here too”. It is hard to supress feelings of sympathy for the victims and their surviving acquaintances and next of kin – and for the community of the Bogside. But it is not a ‘republican museum’, Kerr insists, explaining that DUP politicians Gregory Campbell and

Arlene Foster classified it as such (2019). Even though the events of Bloody Sunday led to a huge influx of IRA members, the exhibition takes no stance on constitutional issues. A different political victory is celebrated, being prime minister David Cameron’s apology on behalf of the

British government and his admitting that the killings were unjustifiable as per the Saville

Inquiry. On a large screen at the end of the linear exhibition, a video plays on loop, showing both the apology and a crowd of Derry citizens watching it on a large screen in front of the town’s Guildhall.

Hence, the Free Derry museum combines realism with civil celebration instead of military triumphalism. In a way, the aggrieved community of Derry has overcome, or, at least,

A Very Funny Place is overcoming. When asked whether an apology and recognition from the British government was enough, Kerr admitted that indeed to him it is, but added: “to me, Soldier F is a psychopath”. ‘Soldier F’, as he is known to the public, faces murder charges for his reckless conduct on Bloody Sunday. Kerr also explained that other employees at the museum want closure in the form of legal conviction. Among them is at least one relative of a Bloody Sunday victim (Kerr, 2019). Issues surrounding the aftermath of violence are complicated. Retired lieutenant-colonel Andy Hart agreed that Soldier F should be prosecuted. “He was trained in the use of his weapon and therefore had the duty to act responsibly with his weapon, which he did not.” Hart acknowledged that admitting guilt and responsibility would result in an increased respect towards the government and the armed forces (2019b). But loyalist working-class neighbourhoods all over Northern Ireland are decorated with the reverse message. Flags coloured paratrooper maroon containing the phrase “We support Soldier F” abound. One tangentially related issue is the effort and money Tony Blair’s government put into the Saville

Inquiry, while victims in loyalist communities receive less attention. It seems likely that grievances generated thus are transformed into support for the soldier that clearly acted out of bounds. During a commemoration honouring murdered UUP politician Edgar Graham (1954-

1983), the harsh dilemmas faced by the unionist community became almost palpable. Many who were victimised by the IRA want closure. That can come in several ways and/or to several degrees: knowing the truth; recognition by others in society, especially the political establishment; confession of guilt by the perpetrator; and legal persecution. To obtain more truth, ex-paramilitaries often need to confess, but they would only do so when given increased legal protection or even immunity. Furthermore, should combatants face equal persecution, state forces risk being put on trial more often, because it is easier to obtain evidence against them, whilst paramilitaries reside outside state control.

A museum could fulfil the need for public recognition of the victimised, as the Museum of Free Derry does. Of course, this example is restricted to the Bloody Sunday victims and to

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Figure 24: An RUC and UDR figure with a banner in the Museum of Orange Heritage. Picture by the author. a lesser extent the civil rights movement. The former is done very concretely, while the latter

is more abstracted. Although the Museum of Orange Heritage slightly edges towards military

triumphalism, they also pay attention to members killed by paramilitaries during the Troubles.

Their showing of weapons is mostly sanitised: a late 1600s musket and Martini-Henry carbine

does represent loyalists as violence doers, but other than simple chronology and context the

onlooker is left to think of them as neutral or with amazement. It is as ‘unsanitised’ as the arms

in the Connolly centre. Two mannequins, one in RUC and another in UDR uniform, strike a

solemn pose. The Orange Lodge banner in between them shows a romantic image of UDR men

in the countryside at a vehicle checkpoint. Hardly any context is provided, therefore we are to

take it uncritically and at face value. Being a banner, it is a celebratory device, and hence we

are to celebrate this martial display. Remarkably, as opposed to the Williamite period and the

early twentieth century, no actual Troubles era weapon is present. While true that paramilitaries

are responsible for the vast majority of fatalities and injuries, state forces and individual

members within them did act dubiously at times (Grant, 1992).

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Although hardly containing references to the Troubles, the Siege Museum in Derry combines the sanitising mode with overt celebration. The Siege of 1689 does indeed receive some realistic treatment through an imagining of the harsh living conditions for the besieged protestant population in terms of the lack of food and diseases. Their positioning of commemorative flags draped along the wall and other celebratory devices like miniature cannons heavily suggest we should take these items at face-value. It mainly enforces the idea of still being under siege, while downplaying the notion that contemporary ‘besiegers’ are not to the last person the demons they are imagined to be. Interestingly, a large part of their historic hardware consists of world war era small arms. Some of it is shown in two separate glass cases, one each for the Entente and the Germans. They reveal how Great War usage has eaten away at the wood and metal the objects consisted of. In addition, the time they laid buried before being excavated has eroded their original form. Does the Tommy helmet with holes in it make for a ‘realistic’ display? To an extent, it does, but the poppies around it suggest that his sacrifice was a fine display of loyalty or downright sad, or both. In combination with the 1689 siege commemorative objects it becomes hard to think of the world wars as having resided outside

Figure 25: Allied WWI "relics" at the Siege Museum. Picture by the author.

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Figure 26: A few of a great many celebratory miniature cannons at the Siege Museum. Picture by the author. the exclusive realm of Ulster loyalism during the Troubles, and the present day. Like Irish

struggles, be they pre-nationalist, nationalist and republican, all loyalist fighting is blurred into

one homogeneous battle.

To a degree, the displays of the Museum of Orange Heritage and the Siege Museum

can be classified what Katie Markham named ‘organised innocence’. Mainly on the basis of

celebrating martial prowess and the suffering of the ingroup, they deny the violence projected

onto others. Markham attributed this term to the IRHM and the loyalist Andy Tyrie Interpretive

Centre, showing that these venues downplay their role as violent groups. Instead, they focus

on the violence inflicted by the state on civilians, for instance rubber bullets fired at children.

Although less prominent than most weapons, the IRHM showed a poster that warned against

car bombs too. But given Markham’s estimate that visitors only spent half an hour inside, the

poster is too little to fully comprehend the impact of direct republican violence (Markham,

2018). When showing me around the Irish Republican History Museum, a volunteer pointed

out a variety of Troubles era small arms. Earlier rifles and the remnants of a musket represent

the older republican struggles. Although the museum could do more to more fully engage with

A Very Funny Place the stories of victims of republicanism and let go of sanitisation and celebration, one volunteer seemed aware of that issue, painting a fairly realistic picture: “Many who come here are interested in the guns we have, younger people too. It’s [in part] because of the video games.

You have to kill so-and-so many to get to the next level. In reality these guns blow people’s heads off” (Anonymous-a, 2019).

Let us shortly further consider games and other wars. In the broader sense games are art forms that explicitly allow for a greater interplay between the public, the art itself, and the artist. Games give the player the impression that they are at the centre of the art work. At the

Battle of Bannockburn Visitor Centre, up to thirty visitors can together recreate this military engagement of 1314. Under the guidance of a museum employee, they can make tactical decisions and change the historical course and outcome (Pittock, 2019). While amazing to anyone with a love for games, such an approach runs the risk of passing over the gruesomeness of medieval warfare. Exactly this makes it unsuitable for displaying the Troubles: ‘playing’ as the IRA, the UVF or the more vicious kinds of British state forces is something mentally hard to do. The problem is not so much with the time period or the sides one could play as. Playing as the Confederacy in games about the American Civil War, or as any side in the Vietnam War seems perfectly possible. One could think of Northern Ireland as too small a country and the

Troubles too little a conflict for gaming attention, but ample academia and journalist’s attention prove otherwise. If anything, this conflict seems overrepresented compared to other wars. And besides, the Scottish medieval wars receive quite some gaming attention despite being rather obscure in the grand scheme of historic things. The possible explanation revolves around targeting civilians. Civilian loss of life is all too easily glossed over in nearly all wargames, even if in reality that was a very central consequence, tactic and even strategy of war. Gamers often focus on destroying Nazi tanks, or capturing Stalingrad, but never on finding an

Endlösung. Industry can be bombed, but not Dresden’s city centre. In Northern Ireland’s conflict, civilian casualties were high. In addition, bombing civilians was a central part of the

A Very Funny Place local and international imagining of the war. Therefore, the Troubles are simply not gameable in the traditional sense. Other interactive methods are needed to interest visitors.

v. Visitors and Participation

This brings us to visitors, participation and interaction in museums. Four major points of attention stand out, namely i) the balance between explicit subjectivity and intended objectivity; ii) the balance between invoking emotions in visitors on one hand and on the other educating them. These two things overlap: through experiencing a certain emotion, one might learn or understand another’s viewpoint; and iii) therefore to what kind of audience an exhibition caters best; and iv) in what way the audience is invited to partake in sharing, discussing and debating history.

Manager Adrian Kerr explained how a school teacher with a unionist stance at first refused to come to the Museum of Free Derry. Once the teacher was finally convinced to come, this story of the various civil rights movements and Bloody Sunday caused new insights and understanding for the victims, their relatives, the community of the Bogside and perhaps Irish people in general. Now, he returns regularly with pupils (Kerr, 2019). Having visited the museum too, Mervyn Gibson’s political opinions were unchanged, stating that “it is basically a museum about fourteen people” (2019). That interpretation indeed hardly allows for a new view on the Northern Ireland conflict. It harks into the discussion whether Bloody Sunday can be seen as representative, symbolic and symptomatic of the state’s treatment of Irish citizens.

Their political differences aside, Kerr and Gibson share the believe that general exhibitions of the Troubles would not work. Kerr claims they would be too bland: they focus on the high political developments and general narratives, leaving out the personal stories as a consequence. It would hardly lead to any understanding of how people felt throughout the

Troubles: “I would like to see places like this [Museum of Free Derry], but from a unionist perspective” (Kerr, 2019). For Gibson, the strive after objectivity poses problems. In his view,

A Very Funny Place it would be better to immediately and overtly confess subjectivity, and then allow the visitor to form a personal opinion (Gibson, 2019). A problem that might arise stems from the authority with regards to the historical narrative a museum expresses and embodies. After all, through the documents, artefacts and knowledgeable personnel these establishments gain such authority almost a priori. As a result, if a museum opts to be explicitly subjective and only shows a singular view from a one group in society, then ‘lay’ visitors might simply adopt that view. It remains a question to what extent the unionist school teacher in Kerr’s story is representative: are the insights of the Bogside establishment enough to sway a significant portion of people with unionist views? There is merit to the subjective approach. It stimulates museums to express their sincere opinions. Yet, additionally, it is paramount to invite visitors to express their own ideas about the museum, even (perhaps especially) when they disagree with the museum.

Karen Logan defends the milder and more objective venue. As curator of the Ulster

Museum, she once encountered a visitor who initially declared that she would not go to any

Troubles exhibition. Presumably this particular visitor had either suffered a traumatic experience or found any reference to the violent conflict too confronting. Yet, where the

Bloody Sunday exhibition in Derry provides an extremely emotive story, the Ulster Museum creates more distance between visitor and subject. Eventually, this particular visitor brought herself to go see the exhibition (Logan, 2019). Being interviewed by BBC Radio 4, Logan said that a lot more younger people were visiting, and the amount of inter-generational conversation was growing. In part, this was caused by older visitors identifying someone they knew that featured in the exhibition, and was killed in the conflict. In the same radio program, curator

Hannah Crowdy stated about foreign visitors that they were actually quite “comfortable” with the museum’s first Troubles exhibition. After all, this version of the conflict was already familiar in much of the Western world through respective national newspapers. Somewhat giving the best spin possible to the whirl of critique it generated, National Museums Northern

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Ireland personnel refers to this exhibition as having a journalistic perspective. It showed press photographs, some explanatory captions and textual facts. Objects were the great absentee. By

2018, when Karen Logan’s overhaul had taken place, international visitors got to explore very powerful glimpses of the violence on the ground. Moreover, in the simplified newspaper versions in other countries, the war got a clear ending with the GFA in 1998. Yet, as Crowdy points out, trauma and memories continued to have their effect well beyond the last acts of violence that fizzled out in the early twenty-first century (BBC, 2018).

Bringing together different subjective stories is possible, but poses challenges. The

Police Museum suffers a bit from its geographical location, as it is positioned on the edge of

Belfast, away from city centre and above all within the fortified PSNI headquarters. Curator

Figure 28: Other troubled lives are being unraveled at the Figure 27: Visitors are invited to contact to the Ulster Ulster Museum. Picture by the author. Museum if they wish to tell their stories. Picture by the author.

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Hugh Forrester explains that visitors often have a very specific interest for the Royal Irish

Constabulary, RUC or police services in advance. Some are looking for information about a specific ancestor, but other than that the RIC plays second violin. In the end, a majority is still interested in the batons of the 1970s. Guests from justice and police departments from around the world come by the single-room museum too when they pay official visits to the PSNI. It is in this intimate environment that Forrester believes conversation and debate has the best chances of success. In places like the Ulster Museum there would simply be too many people visiting at once for the staff to give them ample attention (Forrester, 2019). To a degree that could well be true, although it could also mean that bigger venues like the Ulster Museum are simply understaffed. Two former UDR members who partook in meetings organised by

Healing Through Remembrance also found the working groups a bit too crowded, even though the art-making workshops were very mind-opening and helped with mentally processing the past. A handful of people rather than a dozen would have been preferable. During one open meeting of The Fellowship of Messines in Linen Hall Library on December 7, 2019, they experienced something similar. Although often attended by both former loyalist and republican paramilitary members, republicans with socialist or trade union backgrounds dominated the conversation in this particular instance (Anonymous-e, 2019) (Anonymous-f, 2019).

Therefore, although the UDR women were applauded for besting the threshold, it still is tough to cross the line into actual conversation with those you would have called enemies one day.

Additionally, part of the attendees seemed to have a strong urge to tell their story. Judging from one anecdote in the Irish Republican History Museum it appeared that they do sometimes receive visits from across sectarian boundaries. A volunteer related that a former loyalist combatant entered, looking a bit intimidated by all the republican artefacts. Those working at the museum assured him his visit was all fine (Anonymous-a, 2019). Ideally one would indeed want to offer a guiding hand to every individual through an exhibition on something as complicated as the Troubles, that also allows enough space for the visitors’ own interpretation.

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This is what Liam Kennedy cs envisioned in their first explorations for a new Troubles museum. A new exhibition should allow for discussions in small groups with the help of a trained historian or otherwise knowledgeable on the Troubles (Kennedy, Boada, Speight,

Riethmuller, & Purdue, 2018). In the case of the Maze/Long Kesh project, discussion preceded the creation of a new space. These buildings and surroundings were thought of as a potential new peace centre and museum venue, having been a prison for both loyalist and republican dissidents. However, as some argued, it broke down because republican ex-prisoners involved in the project wanted to tell their narrative of overcoming state oppression, while loyalist ex- prisoners and unionists could not agree with that (Lisle, 2016, pp. 227-231).

As the above attests objectivity is impossible, as it is in all probability the mere agreeance on a single subjectivity. For the subjective approach to be inclusive, openness towards visitors’ stories is required. Also, although they have very vivid memories of it, it cannot merely be told by former paramilitaries and state force members, and their respective political leaders. A joint space cannot be led by them, as their ties to the political sphere are too strong, and traditional views deny any real conciliation. This means that a new Troubles museum or exhibition that combines different views would have the best chance of succeeding if it came not from people who have a living memory of the events and close ties to the traditional sides and organisations involved.

Although not without challenges, steps have been taken in that direction. Emma

McAleer stated that “sometimes I believe that adults have no faith that young people and children understand what heritage is. But it can mean many different things to different people.

Families are the easiest to get through the door”. Individuals grouped in a different composition are harder to attract (McAleer, 2019). As a result, it appears possible that exhibitions are interpreted mainly in the context of the family, and at least some views by some (older) family members will be transferred onto other (younger) relatives. While that is inescapably the case in the private sphere, the question remains whether that is desirable in a public space. McAleer

A Very Funny Place is a leading figure in projects such as ‘Reimagine, Remake, Replay’, “led by a consortium including Nerve Centre, National Museums Northern Ireland, Northern Ireland Museums

Council and Northern Ireland Screen, and is funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s

Kick the Dust programme”. The project is aimed at people aged 16 to 25 to actively engage them with museum artefacts (RRR, n.d.). McAleer admitted that getting everyone on board was the main challenge, both within this complicated looking organisation in which RRR exists, and on the outside. For this project specifically, McAleer “pushed for attracting people aged 16 to 25, [as opposed to 11-25] as 11-16-year-olds are still at school”, and hence their opportunities for creative engagement is relatively greater. “From 16 onward, you might not know what path you want to take yet”, and RRR offers a guiding hand out of the traditional spheres. Still, in the end, the challenge of NMNI in its entirety is to provide for everyone, including “young people, families and over-65s” and so on (McAleer, 2019).

Having been an RRR participant, Niamh Kelly draws attention to a fundamental shift that includes technology, but mainly revolves around changing minds. Initially, “it’s not as much changing young people’s attitude to heritage, as to how they fit inside a space like a museum. … Kids see the [traditional] museum and [realise] there’s not so much room for them there. This project really opened up to say ‘this is your space; you can come and contribute your own ideas here’. The technology was brilliant,” Kelly continued, “and you could interact with the selection of museum objects in ways that you never thought of. But it wasn’t the actual devices themselves, it was being able to interact, and react and create in the first place. I think you can get the same level of interaction from a more traditional way of making something physically. It was about having the time, space and resources to do this.” Among other activities, Kelly interviewed members of the LGBTQ+ community. In those conversations, the

Troubles came up in the light of the experience of this marginalised group (Kelly, 2018) (Kelly,

2019). The Ulster Museum has been making an effort to include groups in their current exhibition that were never part of the traditional story of green and orange. In a similar vein,

A Very Funny Place they also display a short memoir by a nurse. This memoir was sent to them as a result of a request to visitors (Logan, 2019). Talking about what kind of space the museum is, Kelly said that she did “not really socialise with people from the protestant community until university.

Even though they don’t live very far from where I lived, and I’m friends with them now, we just didn’t go to the same [elementary and middle] school. The project is another way to bring people from different backgrounds together” (Kelly, 2019).

Participation can be facilitated simpler – technology-wise that is. McAleer also recognises the value of more analogue activities like drawing to engage with museum objects.

Kelly partook in a workshop involving the creation of a protest poster. She decided to raise pro-choice awareness with hers. The posters that emerged from the workshop were put on display by the Ulster Museum, and initially it was a well-visited exhibition. After a few days, an anti-abortion group had gotten wind of Kelly’s poster and heavily criticised the piece.

McAleer: “we received three hundred complaints and from the moment we opened that morning, the phone was off the hook. Some of the comments were so awful.” One visitor declared to never return to the museum again, as it was now pro-choice. The Ulster Museum reacted that this was not the organisation’s position, but that the idea of the workshop was for young people to express their opinions. McAleer personally holds that “if a person in the group was pro-life, then her piece would not have been rejected” (McAleer, 2019). The public is still in the process of getting used to the museum as forum.

McAleer’s view on the museum as open forum coincides with her stance on a new

Troubles museum. McAleer would go as far as not try a dedicated Troubles museum per se.

Yet, she admitted that it would inescapably come up in a museum about identity, politics and societal issues. In that case, visitors should be aided and enabled to express their views in a responsible, inspiring and engaging setting and fashion. “What infuriates me in this country is that either you’re green or you’re orange, but what about everybody else?” The Troubles as historic subject might have been claimed too much by extremists of both republican and loyalist

A Very Funny Place cut, and also by the political sphere. Therefore she prefers what I termed a ‘people’s museum’ during our conversation. McAleer then referred to the People’s History Museum in

Manchester. This venue incorporates workshop elements to mobilise and aid people to express their political views in a democratic way. Such a museum would not simply impose on visitors a historic and thus political view. (McAleer, 2019). Nearly all other venues mentioned in this thesis do so, including the Ulster Museum in much of its space. In the end the space committed to the 1960s-2000s in both the Ulster Museum and the Tower Museum seems too small for the full complexity of the Troubles. That said, the Ulster Museum has been chipping away at the binary and trinary readings of the Troubles. In a recent temporary exhibition, visitors could fill out a questionnaire to find out how ‘protestant’ or ‘catholic’ they were. By means of humorous exaggeration, the Ulster Museum seeks to show how simplistic the binary is (BBC, 2020).

Based on this anecdotal-though-multi-angled evidence, it is clear that post-conflict societies need both subjective and objective story sharing. To loyalists and republicans leaning towards the edge of the political field the past is memorialised because it was both a dark time, and the time in which they were dominant players. Violent conflicts all too easily become both an era of tragedy and a golden age. As a result, groups celebrating opposing sides are unable to share commemorative space, nor museum space. They also have a tendency to overshadow or even claim the very particular narratives told by the emancipatory Museum of Free Derry.

But such single-identity exhibitions cannot coexist within the same walls as the more academia- led museum proposed by Kennedy cs. However, this idea could be augmented with the interaction ideas mentioned by McAleer and Kelly. Although with backlash from others in society who see the museum still as temple rather than forum, the Ulster Museum as shown itself increasingly as enabler of informed debate and creativity in Northern Ireland. However, as Northern Ireland as a whole still views its crises through the lens of green and orange, much remains to be done to further open up the historical, public and political debate.

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V. World Wars: To Divide or Unite?

Nu zijn we veilig, hier in deze tent, vandaag. [...] Maar stel je voor dat er een dag komt dat je dan toch... dat het niet meer zo is, dat je moet kiezen. Kies je dan voor jezelf, voor je gezin ... of ga je je leven wagen [en] anderen in huis nemen? Ben je een held? Of ben je, net als iedereen, gewoon geen held?

Now we are safe, here in this tent, today. [...] But imagine that there’ll be a day that you, after all ... that it isn’t like that anymore, that you’ll have to choose. Will you choose for yourself, for your family [...] or will you put your life on the line [and] take others into your home? Are you a hero? Or are you, just like everyone else, simply not a hero?

-Spinvis, prior to performing Tienduizend zwaluwen, ‘Ten Thousand Swallows’ (2018).

Interestingly, the amount of museum space in Northern Ireland devoted to the world wars is similar to that of the Troubles. Let us deal with this observation by means of two questions: how are the world wars depicted in museums? To emphasise particularities and open up the debate, I will compare the popular world war narratives on the island of Ireland with those in the Netherlands. To an extent, these public histories are reflections of the national identity and the imagined geographies at play in the minds of its members. This comparison is of importance because as a conflict narrative, the Troubles are competing with the world wars for the public’s attention. Furthermore, the world war era and the Troubles are often understood in each other’s light. Lastly, in light of a new Troubles museum, this comparison sheds light on challenges faced when dealing with conflict museums. The British Empire and the United

Kingdom were useful constructs to battle German aggression in 1914-1945. As a result, the world wars are histories for loyalists and unionists to easily rally around and emphasise the positive sides of Britishness. To the nationalist Irish, it distracts too much from their national emancipation and republicanism. By a majority of the Dutch, WWII has been dubbed the most important event in their history (NIOD, 2018). But in addition to honouring and remembering victims like the British, the Dutch appear more invited to rethink their own sense of nation, unlike Britons.

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i. Two Commemorations

2019’s main ceremony of Remembrance Sunday at Belfast City Hall felt disjointed in several

respects. The Royal Irish Regiment (RIR) provided the military band and a third of the honour

guard positioned along City Hall’s western wall. The Navy and the Air Force made up the

remaining two thirds. Four additional RIR members stood near the cenotaph, each on a corner.

Hoarse drill commands could be heard, upon which the honour guard shouldered arms, ordered

arms and executed other movements in unison. The shouty manner in which military personnel

use their voices, creates two things. In the first place such emphasises that the armed forces

comprise a distinct sphere from the rest of society. Second, it presents that distinct sphere as

orderly if not rigid, martial if not aggressive, controlling if not controlled. Hardly any words

were spoken in an every-day sense, but for one clerical figure who proposed “let us pray”. It

was tough to say what portion of the crowd that had gathered (or rather, was still gathering)

really answered the invite to prayer with an actual spiritual thought. For all one could say, most

people just lowered their gaze and recalled death and war, lost and loved ones. At one point

during the one-hour event, a car passed through adjacent Howard Street and Bedford Street, a

Figure 29: Remembrance Day 2019 at Belfast City Hall. Picture by the author.

A Very Funny Place man emerging from its window and crying out something unintelligible. Without much ado the crowd readily ignored it, but apparently, respect for the occasion is not omnipresent. Officials from several organisations (state and non-state) laid poppy laurels. Many of the public were wearing poppies too, both cloth ones and metal pins.

Half a year earlier, in the Dutch city of Nijmegen Dodenherdenking, or the May 4

‘Commemoration of the Dead’, was an entirely different experience. The mayor, Christian- democrat Hubert Bruls, occupied a very central position. In his politicised speech he actively denounced nationalist movements on the rise throughout the continent, who he says are working counter to a united and peaceful Europe. Eight members of the National Reserve Corps forming the honour guard bore no arms during the ceremony. Neither the city itself nor the province it is in has a connection to this particular unit. Granted, Dutch full-time service regiments do have names that refer to localities such as Gelderland, Friesland and Limburg.

Also, Nijmegen is not a capital of anything nor the centre spot of a wider ethnic group. If anything, the city is often stamped leftist and constitutes one end of a region that one author has recently dubbed the “Greenbelt”. Above average, it is inhabited by voters that support socialist and environmentalist parties. At a rough 90 degree angle, this region crosses the conservative Bible Belt, and stretches from Amsterdam, through Utrecht and Wageningen, and finally – by bridge, one could say – to Nijmegen (Voogd, de, 2019). The ceremony is held close to the Nijmegen end of this Waal bridge, apt because of its military value during the time primarily commemorated. Instead of a sea of poppies, a narrator tells the crowd precisely by whom and for whom laurel wreaths are placed at the war memorial: a particular wreath is for, say, members of the military and the merchant navy who lost their lives. Other short though specific moments during a ceremony are thus reserved for minorities who were murdered in labour camps and extermination camps, or civilians who lost their lives due to war-related starvation and disease. Instead of the stately cenotaph with classical pillars in an arch around

A Very Funny Place it, the central monument is a male figure walking hurriedly holding up a tattered flag, looking over his shoulder.

ii. Constructivist Nationalism & The Freedom Museum

The latter commemoration practice ties into two elements of Dutch nationalism, namely pragmatism and the ironic element ‘anti-nationalism’. This pragmatism is described as trying to give as many people as much of what they want, ideally keeping the peace as a consequence

(Amaya-Akkermans, 2014). Therefore, civilians, the military and minorities should be treated with a clear separation though within the same context. Dutch anti-nationalist nationalism has some inherent contradictions. Many Dutch people harbour suspicion of uniforms, (militarist) authority, national institutions, grotesque emotive displays of patriotism organised by the state or voiced by an individual. Although many in the Netherlands very likely have a ‘weak spot’ for their nation, as one author wrote, an overt display of love for the nation is frowned upon and quickly ridiculed, or instils feelings of awkwardness. A committee of academics appointed by the government found that Dutch history and identity could and should not to be essentialised. That, if anything, was its sole essence. The sense of nation is to be forever revised, as new influx, social divides and viewpoints arise (Kešić & Duyvendak, 2016). It is however wrong to think that Dutch pragmatism means that their doings are solely logical, calculated, cold and devoid of romanticism. Apparently, there are war memories and histories that are valued so deeply that a large and significant portion of the Dutch populace goes to great lengths to canalise them into very clear-cut commemorations. In all, The Commemoration of the Dead seems somewhat of an exception to supposed Dutch suspicion of state authority, the military and nationalism, albeit only a little.

It is rather commonplace among people in the Netherlands to ask one another whether one would have been ‘good’ or ‘bad’ during ‘the war’, or what you would have done during a foreign occupation at all. Sometimes in jest, as often in all seriousness. This behaviour has its

A Very Funny Place academic counterpart, perhaps even its origin. Leading historian Loe de Jong wrote a huge series of books on the war, but was criticised for thinking too much in this dichotomy (Haasnoot

& Houwink ten Cate, 2001). Gradually, the experience in western, continental Europe has been increasingly presented as complicated in essence. The Bevrijdingsmuseum (‘Liberation

Museum’) in Groesbeek displayed a temporary exhibition on the Waffen-SS during late 2017 and early 2018. In historiography too, new attention has emerged for Dutch members of this multinational fighting force, challenging the idea of the Netherlands as an essentially occupied, pro-Allied country (Roekel, van, 2019). However on the other hand, Allied soldiers reaching the Netherlands in 1944-1945 tend to judge the Dutch as very helpful, relieved and grateful.

The lack of mountainous terrain or woodlands forced the Dutch to fall back on administrative resistance of forging documents and hiding people in danger in the attic – the Sten gun-wielding saboteur was more prominent elsewhere. Also, throughout the war, the Germans remained frustrated as the neighbouring ‘Germanic brethren people’ refused to join the Nazi cause en masse (Beevor, 2019 (2018)).

This broad spectrum of political choices is explored by the museum, which changed its name to Vrijheidsmuseum (‘Freedom Museum’) in 2019. One section of the establishment appreciates the tough reality of the war in a very accessible way. In it, the visitor is confronted with scenarios that were faced by many individual people during the actual war. They include a police officer who has doubts about serving the occupier’s regime, and a family that ponders the idea of using their teenage child in (non-violent) acts of survival and resistance. Politically the most awkward one is about a young man who wishes to avoid Arbeitseinsatz (forced labour employment) by joining the Waffen-SS. After the short narratives, the visitor is presented with three options and is invited to think about what she or he would have done, and what the outcome might have been. Although the specific names in the scenarios are fictitious, the different outcomes are explained by actual historic examples – with both happy and bad endings. The temporary exhibition of 2020 dealt with Allied looting in the wake of Market

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Garden. Again, the museum sought to draw attention to narratives that complicate the simple and traditional stories.

The extent to which the museum embodies constructivist nationalism is that it very much invites the individual visitor to think about another individual in her or his time and environment. Given the very low threshold – one only has to push a button to make a choice in the trilemma – it is bound to have a large range. Although indirectly and canalised, it still fits the constructivist mindset of allowing the public to form their own opinions and denying singular truth. As such the Freedom Museum seems part of a wider movement that focusses on individualist story-telling. The War Museum Overloon (Oorlogsmuseum Overloon) offers mostly traditional military history, displaying a huge amount of weaponry used in all the major

European theatres. In recent years, however, it started to ask people to put themselves in the shoes of those who lived through 1940-1945. Although still focussing on military equipment and institutions, a recent temporary exhibition in the National Military Museum (Nationaal

Militair Museum) focussed heavily on the sole lives of a Canadian and a German soldier. The most famous WWII tourist attraction in the Netherlands is based on an individual too. Anne

Frank’s hidden home has garnered so much attention because her vividly penned-down experiences are so widely known. Visitors might not be able to imagine an abstract foreign nation in full, but might come to understand one fellow human being in a rather intimate manner.

During the above described commemoration service, five national flags were flown, being the Dutch, American, Canadian, Polish and the Union Jack, emphasising the liberated and their liberators. At the end of the permanent exhibition, the Freedom Museum too urges an internationalist take in a very simple manner. A series of black rectangular metal bars denote casualties per country during WWII. The one for the Soviet Union is especially striking as it is easily mistaken for a supporting pillar of the museum building itself. Given that some bars are under a feet high this mere statistic alone is baffling. Stunning to Dutch people too is the loss

A Very Funny Place of life in the former overseas empire: over 2,5 million Javanese subjects perished in 1942-1949

(NIOD, n.d.). After all, in addition to informing, this museum too commemorates, and seeks to instil respect. But not solely for the individuals you just met, but for all who suffered the human catastrophe that was WWII.

In the end, however, Dutch public history and memory remain far from perfect. The

Dutch were unable to see the bad in their actions in the last major colonial war of 1945-1949, caused by a similar sense of anti-nationalism that prevails to this day. As a neutral country severely victimised by German nationalist extremism, how could such a people be anything but a benevolent imperial overlord? Weren’t Indonesian nationalists the same as the German extremists? Although Asian perspectives are on the rise, many Dutch people prefer to retreat into the comfortable role of the victim (Romijn, 2020). That said, as a WWII narrative, the

Netherlands can teach a broader perspective: individualist, constructivist and internationalist.

iii. Ulster Identity: An Essentialist Nationalism

Rather than treating the public as someone to be guided, on the surface the Belfast commemoration experience seemed more open to individual interpretation. In part, this ‘open source’ kind of public history is created through phrases like “Lest we forget”, leaving to the beholder what she or he wishes to remember. Yet, like the near omnipresent poppy, they are also pretty vague nodes of recognition. What exactly do they encompass? What exactly are we supposed to not forget? Who gets to decide that? Like national flags, they suggest that we are all attached to the same values, yet it also leaves implicit and unsaid what exactly those values are. Britishness in Ulster however, as Brian Graham & Peter Shirlow wrote, is internally divided along the lines of a concept they show a hostile allergy for: marxism.

Within Ulster Britishness, working-class loyalism differs from more middle-class unionism, Graham & Shirlow explained, using Somme commemorations as case. The former feel a greater attachment to Ulster or even more local entities, the latter focusses on the union

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that the entire UK is, and is more London-oriented. This reveals an additional problem (Graham

& Shirlow, 2002, pp. 885-887). It upholds the myth that UK identity is an inclusive family of

nations: people have been excluded based on their Irishness or, more recently, immigrant

background (McVeigh, 2015).

Ironically, loyalist working-class communities too have oft been forgotten. And in that

very aspect, the memory of the Battle of the Somme fits very well, if not furthers that sentiment

and outlook. This image consists of an Ulster protestant people that sacrificed life and limbs

for Britain, thus demonstrating their military prowess and loyalty. Yet, prior to 1914, the Ulster

British feared Westminster might grant Ireland Home Rule, amounting to a betrayal. Right

after the war, they felt their government did very little to enhance their living conditions at

home. During the Troubles, negotiating with the Republic of Ireland and the IRA again showed

that to the government in London, Ulster was by-passable in favour of other interests (Graham

Figure 30: A mural containing symbolisms of the Red Hand Commando, a loyalist paramilitary group, next to a 1914 poem by Laurence Binyon. Picture by Jean Querelle.

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& Shirlow, 2002, p. 894). Ulster loyalism follows a logic of essentialist nationalism: they are

British, loyal to the Crown, ready to fight for their freedom at the Boyne, the Somme or the streets of Belfast regardless of the opposition. No constitutional change or (international) political negotiation can change that. Those who fought for Britishness in the trenches of the

Somme are thus to be remembered and honoured.

A temporary exhibition in 2019 in the Lisburn Linen Centre/Museum featured the homecoming of Great War soldiers. Confirming the pattern set out in the previous chapter, all names of those from that town who died in 1914-1918, accompanied by small photographs, make up almost half the exhibition. A few hundred little pictures adorned the wall. This has two implications that relate to the idea of the human individual. In the first place, it shows the huge impact it must have had on a community like Lisburn’s. All would have had parents, siblings, lovers, friends and perhaps children. This kind of remembrance objects is reminiscent of the famous RUC piece that contains all officers who were killed during the Troubles. But, secondly, it also means that individuals in history are prominently defined by the organisation they were part of. In other words: there is not so much space for the individual challenges and options that raced through the heads of many when the German Imperial Army thundered across Belgium. Only those who enlisted, for whatever reason, are to be remembered. And today, they are subsumed into unionist and loyalist politicised memories.

When I examined the Royal Ulster Rifles Museum in Belfast, a small group of visitors, including a son, conversed with a museum host. The young teenager wished to do a school project on an ancestor that had served with the Rifles. He was steered away from solely studying the specific ancestor, which made sense as the history of an individual combatant is likely too small even for an elementary or secondary education project. Instead, the museum host proposed, perhaps he could focus on the battalion and its route through France. Like in popular history, the inclination seems towards traditional operational military history, or histoire bataille. But this approach leaves out a more fundamental discussion on why

A Very Funny Place individuals opt to take up arms in the first place (or in the case of conscription, why they do not argue against it as much as they might have done). An alternative, or additional strand, for amateur research like this could revolve around social pressures and political choices that relate to fulfilling military service. If the reason a social group agreed to fighting a war is left undiscussed and left unchallenged it is easier for political elites to fill in this part of history.

Fighting, with battle cries of “No Surrender”, has been portrayed as the only option to deal with challenges like Irish emancipation. Other interactions with political opponents are thus easily branded weak or treasonous. In the end, the loyalist version of the Battle of the Somme need not be denied entirely. And the discipline of military history is well-worth studying, if we remember we are dealing with human bodies and emotions, ripped apart by shells and thousands of personal choices made by ordinary individuals.

Perhaps the advice from the museum host is understandable given where it comes from.

The Royal Ulster Rifles Museum itself leaves out much social history as well. It shows medals, and therefore martial heroism as ideal; weapons, and therefore doing violence; uniforms, and therefore the violent organisations as protagonist rather than those who suffer violence. That said: the common foot soldier suffered that a lot as well from the direction of the enemy. A recurring setup in the Tower Museum, the Somme Centre and the Royal Ulster Rifles Museum is a life-size trench scene complete with dressed-up mannequins. The Museum of Orange

Heritage too added a similar setup in a temporary exhibition in 2018. Again: we the audience are not to dwell on the political choices made by so many individuals. Neither are we to question them. But we should, lest we forget why millions sleep-marched into the carnage of the Great War.

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Figure 32: Page 23 of a little guide for American military Figure 31: Page 25. The section ‘About Arguments’ warns personnel stationed in Belfast during WWII. On display in Americans to not get entangled in local political discussions. the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum. Picture by the Picture by the author. author. After a period of many centenary activities dealing with the Great War, people were also left slightly weary of the subject, Maciek Bator realised. He and his organisation For Your

Freedom and Ours capitalised on this opportunity and brought WWII into greater view. Having his origins in Poland, he committed himself to finding a way to close the gap between immigrant Poles and the native Ulster British. As Poland joined the EU in 2004, Polish migrant workers fanned out across Europe. In Northern Ireland especially, they were met with ethnic prejudice that turns violent at times (The Irish Times, 2015). “Poles are catholics. Because of that loyalist people thought we would be on the side of the Irish catholics. In reality, we didn’t care for their conflict.” They were merely fulfilling the demand for cheaper labour in European

A Very Funny Place capitalist economies and as a result needed to deal with ethnic prejudice. “At first we tried anti- racism workshops. That didn’t really work. People don’t want to be called racist, and so they would not come.” The road to mutual understanding had to contain a more positive note. “We decided on using history, and we started to show unionist and loyalist communities that Poles fought with them against the Nazis.” Their focus initially lay on the defence of the isles during the Battle of Britain (1940). Other meetings revolved around the role of Polish agents in British intelligence services. This less overt bonding exercise seems to be working in Maciek’s experience. Attendees of lectures organised by For Your Freedom and Ours do have the feeling that they have learnt something new about a subject they were already invested in (Bator,

2019).

One could say that the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum takes a similar approach. The subject of WWII is not new, but being a home front museum allows for a new take on war and society. Perhaps most poignant is the easier inclusion of women, who are too easily written out of the narrative when it’s exclusively operational military history. Many served in non-combat roles such as administration, food supply, ammunitions and weapons manufacturing, and semi-combat roles like operating search-lights. Also, a glimpse is offered into how Northern Ireland’s society engaged with American military presence. Although it is relatively small, the museum offers a chance to understand the era of total war, as war raged into so many ordinary people’s houses across Europe. As a result, it makes it easier for Britons and Irish people to compare their historical memory with home front stories on the continent, where all fronts were home fronts. Manager Jenny Haslett is aware that the story of her venue can thus be somewhat at odds with the narrower loyalist narrative. During days when children get one of their first chances to engage with Belfast’s WWII experience, “we do dress them up in RAF uniforms, but we also tell about what happened to Dresden and other German cities”,

Haslett explained. This shows that they are at a stage of recognising wrongdoings acted out by the ‘own group’. To what extent those stories are lost on children involved in the museum’s

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Figure 34: A little guide for communicating with the locals in Figure 33: Rifles in the Siege Museum with plaques Francophone areas to be liberated during WWII. On display commemorating the 1914 gun-running, by which the UVF in the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum. It obtained 25.000 small arms. Picture by the author. emphasises that Western Europe was home to many and not merely an arena in which to beat the Germans. Picture by the author. activities, Haslett could not exactly say. Still, it is always better to make the effort, and parents

too would be exposed to this new narrative. In her experience it remains easier to connect to

unionist communities, even though the museum has the means to engage the Irish too, and tries

to (Haslett, 2019). The story of widespread participation, mobilisation and victimisation –

military or not, institutionalised or not – cannot be told by a Lee-Enfield rifle encased in glass.

The frontline for the British Tommy, or the hardly visible targets of Luftwaffe and RAF

bombers, were everyday living spaces of millions. Thus, the establishment also stresses civilian

suffering, showing a mannequin in fire department dress on rubble with a hose. Moreover, a

A Very Funny Place firefighter’s helmet of the Dún Laoghaire fire brigade features, which reveals that help came from the South to douse Belfast’s flames.

Former councillor for the UUP Jeff Dudgeon named getting a Blitz memorial through

Belfast City Council “his only victory” in that representative body. After all, he reasons,

Luftwaffe bombs killed the Irish inhabitants as easily as the British when the city was bombed in the spring of 1941. Still, he met a lot of resistance from Irish nationalist politicians, mainly

Sinn Fèin. In Dudgeon’s experience, the republicans were willing to agree with it, but in return wanted a monument honouring Winifred Carney (1887-1943), a feminist, trade unionist and activist for Irish independence. However, doing so would render a Blitz monument a unionist bargaining chip, and therefore the bombing a memory that would presumably belong solely in the unionist mind. That Dudgeon did not want. He “called their [the republicans’] bluff”, and when it came to a vote the council still opted in favour of the monument. Yet, it is not to be erected on the grounds of City Hall, but in the Cathedral Quarters, close to the Northern Ireland

War Memorial Museum (Dudgeon, 2019). Sinn Féin councillor Séanna Walsh denied that his party outright opposed Dudgeon’s proposal. It was not so much the republicans not wanting a

Blitz monument. Instead, the monument did not meet certain requirements that the city government had agreed upon after consulting academic experts on culture. Walsh explained that cultural expressions in and around City Hall were still lacking representations of female history, the working class, republican history and non-white ethnicities. Seemingly, a Blitz monument would not tick those boxes. When asked whether he thought the Belfast Blitz and

WWII memories in general were exclusively loyalist and unionist, Walsh agreed that it could be a historical memory that belongs to both Irish and British people (2019). A cynic reading these views might conclude that republicans were successful in exiling an imperialist symbol to an area that was already dominated by Britishness.

But whatever the truth behind this City Hall politicking, consensus on some parts of

WWII looms in the distance, as an optimist would acknowledge. Adrian Kerr commented that

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Figure 36: In the Royal Ulster Rifles Museum the visitor is Figure 35: A handcrafted teddy bear reminds of people's invited to get the feel of a Bren light machine gun. creative skills, as well as of wartime's boredom, escapism. Additionally, helmets from several periods could be tried on. And, in this case, also of being wounded. Picture by the Picture by the author. author. in loyalist histories British soldiers are in essence noble Tommies, regardless of the war (2019).

Projects like For Your Freedom and Ours, the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum and a

Belfast Blitz Memorial have the potential to de-essentialise Ulster identity, through attaching

it to Irishness, Polish immigrant communities and European narratives. Although De Valera

awkwardly sent condolences to Germany when Hitler died, and the war is awkwardly known

as the Emergency south of the border, WWII is less of a contested historical space than the

decades of Home Rule, the Somme, the Easter Rising and the civil wars for independence. Still,

the question remains how the Irish, especially republicans in the North, express world war

history.

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Figure 37: Dún Laoghaire Fire Brigade helmet in the Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum iv. A Very Long Way from Tipperary

For unionists, and especially the stauncher loyalist elements of it, the world wars present an opportunity to fill a gap in their political toolkit. Given the international character of those conflicts, they might serve as nodes around which to gather international friends. However, unlike the nationalist community, they have proven quite uncapable of generating foreign understanding for their cause. Republicans do so through the platitude of ‘oppression breeding

A Very Funny Place resistance’. In nationalist-oriented museums, the world wars are mostly a side note. During a conversation with volunteers of the Irish Republican History Museum, we discussed the motivation of the Irish nationalist catholic soldier during the Great War. Given the absence of conscription, it could hardly be state coercion alone. Evading the idea that among the Irish there might indeed be ideologically motivated combatants and comfortable within the British

Empire, one argued it would mostly have been economic reasons. Clothing, food, a pension and an income were indeed great incentives, and quite likely for many sufficient. Judging from the support of John Redmond’s Irish Parliamentary Party, the Home Rule promise meant that many Irishmen believed they would soon be accepted as dignified and equal nation within the empire. As this constitutes initial loyalty to the empire and belief in the state, motivations to join could be both ideological as well as economic. Furthermore, like the Belgians and Serbs, the Irish were a small nation deserving their freedom. For that ideal they volunteered to fight.

The fact that this freedom in the form of Home Rule never materialised, however, served to underline British untrustworthiness (Fitzpatrick, 1996, pp. 383-387).

We continued about how violence initiated by republican paramilitaries during the

Troubles should be dealt with in a museum. Would there not be a risk that violence is being glorified when depicted in a museum? After some thought, one answered that there would always be violence in places where starkly differing ideologies meet, and “when the Germans invaded the Netherlands, there was violent resistance too, right?” (Anonymous-b, 2019). This suggests that the use of force by all sides can fairly easily be justified. Historian Tim Pat

Coogan argued that the 1845 Famine was a British-sponsored Irish Holocaust, misusing the worst of wars to illustrate one’s own past and justify one’s own politics. Liam Kennedy showed how different the genocidal Third Reich and British Empire were, despite the destructive influence of the latter’s laissez-faire economics and authoritarian rule (2016, pp. 81-124).

Members of armed organisations of British or Ulster identity, be they state military, police or paramilitary are referred to as ‘Huns’ in very rudimentary republican or civil rights discourse

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(Prince, 2018 (2007), p. 171). During a famous piece of footage of the October 5, 1968 clash in Derry, protestors mimicked the fascist salute, mocking the RUC who had just beaten some in the crowd. The black and tight police uniform surely did not make this image any better

(RTÉ, n.d.). Despite (or perhaps because of) all its flattening out of historic nuances and ignorance of regional particularities, the nationalist community is remarkably better at using world war terminology to communicate to a European audience. Former RUC officer, Mervyn

Gibson pointed out a telegraph insulator taken from a Nazi concentration camp by an

Orangemen in the British Army, on display in the Museum of Orange Heritage. Although little more than a scrap piece of old electronics, he stated that “this always reminds me that we were there, fighting the real fascists” (Gibson, 2019). Gibson’s comments, of course, do not immediately free British state forces from criticism as the Troubles were an entirely different engagement.

But for the same reason, Irish republicans cannot adhere to a simplistic version of the world wars that is tailored to their political needs. Their lack of interest is not entirely their own doing. They have also been excluded from this piece of history and memorialisation by both the Free State government and unionists in the North. Only recently have the tragedies of the

Great War found their way back into the discourse in the Republic of Ireland. South of the border such history was initially seen as an obstacle to nation building, in tandem with violent discrimination against protestants (Walker, 2019, pp. 216-223). Pivotal and symbolic on the road back to WWI remembrance in the Republic was the Enniskillen bomb of 1987. This attack on a Remembrance Sunday ceremony in the North caused many in the South to further question the IRA and Irish history. For instance, in a 1995 ceremony Irishwomen and -men who had served in British forces during WWII were honoured and remembered (Walker, 2019, p. 91).

North of the border this sentiment is slower to develop. Andy Hart, a leading figure in rethinking an all-Ireland military museum, is in part motivated by his sense of heritage. As retired officer of the Royal Irish Regiment, he feels that republicans and unionists/loyalists

A Very Funny Place alike disfigure Irish and British military history. Both ignore the many times Irish and British, catholics and protestants, fought side by side. Both ethnic blocs, the way they are currently configured by their leaders, thrive by excluding the other and ignoring or denying common history (Hart, 2019b).

In the late 1970s, a catholic mother seeking the RUC’s aid brought a couple of photographs with her to the police station. On it were her father and uncles in British military uniform, having served during WWII. This attempt to show the family’s loyalty to the British state did not help. Both her son being held in custody without charge, or the loyalist attacks on him were left as they were. The son, who related this story to me, claimed he was smacked on the ears right after his release. He later joined the Provisional IRA (Anonymous-c, 2019).

Although the blame cannot lie with every single individual member of the overstrained RUC, losing faith in the state apparatus is a fair sentiment in this case. It also encourages to disregard the value of world war memories or to think that the Irish who did made a wrong choice. Sinn

Fèin is gradually increasing its presence at world war commemorations, but their cultural politics remain primarily grounded in the memories of the Easter Rising and wars of 1920-

1923. In the words of Richard Grayson:

So [Belfast mayor] Alex Maskey’s actions in 2002 represented both the minimum and the maximum that Sinn Féin could do: the minimum in terms of actually being involved in commemoration, and the maximum in terms of what many of its own supporters would allow it to do. Before him, SDLP politician and Belfast mayor Alban Magennis proved willing to commemorate the world wars along with unionists too, but stressed that overt display of

Britishness should be left out. The poppy is too much related to British militarism and discourages Irish participation. Especially former Offical IRA members have shown a great interest in the “actual history” (rather than the more politicised practice of remembrance) of the Great War. Harry Donaghue for instance shows a great interest in the Irish serving on the

Western Front (Grayson, 2010). Before the war turned grim, they showed their devoted

A Very Funny Place soldiering through singing It’s A Long Way to Tipperary. But in all, it remains hard for the equally essentialist nationalist community to connect with world war history and thus with unionists. This is of course problematic within Northern Ireland itself, but the two strands of

Irishness are evolving and therefore diverging even further as well. If the Southern Irish manage to increasingly incorporate the world wars in their collective memory, then Northern

Irish nationalists and republicans will probably have to follow suite or risk dividing the united

Irishness they stand for, be it constitutional or cultural.

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VI. Conclusion

Northern Ireland’s museum scene is sceptical about a new Troubles museum. This scepticism consists of two sentiments. One comes from single-identity museums, mostly loyalists and republicans, who are protective of their interpretations and are therefore wary of sharing space with narratives that tell an opposing story. The second sentiment is aimed precisely against this binary relation of conflict. Mainly found within the circles of the Ulster Museum, figures like

Emma McAleer and Karen Logan move away from the museum as historically authoritative temple or as memorial ground, sacred and static. Instead, they increasingly invite previously unheard voices to speak out, including those of the LGBTQ+ community, paramedical personnel and younger, post-Troubles generations. In a sense, they attempt to loosen the grip of the previous green-and-orange generation on their children. The Museum of Free Derry has achieved something similar, while remaining fairly single-identity. The difference between that venue and the Ulster Museum is the range of people represented. Furthermore, the Free Derry museum still imposes a narrative on its visitors, although it is one that only four decades after

Bloody Sunday became more generally accepted. In the end loyalists and republicans are not the voiceless. However, their narratives, then as now, focus on their victimhood and falsely suggest voicelessness. Victimhood is used to legitimise their respective causes, and is thus turned into sacrifice. These two traditional ideologies are engaged in a race to the bottom, chasing the most victimhood. Their museums are temples or memorial sites, as Bigand and

Nora understood them, but especially in the republican sphere they have also become part of a node of everyday socialising, seemingly unpolitical at first sight.

Although a new museum about political conflict would inescapably include the

Troubles, it would be advisable to consider a broader range of subjects – in spite of the already complicated nature of the Troubles. In the spirit of McAleer, Logan, and in a way also that of

Liam Kennedy cs as proposed, visitors should be guided and enabled to formulate their own interpretations. A broader range of subjects would, as Maciek Bator is showing with

A Very Funny Place considerable success, include other conflicts, among which the world wars, mainly the second one. That has its own challenge. In Northern Ireland up to the recent past, WWII has resided almost completely within loyalist or, more moderate, unionist spheres. A narrative of shared world war victimhood, without the loyalist claims to that past, could open up space for discussions about the Troubles. Those born in protestant and catholic communities were both victimised by state forces, but mainly by republican and loyalist paramilitaries. These organisations became perceived as solutions to the problem, but were in fact worsening the divide. Comparisons between those three political actors and Nazi Germany must always at

Figure 39: The famous leaflet anouncing one of the early Figure 38: A songbook on display in the Museum of Free civil rights marches (1968), on display in the Museum of Derry. Picture by the author. Free Derry. It shows the march was a consequence of lack of housing and jobs. Picture by the author.

A Very Funny Place least start with the premise that the Third Reich was far worse than the Provisionals, the UVF and the Parachute Regiment ever were. That said, there is no justification for the violent excesses the latter three committed. As any such equalization is historically false, they must be based on other motivations. They are thus political frames, and again, they are only used by republicans and loyalists to suggest a sense victimisation. Instead of Lijphart’s top-down consociationalism, it is therefore likely that grassroots activities such as Reimagine, Remake,

Replay create more tolerant, open and therefore more stable future generations.

The British and Irish both have a very local view of the world wars. This is somewhat explicable geographically and historically, as they never felt the full force of 1914-1945 violence. The Northern Ireland War Memorial Museum does a lot to rectify this, but in

Northern Ireland, the world wars remain a military event. The emphasis is on military victimhood, but also celebrates martial behaviour. In the Netherlands, the military side of the story has to share space with the Holocaust and other civilian suffering. It is a condemnation of war and extreme nationalism. As such, it is for the public to take cross-border stances, mainly towards other western European peoples. Since this sentiment is less present in Northern

Ireland and Britain, essentialist nationalism in the form of Sinn Féin and Brexit is more prevalent.

The writings of Anderson and Davies show that a sense of nation is by definition transient. Essentialist nationalisms deny this, but that brings them into conflict with that reality.

Therefore, it would indeed be advisable for new museums to allow for a constructivist sense of community: accept that the need for national community exists, and that the nation exists, but also underline that it is ever-changing, and not readily knowable what its constituent elements are in a given moment in time. Interaction-based museums and exhibitions that actively allow for visitors’ preference and interpretations enable constructivist nationalism.

Such a relation with the narrative can range from a simple push on a button, or adding one’s own caption to an object to a fully blown creative workshop or expert-guided debate. Most

A Very Funny Place importantly, a democracy has to place trust in its citizens and mobilise them to develop their ideas together. When configured in an interactive way, museums can greatly contribute to a democratic society.

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References

Aldridge, D. (2014, November 11). How should we teach remembrance at school? . Retrieved from The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/how-should-we-teach-remembrance-at- school-33818

Amaya-Akkermans, A. (2014). "The Chinese of Europe?" Dutch Identities on Trial. In R. Vogt, W. Cristaudo, & A. Leutzsch, European National Identities: Elements, Transitions, Conflicts (pp. 135-154). New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers.

Anderson, B. (2016 (1983)). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and the Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.

Anonymous-a. (2019, October-December). Conversations with a volunteer of the Irish Republican History Museum. (D. Pligt, van der, Interviewer)

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