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Home , Andy Tyrie, Austin Currie, Canon Fodder, Christopher John Hanna, Craig McCauley, Cruthin

A Plurality of Identities: in Contemporary Northern Irish Drama

Georgia Macbeth

A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

School of Theatre, Film and Dance University of New South Wales August 1999 Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 3

Abstract 4

Introduction A Confluence of History, Myth and Identity 5

Part One: Protestant as Planter

Chapter One Field Day Theatre Company: a Northern Nationalist Vision 57

Part Two: Protestant Diversity

Chapter Two History as Identity: Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness 119

Chapter Three Centres and Peripheries: the Ulster Protestant as Irish and British 152

Chapter Four The Angst of the Middle Classes: Graham Reid, Bill Morrison and Robin Glendinning 181

Chapter Five Charabanc Theatre Company 204

Chapter Six Christina Reid: the Ulster Protestant Female 238

Chapter Seven Gary Mitchell: a New Protestant Voice? 256

Conclusion 275

Bibliography 284

2 Acknowledgements

This thesis would not have been possible without the insight and guidance of Jim Davis. Special thanks should also go to Mum, Dad, Will and the rest of my family and friends for their unwavering encouragement and support. Specific thanks to Eleanor Methven for inspiration, Ophelia Byrne and Maelíosa Stafford for invaluable assistance, Vi, Reggie, Nell and Dan for their hospitality, and Bill Morrison for lunch in Liverpool. Finally, and with much love, I thank Danny.

3 Abstract

This thesis examines the ways in which Ulster Protestant identity has been explored in contemporary Northern Irish drama.

The insecurity of the political and cultural status of from the Home Rule Crises up until Partition led to the construction and maintenance of a distinct and unified Ulster Protestant identity. This identity was defined by concepts such as loyalty, industriousness and ‘’. It was also defined by a perceived opposite – the Catholicism, disloyalty and ‘ of the Republic. When the Orange State began to fragment in the late 1960s and early 1970s, so did notions of this singular Ulster Protestant identity. With the onset of in 1969 came a parallel questioning and subversion of this identity in Northern Irish drama. This was a process which started with Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge in 1960, but which began in earnest with Stewart Parker’s Spokesong in 1975.

This thesis examines Parker’s approach and subsequent approaches by other dramatists to the question of Ulster Protestant identity. It begins with the antithetical pronouncements of Field Day Theatre Company, which were based in an inherently Northern Nationalist ideology. Here, the Ulster Protestant community was largely ignored or essentialised. Against this Northern Nationalist ideology represented by Field Day have come broadly revisionist approaches, reflecting the broader cultural context of this thesis.

Ulster Protestant identity has been explored through issues of history and myth, ethnicity, class, gender and sexuality. More recent explorations of Ulster Protestantism have also added to this diversity by presenting the little acknowledged viewpoint of extreme . Dramatists examined in this thesis include Stewart Parker, Christina Reid, Frank McGuinness, Bill Morrison, Ron Hutchinson, Marie Jones, Graham Reid, Robin Glendinning and Gary Mitchell. The work of Charabanc Theatre Company is also discussed.

What results from their efforts is a diverse and complex Ulster Protestant community. This thesis argues that the concept of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, defined by its loyalty and Britishness, is fragmented, leading to a plurality of Ulster Protestant identities.

4 Introduction

A Confluence of History, Myth and Identity

The issue of Ulster Protestant identity has been frequently explored on Northern Irish stages and changing conceptions of this identity have been reflected in the changing ways in which it has been presented on stage. This thesis aims to trace this process, showing how contemporary Northern Irish drama has mirrored contemporary views about Ulster Protestantism from both internal and external perspectives. Since the onset of the current Troubles1, the Northern Irish majority has experienced a drastic shift – from a position of security to one of insecurity, from belonging to dispossession and ultimately from the conception of a singular and stable Ulster Protestant identity to the recognition of a plurality of Protestant identities. I aim to show how these shifts have been explored in contemporary Northern Irish drama, starting with an examination of the issues and background which frame my argument.

Theatre in Northern Before 1969

In Northern Irish drama prior to 1969 we can see both the assertion of an identity independent of Britain and Ireland and a converse assertion of the inherent Britishness of the Ulster Protestant. Theatre in the North was both parochial and provincial in outlook, mirroring contemporary Ulster Protestant confusion. In 1902 two Ulster men, Bulmer Hobson and David Parkhill,

1 In using the term ‘current Troubles’, I am referring to the period since the civil unrest of 1969.

1 established a Northern branch of the Irish National Literary Theatre. The ethos behind their efforts was Nationalist. Both Hobson and Parkhill were representatives of the Protestant National Association (‘one of the many scions of national enthusiasm in the North’2) and firm believers in the spirit of the United Irishmen3. They believed that Ulster should play its part in the Irish Revival. Yet they did not have the blessing of WB Yeats and the Irish Literary Theatre, and, after rejection from Dublin, they renamed themselves the Ulster Literary Theatre (ULT). It was their second season of plays early in 1904 which highlighted the need for more than just a nominal break from their southern co-practitioners. Productions of Yeats’ Cathleen Ni Houlihan along with AE (George Russell)’s Deidre received much poorer houses than expected. Gerald Macnamara recorded that the ‘ public were not taken by Cathleen Ni Houlihan’: ‘Ninety-nine per cent of the population had never heard of the lady – and cared less; in fact someone in the audience said that the show was going “rightly” till she came on’4. Here we see the first drama-related expressions of a distinctive ‘

Also a representative of this new move towards independence was the ULT’s literary review – Uladh. The review’s first editorial asserted the distinctiveness of the Ulster voice, contrasting it directly with that of the South: Dreamer, mystic, symbolist, Gaelic poet and propagandist have all spoken on the Dublin stage, and a fairly defined local school has been inaugurated. We in Belfast and Ulster also wish to set up a school; but there will be a difference... At present we can only say that our

2 Hagal Mengel, Sam Thompson and Modern Drama in Ulster (Frankfurt am Main: Verlag Peter Lang, 1986), 14. 3 Sam Hanna Bell, The Theatre in Ulster: A Survey of the Dramatic Movement in Ulster from 1902 until the Present Day (: Gill and Macmillan, 1972), 2. 4 Gerald Macnamara, as quoted in Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 3-4.

2 talent is more satiric than poetic... we shall... attain to something unique in Ulster, smacking of the soil, the winds on the uplands, the north coast, the sun and the rain, and the long winter evenings5. ‘Satire’ formed the base for much of the ULT’s work and this distinction between ‘satiric’ and ‘poetic’ lingers up to the present day, with remnants left in the differences between Ulster Protestant and Irish Catholic drama, between the work of a writer such as Stewart Parker and that of .

What these initial years of the ULT illustrate is the effort to assert cultural independence and it is in these efforts that their longer term significance lies. For the first time, Ulster characters, speaking Ulster dialect, appeared on stage across the province. Worthy of note from this early period were Rutherford Mayne’s The Drone (1908)6, Lewis Purcell’s and Gerald Macnamara’s (alias Harry C. Morrow’s) Suzanne and the Sovereigns (1907), and Gerald Macnamara’s 1912 work, Thompson in Tir-na-n’Og. The last work of this list was characteristic of the ULT’s early work both in form and content. Thompson in Tir-na-n’Og was a one-act work following a central character, Andy Thompson. Thompson is an Ulster Protestant who, after an accident with his gun during a mock battle, finds himself ‘complete with Orange sash and bowler hat, in the Land of Eternal Youth among the heroes of Irish myth’7. Here we have a humorous meeting of opposing sides underpinned by the view that to laugh at was to reject and undermine its potency. The importance of all of this early work was its grounding in the province, particularly in its depiction of urban, distinctly Belfast life. Specifically written for and directed at audiences in Ulster, this

5 WB Reynolds, ‘Editorial’, Uladh (1 November 1904), as quoted in Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 7. 6 Mayne’s play remains frequently performed in amateur circles – an Ulster ‘classic’. 7 Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, 42.

3 early ULT work broke away from Dublin, rejecting the plays of the Irish Literary Theatre in favour of local writers. In this it took Ulster cultural distinctiveness much further than Uladh.

Up until the 1960s, various theatre companies were established and dissolved, including the Belfast Repertory Company (otherwise known as The Empire Players), the Ulster Group Theatre (formed in 1949 by an amalgamation of the Ulster Theatre, Jewish Institute Dramatic Society and the Northern Irish Players), the Belfast Arts and the Lyric Players Theatre (formed in 1951 and still in existence today)8. However, the progress of Northern Irish drama is best illuminated through examination of two particular writers – St John Ervine and Sam Thompson. The contrast between the work of these two men highlights the shift which occurred, as conflict loomed in the North, from a traditional conception of Ulster Protestant identity as expressed in Ervine’s work to a fragmented and diverse portrait of Ulster Protestantism such as is depicted in the work of Sam Thompson.

Hagal Mengel describes St John Ervine as ‘a rather cosmopolitan bourgeois writer, as much at home in English drawing-room comedy as in Ulster realism’9. Mengel’s description illustrates well the peculiar mix of provincial and parochial that I have been describing. Ervine had a long and successful career writing away from . Two of the works that he did situate in the North were Mixed Marriage (1911) and Boyd’s Shop (1936), written at either end of his career10. Both plays are very parochial in tone yet ironically both were premiered away from the province, Mixed Marriage in

8 For a more comprehensive account of Ulster Theatre prior to 1969 see Bell, The Theatre in Ulster, Mengel, Sam Thompson, and Ophelia Byrne, The Stage in Ulster from the Eighteenth Century (Belfast: The Linen Hall Library, 1997). 9 Hagal Mengel, ‘A Lost Heritage: Ulster Drama and the Work of Sam Thompson’, Theatre Ireland, 1 (1982), 19. 10 Ervine’s other Ulster-based dramas include The Orangeman (1914), John Ferguson (1915) and Friends and Relations (1941).

4 Dublin and Boyd’s Shop in Liverpool. Mixed Marriage was one of the first Ulster plays to concern itself with the Belfast working classes, and it examined sectarian division in the North, controversial material for its time. Ervine focused on putting forward an authentic portrait of Belfast and it is in this focus on authenticity that we see the beginnings of social realism on the Northern Irish stage. This would be a style later adopted by Sam Thompson and, in the 1970s and 1980s, by John Boyd, , Graham Reid and Christina Reid, among others. Yet where Ervine differs from these later writers is in his conventional portrait of the Ulster Protestant.

This singular Ulster Protestant identity is best expressed through the character of Boyd in Ervine’s Boyd’s Shop . The play took the approach of social realism (albeit with a heavy dose of sentiment) and applied it to Protestant lower middle class rural Northern Ireland. David Kennedy, writing in 1951, explained the appeal of Boyd’s Shop for Ulster audiences: Presbyterian Ulster liked this picture of itself. Here were some echoes of pulpit eloquence and theological discussion, a glorification of the wee shop, and ‘two ministers till their tay’ – and what a tea! , treacle bread, brown bread, baps, toasted barm-brack, and fadge. Sentimental, yes, but a little sentiment was needed here to neutralise a former excess of acid11. Mixed Marriage, with its explorations of Ulster sectarianism, was far more confrontational than Boyd’s Shop. The latter merely reinforced the official picture of the industrious and enterprising Ulster Protestant, represented by Boyd. Through the course of the play, Boyd’s livelihood is threatened by an outsider, who has eyes both for his customers and his daughter. Yet traditional values win out in the end. It was Ervine’s depiction of an

11 As quoted in John Cronin, ‘Introduction’, in Selected Plays of St John Ervine (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), 13-14.

5 archetypal Ulster Protestant, with its implied suggestion of a unified and singular Protestant identity, which made him the ideal mouthpiece for the ideas of the Unionist establishment, whose efforts, as we shall see, were similarly directed.

The same could not be said for Sam Thompson who presented his audience with a complex and diverse Ulster Protestant community. Thompson is best known for his Over the Bridge, which was commissioned and then rejected by the Ulster Group Theatre in 1959 because of its allegedly inflammatory content. Thompson eventually had to mount a production of the play independently, which opened in January 1960 to great controversy. Over the Bridge was set in the Belfast shipyards and dealt in a confronting way with sectarianism, following on from both Ervine’s Mixed Marriage and Gerard McLarnon’s The Bonefire (1958). Contemporary playwright Robin Glendinning comments on Thompson’s ‘boldness’ in dealing with such issues at that time: When Sam Thompson... stood for the Labour Party at a Northern Irish election, I remember my maiden aunt, who was very dear to me, saying: ‘That bloody man thinks he’s Shakespeare’... There was a grave distrust for Thompson, not simply because he was standing for the Labour Party but because he dared to write about contemporary Belfast, about sectarianism, about the darker side of Ulster life. I have a feeling that amongst people like my aunt there was a sense that, in the field of letters certainly, nothing really could come out of Ulster. Anybody who tried to write plays was a poseur because the only decent plays, they

6 suspected, although they never saw them, were in London12. Critical work written on the play tends to draw attention to Thompson’s skill at capturing the language and character of the working class. He himself had worked in the shipyards and DES Maxwell argues that: ‘He makes no attempt to derive a raised, lyric intensity from his common speech. Underwritten, downbeat, it carries with precision the feelings of a people whose characteristic mode is irony and understatement’13. Stewart Parker’s introduction to the published edition of the play elaborates: The English they all speak is the plain lean language of the Belfast streets, with its earnestness, harshness, and keenly funny sense of irony, very far removed from the soaring dialect extravaganzas of O’Casey and Synge and yet as distinctly Irish for all that, and a vibrant flexible instrument in the mouths of actors. It was a dialogue that came readily to hand for the author14. Any view of a unified Protestant community was destroyed by Over the Bridge, as trade unionists Davey Mitchell and Rabbie White battle against the bigotry of the likes of Archie Kerr (played by Thompson in the play’s original production). Thompson’s work consciously subverted notions of the Ulster Protestant community as both prosperous and united in its prosperity, and in this he prefigures the writers featured in this thesis. Similarly his extremely urban and working class characters provided a contrast to Ervine’s middle class Boyd.

12 Robin Glendinning in Marilyn Hyndman (ed.), Further Afield: Journeys From A Protestant Past (Belfast: Beyond the Pale Publications, 1996), 234. 13 DES Maxwell, ‘Imagining the North: Violence and the Writers’, Eire-Ireland, 8.2 (1973), 100. 14 Stewart Parker, ‘Introduction’, to Sam Thompson, Over the Bridge (London: Gill and Macmillan, 1970), 13.

7 However, up until the late 1960s, despite the efforts of Thompson, McLarnon and the early efforts of Ervine, the Ulster Protestant identity remained largely unquestioned on Northern Irish stages. As late as 1966, in Plays and Players, James Young, director of one of Ulster’s main companies, the Group Theatre, described the company’s repertoire as: ‘Broad comedy... with plays spoken in broad Ulster voices, often with a tilt at some piece of Ulster hypocrisy or the reaction of an average Ulster family to the goings on the football field, the Corporation or the Northern Ireland Parliament’15. There was little room for works of the explosive power of Over the Bridge in Young’s theatre and, in fact, Young argued that plays ‘in which people laugh at sectarian problems... [have] done as much, if not more, to bring about a more realistic and sane approach than any of the works deliberately written with that end in view’16. The irony, of course, is that less than three years after making such claims, people were being literally burnt out of their homes in Belfast.

The contrast between, and development from, the work of St John Ervine to Sam Thompson broadly follows the political and cultural context of this thesis. A combination of provinciality and parochiality ensured that the North remained distinct, yet indisputably part of broader traditions. Translated into political terms, this describes the ethos of the Unionist establishment. Works like Boyd’s Shop merely reinforced the conventional portrait of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, while the early satire of the ULT obscured the dangerous potency of sectarianism. By the time Over the Bridge premiered in 1960, the Orange State was beginning to fragment. While James Young maintained what he termed a ‘sane approach’ to sectarian problems, violence in the North was escalating, and questions about the legitimacy and of the Ulster Protestant community were being asked.

15 Judith Rosenfield, ‘On the Ulster Front’, Plays and Players, 13 (1966), 68. 16 lbid.

8 Since 1969 Northern Irish drama has been largely occupied with the Northern Irish conflict. Christopher Murray in his survey of twentieth century Irish drama provides a tally of plays dealing with the crisis, too numerous to be recounted here17. These plays have approached the crisis in a number of different ways. One of these ways is through the social realism adopted by Ervine and Thompson. After 1969, John Boyd was the first to take up this theatrical mantle with his Belfast based dramas of the 1970s18. Subsequent examples of this style include Seamus Finnegan’s docu-dramas19, all of which have been premiered in London, the work of Anne Devlin20, Daniel Magee21, and Daniel Mornin22. Graham Reid, Ron Hutchinson, Robin Glendinning and Gary Mitchell, all of whom feature in this thesis, have similarly adopted largely realistic theatrical styles in their explorations of the North.

However, the best uses of this theatrical form are those which subvert and ‘play’ with that form. Conventional narrative structures are rejected in an effort to reach beyond rhetorical frameworks. We see this particularly in the work of Christina Reid and Frank McGuinness, and also in the satirical style of both Stewart Parker’s and Patrick Galvin’s early work23. We also see it in the work of Martin Lynch, a writer who emerged in the early 1980s to

17 Murray adds seventeen plays to the twenty-four plays listed by DES Maxwell in his ‘Northern Ireland’s Political Drama’, Modern Drama, 33.1 (1990), 1-14, and the nine plays listed by Philomena Muinzer in ‘Evacuating the Museum: the Crisis of Playwriting in New Theatre Quarterly, 3.9 (1987), 44-63 [Christopher Murray, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up To a Nation (: Manchester University Press, 1997), 188]. 18 Boyd’s works of the period include The Flats (1971), The Farm (1972), Guests (1974), and The Street (1977). 19 Most notably Act of Union (1980). 20 Most notably Ourselves Alone (1986) and After Easter (1994). 21 Most notably Horseman Pass By (1983). 22 Most notably Kate (1983) and Murderers (1985). 23 Most notably, We Do It For Love (1975), which adopted a revue-style structure of songs interspersed with prose and verse, reminiscent of Joan Littlewood’s Oh, What a Lovely War! (1963).

9 become a significant voice for the working class Catholic and Nationalist community. Lynch’s Dockers (1981) is a direct descendant of Thompson’s Over the Bridge, set as it is in the world of the shipyards, with a vernacular and context grounded in the city of Belfast. The Interrogation of Ambrose Fogarty (1982) is also broadly realist in style, yet takes its audience one step further. Lynch’s play comments on police brutality through the treatment of its two central protagonists – the streetwise suspected terrorist Ambrose Fogarty, and the harmless ‘innocent’, guitar-playing drunk, Willie Lagan. The ludicrousness of Lynch’s ending, as Fogarty is released while Lagan remains in custody, reflects this subversion of expectation. Lynch ‘plays’ with his audience’s preconceptions, prefiguring Stewart Parker’s notions of

The other broad ‘style’ adopted by contemporary Northern Irish drama is that which is non-realist, tending towards a mythic or epic approach to the conflict. Wilson John Haire’s mummer plays framing the action of his Bloom of the Diamond Stone (1973) are mythic in approach. More recent manifestations of the mythic and epic include Bill Morrison’s A Love Song for Ulster (1993), a trilogy which traced the history of Ulster through the history of a specific family, beginning with the marriage of the Protestant John to the Catholic Kate, and, from the Republic, Vincent Wood’s At the Black Pig’s Dyke (1992), which revolved around a group of mummers at the border between North and South, telling the stories of past and present. At the heart of these two plays is the aim of developing new perspectives through an exploration of history and myth, an approach which will be discussed in Chapter Two of this thesis in relation to the work of Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness.

10 This thesis focuses on theatrical work since the outbreak of the Troubles in 1969. It does not purport to be a comprehensive survey of Ulster Protestantism in Northern Irish drama over the past thirty years. The focus is on works which attempt to challenge or expand existing ways of thinking about the North, bringing new perspectives on the question of Ulster Protestant identity. Some of these works are of considerable complexity and deal with substantive issues other than that of identity. For instance, the bold and important work of Charabanc Theatre Company and of Christina Reid could be approached solely from the perspectives of gender or class politics in Northern Ireland, but here these issues are best placed among the means through which the singular Ulster Protestant identity is problematised.

Most of the dramatists examined have also written for radio and television, and some even for film. Yet all of them have returned to the theatre at various points in their career, even Graham Reid, despite his continued success with television drama. In my view, this is for two main reasons. Firstly, the uniqueness of the theatrical medium. Theatre is collective and communal, a place where private and public intersect. Public ‘story-telling’ allows for self-representation and self-reflection. Secondly, and more importantly, is the significance attached to the theatrical tradition in Ireland. This recognition of theatre’s importance stems from the role played by the in the Irish Revival. Christopher Murray argues that in Ireland ‘the nation is staged rather than told’24, and there is a traceable history of exploring Irishness on stage, from Boucicault, through to Yeats, Synge, O’Casey, Behan and Beckett. The playwright is a story-teller, an outsider and a ‘shaman’, following WB Yeats25. The importance of this role increased with the onset of the Troubles. Eleanor Methven, co-founder of

24 Murray, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, 7. 25 Ibid.

11 Charabanc Theatre Company26, argues that the early 1980s in the North saw ‘an explosion’ of a new theatrical voice, represented by some of the writers who occupy this thesis: ‘We all to examine the condition of who we were and where we came from’27.

What this brings us to is the issue of identity. Murray argues that ‘the ultimate question’ for playwrights in the North ‘must be one of identity’28. If one concern overrides all contemporary Northern Irish drama, Protestant and Catholic, it is this issue of identity. This thesis is specifically concerned with theatrical explorations of Ulster Protestant identity, but there is an equally strong tradition of exploring Catholic identity in the North. Two striking examples of this tradition are Daniel Magee’s Horseman Pass By (1983) and Anne Devlin’s Ourselves Alone (1985). Magee’s play deals with a Northern Catholic family torn apart by the crisis yet his broader concern is with a subversion of traditional . Devlin similarly explores Northern Nationalist identity in Ourselves Alone. This she does through a focus on a family of Catholic women, each of whom on some level is a victim of the masculine politics of . In this she acts as a foil for the work of Christina Reid.

What all contemporary Northern Irish drama shares is a belief in the capacity of theatre to cross boundaries and to move the Northern community beyond division. Nowhere is this more eloquently expressed than in Stewart Parker’s 1986 John Malone Memorial Lecture. Parker argued that ‘if ever a time and place cried out for the solace and rigour and passionate rejoinder of

26 For an analysis of the work of Charabanc, see Chapter Five of this thesis. 27 Eleanor Methven, Personal Interview, 6 November 1996. 28 Murray, Twentieth-Century Irish Drama, 189.

12 great drama, it is here and now. There is a whole culture to be achieved’29. He believed in the power of drama to contain the conflicts and contradictions, the cruelty and the killings, the implacable , the unending rancour, pettiness and meanness of spirit, the poverty of imaginations and evasion of truth which unites our two communities in their compact of mutual impotence and sterility – all in a single image. Within that same single frame, it can demonstrate and celebrate a language as wholesome and nutritious as a wheaten farl, a stony wit and devious humour, an experiential vivacity and wholeheartedness, a true instinct for hospitality and generosity, which also and equally unites our two communities30. Theatre in this context has the power to inspire and offer alternatives, as Parker continued: The intentions of such work will be neither didactic nor absurdist. It will aim to inspire rather than instruct, to offer ideas and attitudes in a spirit of critical enquiry, as a challenge rather than a riddle... New forms are needed, forms of inclusiveness. The drama constantly demands that we re-invent it, that we transform it with new ways of showing, to cater adequately to the unique plight in which we find ourselves. For those of us who find ourselves writing from within a life-experience of this place, at this

29 Stewart Parker, ‘Dramatis Personae: A John Malone Memorial Lecture’ (1986), held in the Linen Hall Library Archives, Belfast.

13

owned the state and we didn’t have to dream about it, we didn’t have to think about if it would be better any other way – it was the way we wanted it, and that was that34. Dramatists of the early 1980s did start to ‘think about it’ and from that process sprang much of the work that occupies this thesis. Full use is made of the transgressive nature of theatre to vigorously question and subvert the inbuilt assumptions of audiences in the North and audiences outside the North. What the playwrights and companies in this thesis share in common is a belief in the ability of theatre to move audiences beyond sectarian categories and to promote a kind of community catharsis. The aim is to disrupt the relationship between the individual audience member and the societal structures which surround him or her. In this they parallel the work of classic reception theorists, who argue that the most successful ‘work of art’ is that which forces its readers, or in this case audiences, to cross boundaries35.

However, the issue is more complex. Again paralleling reception theory, Northern playwrights and companies presuppose that their work will be received by an audience who are willing to take part in their act of transgression. But what if the audience member’s preconceptions are deeply rooted? What if they are highly politicised or ideologised? It is here that Stanley Fish’s idea of ‘interpretive communities’ is useful. Fish defines such communities as made up of those who share interpretive strategies not for reading (in the conventional sense) but for writing texts, for constituting their properties and assigning their intentions.

33 Methven, Interview. 34 Methven, Interview. 35 For fuller discussion of reception theories and their relevance to performance studies, see Susan Bennett, Theatre Audiences: A Theory of Production and Reception (London: Routledge, 1990).

15 In other words these strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around36. Truth is contained in neither the ideas of Fish nor the altruistic vision of Parker and his contemporaries. As will be shown throughout this thesis, theatre can have the potential to affect audiences in and outside of the North, but does not always do so. When it fails it is precisely because it has not managed to take an audience beyond existing frameworks or to disrupt its interpretive strategies.

Also complicating the cathartic potential of theatre in the North are practical considerations – theatre doesn’t always reach a wide audience. During the period covered by this thesis, there has been a lively tradition of critical debate in the North, among a sizeable group of critical journals, including The Honest , Threshold, Fortnight, as well as Crane Bag in the Republic. Similarly, there has always been a strong poetry tradition in the province, and the much discussed poetry coterie of the late 1960s and early 1970s which included most famously . However, with the exception of Brian Friel and Field Day Theatre Company, Northern has been accorded little critical attention. Theatre Ireland, the only serious journal to cover this area, was discontinued in 1993 due to Arts Council funding cutbacks. This paucity of critical reponse can be partly explained by the notable smallness of the theatrical scene in the North prior to the 1980s and, indeed, even since then. Many playwrights were and are forced to premiere their work elsewhere, due to a lack of audiences and a lack of venues. As a result, a work like Stewart Parker’s Spokesong, an early response to the Troubles, and so important for audiences in the North to see, was initially premiered in Dublin in 1975. While an Irish Theatre

36 Stanley E Fish, Is There a Text in this Class?: of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 171.

16 Company production of the play reached Belfast on tour from Dublin in 1978, the play was not accorded a Belfast-mounted production until 1989. In addition, during the 1970s and 1980s, at the height of the Troubles, even if a play did manage to be premiered in the North, people were not always willing to travel at night to see it. While theatrical activity by no means shut down, the conflict seriously hampered efforts to build audiences.

Yet the theatre which has been produced in Northern Ireland has been consistently challenging and the theatrical scene is steadily growing37. Above all what much Northern Irish drama shares is a preoccupation with the ways in which the past and present interact. History and myth are shown to be fluid concepts while the idea of the convergence of the individual memory and collective memory is actively explored. Theatre critic and academic Lynda Henderson in 1988 bemoaned what she termed a ‘fondness for lament’ – the Irish focus on the memory of old wounds. In this lecture, later published in Theatre Ireland, she considers ‘laying a charge of sadomasochism against those who seem to relish pulling the scabs off the wounds and making them hurt again’ 38. However, Henderson’s view is rather short-sighted. The process of ‘pulling the scabs off’ is not blindly reverent in spirit nor mythologising in intent, but rather illustrates the growing self-reflection and self-consciousness of both Irish and Ulster drama. Beginning with O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy, many Irish Catholic writers have consciously rejected Nationalist myths, with the ultimate expression of individual alienation coming with Brian Friel’s groundbreaking Philadelphia, Here I Come! in 1964. Gar, with his private and public selves, was the archetypal modern Irish individual, inevitably separate from but nonetheless

37 The list of companies relatively recently established includes Big Telly Theatre Company (established in 1987), Tinderbox Theatre Company (1988), DubbelJoint (1991) and Prime Cut Productions (1992). One can similarly point to the vibrancy of amateur theatre in the province. 38 Lynda Henderson, ‘A Fondness for Lament’, Theatre Ireland, 17 (1988-89), 18.

17 inextricably bound to the family and community which surrounded him. This image of a unified, all-Catholic Ireland has gradually broken down and the slow disintegration of Friel’s Bailebeg in his Translations (1980) can be seen to represent Ireland as a whole. There has been a broad effort to rewrite Catholic Nationalist myths. This process of questioning and subversion is described by Jochen Achilles as the shift from a Nationalist to a ‘culturalist’ paradigm and a new ‘supranational’ orientation39. As the Republic has embraced its participation in the European Union, so has the narrow and parochial focus of Irish Catholic Nationalism seemed more and more irrelevant. This cultural revision strongly parallels efforts by Northern writers to re-write Ulster Protestantism – to recognise its complexity and diversity.

However Ulster Protestant drama is distinct from Irish Catholic drama in two main ways40. Firstly, Ulster Protestant questioning and theatrical subversion are less developed, reflecting that community’s more precarious claims to political, racial and ethnic legitimacy. Secondly, while Ulster Protestant drama is reacting against the same things as Irish Catholic drama – the confluence of history, myth, ideology and symbol – its focus differs. Rather than debunking the classic Republican ‘cult of the peasant’, Protestant drama debunks the myth of the Loyal (and very Orange) Ulsterman. Much of the work examined in this thesis explores urban settings and is firmly located in Belfast. Illustrative of this difference would be a comparison of the work of Martin McDonagh and Gary Mitchell, both being touted as ‘new voices’. While McDonagh is attempting to rewrite the West Coast of Ireland through his Leenane Trilogy (1996-7) and The Cripple of Inishmaan (1997),

39 Jochen Achilles, ‘“Homesick for Abroad”: The Transition From National to Cultural Identity in Contemporary Irish Drama’, Modern Drama, 38.4 (1995), 435-449. 40 Throughout this thesis, unless otherwise specified, ‘Protestant’ and ‘Catholic’ will be used in a broad sense, encompassing the terms Unionist and Loyalist, Nationalist and Republican.

18 Mitchell aims to rewrite , a very Loyalist, urban, housing estate41. This is not of course to say that all Irish Catholic drama is set in the country and all Ulster Protestant drama is set in the city. That would be a simplification. Indeed, if we look at the broader picture, their concerns are different. Protestant writers react to, and reject, a specifically Ulster Protestant historical vision and ideology42.

There is no critical work on contemporary Protestant drama which precedes this thesis, yet the last twenty-five years in the North, specifically since the premiere of Stewart Parker’s seminal work Spokesong, Or the Common Wheel in 1974, have seen the development of a vibrant ‘alternate’ voice, in opposition both to the paradigms of Nationalism and Unionism. This thesis is the first attempt to synthesise these disparate writers and works and argues that they all in fact stem from the same impulse, the impulse to question and subvert.

The Construction of Identity

As we shall see, this questioning and subversion often revolves around the problematic relationship between personal history and community history. It fulfils Margaret Wilkerson’s idea of theatre functioning as ‘the mirror through which society can reflect upon itself’, thereby helping ‘to shape perceptions...

41 Both writers similarly adopt a rather reductive, stereotypical view of their respective subjects. Mitchell’s work will be discussed in detail in Chapter Seven of this thesis. 42 Lynda Henderson argues against a division along religious lines and instead for a ‘more productive distinction.... between a theocentric and anthropocentric imagination’. Yet ‘within this distinction it is arguable that Catholicism tends to produce a theocentric view whereas Protestantism leans... towards the anthropocentric’ [Lynda Henderson, ‘“The Green Shoot”: Transcendence and the Imagination in Contemporary Ulster drama’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley (eds.), Across A Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: The Blackstaff Press, 1985), 197]. However, in her avoidance of any overt statement of difference, Henderson is typical of many critics, as if proposing a difference would support the sectarian divide in the North. Her distinction serves merely to obscure rather than illuminate the question of the difference between Catholic and Protestant drama.

19 through the power of imaging’43. A device often used is that of a central protagonist asserting an identity independent of the constraints of his or her community’s history, myth, and therefore, ideology. It is the ‘outsider’ who offers a new perspective on the North, yet equally finds him or herself drawn back in to the community. This is not a uniquely Protestant phenomenon – it is also found in Catholic drama, as in the work of Brian Friel and Sebastian Barry44. The theatrical device of the outsider proves particularly appropriate when we come to the work which deals specifically with Ulster Protestantism. This is because of the way in which history, myth, ideology and symbol function to create and sustain the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity. The outsider who we see in many of the plays in this thesis inevitably seeks to separate him or herself from the Ulster Protestant community by asserting independence, in the process challenging this singular identity.

The first part of this thesis’ title contains the phrase ‘a plurality of identities’. As will be shown, Protestant drama of the last thirty years has actively promoted such a concept – in direct response to the image of a unified and loyal Ulster Protestant community. This communal identity developed over the course of the Home Rule Crises and was solidified by the creation of the Orange State in 1922. Individual consciousness became submerged beneath the communal consciousness – a necessary product of the province’s insecure political and cultural position. Integral to the maintenance of this community was the use made of history, myth and symbol, all of which merged over time in order to construct and sustain the Unionist ideology. I hope to show how, by exposing the fluidity of the

43 Margaret Wilkerson, ‘Demographics and the Academy’, in Sue Ellen Case and Janelle Reinelt (eds.), The Performance of Power (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1991), 239. 44 Friel and Barry frequently explore themes of internal exile. Friel particularly in Philadelphia Here I Come! (1964), Faith Healer (1979), Translations (1980) and Molly Sweeney (1994), and Barry in his powerful work The Steward of Christendom (1995).

20 relationship between history and myth, and revealing the hollowness of symbol, contemporary Protestant playwrights and theatre companies consciously undermine this Unionist (and Nationalist) ideology. I include Nationalist ideology here because the two work hand in hand – they sustain each other.

In Northern Ireland history is often used as a justification for present action – for example, the sacrifice made by the Ulster Protestant volunteers at the Somme in 1916 is drawn upon to justify contemporary Protestant resistance to Westminster’s growing relationship with Dublin. History becomes more than simply recorded ‘facts’, it assumes a deeper significance. The becomes an historical mythical symbol for the Ulster Protestant community’s spirit of resistance. The clumsiness of the phrase ‘historical mythical symbol’ reflects the fact that these concepts in the North are inextricably bound and impossible to separate. What myth does to history, borrowing from Roland Barthes, is to make it ‘natural’, to give ‘an historical intention a natural justification, and... [to make] contingency appear eternal’45. It is also arguable that myth makes history ‘timeless’ – events are decontextualised, reshuffled and turned into a comprehensible narrative. Myth has the effect of ‘emptying reality’ and, through myth, ‘things lose the 46. Diversity and complexity are replaced by totality and universality. Lévi-Strauss argues that ‘mythical thought... builds up structures by fitting together events... which it never tires of ordering and reordering in its search to find meaning’47. It thus works as ‘a classificatory scheme’, allowing ‘the natural and social universe to be

45 Roland Barthes, Mythologies, translated from the French by Annette Lavers (London: Jonathan Cape, 1972), 142. 46 Ibid., 142-3.

21 defined to a large extent by how the individual or particular community perceives that it fits into its surroundings. Modes of identification can vary, they can run along lines of politics, religion, ethnicity, gender, age or sexuality and indeed combinations of all of the above. All of which lead to answering the question of ‘Who am I?’. Yet such a large part of this is answered by the related question of ‘Where do I come from? such as Northern Ireland, where history, myth, symbol and ideology seem inextricably bound to each other and are collectively bound even more tightly to a specific geography, it is difficult to separate personal from communal identity.

Despite this ideology of a universal ‘Ulster Protestant’, the Northern Irish majority consists of a complex variety of modes of identification – from constitutional Unionism through to rampant Loyalism, with a small percentage of Republicanism thrown in for good measure. The notion of Britishness is embraced by some as an idea of citizenship, yet by others as ethnicity. Arthur Aughey, political historian of Unionism, focuses on this idea of citizenship and argues that it is the Protestant community’s main mode of identification, believing that: ‘The idea of the union is the willing community of citizens united not by creed, colour or ethnicity but by a recognition of the authority of the union. Its relevant concept is citizenship and not nation’51. For Aughey it is ‘only if one is an Irish Nationalist’ that ‘there [is] something intrinsically incompatible (an identity crisis) if one drinks Guinness, loves to holiday in or Killarney, supports an all-Ireland rugby team in Dublin, recognises that one is ‘Irish’, and yet at the same time is a committed 52. However, Aughey’s rejection of the all-embracing identity politics

51 Arthur Aughey, ‘Unionism and Self-Determination’, in Patrick J Roche and Brian Barton (eds.), The Northern Ireland Question: Myth and Reality (Avebury: Aldershot, 1991), 6. 52 Arthur Aughey, Under Siege: Ulster Unionism and the Anglo-Irish Agreement (London: Hurst and Co., 1989), 16.

23 of Nationalism obscures the fact that the conflict has always been underpinned by sectarianism, suggesting a conflict of ethnicity. It is short- sighted to dismiss the fact that Britishness is worn by many Protestants as an ethnic badge, marking them off as different in essence from their Irish neighbours. Britishness here appears not as an anachronism but as a positive identification. Werner Sollors’ definition of ethnic groups fits elements of Ulster Protestantism well. He argues that such groups are typically imagined as if they were natural, real, eternal, stable, and static units. They seem to be always already in existence. As a subject of study, each group yields an essential continuum of certain myths and traits, or of human capital. The focus is on the group’s preservation and survival, which appear threatened53. Here we come again to the idea of myth, history, symbol and ideology converging to naturalise or totalise reality. When applied to Ulster Unionism and Loyalism, we see the effort to assert legitimacy.

Post-colonial theory provides some useful ideas for the discussion of Ulster Protestant identity, but is of limited value as a total framework. Its significance lies in its focus on the role of difference in the construction and maintenance of group identity, through myth-making, history, ritual, repetition and restatement, a continuing process of solidification. The first Ulster Protestants were brought over from by the English government in the Plantations of the early seventeenth century. As colonial settlers, their role was to solidify English occupation of the island, and they were thrown into direct confrontation with the ‘natives’ – the dispossessed Gaelic population. Ulster Protestants were thus the agents of British colonial power. To a certain extent both Protestants and Catholics in the North

53 Werner Sollors, ‘The Idea of Ethnicity’, in Walter Truett Anderson (ed.), The Fontana Postmodernism Reader (London: Harper Collins, 1996), 58.

24 remain entrenched in these colonial positions, re-fighting the one seventeenth century battle over and over again. Communal identity is defined in opposition to the Other and a form of ‘manichean allegory’ shapes the way in which each community perceives itself. JanMohamed defines such an allegory as ‘a field of diverse yet interchangeable oppositions between ... good and evil, superiority and inferiority, civilisation and savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality and sensuality, self and Other, subject and object’54. The constant focus on binary oppositions in the North, as discussed, reflects this desire for such a universalising system, based on the simple principle of inclusion and exclusion.

What this strong adherence to binaries leads to is stasis. Roles are simply maintained rather than challenged and updated. Albert Memmi’s concept of ‘formalism’ is relevant for any analysis of the Ulster Protestant. He describes formalism as ‘the cyst into which the colonial society shuts itself and hardens, degrading its own life in order to save it. It is a spontaneous action of self-defence, a means of safe-guarding the collective consciousness without which a people quickly cease to exist’55. Contemporary Ulster Protestant identity is in part based upon their role as colonial settlers, defending the periphery (Ulster) in order to preserve the integrity of the centre (Empire). The establishment of the Orange State in 1922 formalised this relationship as the six counties of Northern Ireland were maintained as part of the in opposition to the . Concepts of preservation and loyalty are crucial here. The Ulster Protestant community ‘Loyalism’ is formed in relationship to both those who aren’t ‘loyal’ and those to whom they are loyal. As their links to a British identity have been

54 Abdul R JanMohamed, ‘The Economy of Manichean Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist Literature’, in Henry Louis Gates Jr. (ed.), Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 82. 55 Albert Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 101.

25 threatened, so this loyalty has been formalised and has been changed from civic and constitutional identity into ethnicity. While still uses the rhetoric of Empire with its resonances of ‘citizenship’, his Loyalist followers have increasingly turned to ethnic, sectarian division as a justification for continued conflict. Political divisions become ethnic divisions.

However, the situation is more complex than this simple colonial model, and it is for these reasons that post-coloniality as a total theoretical framework is inadequate. The ‘colonised’ (Catholic) and ‘colonisers’ (Protestants/Britain) speak the same language, share the same physical features, geography, economic system and arguably much cultural practice. Mainland Britain has never held an idealised position in Protestant imagination. Indeed, many Loyalists view themselves as the only community who are ‘truly’ loyal to the concept of Britishness. In this way the periphery defines the centre, reversing the colonial model. The growing process of ‘Ulsterisation’ is a manifestation of the increasing distance and isolation from Britain felt by Ulster Protestants. In addition, while post-colonial theory has been successfully applied to the condition of Ireland pre-partition with the ‘coloniser’ as the Anglo-Irish community, the situation in the North since the 1922 treaty is far more complex. Northern Ireland is in many respects a periphery caught between two centres, Dublin and London, placing the Catholic and Protestant communities in the roles of both colonised and coloniser.

These kinds of issues permeate contemporary dramatic explorations of Ulster Protestantism. It is the confluence of history, myth, symbol and ideology which lies at the crux of the singular Ulster Protestant identity, an identity which is also shaped by the idea of ethnicity along with post-colonial notions of centre, periphery, difference and the Other. We now turn to an

26 examination of how these broader theoretical concepts operated in specific historical and cultural moments to shape and define Ulster Protestantism.

The Construction of the Ulster Protestant

For an Italian living in Italy, Italianness is patently not much of a distinction. What really gives nationality its chiaroscuro, its flavour, is a little dash of hatred and fear. Nobody really knows or cares who they are until they meet what they don’t want to be. Then it’s time for the flags and guns to come out. Robert McLiam Wilson, Belfast novelist, 199756.

Robert McLiam Wilson continues the above discussion of national identity by arguing that ‘nationalities primarily define themselves by what they’re not’. He qualifies this, however, in the case of Ireland: ‘The Irish make internal distinctions as well. Some of the Irish aren’t properly Irish. Some of the Irish aren’t even vaguely Irish. In pursuit of this mantle of absolute Irishness, brother kills brother and sisters look on and applaud’57. What he introduces is the idea that contemporary Northern Irish identity is founded on division and difference. An exclusion from Irishness is one of the defining elements of Ulster Protestantism. The construction of a singular Ulster Protestant identity began in earnest with the Home Rule crises of the late nineteenth century. What follows is an examination of the ways in which it was constructed, sustained and the process of its fragmentation.

56 Robert McLiam Wilson, ‘Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity’, Grand Street, 62 (1997), as sourced online at www.grandstreet.com on 15 March 1998. 57 lbid.

27 Crucial to Ulster Protestant identity has always been some idea of what it existed in opposition to – Unionist against Nationalist, Loyalist against Republican, and Protestant against Catholic, returning to the idea of the centrality of a ‘manichean allegory’. Both the physical and metaphysical landscapes of Ulster are rooted in this sense of division, and principles of exclusion and inclusion. Northern Ireland is in many respects defined by a sense of border, it is ‘not so much enclosed by its borders as defined by 58. This notion of ‘border’ doesn't only apply to the border between North and South, or even to the borders between provinces. Since the escalation of the Troubles, which saw communities staunchly defend every part of their territory, border has come to mean, especially for urban communities, dividing lines between streets, ever intersecting and fluid. In the more volatile areas of Belfast, where Catholic and Protestant suburbs stand side by side, ‘peace walls’ have been constructed to restrict the flow of traffic from one area to another, barriers clearly dividing and defining territory as either Protestant or Catholic. Rural areas are similarly marked off, kerbs being painted either red, white and blue or green, white and orange, depending on the religious affiliation of the majority of the town’s inhabitants.

This difference between Catholic and Protestant was actively cultivated by the Unionist leadership. The Orange State set itself up in direct opposition to the Irish Free State from partition onwards. Lord Craigavon in 1934 asked the North to ‘remember that in the South they boasted of a Catholic State. They still boast of Southern Ireland being a Catholic State. All I boast of is

58 Eamonn Hughes, ‘Introduction: Northern Ireland – border country’, in Eamonn Hughes (ed.), Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland 1960-1990 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 3.

28 that we are a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State’59. Underpinning such distinctions were reductive opinions about religion. The dissenting, Presbyterian background of Ulster Protestantism was viewed by the community as infusing their politics and culture with a libertarian streak. This was placed in direct opposition to its reductive view of Irish Nationalists (and therefore Catholics) as: ‘A people in thrall to an authoritarian church, moulded in the image dictated by priestly convenience and thereby not eligible for the full and responsible citizenship which liberty demands’60. Here Ulster Protestantism was defined in negative terms, as what or who they were not. Such a distinction was promoted as a justification for Protestant dominance in Ulster. Protestant secular ‘rationality’ was viewed as integral to the North’s industrial success and economic prosperity.

Yet just as the Protestant community actively constructed a separate identity to that of the Republic, so they were in turn rejected by the Free State. The movement towards Home Rule which began in the late nineteenth century saw a firm appropriation of the term ‘Irish’ by the Catholic community. and his fellow Henry Joy McCracken, both Protestants, would have been horrified at the thought that they were not considered Irish, yet in the early to mid-nineteenth century Daniel O’Connell was frequently heard using the words ‘Catholic Ireland’, equating ‘Irish’ with the majority on the island, the Catholic population: ‘The hegemony of this new meaning took most of the nineteenth century to effect fully, but its triumph was sure’61. By the time of Partition – aided by the moral scandal

59 Thomas Hennessey, ‘Ulster Unionism and Loyalty to of the , 1912-1974’, in Richard English and Graham Walker (eds.), Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture (London: Macmillan, 1996), 118. 60 Aughey, Under Siege, 9. 61 Donald Harman Akenson, Small Differences: and Irish Protestants, 1815- 1922, An International Perspective, 2nd edn (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 134.

29 that politically destroyed Land League leader Charles Stewart Parnell62, the newspaper The Leader under its contentious editor DP Moran63 and fierce rejection of Home Rule by Northern Unionists – the words Protestant and Irish had, by and large, become mutually exclusive terms. T W Moody argues that historical consciousness is based around the idea of a ‘predestinate nation’ whose people are the dispossessed Gaelic/Catholic population: Modern Irish history thus becomes, in the words of PS O’Hegarty, ‘the story of a people coming out of captivity, out of underground, finding every artery of national life occupied by her enemy, recovering them one by one, and coming out at last in the full blaze of the sun’64. In such a consciousness, the Ulster Protestant population is firmly associated with the ‘enemy’, excluded from any claim to Irishness.

The construction of a definable and resolutely separate ‘Protestant Ulsterman’ paralleled this development of notions of Irishness. Here Protestant identity was positively defined, answering the question of ‘Who are we?’. A flood of new books was published attempting to define the character of the typical ‘Ulsterman’, such as James Barkley Woodburn’s The Ulster Scot (1914), F F ’s The Truth About Ulster (1914), Ernest Hamilton’s The Soul of Ulster (1917), H M Pim’s Unconquerable Ulster (1919), and James Logan’s Ulster in the X-Rays (1923)65:

62 Protestant Parnell was working towards Catholic land ownership when his affair with the married Kitty O’Shea morally discredited him in the eyes of his largely Catholic supporters. 63 Moran coined the term ‘sourfaces’ to describe Ulster Protestants. 64 TW Moody, ‘Irish History and ’, in Ciaran Brady (ed.), Interpreting Irish History: The Debate on Historical Revisionism 1938-1994 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1994), 84.

30 The Ulster ‘character’ which emerged was dour but hospitable, shrewd, self-reliant, steadfast and industrious, blunt of speech, and gifted with the capacity to govern less fortunate peoples. These sterling qualities had been demonstrated in the colonisation and civilisation of the northern province, in the struggle for constitutional freedom in both Ireland (1688-90) and America (1776), in resistance to religious persecution and participation in the great enterprise of empire66. Here again, identity is encoded with Protestant history and myth. Northern historians also came to the fore supplying a ‘comprehensive and apologist 67 which included war histories (focusing on Ulster Protestant sacrifice at the Somme in 1916), laudatory works on the planter tradition (with focus on the massacre of planters in the 1641 Uprising), more general celebrations of ‘the Ulsterman’, encompassing broad Ulster Unionist achievements, and finally, biographies of Stormont’s ‘Founding Fathers’68, all of which fulfilled an important function in the construction of a singular Ulster Protestant identity.

The steadfastness, loyalty and industriousness of this identity existed in opposition to images of . Protestant playwright Ron Hutchinson articulates this comparison well: ‘The Catholic population has all the best tunes. The image is of the laughing boy, doing the , arm around the girls – the lad who takes over the pub, the knockabout bruiser, like the Brendan Behan in writing terms’, whereas the Protestant heritage is made up of a ‘feeling for spareness and harshness and an inflexibility of will and

65 Ian McBride, ‘Ulster and the British Problem’, in English & Walker (eds.), Unionism in Modern Ireland, 7. 66 McBride, ‘Ulster and the British Problem’, 7. 67 Alvin Jackson, ‘Unionist History’, in Brady (ed.), Interpreting Irish History, 258.

31 crystallisation of a Nationalism, which were vastly different71. Belfast is the only Irish city with an industrial history. At the turn of the century it housed the largest ship-building and linen producing industries of the British Empire. For the Protestant community, this was a special source of pride. Unionist opposition to Home Rule in the late nineteenth century was partly based in a fear that absorption into the South would ‘empty their mills, clear their rivers and shipyards, would stop their looms, would make the voice of their spindles silent and would cause a complete destruction of the industry that has made the province so prosperous’72. Belfast’s growing economic prosperity and the strength of its port created links with other Northern cities in – Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester – overriding geographical ties with Dublin.

Yet underlying this image of Belfast as a productive, modern, industrial city was a sense of harshness and volatility. Stewart Parker’s Henry Joy McCracken in Northern Star (1984) describes Belfast as: Brain-damaged and dangerous, continuously violating itself, a place of perpetual breakdown, incompatible voices, screeching obscenely away through the smoky dark wet. Burnt out and still burning. Nerve-damaged, pitiable. Frightening. As maddening and tiresome as any other pain-obsessed cripple73. Parker’s vividly pathetic portrait recalls past literary expressions, as detailed by Edna Longley, in her article ‘The Writer and Belfast’. Longley provides us with a catalogue of adjectives used by writers to convey what she terms as

71 Mark Jefferson, ‘The Law of the Primate City’, Geographical Review, 29.2 (1939), 226-32, as quoted in John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question 1917-1973 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 21. 72 RF Holmes, ‘Our Presbyterian Heritage’, 134, as quoted in David Hempton and Myrtle Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster Society: 1740-1890 (London: Routledge, 1992), 173. 73 Stewart Parker, ‘Northern Star’, in Three Plays for Ireland: Northern Star, Heavenly Bodies, Pentecost (London: Oberon Books, 1989), 75.

33 ‘Belfast’s inhospitability’: ‘Michael McLaverty’s recurrent “desolate”. MacNeice’s “hard”, “cold”, “melancholy”... and of course Brian Moore’s fusillade of “run-down”, “provincial”, “grey”, “black”, “ugly”, “dull”, “dead”’74. Longley’s ‘blackest picture of all’, comes from a novel entitled The Black City by MF Caulfield, published in 1952: It is the Black City because of what is between Protestant and Catholic, between mongrel Briton and mongrel Irishman, that is, narrow hatred and bigotry. It is not much of a place as cities go, a nineteenth- century industrial profusion of shipyard gantries, linen-mills, factory chimneys, flaking pubs, oily river basins and mile after mile of narrow, mean streets... It is an awfully wet place. The wettest place on earth... The rain... persists all day almost everyday. It clogs the streets, mixes with the dust to create a fine, gluey mud that adheres to everything75. The city came to be almost personified as ‘the Ulster Protestant’, its severity matched by characterisations of the Ulster Protestant as dour, stern, uncompromising and unimaginative.

The construction of a distinct Ulster Protestant identity reached its apotheosis with the opening by King George V of the Northern Ireland Parliament in 1920. From then until its dissolution in 1972, the Parliament was run by Ulster Unionists, whose aim was to keep Northern Ireland within the British Empire. Crucial to such an enterprise was the notion of ‘loyalty’. In 1933 then Prime Minister, Lord Craigavon urged the public to ‘employ only Loyalists – I say only Loyalists. I do not care what their religion may be. I

74 Edna Longley, ‘“A Barbarous Nook”: The Writer and Belfast’, in The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland (Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994), 88. 75 MF Caulfield, ‘The Black City’, (London: 1952), 9, as quoted in ibid.

34 say that as long as they are loyal people we will engage them and give them every chance’76. Yet that same year, Minister of Agriculture (and future Prime Minister), Sir Basil Brooke, urged supporters at a meeting to employ only ‘good Protestant lads and lasses’77. Despite Craigavon’s non- sectarian definition of ‘Loyalism’, it was clear that for the Northern Irish administration, the only legitimate Loyalists were Protestant. Catholics were perceived as a threat to the state, as irretrievably the Other. For the fifty years of its existence, the Orange State covertly, and at times overtly, practised a policy of discrimination against the state’s sizeable minority, Northern Catholics. In doing so, Ulster Protestant leaders not only preserved economic prosperity for their community, but also maintained the image of a unified Ulster Protestant identity, one which based itself around the notion of loyalty to Empire.

The discrimination suffered by Northern Catholics, or the ‘disloyal’, in the province was nowhere more extreme than in , where gerrymandering kept a Protestant minority in power and Catholics were severely disadvantaged in even the most fundamental of ways, as Eamonn McCann describes in his seminal work, War and an Irish Town : The housing allocation system was possibly unique. The Corporation... elected a Unionist-controlled housing sub-committee each session. The housing sub-committee would then vote to delegate all its powers of allocation to the mayor. The mayor, on his own, allocated the houses. He was not required to report to the sub-committee or to the Corporation. The operation was completely secret. There were no set criteria to guide him. The only way to get a

76 Hennessey, ‘Ulster Unionism’, 118. 77 lbid, 119.

35 Corporation house, therefore, was to convince the mayor that you ought to get one, and members of his local Orange lodge were obviously better placed than Bogsiders to do this78. In the early 1970s when the Stormont Parliament was deciding where Northern Ireland’s second university (outside Queen’s University in Belfast) would be built, the citizens of Derry thought themselves the natural choice, Derry being the second largest city in the province. However, the university was built in , a much smaller and staunchly Protestant town on the Antrim coast. With its increasing Catholic majority, Derry was seen as a ‘hostile’ town, desperately in need of ‘containment’. Reliving the 1689 Siege of Derry, the Protestant population of the town has, over the last thirty years, found itself ‘walled up’ on one side of the Foyle River. Derry, or Londonderry79, was the most potent symbol of oppression at the outbreak and through the early years of the Troubles.

The Stormont Parliament building in Belfast, opened in 1932, conversely represented or rather aimed to symbolise the total authority and, more importantly, the permanence of the government of Northern Ireland. This acted as a further solidification of Ulster Protestant identity. The community now possessed its own parliament and its own parliamentary building. Stormont acted as a symbol of Ulster Protestant self-determination, fulfilling a vital role in the maintenance of Unionist ideology and acting as a powerful symbol of Unionist dominance. Alan Baker argues that of the many characteristics of an ideology, perhaps the most important are ‘the

78 Eamonn McCann, War and an Irish Town (London: Penguin, 1974), 24. 79 The ambiguity of the town’s name points towards its importance in both the mythology of the Catholic and Protestant communities. For Northern Irish Protestants, ‘Londonderry’ was the site of the famous 1689 siege, representing Protestant defiance and strength. Ironically, as a result of the late 1960s civil rights marches and the Battle of the , ‘Derry’ holds much the same symbolic value for Northern Irish Catholics.

36 connections of an ideology to a quest for order, to an assertion of authority, and to a project of totalisation’80: Ideologies offer ordered, simplified visions of the world; they substitute a single certainty for a multiplicity of ambiguities; they tender to individuals both an ordered view of the world and of their own place within its natural and social systems. The function of an ideology in this regard is to furnish assurance81. The Stormont ideology functioned in just such a way. Furthermore, the Stormont building offered a clear sense of hierarchy and a clear formulation of the Protestant community’s collective identity, applying Theodor Adorno’s view of ideology as essentially ‘identity thinking’, as ‘erasing difference and 82. It symbolically encompassed the whole of Northern Ireland, and those who rejected political participation within its walls were thus excluded from Northern Irish citizenship, they were excluded as ‘outsiders’. The building functioned as the centre or even the embodiment of Ulster Protestantism. Through Stormont we see clearly the way in which symbol, ideology and history intersected to define the singular Ulster Protestant identity.

Also important to Ulster Protestant collective consciousness was the upon which the Unionist Party continued to rely for the ‘underpinning of 83. The Orange Order situated itself above political and religious divisions within Protestantism and existed as one of the more

80 Alan R H Baker, ‘Introduction: on Ideology and Landscape’, in Alan R H Baker and Gideon Biger (eds.), Ideology and Landscape in Historical Perspective: Essays on the Meanings of Some Places in the Past (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 4. 81 Baker, ‘Introduction: on Ideology and Landscape’, 4. 82 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, translated by EB Ashton (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), 148-151, as discussed in Terry Eagleton (ed.), Ideology (Essex: Longman, 1994), 14. 83 Fred Boal, John A Campbell and David N Livingstone,‘The Protestant mosaic: a majority of minorities’, in Roche and Barton (eds.), The Northern Ireland Question, 102.

37 striking manifestations of Unionist/Loyalist unity. However, in the last thirty years, the Order has not facilitated an interpretation of Ulster Protestants as a tolerant community. Parading in their uniform of bowler hats, white gloves and orange sashes, they appear almost as a triumphal army, especially when passing through Catholic areas. The ceremony and ritual of Orange parades act consciously as an exclusion, demarcating the community’s boundaries. While the founding rules of the Orange Society, established in 1798 state that: We are exclusively a Protestant association, yet detesting as we do any intolerant spirit, we solemnly pledge ourselves to each other, that we will not persecute or upbraid any person on account of his religious opinion, but that we will, on the contrary, be aiding and assisting to every loyal subject of every religious description84, this policy of religious toleration is immediately contradicted by the fact that ‘no Roman Catholic can be admitted [to the Order] on any account’85. Contemporary images of the Orange Order directly associate the organisation with the Stormont regime as the leadership of both quite blatantly overlapped86. Through such association, the Order is inextricably bound to images of the maintenance of privilege through the institutionalisation of discrimination. Its anachronistic uniform refers to the historical ‘moments’, most clearly the Battle of the Boyne and Ulster’s nineteenth century industrial prosperity, which bolster the foundation myths of Ulster Protestantism.

84 ‘Rules of the Orange Society’ (1798) as published in Robert G Crawford, Loyal to King Billy: A Portrait of the Ulster Protestants (London: Hurst and Co., 1987), 134-5. 85 Ibid. 86 This is still the case as strikingly illustrated by television footage of the 1996 Drumcree standoff, which showed 1998 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, , decked out in orange sash and arguing with a member of the RUC.

38 The concept of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, constructed by Ulster Unionist ideology and sustained from the Home Rule Crises through the Stormont years, began to unravel with the advent of Captain Terence O’Neill as Prime Minister in 1963. He aimed to alleviate sectarianism and discrimination by changes from within, a change in attitude rather than a change in structure87. In January of 1965, he met with Irish Prime Minister Sean Lemass; soon after, McAteer, leader of the Nationalist Party in the North, announced that his party would become the official opposition at Stormont. O’Neill was careful to be photographed with nuns and to be seen taking tours of Catholic schools and he believed that, if overtures were made on the part of the government, Catholics would begin to behave ‘more like Protestants’. With a broader economic revival, wealth would eventually filter down to the Catholic community, ‘enabling them to “live like Protestants, because they will see neighbours with cars and television sets. ....If you treat Roman Catholics with due consideration and kindness, they will live like Protestants in spite of the authoritative nature of their Church”’88. Nationalist reaction to O’Neill’s rather patronising and bigoted ‘plan’ was not kind. Austin Currie believed that it was ‘like a squire on his estate, talking about the treatment of his cattle’ and Gerry Craigavon and Brookeborough had walked over the Catholics with hobnail boots, O’Neill walked over them with carpet slippers’89, both comments well-suited to O’Neill’s Anglo-Irish, ‘Big House’ background.

O’Neill’s efforts did little to satisfy the growing civil rights movement of the late 1960s and much to alienate traditional Unionism. His leadership is contemporaneous with the rise of Ian Paisley, whose own brand of

87 Feargal Cochrane, ‘‘Meddling at the Crossroads’: The Decline and Fall of Terence O’Neill within the Unionist Community’, in English and Walker (eds.), Unionism in Modern Ireland, 148-168. 88 Ibid., 150-1.

39 extremism provided an outlet for those opposed to O’Neill’s apparent liberalism. In typical sermon-like fashion, Paisley denounced the Prime Minister: The term of the present Prime Minister, Capt. Terence O’Neill, has been one sad story of appeasement with the enemies of Northern Ireland. His secret meetings with Lemass were acts of treachery. By his words and actions he has shown himself to be more interested in his political dictatorship than in keeping Northern Ireland truly Protestant... With the grace of God and the help of the Protestants of Ulster, the day will come when I will be in Stormont – the only way true Protestant people can deal with the ruling junta of Lundies is to have someone there to root out the nest of traitors90. O’Neill’s centrist politics, positioning him firmly in the middle of the road, saw him being ‘knocked down by traffic coming in both directions’91. O’Neill’s last-ditch appeal on television to the Northern Irish public in late 1968 is striking in hindsight, given the province’s thirty years of conflict. His speech has become his ‘public epitaph’, according to Feargal Cochrane92. Claiming that Ulster stood ‘at the Crossroads’, he asked his constituents: What kind of Ulster do you want? A happy and respected province in good standing with the rest of the UK? Or a place continually torn apart by riots and demonstrations, and regarded by the rest of Britain as a political outcast? As always in a democracy, the choice is yours93.

89 Austin Currie and as quoted in ibid. 90 , 30 July 1966, as cited in Cochrane, ‘Meddling at the Crossroads’, 156-7. 91 Ibid., 160. 92 Ibid., 163. 93 Terence O’Neill, as quoted in ibid.

40 Towards the end of the 1960s, the Orange Order found itself in a similar position to that of O’Neill, in competition with more extreme Protestant organisations such as the Ulster Protestant Volunteers (UPV) and the (UVF). In contrast to these groups and the various public protests of the Paisleyites: ‘The Orange Order appeared to many young urban Protestants to be a stodgy, over-respectable organisation run by the Unionist establishment’94. The monolithic ‘identity’ of Protestant Unionism was gradually fragmenting.

The Issue of Loyalty

One of the defining characteristics of this monolithic identity, constructed and maintained throughout the Home Rule Crises and the Orange State, was loyalty. Lord Craigavon’s 1933 call to employ ‘only Loyalists’ expresses this clearly. To be Ulster Protestant was to be loyal to Empire and the Protestant community viewed itself as a part of Britain. However, this status as British citizens has been called into question almost from the moment of official partition. Westminster has expressed its distance from the North both implicitly and explicitly, and in doing so has rejected Ulster Protestant Britishness.

Northern Ireland has often been regarded by London as ‘a place apart’95, and British politicians have often been perceived as being uninterested in the affairs of the province. During Northern Ireland’s years of devolved government, Westminster had little input into its affairs. In 1923 an agreement was formulated which specified that Westminster would not discuss matters relating to Northern Ireland and, during the Stormont years,

94 Cochrane, ‘Meddling at the Crossroads’, 158.

41 colonial condition of being infantilised. They have become the colonised98. Through direct rule Ulster Protestants have been placed firmly on the periphery, alienated from a rather distant centre.

The resultant insecurity of Ulster Protestant Britishness manifests itself in the sense of desperation with which they cling to their Loyalism. In this way they fit Albert Memmi’s model of the colonialist, frozen in time: ‘The colonialist requires his homeland to be conservative... [he] is of course resolutely conservative... he is seized with worry and panic each time there is talk of changing the political status [of the colony]’99. Steve Bruce argues that: ‘Ulster Loyalists want to be part of that British Empire whose world domination was displayed in school world-maps with huge areas of red’100, and his comment exposes the fact that the Ulster Loyalist community clings to a notion of what it means to be ‘British’ which those on the mainland have long given away. Tom Paulin vividly describes contemporary Ulster Unionism and Loyalism as ‘a holding operation and it is parasitic on 101. The problem lies in the fact that Ulster Protestants have found themselves increasingly marginalised by Britain, and the louder they protest, the more their insecurity is revealed.

Ulster Protestants frequently bemoan the English failure to understand their position. Northern Ireland is inevitably distanced from the rest of the United Kingdom because of continuing sectarianism and violence. Fervent Loyalism (infused with evangelicalism) coupled with extreme Republicanism

97 Coulter, ‘Direct Rule’, 169-70. 98 John Wilson Foster, ‘Culture and Colonisation: View From the North’, in Colonial Consequences: Essays in and Culture (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1991), 263-77. 99 Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised, 61. 100 Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster: The Religion and Politics of Paisleyism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 252. 101 Tom Paulin, Personal Interview, 1 March 1998.

43 seems alien to the secular politics of Westminster. Nelson uses an amusing anecdote to emphasise this point: When others fail to act as we ourselves would, when they refuse to take the ‘obvious’ course, our imagination grinds to a halt, our sympathy turns to hopeless exasperation. I once wrote to an MP about Ulster. To this day I cannot decipher if his five word reply reads ‘the Irish are a very internal people’ or ‘the Irish are a very infernal people’. However, most of his compatriots would share both sentiments102. However, her colourful comments do obscure the fact that it is equally arguable that the Ulster Protestants have made their case very badly. It has been Ian Paisley who has most often been singled out as the voice of Ulster Protestantism, yet his views are extreme. Paisley’s prominence highlights the fact that intelligent Unionism is frequently hijacked by extreme Loyalism. Addressing the question of ‘an intelligent, principled stand for Unionism’, Ulster Protestant playwright John McClelland argues that ‘there... never will be one as long as Unionism is forced to make its stand buried to the waist in a trench dug close to a red brick wall upon which King Billy rides defiant on his charge’103. Similarly, Tom Paulin believes that while ‘the best of [Unionist] culture is modernising, secular, liberal and not particularly backward looking, they [Unionists] present themselves very badly on television’: They lack confidence, they bluster, there isn’t one Unionist politician who has succeeded in striking a chord with the , whereas I’ve heard entirely civilised say ‘well, you know I agree with a lot of what Adams

102 Nelson, ‘Did You Hear the One About the Englishman... 103 John McClelland, ‘Letter to the Editor’, Theatre Ireland, 26-27 (1992), 7.

44 says’. There isn’t a single Unionist politician who has found a way of speaking to Britain104. McClelland and Paulin both pinpoint a key issue for Protestant dramatists, many of whom actively rise up to the challenge of giving voice to ‘intelligent’ Unionism, as we shall see in Chapter Five of this thesis.

The more extreme elements of Ulster Protestant culture view their community’s relationship with Britain as one of consistent loyalty rejected by equally consistent betrayal. Prior to the formation of Northern Ireland, moves towards total Home Rule of Ireland were staunchly rejected by Ulster Unionists. It was this period which saw the consolidation of Unionist factions into one, when, on September 28th, 1912, led by Sir , 471,000 Protestant men signed Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant. It stated that: Being convinced in our consciences that Home Rule would be disastrous to the material well-being of Ulster as well as the whole of Ireland, subversive of our civil and religious freedom, destructive of our citizenship and perilous to the unity of the Empire we... do hereby pledge ourselves in solemn Covenant throughout this our time of threatened calamity to stand by one another in defending for ourselves and our children our cherished position of equal citizenship in the United Kingdom and in using all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland105.

104 Paulin, Interview.

45 The Home Rule issue was temporarily stalled by the outbreak of the First World War. At the Battle of the Somme alone, there were over 5,000 casualties from the 36th (Ulster) Division (formed from the 30,000 UVF men who enlisted at the outbreak of the war). This event formed the basis for Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme to be discussed in Chapter Three). Following the war and indeed the in Ireland, the 1922 partition treaty was signed. For Ulster Protestants, sacrifice for and loyalty to Britain had been rewarded by a preservation of Ulster’s status as part of the British Empire. However, more recent perceptions have been of British betrayal. Manifestations of this betrayal have included a perceived desire on the part of Westminster to rid itself of responsibility for Northern Irish affairs. The signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement in 1985, Westminster’s secret talks with Sinn Fein and the recent Good Friday Peace Agreement have all been interpreted by Ulster Loyalists as evidence of this desire.

What this continued perception of betrayal has seen is a more inward looking Protestant community, looking more and more towards an independent ‘Ulsterness’ for a sense of identity. As those on the mainland have continued to label Ulster Protestants ‘Paddies’, so Ulster Protestants have begun to recognise their Irish inheritance. Ironically, this process began with that most fervent of Loyalists, Ian Paisley. Tom Paulin describes his significance: I can remember from my early adolescence Ian Paisley emerging as a political figure because I was very much opposed to what he stood for. Like lots of middle class Protestants I was put off by the rhetoric and so on. I noticed an advertisement for a cassette by him called ‘Separation’. It was a very puritan thing, daily commentary

105 Ulster’s Solemn League and Covenant (1912), as reprinted in Seamus Deane (ed.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols (Derry: Field Day, 1991), III, 353.

46 on the book of Exodus, the idea being that you put this cassette on every morning instead of listening to the news program. Mrs McGinley would play the organ for a bit and then there’d be Paisley reading a verse from Exodus which he would comment on. Its title made me realise at some level that this was somebody trying to think beyond being British106. One manifestation of this new approach to the problem of an Ulster identity can be found in the theory of the , put forward in two books –The Cruthin and The Identity of Ulster – by Ian Adamson107. Adamson argues that the earliest inhabitants of Ireland were not the , but instead the Cruthin, a Pictish tribe. By the fifth century, this tribe had been pushed into the far north-east region of Ireland (into Antrim and Down) and gradually into lowland Scotland. Irish history viewed this way sees the Ulster Protestants as native to Ireland and the Plantations of the seventeenth century as a people returning home. Adamson’s theory has been officially adopted by the UDA and reflects what playwright Gary Mitchell argues is a recognition of Irishness, combined ‘with the best of 108. However, the issue remains one of legitimation – arguing for the right of the Protestant community to be in Ulster.

The Recognition of Pluralism

now because of the kind of identity crisis that results from the

106 Paulin, Interview. 107 Ian Adamson, The Cruthin (Belfast: Donard, 1978), and The Identity of Ulster: The Land, the Language and the People (Belfast: Nosmada, 1982).

47 recognition by Ulster Protestants that basically the British in Scotland and and Wales don’t want them. Tom Paulin, 1998109.

What the work examined in this thesis aims to do is to question and challenge the singular Ulster Protestant identity that was contructed and maintained from the Home Rule Crises up until the outbreak of the contemporary Troubles. It rejects the notion that the ‘northern Protestant experience’ is based around a ‘continuous, unified, lawful, rational, disciplined resistance to a papally dominated, terrifyingly irrational Nationalism’110. This questioning is part of a broader process of interpretation and criticism that has been in evidence since the early 1970s. Academic and journalistic interest in the Ulster Protestant community has grown with cross-disciplinary efforts being made to understand the motivations of the Northern Irish majority111. My own alignment is with this broader movement away from a simplistic binary between Protestant and Catholic and towards the recognition that underneath the banners of each community is the reality of a plurality of opinions, political attitudes and identities.

This process has involved first and foremost a rewriting of history. Terence Brown (in one of three pamphlets published by Field Day Theatre Company

108 Gary Mitchell, Personal Interview, 14 November 1996. 109 Paulin, Interview. 110 Terence Brown, The Whole Protestant Community: the Making of a Historical Myth (Derry: Field Day, 1985), 10. 111 Key texts include Geoffrey Bell, The Protestants of Ulster (London: Pluto, 1976), Sarah Nelson, Ulster’s Uncertain : Protestant Political, Paramilitary and Community Groups and the Northern Ireland Conflict (Belfast: Appletree, 1984), Steve Bruce, God Save Ulster and The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), Arthur Aughey, Under Siege, and more recently, English and Walker (eds.), Unionism in Modern Ireland and Peter Shirlow and Mark McGovern (eds.),

48 which aimed to examine the Protestant community) uses the history of Ulster as the basis for rewriting Protestant history or, rather, histories. He suggests that the perception of the ‘poverty’ of the northern Protestant’s historical inheritance is due to a ‘collective amnesia’ on the part of Unionism. He quotes Presbyterian historian, the Reverend Principal John M Barkley, who sees a subterranean emotion in northern Protestant, and especially Presbyterian, historical awareness... the ‘Theory of Ireland’s Last Chance’... [ Rebellion is recalled as the moment when radical, just ideals and demands rooted in the achieved identity of the northern Presbyterian people were overwhelmed by forces of atavistic racial Nationalism112. Since then, as Barkley and Brown suggest, Protestant ideas of liberty and religious freedom have taken second place to ‘realpolitik’, the need to maintain unity, to maintain the image of ‘the northern Protestant as having always belonged to a homogeneous, ideologically monolithic, social group which stands for authority, law, order, loyalty, conformity, social cohesion and reason’113. The Orange monolith excluded voices which didn’t fit into the Unionist ideological framework. Ironically, the radical Presbyterian tradition, expressed by the Republican United Irishmen, became absorbed into Ulster Unionism as radical Presbyterian Loyalism, represented by Ian Paisley. It is this continuing Presbyterian radicalism that betrays Ulster Protestant diversity. The secular constitutional Unionism of the moderate Alliance Party seems entirely at odds with the extreme Loyalism and ethnically-based politics of Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party.

Who Are ‘the People’?: Unionism, Protestantism and Loyalism in Northern Ireland (London: Pluto, 1997). 112 Brown, ‘The Whole Protestant Community’, 13-14. 113 lbid,, 11.

49 However, despite this growing recognition of diversity and pluralism, as evident in Terence Brown’s re-remembrance, Northern Irish cultural criticism on many levels remains polarised. Protestant playwright Gary Mitchell has stated that: ‘Protestantism is a multi-faceted culture and that there is no one person who represents every Protestant’. In addition, he argues that it is ‘impossible to have a political party that represents all Protestants and a church that defends the single religious beliefs of the Protestant people’. Mitchell sees vast differences between the two communities in the North. The ‘ is all-embracing – of every Catholic in Northern Ireland’ and politically for Nationalists ‘there are really only two parties, the SDLP and Sinn Fein’. In contrast, Ulster Protestantism is ‘factionalised all across divid[ing] people up – socially, politically and religiously and any other way you can think of’114. Mitchell’s comment is very revealing. While he proposes a more complex and diverse Protestant community, and thus, on the surface seems to be calling for a recognition of Northern Irish diversity and pluralism, he nonetheless maintains a simple binary division between Protestant and Catholic. Within his distinction between a Catholic Church which is ‘all-embracing’ and a Protestantism which is ‘factionalised’ lies a familiar opposition between Catholicism as theocracy and Protestantism as secular and, ultimately, rational.

In their shared desire to re-examine Protestantism, and in their rejection of blind ideology (both Unionist and Republican) most, if not all, of the playwrights in this thesis can be broadly labelled revisionist. Alongside critics such as Edna Longley and John Wilson Foster, these dramatists are embarking on a process of attempting to understand the Ulster Protestant position. By acknowledging the existence of a definable and diverse Ulster Protestant culture, they are implicitly questioning the notion of ‘one nation’,

114 Mitchell, Interview.

50 that is, the cultural and national integrity of the island of Ireland. They are therefore challenging and ‘revising’ the founding ethos of the , in which ‘Unionists must submit to the inevitable’115 – a .

Mitchell’s unconscious reversion to a binary between Catholic and Protestant illustrates the fact that Northern Ireland remains a society of binary oppositions. This is nowhere more evident than in the debate that has centred on this issue of revisionism. Because of their opposition to the Nationalist reading of Northern Irish history as described above, revisionist historians, cultural and literary critics are often labelled merely Unionist apologists, with a particularly virulent attack coming from Richard Pine, author of one of the many comprehensive studies of the work of Brian Friel116. Pine describes critics of Field Day (for this, read revisionists) as constituting ‘a critical opposition of unlikely bedfellows... characterised... by an intuitive sense of the superiority of the Protestant mind’117. Yet rather than providing a front for supposed Unionist apologists, revisionism simply rejects the founding ethos of the Republic, it accepts that the Irish situation is more complex than English versus Irish. Without condoning or in any way justifying the discrimination suffered by Northern Catholics at the hands of Stormont Parliament, revisionists, broadly speaking, insist upon the Ulster Unionist right to self-determination. Quite reasonably, they accept that Ulster Unionists must have a voice, and that Ulster Unionism must be understood, if any satisfactory solution to the Northern Irish situation is to be found.

115 John Wilson Foster, ‘New Realism: A Future for Irish Studies’, in Colonial Consequences, 236. 116 Richard Pine, Brian Friel and Ireland’s Drama (London: Routledge, 1990). 117 Richard Pine, ‘Continuing Commitment’, Theatre Ireland, 18 (1989), 19.

51 Seamus Deane describes revisionism as a school of thought which ‘attacks the notion of a single narrative and pretends to supplant it with a plurality of narratives’118. His use of the word ‘pretend’ reveals Deane’s own position, that of an anti-revisionist, believing that revisionists ‘are Nationalists despite themselves; by refusing to be Irish Nationalists, they simply become defenders of Ulster or , thereby switching sides in the dispute while believing themselves to be switching the terms of it’119. This attitude could be described as the Field Day Theatre and Publishing Company, and at times The Crane Bag120 position in the cultural debate. The use made by both organisations of the term ‘fifth province’121 suggested a place where both sides could find common ground and both organisations directed their efforts towards creating a ‘cultural state’, one which would inevitably lead to a ‘political state’122. However, Edna Longley described Field Day’s efforts as yearning for ‘Edenic oneness... a monolithic nation’123 and much criticism of both Crane Bag and Field Day revolved around the notion that their ideology of cultural inclusiveness was merely veiled Nationalism. What Deane’s criticism points to is the polarity of this debate in the North. His assumption seems to be that if one is not an Irish Nationalist, then one therefore must be an ‘Ulster or British’ Nationalist. His description of revisionists merely ‘switching sides’ limits and narrows the debate to almost unworkably parochial terms. What Deane promotes is essentially the same division – Catholic versus Protestant – but presented in a new framework.

118 Seamus Deane, ‘Wherever Green is Read’, in Brady (ed.), Interpreting Irish History, 241. 119 Ibid., 242. 120 The Crane Bag (1977-1985) was established by Richard Kearney and Mark Patrick Hederman. 121 For more discussion of the Field Day Theatre Company position and its notion of a ‘fifth province’, see Chapter One of this thesis. 122 Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Man From God Knows Where: An Interview with Brian In Dublin, 28 October 1982, 23. 123 Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars, 2nd edn (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987), 195-6.

52 Crucial to the debate is the issue of the relationship between art and politics. On one side is Edna Longley who argues an English New Critical/Leavisite position that ‘poetry and politics, like church and state, should be 124, thereby maintaining the idea of an independent and transcendent aesthetic. Seamus Deane on the other hand sees the two as inseparable: ‘Art and politics are rooted in the same deep atavistic darkness. Their interest in structuring and destroying structures is a common bond’125. ‘Atavism’ is identified by Longley as being ‘a key Crane Bag word... another intersection of literary and political emotion’126, and use of the term by The Crane Bag allows Ulster to be seen as ‘distinct’ because of its atavisms rather than because of the presence of a definably and self- consciously ‘non-Irish’ or non ‘Celtic’ community. Belfast is not just a Dublin run rife with sectarian divisions. Its Protestant heritage marks it off as a distinct city. Yet Longley’s position is also flawed. Art and politics cannot be separated and nowhere is this more evident than in the drama which occupies this thesis, infused as it is with the politics of the North. However to focus on the atavistic depths of Northern Irish society is a limited enterprise. As will be demonstrated in this thesis, the work that has proved the most challenging is that which has consciously moved forward and away from Deane’s ‘atavisms’.

Revisionism as a school of thought is commonly identified with the Protestant and Unionist position while cultural inclusiveness or wholeness is seen to be Catholic and Nationalist in its intent. As Tom Paulin has commented: ‘It’s very confined and everyone knows each other. There’s a

124 Longley, Poetry in the Wars, 185. 125 Seamus Deane, ‘The Artist and the Troubles’, in Tim Pat Coogan (ed.), Ireland and the Arts (London: Namara Press, 1983), 43. 126 Longley, Poetry in the Wars, 188.

53 lot of personal abuse’127. The debate that raged between Edna Longley and Seamus Deane illustrates the fact that cultural criticism has been politicised in the North, despite its pretensions to objectivity. Their printed dialogue at times borders on personal abuse and, as Richard Kirkland argues in his comprehensive but frequently incomprehensible survey of Northern Irish literary criticism: Longley and Deane will, seemingly, always misrecognise and misrepresent one another’s positions as they acknowledge neither a shared canon, tradition, geography nor practice; the only point of convergence is the occasional ‘primary’ text that is unfortunate enough to be caught in the crossfire128. Quoting O’Seaghdha, Kirkland suggests that: ‘“When it becomes obvious that two people supposed to be engaged in a public debate are in fact delivering parallel monologues, it may be time for members of the audience to question the terms of the debate”’129.

While interviewing Catholic and Republican playwright Martin Lynch in Belfast in November 1996, I was asked about my ancestry: ‘ a Protestant surname. Do you have any Irish ancestry?’. After explaining that most of my paternal ancestors came from Tipperary to on boats fleeing the potato famine, his response was that he ‘knew there had to be some Catholic in there somewhere’130. While essentially flippant in intent, Lynch’s remarks exposed a deeper and more complex process. Kirkland argues that:

127 Paulin, Interview. 128 Richard Kirkland, Literature and Culture In Northern Ireland since 1965: Moments of Danger (London: Longman, 1996), 111. 129 B O’Seaghdha, ‘(Winter) And Again... Graph, 7 (1989-90), 19-20, as quoted in ibid.

54 To be of and concerned with the culture of Northern Ireland is to feel the weight of difference in all ideological gestures. Denials have to be conscious and allegiances always declared. For this reason, the timid ‘I’ that can enter any debate or text will often be read as ‘we’, as individuated definitions of dissent are relocated within groupings far from the discourse of liberal humanism131. In any exchange with the North, one has no need consciously to ‘find’ a position. The process is more a case of ‘being positioned’. By virtue of my focus on Protestantism and the diversity of that culture as expressed in recent drama, I am unavoidably placing myself, or rather being placed, at the revisionist end of the debate. However, I do find myself more in agreement with the criticism of Edna Longley and John Wilson Foster than with Field Day or The Crane Bag, whose efforts at cultural integration seem ultimately flawed through the notable absence of the Ulster Protestant community, as if its presence and right to self-determination would complicate efforts at unity of North and South.

Field Day’s cultural agenda places it within the broader Irish theatrical tradition, which has often been associated with ideological enterprises. Yeats, and the Abbey Theatre and their relationship to the Irish Revival remain the model for this. One can also point to the ULT, Uladh and their assertion of Ulster independence, and the Lyric Theatre and its revival of the poetic dramatic tradition and, most recently, Field Day with its post- colonial project. All of these groups come from a broadly Nationalist perspective and all of them seek to affirm a particular ideology. Despite its aims and protestations to the contrary, this was particularly the case with

130 Martin Lynch, Personal Interview, 13 November 1996. 131 Kirkland, p.115.

55 Field Day Theatre Company. A particular view of history is embraced and particular myths and ideologies are sustained.

Field Day occupy the starting point for this thesis because they represent the confluence of history, myth and ideology which, as I have argued, most of the contemporary explorations of Protestantism seek to break down. After discussion of this influential company, I move on to examine work which has all contributed to the problematising of Ulster Protestant identity. The work of Field Day sits in the foreground of this work as it sits at the head of the canon of recent Northern Irish drama, variously an archetype, and an incitement to reaction and criticism.

56 Chapter One

Field Day Theatre Company: a Northern Nationalist Vision

Field Day is saying that there is in fact an Ithaca, but in order to live there you’ve got to demythologise this society a good deal; demythologise it in such a way that those sects and groupings within the society that form the basis of our disagreements also will find that there is in fact the possibility of a vision; a vision, if you like, a unity of culture, in which they all can share. Seamus Deane, 1985132.

In any study of contemporary Northern Irish drama, Field Day Theatre Company must take a central position. The influence of its theatrical and critical work has been such that it seems natural to begin any exploration of contemporary drama in the North with an examination of Field Day. In this thesis the company takes precedence in part because of its broad influence, but more substantially because of the manner in which its ideological agenda operated as a kind of antithesis to so much of the work discussed later. Field Day staked a claim over the project of reimagining the North through drama, but it was by no means the sole claimant.

Field Day’s production history includes plays of great importance to the Irish and Northern Irish theatrical canon. The company’s focus on issues of

132 As quoted in Jennifer Fitzgerald, ‘The Arts and Ideology’, The Crane Bag, 9.2 (1985), 63.

57 language, identity, history and myth provided for complex and sophisticated analyses of Irish Nationalist culture, which necessarily fall outside the scope of this thesis. Here I am thinking particularly of Brian Friel’s Communication Cord (1982), a farcical counterpart to the sorts of issues dealt with in Translations, and Thomas Kilroy’s Double Cross (1986), an exploration of Irishness through the dual figures of Brendan Bracken, Churchill’s Minister for Information, and William (Lord Haw-Haw) Joyce. This thesis has as its focus the issue of Ulster Protestant identity and the selection of works has inevitably been informed by this.

The chapter begins with an exploration of how the company’s first play, Translations, and its first set of pamphlets, established its ideological agenda. It then moves on through both Field Day’s theatrical and critical work, examining the company’s interpretation and positioning of Ulster Protestant identity.

1980 to 1983 – Definition

Beginnings

From its very beginnings it was hoped that Field Day Theatre Company would provide genuine insight into questions of Northern Irish culture and identities. This hope was fuelled by the company’s initial mission statements which stressed two things: the inherent ‘ company and the inclusiveness of its enterprise.

58 The company had been established by actor and playwright Brian Friel primarily to present Friel’s new work Translations in 1980133. In September 1981, following the success of this first production, a Board of Directors was formally announced. It included poets and critics Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin, writer and critic Seamus Deane and musician David Hammond. In 1982 Friel stated in an interview that ‘the important defining thing’ about the Board was that they were ‘all Northern people’134 and initial press statements and publicity made particular mention of this Northern background of the six men and also of their mixed religious upbringings. Three of its members – Friel, Heaney and Deane – were Catholic, while the remaining three – Rea, Paulin and Hammond – were Protestant. High expectations were set for a company which would position itself above sectarianism and would be fully representative of all parts of the political spectrum in the North135.

Through its initial pronouncements the Field Day board continued to raise these expectations of inclusiveness. Their stated aim was to de-construct notions of Irishness and Englishness, to break down stereotypes which they believed to be ultimately restrictive. Seamus Deane argued in the final issue of Crane Bag in 1985 that ‘we should in some way try to re-remember... a very complex heritage which has been simplified and reduced into sectional and sectarian patterns’136. Field Day set themselves the task of vivifying the paralysed language of Northern Irish cultural politics and redefining modes of analysis. Such a project, which Deane described as ‘a political gesture,

133 According to Brian Friel, the name was chosen for its similarity to both its founders’ Friel’ and ‘Rea’, as quoted in Ciaran Carty, ‘Finding Voice in a Language Not Sunday Independent, 5 October 1980. 134 Fintan O’Toole, ‘The Man From God Knows Where: An Interview with Brian In Dublin, 28 October 1982, 22. 135 Marilynn Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre Company and Irish Cultural Politics 1980-1984 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 74. 136 Fitzgerald, ‘The Arts and Ideology’, 65.

59 smacking of Northernness’, involved a ‘double secession – from the North and from the Republic’. It also involved a reconstituting of literature as ‘an enabling activity’ rather than as a ‘sideline activity’ 137. A belief in the possibility of a ‘unity of culture’ saw Field Day concern itself with the creation of a ‘fifth province’. The term ‘fifth province’ was not a new idea and made reference to an concept of ‘the centre’ or ‘a central area’. This secret centre ‘was the place where all oppositions were resolved’138. Rejecting old paradigms of sectarian division, Field Day’s ‘fifth province’ was a new paradigm, all-inclusive and liberated from the framework of sectarianism. The company’s aim was to create such a ‘secret centre’ or ‘fifth province’ through culture.

Implicit in this idea of a fifth province was a challenge to the traditional humanist separation of art and politics, expressing again the notion of literature as an enabling activity. Speaking in 1990, Deane contrasted what he put forward as ‘the Arnoldian notion’, ‘that the work of art that most successfully disengages itself from the particularities of its origin and production is, by virtue of that “disengagement”, most fully and purely itself, it is “universal”, the proper thing for art to be’139, with the Field Day project, which viewed ‘art as a specific activity indeed, but one in which the whole history of a culture is deeply inscribed’140. Nonetheless, Field Day owed a lot to Arnoldian notions about the function of culture, despite rejecting Matthew

137 Seamus Deane, ‘What is Field Day?’, programme note for the Field Day production of (1981). 138 Mark Patrick Hederman, ‘Poetry and the Fifth Province’, The Crane Bag, 9.1 (1985), as quoted in Richard Pine, Brian Friel and Ireland’s Drama (London: Routledge, 1990), 36. 139 Seamus Deane, ‘Introduction’, in Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward W Said, Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1990), 7. 140 Ibid.

60 Arnold’s separation of art and politics. In Culture and Anarchy Arnold argued for ‘the moral, social, and beneficial character of culture’141, believing that: Perfection, as culture conceives it, is not possible while the individual remains isolated. The individual is required, under pain of being stunted and enfeebled in his own development if he disobeys, to carry others along with him in his march towards perfection, to be continually doing all he can to enlarge and increase the volume of the human stream sweeping thitherward142. Such notions framed the Field Day cultural project – the value of culture coupled with the idea of active engagement. This debt serves to reveal just how inherently conservative the company was. Despite Field Day’s search for new ways of looking at the North, notions of ‘high culture’ and a concern with the idea of a literary canon underpinned much of its work. This literary conservatism at times obstructed Field Day’s aspirations towards inclusiveness.

An early press release for Translations stated that ‘every effort is to be made, through this and future productions, to reach the widest possible audiences’143. The aim here was to cross sectarian boundaries, as acknowledged by Seamus Deane after the release of the company’s first set of pamphlets in 1983: It’s no good just performing our plays and selling pamphlets to people we know. There’s no point in continuing unless we can get through to Unionists. We must seek an audience of people in [the] North who would be put off just

141 Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy and Other Writings, edited by Stefan Collini (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 61. 142 Ibid., 62. 143 Anon, ‘World Premiere of Friel Play to be staged in Derry’, Irish News , 25 August 1980.

61 by our names, by [the] fact that two of us are called Seamus. We must find a way of convincing these people that Field Day is for them, that it’s not subversive144. The creation of a fifth province was only going to be possible with the support of all sections of the community in Northern Ireland. However, this worthy effort at inclusiveness was hindered in two main ways: by Field Day’s tendency towards cultural elitism and by its adherence to a broadly Nationalist perspective on Northern Irish politics.

Field Day was criticised for a perceived ‘air of elitism and self-enclosure’145. While presenting itself as a community-based theatre company, its press releases, public statements and the comments from various board directors in interviews, all contained imagery which proved confusing and alienating for the majority of its audiences in both rural and urban areas. Two samples from Tom Paulin’s program notes for The Communication Cord in 1982 clearly illustrate this point: ‘Imaginatively, Derry is the most advanced city in Ireland and the Guildhall is a temple which joins the stained, bright images of empire to the idea of a new res publica’146: Field Day, therefore, starts for me with the idea of commencement, with the letter A – Amphion, Augustan, Athens, Art and Audience. More particularly and pedantically, I’d plant a claim for the Arnold (the European and unBritish Arnold) of two neglected essays – 'Equality' and ‘The Literary Influence of Academies'147. Fintan O’Toole argued in a 1993 retrospective of the company that:

144 Seamus Deane, Richard Kearney, and Ciaran Carty, ‘Why Ireland Needs a Fifth Sunday Independent, 22 January 1984. 145 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Dissension in the Fifth Province’, , 1 May 1993. 146 Tom Paulin, ‘Commencement’, programme note for the Field Day production of The Communication Cord (1982). 147 Ibid.

62 Here there is a double elitism. One is the simple question of what someone going to a play on a wet Tuesday night in Maghera or Mullingar was supposed to make of this language. The second is that only those who have access to Matthew Arnold’s more obscure essays would be in a position to understand just how elitist the passage was. The second Arnold essay mentioned is a description of the founding of the Academie Française by Cardinal Richelieu in 1629. Only the elite could understand that Field Day was to be compared to the ultimate cultural elite, the Academie Française148. In 1869 Matthew Arnold wrote that ‘the great men of culture are those who have had a passion for diffusing, for making prevail, for carrying from one end of society to the other, the best knowledge, the best ideas of their time’149 In its explicitly stated ‘cultural project’, Field Day placed itself as a group of cultural ‘leaders’, ‘great men of culture’. However, the effect of ‘academic’ pronouncements such as those of Paulin above, served to cloud the message of Field Day productions. This intersection between theatre and criticism would prove to be problematic for the company from 1983 onwards, as it began to develop a more certain ideology through its publishing wing.

In addition, revisionist critics quickly began to perceive Field Day as Nationalist in political sentiment, largely encouraged by the expression of concepts like a ‘unity of culture’ and ‘political state’, and by its continued failure to come to grips with Ulster Protestant identity. By insisting on the use of Derry’s Guildhall150 for its theatrical premieres and referring to that building as ‘a huge symbol of Empire, of the Union, of some kind of

148 O’Toole, ‘Dissension in the Fifth Province’. 149 Arnold, Culture and Anarchy, 79. 150 Derry’s council chambers – a potent symbol of Unionist misrule.

63 adherence to English principles’151, Field Day was positing its enterprise as a challenge to traditional Unionist authority. As an aim, this was admirable in intent but in actuality translated often into a denigration of Ulster Protestant culture. Field Day’s alternative ‘secret centre’ was perceived by some to be merely a united Ireland framed in a different way.

Translations and the role of drama

This cultural and ideological agenda had been already set by Field Day’s first public outing, Translations, which premiered in 1980. The production firmly located the company’s activities in the North. Translations was seen by audiences in Northern Ireland as a play of the North and for the North. This was evident in the play’s critical and audience reception. Reviews in the Republic tended to focus on the Nationalist politics of the play, while those in England focused on the ‘entertainment’ value of the play. By contrast, in the North, the enthusiastic reception of the play was ‘as much a 152 as it was a reaction to Friel’s skill as a playwright. Field Day committed itself to the city of Derry – it rehearsed in the city and chose to premiere the play in the city’s Guildhall.

Underpinning the play was also a view of theatre as aiding the process of reinvention, helping to demystify and deconstruct stereotypes, returning to Arnold’s notion of the ‘moral, social and beneficient’ character of culture. Certainly, the company’s wide touring base indicated a faith in the transformative power of theatre. In 1990, describing the company’s theatrical enterprise, Seamus Deane argued that its:

151 Richard Kirkland, Literature and Culture in Northern Ireland since 1965: Moments of Danger (London: Longman, 1996), 135. 152 Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 51.

64 central preoccupation has been with a particular experience of what we may call translation... the adaptations, readjustments, and reorientations that are required of... [those] who have undergone a traumatic cultural and political crisis so fundamental that they must forge for themselves a new speech, a new history or life story that would give it some rational or coherent form153. Responses to the company’s first production seemed to validate such a view. Writing in 1988, Seamus Heaney reflected on the extraordinary response that the company received to Translations: The excitement which [it].. caused was palpable and its gratifications had to do with a feeling that the dramatic form had allowed inchoate recognitions, both cultural and historical, to be clarified and comprehended. Most people talked about it with relish, some with resistance, all with awakened attention154. Christopher Murray similarly describes the enthusiastic audience reception of the play in the , arguing that the play ‘stirred something 155. Murray’s emotive language points to the way in which Field Day was initially unreservedly welcomed by audiences and critics both North and South. Here was a company which had something genuinely new to offer.

However, it was in its stated object of inclusiveness that Field Day’s first outing can be found wanting. In focusing the play on the relationship between English coloniser and Irish colonised, Friel absents the Ulster

153 Deane, ‘Introduction’, 14. 154 Seamus Heaney, ‘A Field Day for the Irish’, The Times, 5 December 1988. 155 Christopher Murray, Twentieth Century Irish Drama: Mirror Up to a Nation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 210.

65 Protestant community. Seamus Deane in 1990 stated that ‘Field Day’s analysis of the situation [in the North] derives from the conviction that it is, above all, a colonial crisis’156, and Translations was the company’s first expression of this thesis.

The play is set in 1833, in a hedge school in Bailebeg, a fictional Irish- speaking community. It focuses on the time of the first Ordnance Surveys – the process of re-mapping Ireland through a translation of Irish place-names into English. Simultaneously, Bailebeg is experiencing the process of the replacement of the old system of hedge-schools with national schools, where, as Bridget explains, ‘from the very first day you go, you’ll not hear one 157. Friel represents a community in crisis as its way of life is being eroded and supplanted by the culture of the metropolis. The play examines the loss of language, the presence of a colonial power and how a community copes with both of these processes, all from the perspective of the periphery.

Friel takes an approach of privileging the margins and in doing so revisits Irish history. Different responses to this process of dispossession are personified through particular characters. Manus, son of the schoolmaster Hugh, clings on to old traditions and at the end of the play is offered a job at another hedge school on a remote island off the coast. Owen, Hugh’s other son, has firmly embraced the new colonial culture. He returns to Bailebeg as a translator for the English map-makers. The character of Maire expresses the dilemma of the periphery, always looking to and aspiring towards the centre. She longs to get out of Bailebeg and experience the world. The

156 Deane, ‘Introduction’, 6. 157 Brian Friel, ‘Translations’, in his Selected Plays (London: Faber, 1984), 396. All subsequent references from the play will be given in the text.

66 English Lieutenant Yolland and his fellow surveyors represent that wider world.

Translations at its heart deals with the relationship between the microcosmic Gaelic Irish village and the intruding English colonisers. The Ulster Protestant is nowhere to be seen. Edna Longley, frequent critic of Field Day, argued that Translations reflected ‘the Republican viewpoint from which history stands still... the old colonial theme, that writes Northern Protestants out of history’158. Longley’s criticism might seem harsh given the subject matter of the play. There would seem to be little room in Friel’s narrative for an Ulster Protestant character, and Field Day’s stated aim of inclusiveness did not amount to an undertaking to include representatives of all sections of the Northern Irish community in each of its works. The criticism, however, is not so much that Friel writes Ulster Protestants out of the nineteenth century, but that, through implicit parallels with contemporary Northern Ireland, he writes them out of the present conflict. The issue here is one of equation, and Longley indeed makes that point159. Friel equates Bailebeg with the contemporary North and it is here that his play becomes problematic from the perspective of this thesis.

Much of the criticism that was voiced about the play came from those who were concerned about its historical inaccuracies. Friel used historian John Andrews’ book, A Paper Landscape, as his main source of research into the Ordnance Survey and Andrews himself attended a Dublin performance of the play. As he later wrote, Andrews was astounded at Friel’s representation of the soldier-surveyors violently evicting native Irish farmers from the land: It really seemed like one of those terrible moments in the theatre... when the audience stops looking at the front and

158 Edna Longley, Poetry in the Wars (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books, 1985), 192. 159 lbid.

67 starts looking at each other. Anyway, that is what I did. I needn’t have bothered. At that moment in the Gate Theatre every eye but mine was riveted on the stage. The bayonets, the shooting, the evictions: all my fellow play- goers were lapping it all up160. Friel later made apologies for what he termed ‘the tiny bruises inflicted on 161 and certainly from Andrews’ experience the Dublin audience were content to view them as such. Friel saw himself as a playwright first and foremost, reminding critics that ‘the imperatives of fiction are as exacting as the imperatives of cartography and historiography’162. The question of historical veracity is an important one and one to which Friel would return in his later work, Making History (1988). While it could be argued that the role of drama is not, and has never been, to present history accurately, objections to Translations were, as John Andrews’ experience illustrates, not with the distortions themselves, but with the acceptance of those distortions as historical fact by audiences. This acted as a clear illustration of the intersection of history and myth. Friel, and by extension Field Day, rather than re-remembering Irish history, were refashioning the myth of Gaelic dispossession, rewriting the Nationalist myth. As Andrews’ comment illustrates, audiences accepted Friel’s mythical Bailebeg as history163. Aiding such acceptance were the programme notes, which included extracts from both primary and secondary sources, serving clearly to speak for the supposed historical authenticity of the play.

160 Brian Friel, John Andrews and , ‘Translations and a Paper Landscape: Between Fiction and History’, in Mark Patrick Hederman and Richard Kearney (eds.), The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 2 vols (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1982 and 1987), II, 120. 161 Ibid., 123. 162 Ibid. 163 Friel’s second play for Field Day, The Communication Cord (1982), aimed to undermine this acceptance of Translations as historical fact. For more discussion of this issue, see Pine, Brian Friel and Ireland’s Drama, 144-84, and Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, Chapter 4.

68

The First Series of Pamphlets – A New Nationalism

Like Translations, Field Day’s first excursion into publishing contradicted its stated aim of inclusiveness. The relevance of this critical work lies in its relationship to the company’s theatrical enterprise. Christopher Murray argues that the two should be kept separate and that Field Day’s theatrical wing was primarily concerned with ‘the creation, distribution and reception of 167. This statement is clearly true, but it ignores the fact that behind the plays, as well as the pamphlets, was an explicit cultural project. Field Day’s aim was to create new ways of thinking about the North and to establish a ‘fifth province’. The company’s critical activity extended this aim but nonetheless remained an integral part of it. To examine Ulster Protestant identity as represented only on Field Day stages would be to obscure the full picture of the cultural politics the company espoused and which other dramatists reacted against. Seamus Heaney, in retrospect, argued that the company had been ‘searching for other ways in which that kind of stirring and self-inspection could be extended beyond theatre’168. In this aspect the critical work was seen, by both the company and those outside it, as working in tandem with the theatrical work. Indeed, many of the concerns found in Field Day plays are also to be found in its pamphlets.

Following on from Translations, Field Day’s first set of pamphlets169, attempts to deal with questions of language and identity and it shares a desire to subvert the privileging norms of the centre as well as a rejection of authority. However, after being published in 1983 to much media and critical attention, the pamphlets were widely criticised by revisionist critics, including Edna

167 Murray, Twentieth Century Irish Drama, 209. 168 Deaglán de Bréadún, ‘Comfortable Image Belies the Serious Poet’, The Irish Times, 13 September 1984. 169 As published in Ireland’s Field Day: Field Day Theatre Company (London: Hutchinson, 1985), 1-42. All references from the pamphlets will be given in the text.

71 Longley and John Wilson Foster, for their allegedly Nationalist agenda and for lack of depth in their analysis of Ulster Protestant culture and identity.

Such criticisms seem misguided upon examination of Field Day’s first pamphlet. A New Look at the Language Question , by Tom Paulin, is particularly important to this thesis because Paulin, Protestant by birth, was the only one of Field Day’s academics who could be seen to represent the Protestant community. His views thus assume special significance. Yet he is far from the typical Ulster Protestant. Until 1980, while not identifying as an Ulster Unionist and supportive of the civil rights movement, he nonetheless ‘believed what most Ulster Protestants still believe – that Northern Ireland was, and ought to remain, permanently wedded to Great Britain’170. This attitude changed as Paulin found himself in the late 1970s ‘drawn to ’s eloquence, his humane and constitutional politics’171. Since then he has defined his position on the North as Protestant Republicanism. He believes that Protestantism is a culture ‘which could have dignity, and it had it once – I mean that strain of radical Presbyterianism, which more or less went underground after 1798’172. His own views on Northern Irish politics are, in his words, ‘eclectic and founded on an idea of identity which has as yet no formal or institutional existence. It assumes the existence of a non-sectarian, Republican state which comprises the whole island of Ireland... the idea of a secular republic’173. Any notion that Paulin would provide a voice for Protestant Unionism was dispelled with the expression of such views in 1984.

170 Tom Paulin, ‘Introduction’, in Ireland and the English Crisis (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books, 1984), 16-17. 171 Ibid. 172 Tom Paulin, in John Haffenden (ed.), Viewpoints: Poets in Conversation with John Heffenden (London: Faber, 1981), 159, as quoted in Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 107. 173 Paulin, ‘Introduction’, 17-18.

72 Paulin’s pamphlet argues for the legitimacy of various Irish dialects, which are marginalised and made ‘literally homeless’ [11] by the dominance of Standard English. He advocates a ‘federal concept of Irish English’ where ‘three fully-fledged languages’ would exist side by side - ‘Irish, Ulster Scots Paulin’s linguistic utopia allows for the expression of Ulster Scots, a dialect claimed by Ulster Protestants. In this, he implicitly recognises the self-determination of that community, whom he sees as occupying an undeniable place in any ‘federal’ Ireland. His inclusiveness seems a genuine expression of the search for a ‘fifth province’.

However, Paulin’s ideas were nonetheless labelled as covertly Nationalist. Focus was placed on Paulin’s choice of adjectives in one particular section of the pamphlet174 and on his criticisms of Ian Adamson175. Critics including Edna Longley and John Wilson Foster argued that Paulin’s implicit assumption is that a culture which looks towards Britain is somehow found wanting when compared to one which looks inwards, looks to Ireland – that a Republic is logical, while Unionism is flawed. In addition, the argument was put forward that behind Paulin’s idea of an Irish federation of languages or dialects lay his idea of a ‘secular republic’. Both were seen as expressions of their author’s inherent Republicanism176. Any inclusive and pluralistic concepts in the pamphlet were obscured by this perceived bias.

174 While he describes the philosophy of Ulster Protestant schools as ‘short-sighted’, schools in the Irish Republic are ‘idealistic’ in their approach to language [10-11]. 175 While Adamson’s attempt to assert the indigeneity of the dialect (and Ulster Lallans) is seen by Paulin as ‘worthwhile’, he argues that one of its weaknesses 'is an uncertainty about the status and the nature of the in Ireland' [15]. Paulin argues that Adamson’s lack of ‘a concept of Irish English’, stems from his unwillingness 'to contemplate the all-Ireland context which a federal concept of Irish English would necessarily express' [15]. It was this implied criticism of Adamson’s Unionist beliefs which revisionist critics found objection to. For further discussion see Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 142ff. 176 For a more detailed discussion of critical responses to Paulin’s pamphlet, see Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 142ff.

73 Revisionist reponses to Paulin’s pamphlet seemed unjust. The same, however, could not be argued of their responses to the second and third pamphlets of the series, which Edna Longley quite accurately described as ‘largely a matter of old whines in new bottles’177. The contributions of ‘the two Seamuses’ to Field Day’s first critical outing did little to assist the creation of a ‘fifth province’. They were neither inclusive nor enlightening in their approach to the North. Heaney’s Open Letter, written in verse form, states the poet’s rejection of the label ‘British’, imposed upon him by virtue of his inclusion in The Penguin Book of Contemporary British Poetry. He argues that ‘My passport’s green/ No glass of ours was ever raised/ To toast The Queen’, and desires ‘[t]o be at home/ In my own place and dwell within/ Its proper name –’ [27]. Heaney’s sentiments are fairly benign in their explicit Nationalism.

Deane’s arguments are, however, a little more insidious. Like Open Letter, his pamphlet implicitly reduces the conflict in the North down to the issue of Irish versus English. He begins well, stating that his intention is to deconstruct the ‘blighting... four-hundred year-old distinction between barbarians and civilians’ [42], between reductive notions of ‘ ‘Englishness’. His implicit argument is that by moving away from such an outmoded binary, solutions to the problems in the North will be easier to find. However, where Deane fails is in his adherence to a theoretical framework of colonial theories of division, relying on a manichean allegory of self versus Other. By exclusively focusing on a seemingly clear distinction between ‘Irish’ and ‘English’, he ignores the divisions which exist within Ireland and particularly Northern Ireland. Diversity and plurality are replaced by his simplistic binary, which he claims to dismantle, but in fact reinforces. He identifies ‘civilians’ as Protestant and English, and he puts ‘barbarians’

177 Edna Longley, ‘More Martyrs to Abstraction’, Fortnight, July/August 1984, 18.

74 forward as Catholic and Irish. This obscures the question of Ulster Protestant identity, as the Northern Irish majority are excluded from consideration independent of the English.

Deane’s colonial framework of 1983 echoed the picture presented by Translations. The Northern Irish crisis is explained by reference to Ireland’s colonial past. While Translations drew on the gradual dispossession of the nineteenth century rural Irish, Deane drew upon the ‘coloniser’ Spenser’s distinction between Irish and English, serving also to emphasise the company’s literary conservatism. This initial period was crucial for the company. Most responses to this early work were focused upon the fact that the company board members were all from, and chose to base their work on the North. Field Day’s early efforts undoubtedly provided part of the inspiration for both the Lyric Theatre’s promotion of new writers (including Christina Reid and Martin Lynch) and the founding of Charabanc in 1983. Yet, despite this, the company’s politics were quickly perceived as Nationalist (by revisionist critics in particular) and such politics were inevitably imposed on the theatre and the criticism which followed. For a group which preached inclusiveness, in its first three years Field Day gave little attention to the issue of Ulster Protestant culture and identity, perhaps because to acknowledge its existence would be to complicate the chosen colonial framework. The Northern Irish majority was conspicuously and erroneously absent from Field Day’s gaze.

75

Queen’s University in 1968 and in an article subsequently published in The Listener, had used the story of Antigone as a metaphor for the Northern Irish situation, with Creon representing the Orange State and Antigone being read as a Republican activist/IRA sympathiser. He revised his interpretation in a later work, States of Ireland, writing that ‘after four years of Antigone and her under-studies and all those funerals... you begin to feel that Ismene’s commonsense and feeling for the living may make the more needful, if less spectacular element in "human dignity”’179. Paulin rejected O’Brien’s revised interpretation on the grounds that ‘in recommending common-sense he is really supporting Creon’s rule of law’. He argued that O’Brien’s revision absolves Creon and therefore the Unionist state from responsibility, placing blame for ‘all those funerals’ with Antigone. This he viewed as ‘a severe distortion of the tragic conflict’ 180. However, Paulin misreads O’Brien’s comment. At no point in his original lecture, article or subsequent revision does O’Brien ‘absolve’ Creon or the Unionist state. His point is merely that it is not ‘possible to put all the blame on Antigone is ‘as dangerous in her way as Creon, whom she perpetually challenges and provokes’181. Here is a clear manifestation of the revisionist position, as O’Brien questions the Irish Republican model of Protestant (English) as oppressor and Catholic (Irish) as oppressed.

Reading Paulin’s criticisms, one would expect to see in The a translation that retained all the power of such ‘tragic conflict’. George Steiner argues that the tragedy of Antigone is in essence the absoluteness of both Creon’s and Antigone’s rights and the hopelessness of the situation without some form of compromise. By extension, ‘commentators have

179 Conor Cruise O’Brien, States of Ireland (St Albans: Granada, 1974), 153. 180 Tom Paulin, ‘The Making of a Loyalist’ in Ireland and the English Crisis, 28. 181 O’Brien, States of Ireland, 151-2.

77

The characters, in grey and black modern dress (Creon wore a business suit), moved in front of grey drapes inscribed with classical architectural lineaments. White light on a bare stage created shifting patterns of shadows, and the movements of the cast were precisely choreographed and described by more than one critic as ‘balletic’. Creon also melted into and out of the chorus185. Christopher Murray took this description of the set further by identifying the parallel between the ‘grey drapes inscribed with classical architectural lineaments’ and ‘Masonic symbols, which identify the power structure with 186. As will be shown, this association was reinforced throughout the play by the character of Creon.

The language of the play became a distinct Hiberno-English, recalling Paulin’s first Field Day pamphlet, wherein he examined varieties of the Irish- English language, bringing dialect to the fore. His translation offered a ‘short verse line, lean, terse, understated’ with a ‘conversational yet urgent’ style187. The vernacular is used to vivid effect, as when Ismene attempts to dissuade Antigone from illegally burying her brother: Can you imagine, but, what way we’ll die? – some screggy, smelly crowd, us dragged before them – oh, they’ll spit,

185 Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 216. 186 Murray, Twentieth Century Irish Drama, 214.

79 they’ll sleg us then, shout all the dirt till the first stones go whap!188 . Paulin also makes much use of the character of the Guard to provide his audience with an Ulster working-class vernacular. Various critics argued that this vernacular had the effect of reducing the potency of the story at various points, although it did succeed in making the text accessible to a contemporary Northern Irish audience. Lynda Henderson argued that: At the end of the play, where the great emotional cathartic thing comes to the fore, the language simply isn’t flexible enough to stretch to encompass that, and Stephen Rea as Creon was forced into a position where all he could find was the maudlin, and it became unfortunately almost laughable. In his moment of anagnoresis, he actually describes himself as cack-handed Creon, and it is so far from the necessary poetry at that point as to fail quite seriously then189. Christopher Murray was in agreement, arguing that the language used ‘never rises to the occasion, either of the sentiments expressed by the Chorus or of the situations developed by the characters’ and that ‘Paulin misses or ignores opportunity after opportunity to express feeling and nobility of thought’190. This is because ‘irony is his main stylistic device... [Paulin] deliberately makes the noble figures appear recognisable rather than mythic’191. Overall, Murray believed that The Riot Act was ‘almost ludicrously inadequate’192.

187 Anthony Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama: From Beckett to McGuinness (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), 260. 188 Tom Paulin, The Riot Act (London: Faber, 1985), 12. All subsequent references from the play will be given in the text. 189 Henderson, Radio review on ‘Kaleidoscope’. 190 Christopher Murray, ‘Three Irish Antigones’, in Jacqueline Genet and Richard Allen Cave (eds.), Perspectives of Irish Drama and Theatre (Maryland: Barnes and Noble, 1991), 121. 191 Murray, ‘Three Irish Antigones’, 121-2. 192 Ibid.

80 Murray and Henderson’s remarks raise a broader issue about adaptations. Their underlying view is that, in bringing Antigone into a Northern Irish context, Paulin has somehow corrupted ’ original. He has achieved topical relevance at the expense of the potency of the original text. In rejecting what they see as parochialism on Paulin’s part, these two critics stray into a converse position of ‘provincialism’. Poet , writing in 1967, described the ‘provincial’ as having ‘no mind of his own’: 'He does not trust what his eyes see until he has heard what the metropolis – towards which his eyes are turned – has to say on the subject’193. This kind of attitude permeated Northern Irish culture prior to the outbreak of the Troubles. What is ‘English’ is appropriate subject matter for Northern Irish Protestants, while what is ‘Irish’ is not. The remnants of this deeply colonially imbedded attitude underpin Murray’s and Henderson’s criticism. In their view to replace the language of standard English translations of the Sophoclean text with Ulster dialect is to diminish the tragedy.

However, Paulin’s translation is flawed because of his representation of the character of Creon rather than because of the language which he chooses to use. Creon is introduced by the Chorus as ‘The Big Man’ [15], a description which, for a Northern Irish audience, makes unmistakable reference to Ian Paisley. His opening speech, however, seems a satirisation of a Westminster politician, more interested in rhetoric than action. Paulin’s stage directions imply this: ‘Often he seems to be speaking purely for his own delight, savouring certain juicy vowels, whipping others into fine peak’ [15], along with Creon’s own words: ‘For my own part, I have always held that one of the soundest maxims of good government is always listen to the very best advice [author’s italics]. And in the coming months I shall be doing

193 Patrick Kavanagh, ‘The Parish and the Universe’, in Collected Prose (Worcester: MacGibbon, 1967), 282.

81 a very great deal of listening, sounding opinions and so forth’ [16]. Creon, in his business suit, is immediately presented as a mix of the Ulster Unionist extremist and the practised public official from the mainland. In the original production this characterisation was taken further by Stephen Rea, who, recalling a photograph of Edward Carson addressing a Unionist rally in 1912, chose to emulate Carson, by leaning standing up against a table, and by further leaning forward to glare at the audience194. Paulin reduces Sophocles’ Creon – with all of his potential complexity – by satirising him and setting him up as suspect.

The character of Creon is drawn through a composite of caricatured moments. At the end of his opening speech, Paulin has him flash a ‘stonewall smile’, and later when questioned by the Chorus Leader, ‘Sure no one in their right mind/ would choose to die’, Leaning over, in a soft growl ) Money, brother –/ dirty, dirty money –/ might lead them by the Creon also appears to lose his temper under pressure. After being informed by the Guard that someone has attempted to bury Polynices, Creon orders the Guard: (and half-imitating his accent when he gives the order) go you, dead quick, and find who done it, else I’ll tear the skin off o’the whole pack o’ye and roast you real slow [22]. As the play progresses and the pressure builds, Creon begins to sound more and more like a ‘hard man’, bordering on a hardline paramilitary. He abandons appeal to reason and turns instead to the assertion of will in

194 Paulin, Interview.

82 getting what he wants: ‘Bring out the dirty bitch/ and lets be rid of her’ [42]; and, I’ll make him hear her every scream, I’ll tear the shite from out of the pair of them! [42]. There is no doubt that, for Paulin, Creon is the villain of the play. Throughout, we hear characters denouncing Creon’s method of rule. His own son Haemon argues: ‘That’s no city/ where one man only/ holds all the power’ [40], while the wise man Tiresias tells Creon: ‘...you were too tough;/ the state is dead’ [51], and, after events have come to their inevitable conclusion: ‘Now so much blood’s been spilt/ there’s none can call a halt/ to those thrawn and jaggy hates/ deep-rooted in your state’ [54]. Again we are referred back to the violence of the Northern Irish civil conflict, the ‘deep- rooted’ hate in Ulster and to the Orange State which held ‘all the power’.

When Creon does concede, it is far too late. The death of Antigone has led to the death of both his son, Haemon, and his wife. We hear the word of the ‘man in the street’ represented by the character of the Messenger: ‘Creon... he’d everything you could want... But that’s all gone now. And why? I’ll tell you. He could neither bend nor listen. He held firm just that shade too long. There was no joy nor give in him ever’ [56]. Creon himself is filled with self-loathing: ...Wicked, cack-handed, that’s Creon. Made a right blood-mess, did Creon. And where’s the end of it? Ask Creon [62].

83 Paulin ultimately leaves responsibility with Creon, which he willingly takes, the suggestion being that the Orange State has similarly ‘made a right blood-mess’ and that they too should take responsibility.

Interestingly, here Paulin extends his representation of Creon, via a reference to Yeats. The Chorus tell Creon ‘It was too late/ you changed your mind' and he replies 'I changed it, but/ Aye, changed it utterly’ [60], recalling Yeats ‘Easter 1916’: ‘All changed, changed utterly:/ A terrible beauty is born’195. Creon thus absorbs Anglo-Irish guilt into his already crowded personality, crowded with English politicians and Presbyterian fundamentalists. He comes to represent all manifestations of English colonial power in Ireland – North and South.

The final speech of the play sees the Chorus Leader call for compromise [63], yet we are left with the feeling that Paulin means for only Creon (or the Ulster Protestant leadership) to compromise. Michael Billington, in a review for , believed that Paulin reduced Sophocles’ tragedy to ‘political melodrama’: ‘When Creon at the end cried “Pity me if you can, blind and thick” I simply felt an Ulster demagogue was receiving his come- 196. While Billington’s choice of phrase, ‘political melodrama’, could at times quite easily be applied to Northern Ireland, he wasn’t the only critic to express these sentiments. Fintan O’Toole also criticised Paulin’s bias against Creon, in a review for The Sunday Tribune: ‘Sophocles’ Creon is a tragic hero as well as a villain. By satirising him from the start, the drama of his conflict with Antigone is rendered impossible’197.

195 WB Yeats, ‘Easter 1916’, in The Poems, edited by Daniel Albright (London: JM Dent and Sons, 1990), 228-230. 196 Michael Billington, The Guardian, 5 October 1984. 197 Fintan O’Toole, The Sunday Tribune, 23 October 1984.

84 While Creon’s stubbornness is seen by Paulin as unreasonable inflexibility, Antigone’s stubbornness is presented instead as ‘wildness’. Ismene says early in the play to Antigone: ‘You’re talking wild’ [11]. Similarly the Chorus describes her just before she is shut away as: ‘Wild as ever/ in her speech she is’ [47]. Anthony Roche argues that Paulin presents Antigone as ‘wild’, not in the English sense (being set up against civilisation – barbarous and essentially negative), but ‘wild’ in the more positive Irish sense of: ‘exuberance, primitive earthiness, an integrity of body and soul that resists social integration or confinement within limits’198. Antigone’s stubbornness (or should we say ‘wildness’) is presented with integrity, an integrity which stems from intense loyalty to her family. Her adherence to this ‘natural law’ sets her up as a character identifiable with the young Bernadette Devlin or even the later hunger-strikers, with their loyalty to the ‘family’ of and ultimately to a united Ireland. Creon’s law is alien to Antigone yet imposed upon her, just as the unjust laws of the Orange State and subsequent laws from Westminster are alien to and have been imposed upon the Catholics of Northern Ireland.

Paulin destroys Creon’s validity by presenting him almost in the form of caricature. While Antigone was equally identified with Bernadette Devlin, we see none of the characteristic civil rights or Republican rhetoric being used, whereas Creon’s speeches are filled with the language of politics, both liberal ‘bureaucratic’ speech and fundamentalist ‘Paisleyisms’. Ultimately, the tragedy of the play suffers because of this reductive approach to Creon. Paulin has a particular didactic purpose which The Riot Act serves, but this didacticism robs the play of potential. The play becomes relevant, but

198 Anthony Roche, ‘Ireland’s “Antigones”: Tragedy North and South’, in Michael Keneally (ed.), Cultural Contexts and Literary Idioms in Contemporary Irish Literature (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1988), 225.

85 robbed of a meaning that it otherwise might have, as it merely perpetuates existing stereotypes.

Presented alongside The Riot Act was Protestant poet and critic ’s translation of Moliére’s The School for Husbands, High Time. The play follows the fate of two brothers as they deal in vastly different ways with two young women whom they have as wards. While one allows his ward freedom, the other is a harsh disciplinarian. Ultimately, the former approach proves successful. Like Paulin’s translation, Mahon presented contemporary dialect, what Lynda Henderson in her review of the double bill described as a ‘backwoods Ulster accent’199. Yet, unlike Paulin, Mahon doesn’t over-use dialect. Critical reception of this second half of Field Day’s double bill was kinder than it was to The Riot Act. Fintan O’Toole described the production as ‘a delight of lunacies, full of style and exuberance and 200, while Lynda Henderson praised Stephen Rea’s performance201.

In addition, critics across the board detected ‘a certain thematic 202 in the double bill, with Henderson arguing that the programme was ‘a fairly comprehensive indictment of both the temperament and the tendencies of the Ulster Protestant’203: The play is a debate between the relative merits of a defensive siege mentality and a more liberal openness to new ideas. Not unnaturally, the former, the poor old insecure Ulster Protestant again, not only loses what he has sought to protect by containment, but is an object of

199 Henderson, Radio review on ‘Kaleidoscope’. 200 O’Toole, Review in ‘Sunday Tribune’. 201 Henderson, Radio review on ‘Kaleidoscope’. 202 O’Toole, Review in ‘Sunday Tribune’. 203 Henderson, Radio review on ‘Kaleidoscope’.

86 universal derision. And I think that is the lesson of the play and that is the point that it makes in combination with the Antigone204. Cross-casting between the plays suggested parallels which served to emphasise these interpretations. Stephen Rea played the parts of both Creon and Tom (Mahon’s insecure ‘Ulster backwoodsman’), Veronica Quilligan played both Antigone and Isabel (Tom’s ward), Des McAleer played both Tiresias and Archie (Tom’s more liberal brother) while Hilary Reynolds played both Ismene and Liz (Archie’s ward). When interviewed, Tom Paulin confirmed Lynda Henderson’s interpretation while dismissing her qualifications: ‘I didn’t find her as a drama critic anything other than 205. He saw the double bill as reminiscent of ‘when I was at school and they’d put on road safety advertisements and you got the really awful and upsetting ones first and then you got the lighthearted ones’206. Yet Field Day’s double-bill, also like a successful road-safety advertisement, contained a reduced and simplistic message. In both plays any diversity in Ulster Protestantism is reduced by caricature and archetype. Creon and Tom end up alone because of their stubbornness, and any sympathy for their position is obscured by a slanted portrayal. Field Day creates an Ulster Protestant archetype, which is a composite of a number of stereotypes. Anglo-Irish guilt, English coloniser, evangelist and extreme loyalist all merge to form a singular Ulster Protestant identity which is backward, insecure, irrational and therefore irrelevant.

204 Henderson, Radio review on ‘Kaleidoscope’. 205 Paulin, Interview. 206 Ibid.

87 The Second Set of Pamphlets - the caricatured Ulster Protestant

This Ulster Protestant archetype is also to be found in Field Day’s second set of pamphlets207, which aimed to examine myths of identity and history. Ulster Protestant identity is actively created, and, through caricature, sits on the periphery, dismissed and removed from analysis. We see this use of caricature operating in Seamus Deane’s pamphlet, Heroic styles: The Tradition of an Idea , which followed his earlier effort by reducing the terms of the debate down to an outdated binary. The binary this time is not ‘barbarians’ and ‘civilians', but instead a ‘romantic’ mode of reading versus a ‘modern, pluralistic’ mode, represented respectively by Yeats and Joyce. Deane makes the leap from early twentieth century Ireland to contemporary Northern Ireland by arguing that the current conflict is ‘stylistic’, that it is ‘a crisis of language’ [46]. The two communities in the North have ‘become stereotyped into their roles of oppressor and victim’ [54]. He defines these ‘roles’ or self-images with characteristic reduction. While the Protestant self- image is ‘bound up with the idea of liberty and with the image of garrison’ and with the lesser known ‘support images’ of ‘the elite people... and of the lost tribe’, Catholic self-image in opposition is ‘expressed in terms of the oppressed, the disowned... the besieger who attempts to break down the wall of prejudice which calls itself liberty’ [53-4].

Following this, each community seeks leadership which will express its self- image. It is here we come to Deane’s primary view of the Protestant community, whose ‘leader’ Ian Paisley ‘is the most remarkable incarnation of the communal spirit of Unionism’: ‘In him, violence, a trumpery

207 As published in Ireland’s Field Day, 43-105. All references from the pamphlets will be given in the text.

88 evangelicalism, anti-popery and a craven adulation of the ‘British’ way of life are soldered together in a populist return to the first principles of “Ulsterness”’ [55]. Against such leadership of ‘trumpery evangelicalism’ and Deane places the Catholic community where ‘John Hume acts as the minority’s agent of rational demystification and the IRA as its agency of millennial revenge’ [55]. He allows for more complexity here, not cheapening Catholic leadership with flowery and derogatory adjectives. Deane denies Protestant diversity by offering up no moderates, only extreme Loyalists. While Catholic identity is allowed plurality, Protestant identity is solely embodied through the figure of Ian Paisley.

The stereotypes Deane provides give expression to his obvious contempt for Ulster Protestant culture. His treatment of Ulster Protestant identity involves a double reduction. Firstly, by adhering to his simplistic binary, he equates Ulster Protestantism with Anglo-Irish culture, implicitly denying the former a unique existence. Deane largely fails to look further forward than Joyce in searching for Irish ‘styles’ or modes of thought, much to the detriment of his argument. This in part was also a failure with the second pamphlet of this series, Richard Kearney’s Myth and Motherland208. Secondly, any distinct identity that he does allow is reduced down to extreme and irrational loyalism. Contemporary Ulster Protestant identity when it does appear is reduced down to Paisleyesque ‘Ulsterness’.

208 Kearney similarly discerns two 'opposing tendencies' [69], Yeats as mythologiser and Beckett, Flann O’Brien and Joyce as demythologisers, or, to put it another way, the distinction between piety and secularity, or between mythos and logos. Again looking no further than the Irish Revival and perceived responses to it, and thereby again exposing the inherent literary conservatism of the Field Day enterprise, Kearney calls for a re-writing: ‘If we need to demythologise, we also need to remythologise. It is our ethical duty therefore to use our powers of logos to discriminate between the authentic and inauthentic uses to which mythos is put in our culture. For if myth is often a response to repression, it can become repressive in its own right' [79]. Yet he provides no ‘plan of action’, and his argument remains descriptive to the end.

89 Declan Kiberd’s Anglo-Irish Attitudes, the third pamphlet of the series, made a similar historical leap and reductive equation to that of Deane, but this time bridging a larger gap. Kiberd begins his pamphlet with an analysis of the Victorian penchant for antithesis and its application to the relationship between Irish and English, particularly illustrated through the life and works of . He then discusses the English fascination with ‘ its complement and its foil. At this point he leaps into the late twentieth century (via an assertion that ‘in modern Ulster men’s emotions have been ruled not so much by culture as by cash’ [101]) and to his argument that British liberals need to ‘cure themselves of their longstanding fixation [with] Irish Nationalism’ [103] and move instead to the real issue, ending the pamphlet with a call for his aforementioned liberals to ‘apply themselves to a study of Ulster Unionism’ [103] and ask the question: ‘“What kind of people are we supporting in Ulster?”’ [104].

In the course of covering such a remarkable amount of political and cultural history, Kiberd reduces Ulster Protestant culture down to a ‘curious blend of resolution and hysteria, of barbarous vulgarity and boot-faced sobriety’ [100]. More damaging, however, than his ethnic stereotyping is the assumption that he makes via his argument that it is ‘cash’ rather than culture that has shaped identity in the North. By looking to economic advantage as the explanation for Unionist beliefs, Kiberd labels Protestant identity as false consciousness and denies Ulster Protestantism a cultural identity. The Ulster Protestant identity which emerges from this set of pamphlets is similar to that which was embodied in Tom Paulin’s Creon and Derek Mahon’s Tom. Through caricature, this identity is denied diversity and reductively characterised by insecurity and irrationality. Not surprisingly, this second set raised critical hackles. While Joe McMinn, a Field Day defender,

90 reviewed it as ‘radical; revisionist and demystifying in purpose’209, consensus amongst revisionist critics was that the pamphlets were ‘politics 210. Field Day constructed itself as a medium for the ‘fifth province’, however to remain above sectarianism necessitated a deeper and more sophisticated analysis of the Protestant voice.

1985 to 1987 – Inclusion

The Third Set of Pamphlets – Protestant Voices

By the end of the second set of pamphlets, calls were being made from many quarters for a series that would explicitly and honestly deal with the issue of Protestant identity, written by people who were intrinsically part of that community. As Damian Gorman put it: ‘A dash of pure orange in the 211. Terence Brown similarly argued: ‘Isn’t it time Field Day really got to grips with Northern Protestantism?’212. Brown was soon enlisted by Field Day to write the first article in a third set of pamphlets representing Field Day’s first real attempt to give fuller representation to Ulster Protestantism. Published in 1985213, these three pamphlets were a major excursion into the question of Ulster Protestant identity. They were a significant departure from Field Day’s adherence to colonial frameworks, diversifying the cultural identity of Ulster Protestantism beyond the label ‘British’.

209 Joe McMinn, ‘Cultural Politics and the Ulster Crisis’, Cencrastus, June/August 1986, 39. 210 John Wilson Foster, ‘ The Critical Condition of Ulster’, in Colonial Consequences: Essays in Irish Literature and Culture (Dublin: The Lilliput Press, 1991), 222. 211 Damian Gorman, ‘Send in the Prods’, Belfast Review, September 1984. 212 Terence Brown, ‘Having A Field Day’, Irish Press, 14 July 1984. 213 As published in pamphlet style (Derry: Field Day Publishing, 1985). All references from the pamphlets will be given in the text.

91 Terence Brown’s The Whole Protestant Community: The Making of a Historical Myth aims to break down the myth of a unified Protestant history and therefore, by extension, a unified Protestant identity. He begins with a description of the paucity of the Protestant historical imagination, where the Protestant ‘historical self-vision is of endless repetition of repelled assaults, without hope of absolute finality or fundamental change in their relationship to their surrounding and surrounded neighbours’ [8]. Brown instead argues for a recognition of the diversity of Protestant history, basing his argument around an examination of the work of a series of Presbyterian historians, and bringing to the reader’s attention aspects of Presbyterian history which contradict and ultimately subvert official Unionist history. He calls for Ulster Protestants to remember these complexities, arguing that: A people who have known resistance as well as dissent, rebellion, dispute, religious enthusiasm in the midst of rural and urban deprivation, have an interesting story to tell themselves – one of essential homelessness, dependency, anxiety, obdurate fanaticising, sacrifices in the name of liberty, villainous political opportunism, moments of idealistic aspiration [20]. Such a description of the Ulster Protestant experience is a stark contrast to the assumed Protestant identity found in the pamphlets of Seamus Deane and Declan Kiberd.

Brown does complicate the Ulster Protestant identity through his examination of the richness of the Protestant historical imagination, and in this his work represents a departure from the Field Day norm. However, his final argument takes us back to Field Day’s Nationalist agenda. Brown argues that it is through the telling of this diverse history that the Protestant community ‘may come to realise at last where they are most at home and

92 with whom they share that home’ [20]. His underlying assumption is that ‘home’ can only be defined through Nationalism. Brown’s dispossessed Protestants can only find belonging within a united Republic of Ireland.

We see the same process at work in the second pamphlet of the set, Marianne Elliott’s Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty. Elliott begins by examining the delicate, ‘contractual’ relationship between Ulster Loyalists and Britain and argues that behind anti-popery and bigotry there exists a strong and dynamic libertarianism, one which can be observed throughout the history of northern Presbyterianism. Where her approach follows that of Brown is in the potential that she sees in these Protestant ideas of liberty. Elliott argues for the possibility of a new ‘1798’ [20], with the Protestant community leading the way to a more pluralistic, united Republic of Ireland. By calling for a secular republic not unlike that described by Tom Paulin214, these two pamphlets essentially deny the validity of the Unionist viewpoint. Brown and Elliott provide a more diverse picture of Protestant identity than is characteristic for Field Day, however the basis of their argument lies in an essentially Republican position. These expressions of Republican sentiment laid them open to accusations of exclusiveness, their perceived argument being that the only logical position for Ulster Protestants to take is to accept their role in a United Ireland. But this does seem to be what they are saying. They are important because of their portrait of the diversity of Protestant identity in the North, but both ultimately fall short of the mark in the positing of an anachronism as the Protestant ideal. The only ‘true’ Ulster Protestant identity lies in Presbyterian radicalism and republicanism, bringing us again to the idea of a singular identity, rather than a plurality and diversity of identities.

214 See page 73.

93 Robert McCartney’s pamphlet, Liberty and Authority in Ireland, in contrast to Brown and Elliott, did represent the Unionist viewpoint. An Official Unionist, McCartney takes what was for Field Day a more radical, revisionist approach to the problems of Northern Ireland, essentially calling for a more pluralist Republic as the precondition to any attempt at unification215. He argues that the authority of the State and Church in the South has developed to such an extent as to completely overwhelm the individual and defends Protestant fears of ‘Rome Rule’: ‘Some would argue that over a period of sixty years Nationalism as institutionalised in the Republic of Ireland has proved the Unionist suspicion that Home Rule was Rome Rule’ [8]. Quoting Bishop Cathal Daly’s attempt to placate Northern Protestants - 'What we do here and now declare and declare with emphasis, is that we would raise our voices to resist any constitutional proposal which might infringe or might imperil the civil and religious rights and liberties cherished by northern Protestants’ – McCartney asks: ‘Are Northern Protestants to be allowed contraception, divorce, abortion in limited circumstances, but these rights are not to be available to Southern Protestants or Catholics living anywhere in a united Ireland?’ [17]. He places equal responsibility for reconciliation with the Republic, arguing that they need to persuade Protestants that they will not lose their liberty in a united Ireland. However, he concludes with the opinion that the only true liberty for Northern Protestants comes from their being a part of the United Kingdom.

McCartney is the only representative of genuine Unionist aspirations in this series. His views position him somewhere in between the Field Day- created Paisleyesque Ulster Protestant and the Protestant Republican. He thus sits outside Field Day’s acceptable definitions of Ulster Protestant identity and

215 Interestingly, McCartney was a nay-sayer to the Good Friday Peace Agreement of April 1998, which is ironic given that the Agreement involved a commitment to pluralism on the part of the Republic.

94 this is where his significance lies. McCartney’s viewpoint seems out of place amongst the overt Nationalism of the Field Day enterprise and the company should be praised for his inclusion. By expressing a rational and secular Unionist viewpoint, his pamphlet broadens Field Day’s analysis of Ulster Protestant identity.

Pentecost – Protestant imaginative territory

Following the lead of this third series of pamphlets, Field Day Theatre Company in 1987 produced Stewart Parker’s Pentecost, which is the only work in the company’s thirteen year theatrical history that actually made an attempt to come to some understanding of the Ulster Protestant identity. The action takes place in an almost derelict house in the middle of a Belfast ‘-spot’. The house once belonged to the very Protestant Lily, whose recent death has transferred ownership to her great-nephew Lenny. It is Lenny’s estranged wife Marian who decides to take over the house and as the narrative progresses, she is joined by Lenny, his friend Peter returned from England, her friend Ruth in hiding from her abusive husband, and the ghost of Lily.

Parker quickly establishes the idea of the house as a refuge for his five characters, filling the opening scenes of the play with images of the contrast between outside and inside, sanctuary and wilderness. The internal and private action of the play takes place in the context of the very public 1974 Ulster Worker’s Council Strike216. However, despite its temporal location

216 The UWC Strike saw the province virtually shut down by Loyalist political extremists and paramilitaries in protest over the Sunningdale Agreement which proposed a power-sharing executive and a Council of Ireland. Essentially the agreement aimed to give more say to the Nationalist community, the prospect of which produced a unity of opposition which the Loyalist community had not seen since the days of Carson and the 1912 Ulster Covenant. The British Government were eventually forced to give in and disband the Agreement.

95 during one of Northern Ireland’s most significant political crises, Pentecost is a deeply personal play. Its realism sharply distinguishes it from Parker’s other works, which, as we shall see in the following chapter, subvert and play with theatrical form.

In his introduction to the published version of the play, Parker describes its form as ‘heightened realism’217, and his initial stage setting is almost obsessive in its detail, providing us with a vivid picture of Lily’s life: The kitchen... is cluttered, almost suffocated, with the furnishings and bric-a-brac of the first half of the century, all the original fixtures and fittings still being in place. But in spite of now being shabby, musty, threadbare, it has all clearly been the object of a desperate, lifelong struggle for cleanliness, tidiness, orderliness – godliness218. While initially Marian wants to preserve the house as historical artefact, she gradually comes to see this act as one of stasis. Ultimately, she decides to let the house be lived in and opened up to air and light, undoubtedly a reference to the need to move forward in the North, beyond restricting sectarian frameworks.

The ghost of Lily becomes the embodiment of Northern Irish Protestantism in the twentieth century for Marian and the audience. She was born in 1900 and her presence forces the Catholic Marian into a confrontation with the past and indeed a confrontation with the darker elements of Protestant culture. When she is first introduced to Marian and the audience, Lily

217 Stewart Parker, ‘Introduction’, in Three plays for Ireland: Northern Star, Heavenly Bodies, Pentecost (London: Oberon Books, 1989), 10. 218 Stewart Parker, ‘Pentecost’, in Three Plays for Ireland, 147. All further references will be provided in the text.

96 appears as a bigoted old working class woman. She describes the night when she and her husband were burned out of their house by Catholic neighbours and holds nothing but contempt for people she describes as ‘ savages’ [180]. This bigotry is initially directed towards Marian. Lily is horrified at the suggestion that Marian should have a child when she doesn’t: 'Why would he bless the fruit of your womb more than mine.... are there not enough runty litters running the streets, whelped by your kind, reared with a half-brick in their fists, and the backsides hanging out of their trousers?' [180]. However, a relationship develops between the two women as the play progresses. Just as Lily forces Marian to face the tribal and atavistic elements in the North, so Marian forces Lily into a confrontation with her past. As Marian tells Lily during their second encounter: ‘ haunting me, don’t you. But you see it’s me that’s actually haunting you. I’m not going to go away... So you might as well give me your blessing and make your peace with me' [180].

Beneath Lily’s stubborn veneer lies a secret. We discover that her husband was impotent after returning from the Battle of the Somme and that a British lodger fathered her only child. Faced with scandal, Lily abandoned her baby on the steps of a local church. Her life since has been a struggle to suppress emotion: I’ve suffered every living hour in this house where the very walls and doors cry out against me... until I was all consumed by my own wickedness, on the inside, nothing left but the shell of me, for appearance’s sake... still and all. At least I never let myself down – never cracked. Never surrendered. Not one inch [196]. This echo of the Unionist cry, ‘No Surrender’ and ‘Not an inch’, has served to smother Lily’s sense of abandonment and deep depression. In this Parker

97 reflects upon the larger Ulster Protestant community, suggesting an identity which goes beyond rhetoric and towards complexity.

Parker similarly makes use of his other two Protestant characters, Ruth and Peter, to comment on the broader question of Ulster Protestant identity. This comes particularly to the fore in Act Two, Scene Four, when the two are listening to the infamous speech on the radio, in which he described Protestant strikers as ‘sponging on Westminster and British democracy’ and ‘then systematically assault[ 3]. Ruth’s reaction to Wilson’s comments is highly defensive – she instinctively becomes one of her ‘tribe’. In contrast, Peter, the outsider who has been living in England since the Troubles began (the familiar ‘exile’ figure, which we will encounter in other plays discussed in this thesis), rejects his community’s call to unity, and attempts to reason with Ruth: Can you not see, this whole tribe, so-called Protestants, we both of us grew up in it... they’ve been marching away with the lambegs blattering and the banners flying straight up a dead-end one-way blind alley, self-destroying, the head’s eating the tail now, it’s a lingering tribal suicide going on out there, there was no need for any of it, they held all the cards, they only needed to be marginally generous [184]. Peter’s disengagement does not go without comment in the play. He himself feels a sense of being trapped when he is in Ulster, experiencing ‘Exilephilia... The desperate, nagging pain of longing to be far, far away’ [186]. Ruth believes that this self-imposed distance takes away his right to speak. Her criticisms point to the conflict between action and disengagement. Does geographical distance lead to emotional distance? And does that then lead to a better and broader understanding of the conflict? Parker himself chose to live away from the North for most of his

98 career, as do Christina Reid, Ron Hutchinson, Bill Morrison, and Graham Reid.

The end of the strike prompts widespread Loyalist celebration, and the audience sees the ‘glimmering of distant bonfires in the night sky above the yard’ and hears ‘the faint sounds of an Orange band playing and of a mob celebrating’ [198]. The UWC strike actually ended on Pentecost Sunday, not an accidental coincidence on Parker’s part. Nicholas Kent, artistic director of London’s Tricycle Theatre Company and director of the play’s first London production, argues that the structure of the play is informed by Pentecostal symbols: Five characters, five scenes; Marian the mother of Christopher, the child who had died five years before; Peter, the rock on which the Church was founded; and the characters all thirty-three, the age of Christ crucified. Everywhere the fives of Pentecost and the threes of the Trinity served as a Christian metaphor for family and friends torn apart by Christian sectarian hatred219. In this use of a unifying metaphor, Parker followed on from his earlier work, a strategy particularly evident in Spokesong (1975) which sees the history of the bicycle become a metaphor for the North220. His choice of a religious metaphor here reflects the deeply personal tone of the play.

Throughout the play – through the internal struggles of Lily, the sexual relationship between Peter and Ruth and through Lenny’s surreal tale of watching naked nuns swimming at a beach [203-4] – we see evangelical imagery of the juxtaposition of mind and body, spirituality and sexuality.

219 Nicholas Kent, ‘A Wonderfully Brave Ending’, Fortnight, Special Supplement, September 1989, XI. 220 For further discussion of Spokesong see Chapter Two of this thesis.

99 Parker’s final message is one of internal redemption, change from within not without. He advocates, through the relationship between Marian and Lily, a positive and creative use of the past, one which will serve to destroy stifling stereotypes and allow a move into the future. The final moments of the play act as a kind of revelation, with Marian declaring that she wants ‘to live now’, that she wants ‘this house to live’ [208]. As she does this, the sky above the visible backyard has been growing light. Lenny begins to play ‘Just a Closer Walk With Thee’ on his trombone, Ruth reads aloud from the Bible, describing the day of Pentecost from the Acts of the Apostles, and Peter begins to play his banjo. Parker’s final instructions are for Ruth to ‘open the As the music swells, the lights fade, very slowly, to blackout’ [208].

These final moments are discordant and almost dripping in sentimentality, as Parker shifts from ‘heightened realism’, into overt spirituality and didacticism. However they are arguably characteristic of Parker’s theatrical approach, recalling his earlier work Spokesong and its overtly escapist ending. It seems almost as though he is reluctant to provide a practical answer to the questions that have been posed throughout the play. The only solution is to be found within the individual and the imagination, yet the potential power of Parker’s message is lessened by being given in a framework of overt spirituality. It is a focus on the personal revelation and redemption of Marian, Lenny, Ruth and Peter that the play leads up to and these multiple layers of meaning, in their move away from realism, only serve to remove the audience from these five characters.

Pentecost, like the third pamphlet series which preceded it, was an attempt by Field Day at inclusiveness. The final scene of Parker’s play, calling for internal redemption, reflects the company’s broader search for a fifth

100 province requiring ‘that each person discover it for himself within himself’221. Parker presents us with a diversity of Ulster Protestant identities through Lily, Ruth and Peter, who aren’t reduced down to Paisleyesque caricature. Yet all three are distanced from their community in some way. Lily is separated by time as a representative of an older generation, Peter has exiled himself to England, and Ruth is hiding from her RUC policeman husband. The Loyalist community remains ‘outside’ Marian’s house and ‘outside’ our comprehension. It intrudes upon stage action as the sound of Loyalist songs, the sound of the mob, the lights from bonfires or mediated through the characters. Like Brown and Elliott’s pamphlets, Pentecost is only prepared to examine part of Ulster Protestant culture, leaving extremes completely unrepresented. To mount a production of a play which doesn’t give voice to Loyalism is, in itself, quite reasonable. But in the context of the Field Day enterprise as a whole, Parker’s play emphasises the company’s reluctance to deal with anything other than acceptable Protestantism, that being secular Protestant Republicanism, or at a stretch moderate Unionism, a position adopted by Robert McCartney.

1998 to 1991 – Irrelevance

Making History – returning to familiar territory

Following this brief period of flirtation with more inclusive and balanced representations of the North, Field Day returned to its origins, revisiting the idea of the crisis in Northern Ireland as a colonial one. Again, as a result of this adherence to a simple binary (Irish versus English), the question of the

221 Hederman, ‘Poetry and the Fifth Province’.

101 Northern Irish majority became irrelevant, and Ulster Protestant identity became frequently subject to reductive portrayal.

This is particularly evident in Brian Friel’s Making History, premiered by Field Day in 1988. It was a characteristic Field Day play for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is concerned with history and myth. The play returned to questions of historical truth which had arisen with Translations in 1980. The notion of the inter-relationship between history and fiction is one of Friel’s major concerns in the play, which centres around Hugh O’Neill, an Ulster Chieftain, tracing his life from the point of his marriage to Mabel Bagenal (one of the ‘New English’, daughter of the planter Hugh Bagenal), through the , to his subsequent exile in Rome. The play’s final scenes involve the Archbishop of Lombard’s attempt to write a ‘history’ of O’Neill. While O’Neill wants Lombard to ‘tell them the whole truth’222, Lombard rejects even the notion of a ‘whole truth’. His aim is instead to provide an acceptable narrative, arguing that: 'People think they just want to know the facts; they think they believe in some sort of empirical truth, but what they really want is a story’ [66].

Critical response to the play clearly illustrates the uneasy relationship that had developed between Field Day plays and pamphlets by the late 1980s. Making History’s complex intellectual content led to a rather dry narrative, and reviewers and academics widely saw it as a problematic play, lacking in animation. Michael Billington, reviewing the London production which followed an Irish tour, complained that ‘at a time when there is a keen debate going on amongst scholars between documentary and aesthetic approaches to history, one wishes that some of that passion had invaded Mr Friel’s play’223

222 Brian Friel, Making History (London: Faber, 1989), 66. All subsequent references from the play will be given in the text. 223 Michael Billington, The Guardian, 7 December 1988.

102 and similarly, Jim Wiley wished that Friel had ‘found a more animated 224 of illustrating his argument. Making History was seen as supporting the critical position of the company. Fintan O’Toole argued that the play ‘had the air of being written for the company, dealing, almost in pamphlet style, with the precise questions of language, identity and narrative which the enterprise had come to be about’225. However, in an interesting subversion of this issue, Christopher Murray viewed Making History as Friel’s expression of frustration arguing that the play ‘might well be read as... [being] about a leader surrounded by ideologues inhibiting the full expression of his personality’ and that after the publication of the first series of pamphlets, the company’s critical wing ‘sidelined 226. By this stage in the company’s history, the publishing enterprise was well established, with all five series of pamphlets already published and the idea of an anthology floating around. The blatantly political side of Field Day’s publishing wing could not but influence the theatrical productions which it annually presented. The two enterprises were viewed together and increasingly the politics of the pamphlets intruded upon the productions. More significantly, the play also followed the company’s critical wing through its depiction of Ulster Protestant settlers.

Unlike Tom Paulin’s Creon and Terry Eagleton’s Carson (who will be discussed below), Brian Friel’s (Protestant) Mabel is portrayed with complexity and is arguably the most sympathetically presented of all of the play’s characters (perhaps with the exception of Hugh O’Neill’s offsider Harry). However, the same cannot be said for her family. They are presented as an archetypal settler/planter family, with an antagonistic attitude towards the native population, rather one-dimensionally realised by Friel. While Hugh O’Donnell’s father refers to Mabel’s father as ‘the Butcher

224 Jim Wiley, The Listener, 15 December 1988. 225 O’Toole, ‘Dissension in the Fifth Province’. 226 Murray, Twentieth Century Irish Drama, 214.

103 Bagenal’ and vividly describes his hideously violent activities, Friel is subtle enough to convey that this is a mediated description, O’Donnell is enemy.

However, the same excuse cannot be made for Friel’s presentation of Mabel’s sister Mary, whom we actually meet. Mary represents the settler class, with all of its inherent superiority. She warns Mary that the native Gaelic population are not to be trusted, that they ‘are not civilised’ [24]. She believes that Hugh’s ‘people are doomed... because their way of life is doomed... because civility is God’s way, Mabel, and because superstition must yield before reason. You know in your heart what I’m saying is true’ [24]. Friel here attempts to challenge simplistic binaries, by pointing to the ludicrousness of Mary’s oppositions between Irish and English, superstition and reason, and civility and barbarousness, yet his efforts are undermined by the fact that he dismisses the integrity and seriousness of the Ulster Protestant community. Like Tom Paulin’s Creon and Derek Mahon’s Tom, Friel’s planters are an insecure lot, clinging on to a mistaken notion of superiority, which will ultimately be their downfall. Their struggle is seen as futile when placed up against the charisma and legitimacy of characters the like of Antigone and Hugh O’Neill. They become the Other in what is a very one-sided drama.

An Outside Perspective - the Fifth Set of Pamphlets

Up to this point, Field Day had enlisted only Northern Irish critics or critics from the Republic to write plays or pamphlets. But with its fifth and final set of pamphlets the company took a new approach in inviting foreign critics to deal with the question of Ireland and the Northern Irish conflict. This set of pamphlets followed the colonial framework of Field Day’s previous work.

104 Each of the three pamphlets in the set – by Terry Eagleton, Fredric Jameson and Edward Said – was written within a framework of post-colonial theory. Fredric Jameson clearly summed up this perspective by arguing that Ireland should be viewed as ‘a national situation which reproduces the appearance of First World social reality and social relationships – perhaps through the coincidence of its language with the imperial language – but whose underlying structure is in fact much closer to that of the Third World or of colonised daily life’ [19]. Field Day’s aim was to rewrite and re-remember Ireland. By engaging outside critics, the company was both broadening perspectives on Irish affairs and ‘educating’ those critics and audiences from abroad. Declan Kiberd pointed to this latter goal when he described Edward Said sitting up ‘until 3am on the night before his Sligo lecture taking copious notes from an Irish Times reporter on the problems facing the Irish left’227. Yet Kiberd’s defence of Said more importantly illustrates the issue of focus. Said’s briefing on the problems facing the Irish left along with his pamphlet, entitled Yeats and Decolonisation, have far more to say about the Republic than they do about the North. Similarly, while Edna Longley assumed a rather petty tone when she argued that ‘the theorists in question could have been productively exposed to data about Ireland since the era of Yeats and Joyce’228, her point was nonetheless valid. This final set of pamphlets served to confirm what Field Day’s critics had suspected all along, that the company was coming from an inherently Northern Nationalist base. This choice of a post-colonial framework inevitably put Ulster Protestants again in the background of the Field Day critical enterprise. Declan Kiberd (former pamphleteer himself) defended Eagleton, Jameson and Said arguing that: ‘Unlike the more usual type of “foreign expert” invited in by the native

227 Declan Kiberd, ‘The Setting of the Free State Sun’, The Irish Times, 21 January 1989. 228 Edna Longley, ‘Introduction: Revising “Irish Literature”’ in The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books, 1994), 30.

105 middle-class to do for its members what they cannot do for themselves, these men have been more concerned to learn than to preach’229. However, as Longley points out, both Said and Eagleton ‘refer confidently to “the ”, a phrase which tacitly assimilates or expels Ulster Protestants’230. While Longley’s constant criticisms by this stage took on a rather repetitive tone, so did Field Day’s continual neglect of the Northern Irish majority. Again the crisis is reduced down to the opposition between ‘coloniser’ and ‘colonised’, ‘English’ and ‘Irish’. These issues were, and are, becoming increasingly irrelevant as Ireland secularises and moves confidently towards Europe. But, more importantly, such simple binaries ignored the complexities of the situation in the North, the biggest complicating factor of which is the question of Ulster Protestant identity.

Saint Oscar – A Pamphlet Play

The pamphlets raised the question of external perceptions of the Northern Irish situation. This issue also lay at the heart of Terry Eagleton’s subsequent play for Field Day about the life of Oscar Wilde, Saint Oscar, premiered in 1989. The various faces of Wilde, for Eagleton, provided a useful metaphor for the dilemma of the colonial Irish. Yet again, what the play gives an audience is a post-colonial reading of the Northern Irish situation. In his introduction to the play, Eagleton provides us with fairly superficial, yet highly charged, left-wing rhetoric: Reflections on the past are always at some level meditations on the present... Oscar Wilde’s treatment at the hands of a brutal, arrogant British Establishment is being acted out once more in Ireland today, with

229 Kiberd, ‘The Setting of the Free State Sun’. 230 Edna Longley, ‘Hoisting the Flag over Holy Ground’, The Irish Times, 21 January 1989.

106 brutality of a different kind... I try in this play, then, to summon [his] shade back to our side when we are in urgent need of him, confident in the knowledge that whatever indignities a dispossessed people may have to endure, small nations will not rest until they are free231. Eagleton reads Ireland as ‘an unfree “nation” enchained by Protestant 232. His colonial framework implies that the only relevant conflict on the island of Ireland is that between Irish and English, ignoring the modern, increasingly secular face of both the Republic and the North. Colm Tóibín argued against Eagleton’s focus on Wilde’s ‘Irishness rather than his homosexuality’ pointing out that the play toured a Republic of Ireland where the laws which put Wilde in gaol were still on the statute books, and where matters like the power of the Catholic Church, the rights of women, the complexity of the Irish identity and the failure of the economic system were more pressing than the single and simple Irish-English question on the Field Day agenda233. In both Field Day and Eagleton’s preoccupation with the colonial conflict, they show themselves up to be typically Northern Nationalists. Throughout this latter period of Field Day’s work, Tóibín would emerge as representative of a new generation of cultural and literary critics in Ireland who exposed the inherent reductiveness of Field Day’s cultural politics. The company’s enterprise was seen as increasingly irrelevant in the face of a growing recognition of Irish and Northern Irish diversity and plurality.

231 Terry Eagleton, ‘Foreword’, Saint Oscar (Derry: Field Day, 1989), xi-xii. 232 Shaun Richards, ‘Field Day’s fifth province: avenue or impasse? Eamonn Hughes (ed.), Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 147. 233 Colm Tóibín, ‘On the Literary Wing’, Times Literary Supplement, 28 April 1995.

107 Eagleton’s attitude towards his Irish audiences is at times patronising, as he assumes the role of an English intellectual giving his Irish pupils a history lesson through the figure of Oscar Wilde. This didacticism did not go unnoticed by critics and academics. Richard Bradford commented on the crudely concealed politics of the play: So, members of the audience, you are to be subjected to the same rhetorical posturings that you find in the critical/Political tract, but the process will be almost subliminal; it will take place while you’re enjoying yourself.... the strategy of quietly injecting social issues into the uproarious good humour of the text is rather insulting234. In addition, Edna Longley argued that: ‘Independent Ireland (or even the other bit) hardly wants to hear his implied reassurances in Saint Oscar that it is not populated by “hairy-kneed Gaels”, “Feckless Micks”...[or] “shite shovelling peasants”’235. In defending Eagleton’s earlier pamphlet – Nationalism: Irony and Commitment – Declan Kiberd argued that its author was representative of ‘radical English intellectuals... [who] try to restore a lost Irish self-respect. They stand up for the rights of Irish victims of injustice long after those victims appear to have been abandoned by our own governing élite’236. The very notion of an English intellectual, who by his own terms is a member of the colonising culture (despite his much emphasised Irish heritage), restoring to the colonised a sense of ‘self-respect’, seems absurd. It contradicts Field Day’s founding ethos, as stated by Brian Friel in 1980: ‘We are talking to ourselves as we must and if we are overheard in

234 Richard Bradford in ‘Saint Oscar’, Theatre Ireland, 19 (1989), 10. 235 Edna Longley, 'The Old Myth of Ireland’, Times Literary Supplement, 6 October 1989. 236 Kiberd, ‘The Setting of the Free State Sun’.

108 America, or England, so much the better’237. Instead of the Irish ‘periphery’ asserting itself, here it was allowing itself to be defined by the centre.

However, in addition to its questionable cultural politics, the play is not particularly well-crafted and comes across as a rather uninteresting and self- indulgent monologue, without much dramatic interest. Anthony Roche argues that Saint Oscar ‘proved an unwise crossing of the lines between those who wrote the pamphlets and those who wrote the plays’238. Eagleton’s colonial framework forms the basis for his reductive and caricatured portrayal of Edward Carson, and, by extension, Ulster Protestant identity. In his final scene, the stage directions read: ‘Lights up on CHORUS, standing around CARSON in paramilitary uniform, head masks with eye-holes. Drums, union jacks. Drum roll’239. Carson here represents not just Official Unionism, but extreme, paramilitary Loyalism. Protestant equals militarism. These directions, not surprisingly, were abandoned for the premiere of the play in Derry due to issues of political sensitivity. However, this is not where the caricaturing ends. Carson’s final speech invokes fanatical biblical imagery highly reminiscent of the Reverend Ian Paisley, as he stands ‘dwarfed by the sheer pressure of the scene – a giant 240: ‘We stand here in darkness, encircled by many foes, surrendered in faith to the God of Israel our deliverer. Lord, behold the sons of Ulster... Have mercy on our weakness, let us feel the sweat of your palm clasped in ours’ [63] and his final words, accompanied by a drum roll, are, of course – ‘No surrender’ [63].

237 Brian Friel, in an interview with Paddy Agnew, ‘Talking to Ourselves’, Magill, December 1980, 60. 238 Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama, 244. 239 Eagleton, Saint Oscar, 62. All subsequent references from the play will be given in the text. 240 Paul Hadfield in ‘Saint Oscar’, Theatre Ireland, 19 (1989), 11.

109 The image of the visually overwhelming the figure of Carson can be read as a metaphor for Eagleton’s (and by extension Field Day’s) view of Ulster Protestant identity. The play ignores the self-determination of Carson’s followers, endowing them with false consciousness courtesy of the English. In the programme notes to Saint Oscar’s first production, Tom Paulin quotes from a speech given by Edward Carson in the House of Lords after the signing of the Anglo-Irish treaty in December 1921, in which he attacked the Treaty, as well as Sinn Fein and the British government: ‘I was in earnest. I was not playing politics. I believed all this... What a fool I was. I was only a puppet, and so was Ulster, and so was Ireland, in the political game that was to get the Conservative party into power’. Paulin adds: Carson and his fellow-Unionists were puppets dangled by the Conservative Party. Beyond Wilde’s tragedy stands the tragic delusion of Carson and his followers and their inheritors today... Long after Wilde’s downfall, Carson came to understand that he and his fellow Unionists could never be fully British241. Paulin’s denigration of Unionist aspiration prefigures Eagleton’s treatment of Carson. Any seriousness or genuineness in Carson’s attitude is subverted by the lack of respect which Eagleton has him show to the people he is supposed to be representing: CARSON: We stand here in darkness, besieged by many enemies, surrendered in faith to the God of Israel our deliverer... That’s what I tell the people. WILDE: And you don’t believe a word of it. CARSON: Maybe not. But I know what the people need, I know the truth they need [62], and,

241 Tom Paulin, ‘Playing with Politics’, programme note for the Field Day production of Saint Oscar (1989).

110 WILDE: So you hobnob with a bunch of thugs in orange sashes chanting ‘Kick the Pope’. It’s unworthy of you, Ned... CARSON: Oh yes, I can’t stand the stink of them. But they believe in order. There’s no meaning without order. Maybe there’s no meaning anyway, but unless we have order we’ll never find out [62-3]. Carson occupies a significant place in Unionist and Loyalist history and mythology. What Paulin and Eagleton aim to do is not so much re-remember this aspect of Unionist history, as completely demolish accepted views of Carson. In the process they denigrate and belittle Unionist aspiration.

Field Day aimed to break down stereotypes, yet as Longley uncharacteristically understates, the character of Edward Carson in this play is ‘heavily outlined’242: ‘Carson represents timeless British imperialism at its most oppressive in Ulster Unionism’. She continues: ‘It is by now a Northern Irish theatrical cliché that the accent of Carson, or any other appropriate character, should modulate into that of Ian Paisley’243. The company’s aim of subverting stereotypes was again undermined by its inherent Nationalist bias. Northern Irish Protestant playwright Robin Glendinning joined the ranks of Field Day’s revisionist critics when he queried its cultural politics: raison d’etre was that the language of Irish politics had petrified, and the language of drama had, therefore, a vital and radical responsibility. If one of these petrified languages is Irish Nationalism, surely a radical responsibility goes beyond finding novel ways of saying the same damned things? And surely inviting

242 Longley, ‘The Old Myth of Ireland’. 243 lbid.

111 English left-wing intellectuals to use the petrified language in their own quarrel with their own establishment is also evading that responsibility?... These boys would much rather be complex about something simple and find a sophisticated way of saying: ‘Brits Out! Saint Oscar does and there is nothing very vital or radical about that, except of course to the English left244. Eagleton’s representation of Oscar Wilde embodies his view of the Irish situation. Wilde’s complex personality is reduced to a duality between Irish and English, with Carson standing outside as the embodiment of a singular Ulster Protestant identity. While Carson himself is somewhat sinister, the culture he signifies is presented as ridiculous and merely emblematic in substance. Eagleton’s recourse to Paisleyesque language follows the lead of Tom Paulin’s Creon by equating Ulster Protestant identity with extreme Loyalism. It is this portrait of Ulster Protestant identity which all of the subsequent dramatists and works aim to subvert, by substituting reduction and stereotype with complexity and diversity.

The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing – A Nationalist Epic

By the time of its tenth anniversary in 1990, Field Day acknowledged its own Nationalist bias. In the programme notes to its annual production in 1990 – Seamus Heaney’s translation of Philoctetes, The Cure At Troy – Mary Holland, in an article entitled ‘Field Day’s Tenth Birthday’, wrote the following: It is important to note what Field Day has meant for Derry and for the whole Nationalist community in the North. Over the past twenty years, and particularly in the dark period of

244 Robin Glendinning, ‘The Quality of Laughter’, The Irish Review, 8 (1990), 5.

112 the late seventies and early eighties, it sometimes seemed that the only way in which Nationalist aspirations could be expressed in Northern Ireland was through violence, the murderous use of the gun or the traumatic suffering affecting the whole community of the hunger strikes. Field Day helped to open out that claustrophobic situation, to make it possible to talk about Nationalism without seeming to pose a threat to others245. This Nationalist perspective lay at the heart of Field Day’s treatment of the Ulster Protestant community, which was frequently shifted to the periphery of analysis as a mere representative of English colonial power. Ulster Protestant identity here could be reduced to an archetype, more often than not a Paisley or Carson type figure, but always characteristically insecure, stubborn and ultimately irrelevant.

Nowhere is this Nationalist bias more evident than in the culmination of Field Day’s critical wing, the epic Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, which was published in 1991. This project, anticipated by Seamus Deane in the second series of Field Day pamphlets246, received widespread criticism for the absence of any consideration of women’s writing. While on the surface this would seem to bear little relevance to the question of the Anthology’s representation of Ulster Protestants, the issues are linked. Both deficiencies stem from the inherent Northern Nationalism of the Field Day Board, in particular, Seamus Deane, who was General Editor of the Anthology. Fintan

245 Mary Holland, ‘Field Day’s Tenth Birthday’, programme note for the Field Day production of The Cure At Troy (1990). 246 At the end of his pamphlet, Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea, Deane called for 'the revision of our prevailing idea of what it is that constitutes the Irish reality. In literature that could take the form of a definition, in the form of a comprehensive anthology, of what writing in this country has been for the last 300-500 years and, through that, an exposure of the fact that the myth of Irishness, the notion of Irish unreality, the notions surrounding Irish eloquence, are all political themes upon which the literature has battered to an extreme degree since the nineteenth century when the idea of national character was invented' [58].

113 O’Toole drew broader conclusions in his review of the three volume set, arguing that the Anthology was symbolic of the company itself: an immense achievement of talent and organisation, a selfless and in some respects heroic undertaking, fatally undermined by the inward- looking exclusivity that could not even notice that there was a whole other world (in this case that of women) that was not dreamt of in its philosophy247. In its focus on binary opposition and its rigid adherence to a post-colonial framework, Field Day again neglected diversity. Ireland is reduced down to, and defined by, the conflict between Irish and English. The contribution of women to Irish literature and Irish cultural politics is ignored as is the fact that contemporary Ireland had moved beyond the conflict between Catholic and Protestant. This focus on the atavisms of the North to the exclusion of plurality and diversity is at the heart of Field Day’s Northern Nationalism and conservatism.

Once again, in the Anthology, Ulster Protestant identity is reduced and ultimately dismissed. The only attempt made at dealing with a specifically Protestant area was the section entitled ‘Northern Protestant Oratory and Writing 1791-1985’, edited by Tom Paulin. Edna Longley praises its inclusion, labelling it as a ‘striking cross-sectarian initiative’248, but argues that, in Paulin’s choice of material, he equates Protestant thought with ‘the wilder shores of Presbyterianism’ 249. By including Ulster Unionism in this section Paulin empties it of political or cultural legitimacy and reduces it to comparison with radical Presbyterianism. The section includes the 1912 Ulster Covenant, a Speech from 1940, and speeches from

247 O’Toole, ‘Dissension in the Fifth Province’. 248 Longley, ‘Introduction’, 32-3. 249 Ibid.

114 Edward Carson and Harold McCusker. It notably excludes nineteenth- century Ulster liberalism and twentieth-century Ulster socialism, presenting, yet again, a stereotyped and essentialised view of the Northern Protestant community. Diversity is denied under the unifying banner of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, largely represented by radical Presbyterianism. In addition, the section entitled ‘Political Writings and Speeches 1900-1988’, edited by Seamus Deane, is almost wholly Nationalist, ending ‘with a flourish of Charles Haughey, John Hume, Sean MacBride and ’250. Critics were left with little doubt that the Anthology was underpinned by a Northern Nationalist perspective.

As Field Day’s most comprehensive publishing effort, the Anthology epitomised the Nationalist perspective of its board members, particularly Seamus Deane. In his ‘General Introduction’ to the anthology, Deane claimed that he and his fellow Field Day board members ‘consider ourselves to be engaged in an act of definition’251. Any act of ‘definition’ requires inclusion and exclusion and the Anthology’s relegation of Ulster Protestant culture to one section (‘Protestant Oratory and Writing’ – defined by its religious exoticism) essentialises and marginalises that culture, in effect removing it from the category of ‘Irish writing’. Such exclusivity ultimately contradicted Field Day’s over-arching search for a ‘fifth province’.

Field Day never achieved its hoped for ‘fifth province’, largely because it never extended itself beyond existing categories. Marilynn Richtarik, in her impressive study of Field Day’s first five years, rejects the notion that the company were pursuing a policy of covert Nationalism. She points to ‘vast areas of disagreement’ between the board directors and ultimately argues

250 Longley, ‘Introduction’, 33. 251 Seamus Deane, ‘General Introduction’, in Seamus Deane (ed.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols (Derry: Field Day, 1991), I, xx.

115

Ireland with problems besides those created by the colonial experience, Field Day became a deeply conservative, backward-looking force in Irish life, six middle-aged men who as individuals were important artists but as a group specialised in missing the point257. He concludes by locating Field Day’s ‘interest’ as ‘perhaps the last serious outing that unreconstructed Irish Nationalism will ever have’258.

Paradoxically, this conservatism also expressed itself in the literary framework which the company chose. Just as the board directors ‘seemed oddly unmoved’ by changes in Ireland since the 1960s, so their cultural and literary values seemed old-fashioned, underpinned by the principles of British high culture. The modernist agenda which the company pursued continually and persistently clashed with the post-modern world in which they found themselves. Field Day remained throughout its first ten years seemingly ignorant of any diversities beyond a binary opposition between English and Irish, which was often crudely translated into an opposition between Protestant and Catholic, to the continual detriment of the former. In 1985, Catholic and homosexual playwright Frank McGuinness, in a joint interview with Seamus Deane for the final issue of Crane Bag, expressed concern about what he termed Field Day’s neglect of diversities other than the Catholic-Protestant/ Nationalist-Unionist ones in Field Day: the diversities between the needs of men and the needs of women, between the needs not simply of rich and poor, but within the middle class, and of the homosexual and the

257 Tóibín, ‘On the Literary Wing’. 258 lbid.

117 heterosexual. I feel a sense of comfort about Field Day: it is in danger of repeating itself259. In 1991, this neglect would come dramatically to the fore with the company’s exclusion of women from its supposedly all-encompassing Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing.

Arguably part of the problem was the increasing prominence of Seamus Deane as spokesman for the company’s critical wing. Richtarik argues that by 1985 Deane had become Field Day’s ‘unofficial spokesman’: Deane leapt into the fray with more abandon than his colleagues... [and] the impact of this internal development on Field Day’s reputation has proved immeasurable, because Deane is an inveterate controversialist. He is also, although he would doubtless dispute this, the deepest-dyed Nationalist on the Field Day board260. Deane completely rejected the revisionist idea of pluralism as merely another form of ‘colonising experience’: To remove ourselves from that condition into one in which all these lesions and occlusions are forgotten, in which the postmodernist simulacrum of pluralism supplants the search for a legitimating mode of nomination and origin, is surely to pass from one kind of colonising experience into another. For such pluralism refuses the idea of naming; it plays with diversity and makes a mystique of it; it is the concealed imperialism of the multinational, the infinite compatibility of all cultures with one another envisaged in

259 Fitzgerald, ‘The Arts and Ideology’, 65. 260 Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines, 243.

118 terms of the ultimate capacity of all computers to read one another261. Yet Field Day’s frequent focus on the ‘lesions and occlusions’ of the Northern Irish conflict ensured that the debate never moved beyond binaries. The perspective remained narrow, and analysis remained restricted.

Field Day did, and does, however, have its defenders. Tom Paulin, in 1981, described Field Day as ‘separatists who... hunger for Europe’262, and both Richard Kirkland and Eamonn Hughes point to the company’s recognition of wider intellectual issues as one of its achievements. Hughes argues that ‘one of Field Day’s great strengths.. [is] the recognition that it is necessary to look beyond Ireland in order to examine the condition of Ireland’ and praises its efforts to ‘dismantle the familiar’263 and its ‘identification of [a].. sense of exhaustion of out-moded structures of feeling’264. Kirkland similarly argues that the Field Day pamphleteers were ‘liberated by [a] wider perspective’ and that they ‘demonstrated a greater freedom of critical interpretation than those critics of Field Day (especially Longley and Foster but also Eavan Boland) who perhaps... are trapped in a doctrinaire project which forbids the analysis of certain given prerequisites’265. Without Field Day, it is arguable that there would not have been the same level of critical debate and the same level of international attention. Amongst its production history266 are

261 Deane, ‘Introduction’, 18-19. 262 Paulin, ‘Commencement’. 263 Eamonn Hughes, ‘“To Define Your Dissent”: The Plays and Polemic of Field Day Theatre Research International, 15.1 (1990), 70. 264 Ibid., 71. 265 Kirkland, Literature and Culture, 140. 266 In addition to the plays discussed in this chapter, Field Day’s production history included Brian Friel’s translation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters (1981), his Communication Cord (1982), Athol Fugard’s Boesman and Lena (1983), Double Cross by Thomas Kilroy (1986), Seamus Heaney’s version of Sophocles Philoctetes – The Cure At Troy (1990), Kilroy’s The Madame MacAdam Travelling Theatre (1991), Frank McGuinness’ adaptation of (1995) and Stewart Parker’s Northern Star (1998), a co-production with Tinderbox Theatre Company. For fuller discussion of these works see Marilynn Richtarik, Acting Between the

119 several plays which have become part of the twentieth century Irish/British theatrical and literary canon, including Translations and Making History. Its publishing efforts were no less impressive. The pamphlets engaged the talents of a wide and distinguished group of scholars, while its Anthology, albeit biased in selection, assembled a mass of material, some of which had been previously unpublished.

However, Field Day was ultimately prevented from reaching genuine insights into the Northern crisis because it never moved beyond outmoded colonial paradigms. At the end of his study of Northern Irish criticism, Kirkland concludes that ‘to be of and concerned with the culture of Northern Ireland is to feel the weight of difference in all ideological gestures. Denials have to be conscious and allegiances always declared’267. This issue of imposed allegiance is crucial. It is arguable that, given the ‘already known’ aspect of the Field Day board members, their endeavours as a group could never have succeeded, that their activities could never have been seen as anything but biased because of the personal political convictions of each individual. Seamus Deane, in 1992, claimed that: A commitment towards comprehending the system is what Field Day is about and, what’s more, I recognise our failures. In fact, we could not but fail, given all the limitations of the situation with which we started, given the limitations of the individuals in Field Day. But Field Day is trying to say to people in Ireland not to sell their soul to an idea of Irishness, or to anything other than an attempt to analyse and understand what is. Of course, it can only be an attempt at any given stage, and every attempt, like the

Lines, Christopher Murray, Twentieth Century Drama, and Anthony Roche, Contemporary Irish Drama. 267 Kirkland, Literature and Culture, 115.

120 Field Day attempt, is culture-bound and time-bound, and therefore subject to the same limitations other subjects have been268. Not only was Field Day ‘culture-bound’ and ‘time-bound’, it was also bound by an adherence to a very specific theoretical framework. By setting up a post-colonial axis between ‘Irish’ and ‘English’, attempts at an inclusive and genuine examination of Ulster Protestant culture were flawed. Field Day was, and is, considered to be one of the most significant forces in contemporary Northern Irish (and Irish) theatre and criticism. Its attempts to deconstruct Irish myths and stereotypes are to be applauded and the contribution which it made to the Northern Irish theatrical canon is undeniable. Yet there was always something missing. Throughout Field Day’s productions and pamphlets, Protestantism is dismissed as merely Planter culture, dispossessed and insecure. Declan Kiberd’s infamous description, in the second series of Field Day Pamphlets, of ‘that curious blend of resolution and hysteria, of barbarous vulgarity and boot-faced sobriety, which lies beneath the emotions of Ulster Protestantism’ [100], illustrates well the reductive approach which Field Day pamphlets and plays took towards Protestant culture, largely viewing it as an extension of the culture of the ‘coloniser’, the English.

The characters of Creon (from Tom Paulin’s The Riot Act) and Edward Carson (from Terry Eagleton’s Saint Oscar) are representatives of Field Day’s ‘boot-faced’ Protestant, becoming, by virtue of their Unionist convictions, carbon copies of Ian Paisley. Mabel (from Brian Friel’s Making History) and Stewart Parker’s Protestant characters (from Pentecost) are more sympathetically portrayed, but only because they have distanced themselves from their tribe, rejecting their community’s ideology. Writing in

268 Kirkland, Literature and Culture, 145-6.

121 1990, Robin Glendinning expressed frustration at what he perceived to be Field Day’s Nationalist bias: The long debate (diatribe?) about colonialism is now four plays long, four production years long, four financial years long, and it has yet to enter the fourth province of Ireland let alone a fifth one of the mind. For instance, Mabel Bagenal (Making History), Sir Edward Carson (St Oscar).... and two Royal Engineers who seem to have mitched their public school Latin classes (Translations) will hardly do for three hundred and fifty-odd years of the Ulster Protestant experiences269. Glendinning’s frustration was also felt about Field Day’s critical enterprise. Consisting of five series of pamphlets and a massive three-volume anthology, it offered little more complexity to depictions of Ulster Protestantism. The first, second and fifth set of Field Day Pamphlets were reductive and almost bigoted in their analysis of the Ulster Protestant, choosing to focus on only the most extreme elements of Protestant culture, while the third set, albeit inclusive of the Protestant voice and supportive of the idea of Protestant diversity, offered up only one genuine Unionist voice (Robert McCartney). Here Ulster Protestantism is included, but only ‘acceptable’ Ulster Protestantism. Protestant Republicanism and moderate, secular Unionism fit Field Day’s criteria, but extreme evangelical Loyalism Seamus Deane’s statement on the need to deal with atavistic impulses.

The key issues in this chapter are of absence and misrepresentation. With the exception of a brief hiatus between 1985 and 1987, when, in response to frequent criticism, Field Day attempted to actively deal with the question of

269 Glendinning, ‘The Quality of Laughter’, 5.

122 Ulster Protestant identity, its attitude to the Northern Irish majority was dismissive, ranging from exclusion to caricature and ultimately irrelevance. Field Day’s focus on binary oppositions, stemming from its base of literary conservatism and Northern Nationalism, reduced the Northern situation to a conflict between Irish and English and restricted it to a post-colonial framework. Ulster Protestantism thus became merely one manifestation of English colonial oppression. Unionist and Loyalist aspirations were delegitimised and dismissed. The work examined in Part Two of this thesis is, both consciously and subconsciously, a reaction against this Field Day, Northern Nationalist perspective.

123 Chapter Two

History as Identity: Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness

What matters is how we see the past. And, having perceived it, how we then set up a healthy relationship with it. Stewart Parker, 1979270.

Stewart Parker’s concern with the ongoing relevance of the past pinpoints the key issue in this chapter – the relationship between Ulster Protestant history and identity. Field Day’s imaginative territory was largely Nationalist, and the company’s stated belief that the crisis in the North was primarily to be explained by reference to Ireland’s colonial past frequently led to the exclusion and reduction of Ulster Protestantism. The plays in this chapter bring the question of Ulster Protestant identity into the foreground of analysis, approaching the issue through an exploration of the Ulster Protestant historical imagination. History and myth are re-examined and questioned, a process which arrives at a pluralist concept of Ulster Protestant identity.

Oliver MacDonagh’s book States of Mind: Two Centuries of Anglo-Irish Conflict 1780-1980 bases its argument around the ‘profound truth’ behind the ‘familiar facetiousness’ of the claim that ‘while the English do not

270 As quoted in Robert Berkvist, ‘A Freewheeling Play About Irish History’, The New York Times, 11 March 1979.

124 remember any history, the Irish forget none’271. At the end of the First World War and as civil conflict in Ireland was escalating, Winston Churchill commented on what he saw as a peculiarly Irish preoccupation with history: The whole map of Europe has been changed... The mode and thought of men, the whole outlook on affairs... all have encountered violent and tremendous changes... but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again. The integrity of their quarrel is one of the few institutions that has been left unaltered in the cataclysm which has swept the world272. It has since become commonplace for commentators on the Northern Irish situation to attribute part of the blame for continuing conflict to this widespread preoccupation with history, and it is the continued intersection of history, myth, symbol and ideology which makes this preoccupation especially potent.

Both Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness explore the issue of Ulster Protestant identity through a concern with the past in their work. However, rejecting simple remembrance, they instead aim to critique the past. The notion that Ulster Protestant history is more complex than a series of battles informs both men’s work as they seek to discover the ways in which the past interacts with the present and the ways in which the past forms the Ulster Protestant sense of identity. Parker has said that the Irish past ‘refuses to express itself in a linear, orderly narrative, in a convincing tone of voice. Tune into any given moment from it, and the wavelength soon grows

271 Oliver MacDonagh, States of Mind: Two Centuries of Anglo-Irish Conflict 1780-1980, 2nd edn (London: Pimlico, 1983), 1. 272 Winston Churchill as quoted in ATQ Stewart, The Narrow Ground: Patterns of Ulster History, 2nd edn (Belfast: Pretani Press, 1977), 179.

125 crowded with a babble of voices from all the other moments up to and including the present’273, proposing a dynamic alternative to the well- documented stasis of the Ulster Protestant historical vision. Such a vision creates and maintains, while simultaneously restricting and binding, personal and communal Ulster Protestant identity.

Ulster Protestant rallying cries of ‘No Surrender’ and ‘Not an Inch’ have their base in defining moments of historical consciousness. All of these moments centre around a battle of some kind, whether explicit or implicit. The Siege of Derry in 1689 saw Protestant men and women lock themselves within the city walls of Derry when faced with the invasion of Catholic King James II and his army, a struggle vindicated by King William of Orange’s victory over James at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. These dates have entered Ulster Protestant consciousness as expressing fundamental Ulster Protestant characteristics. Similarly, the Home Rule Crises which produced the Ulster Solemn League and Covenant of 1912 (signed by some Protestant men with their own blood) and the Ulster Workers Council Strike of 1974 (which collapsed the Sunningdale Power Sharing Agreement) represent, for contemporary Ulster Protestant identity, siege and struggle. Through the agent of history, these unifying images of siege and its implicit opposite of sanctuary, in combination with the myth of sacrifice represented by those Ulstermen who lost their lives at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, form the basis for the singular Ulster Protestant identity. Following Hayden White’s 274, this historical narrative is ordered in such a way as to make it both palatable and, more importantly, useful to the present.

273 As quoted in Elmer Andrews, ‘The Will to Freedom’, Theatre Ireland, 18 (1989), 20. 274 Hayden White, Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1978), 83-86. See page 22 of this thesis for further discussion.

126 around the New Testament and images of Christ (referred to in murals of wearing a crown of thorns). Ulster Protestant sacrifice relates instead to notions of persecution modelled on imagery from the Old Testament. Anthony Buckley in a detailed examination of Orange, Arch Purple and Black Protestant brotherhoods, in particular focusing on the specific biblical texts used on banners, comes to the conclusion that Ulster Protestant communal identity is based on a view of themselves as ‘the Chosen Few’ (which was in fact the title of his chapter): Like the Israelites in Canaan, Ulster Protestants have been given, and now occupy, an alien land. The foreigners whose land they occupy are – like the Canaanites, the Midianites, the Philistines, and others – adherents of an alien religion. Like Jacob, Ulster Protestants steadfastly avoid marrying the daughters of their enemies. Like the heroes of the stories, they lay great stress on loyalty, both to their religion and to the crown276. This loyalty, however, exists within a contractarian framework277 . Reward is expected for loyalty. Sacrifice thus becomes necessary to maintain the link with Empire. An editorial from The in 1916 expresses this clearly, as it justifies Protestant focus on six counties instead of the nine counties of Ulster in their fight against Home Rule: We have to wring the hands of our brethren of Donegal, Cavan and in agony and regret, and bid them goodbye if we are to save ourselves.... Nothing but absolute loyalty to the Empire and Sir Edward Carson has

276 Anthony D Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor and Social Drama in Northern Ireland (Washington: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1995), 191. 277 For a detailed examination of this see Marianne Elliott, Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty (Derry: Field Day, 1985), as discussed on page 93 of this thesis.

128 made this last, and in some respects greatest sacrifice of all, possible278. Crucial to this notion of rewarded sacrifice was the Battle of the Somme on the 1st of July 1916, which in many ways was Ulster Protestant sacrifice’s defining moment. The ‘sacrifice’ of 5500 Protestant men from Ulster was ‘rewarded’ by the Partition Treaty of 1922. Their deaths secured a maintenance of links with the British Empire.

What these unifying themes of siege, sanctuary and sacrifice mean in practice is a framework, a framework by which the past is used to make sense of the present. Like the Catholic community, Ulster Protestants are ‘committed... deeply to ancient roles and modes of interpreting the historical flow, and the patterns they perceive in – or, if you will, impose upon – the past, are at once the cause of the present crisis, and a force making for its continuance’279. Official Ulster Protestant history thus involves a merging of past and present, with the Siege of Derry becoming the Home Rule Crises, and both in turn becoming the 1974 UWC Strike, the same battles merely fought in different years. Historical inevitability becomes a framework of and for ideas. Present events and people are easily interpreted through the past, and interpreted as archetypes. Just like William of Orange and Edward Carson, the Ulster Protestant should be prepared to fight for his or her Protestant way of life, against the attack that will inevitably come from south of the border and, more importantly, like King Billy and Carson, this battle will be won – there will be ‘No Surrender’.

Commemorative marches act as a kind of living history, intensely relevant to both present and past. Rooted in tradition, they function to construct both

278 ‘Belfast Telegraph’, 13 June 1916, as cited in Pamela Clayton, Enemies and Passing Friends: Settler Ideologies in Twentieth Century Ulster (London: Pluto Press, 1996), 92. 279 MacDonagh, States of Mind, 14.

129 communal and personal Ulster Protestant identity, reinforcing an individual’s sense of belonging and providing continuity between ancestor and descendant. However, the surface dynamism of this dialogue between past and present disguises the essential stasis of this ritualistic remembrance. These marches serve to simply recycle a fixed view of history – representing the same events in the same way for the same purpose – allowing the past to continually shape the present, but never to let the present affect an understanding of the past.

It is this fixed and static view of history which the three plays in this chapter aim to subvert. Stewart Parker’s Spokesong, Or The Common Wheel and Northern Star, and Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, share the aim of setting up a more fluid dialogue between past and present. In this, they act as theatrical expressions of Terence Brown’s call for a ‘re-remembrance’ of Protestant history280. Like Brown, their subversion ultimately challenges the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity which is so connected to this fixed history. Just as Field Day aimed to examine the ways in which Northern Nationalist identity is constructed through history and myth, so these three plays focus on the ways in which history and myth have constructed Ulster Protestant identity.

Stewart Parker uses self-conscious theatricality to ‘play’ with the question of the relationship between Ulster Protestant history and identity. In a lecture given in 1986 at Queen’s University, Belfast, drawing on the work of Johan Huizinga in his influential Homo Ludens, Parker rejected ‘connotations of

280 Terence Brown, The Whole Protestant Community: the Making of a Historical Myth (Derry: Field Day, 1985), as discussed on pages 92-95 of this thesis.

130 frivolity and infantilism [that] continue to cling to the word “play” in our work ethic culture’, believing instead that ‘we learn nothing of consequence other than through Play... I play therefore I am. Play is how we test the world and register its realities. Play is how we experiment, imagine, invent, and move forward’281. Ultimately ‘play’ has the potential to lead a writer and audience towards constructing what Parker terms ‘a working model of wholeness’282.

Nowhere is Parker’s philosophy more evident than in his early work Spokesong, premiered in 1975. Early on in the writing process, Parker believed that the play’s ‘only hope resided in being presented in the right 283. At this stage in Belfast, the Lyric Theatre was the only venue open to new work, and, as Parker argued, ‘the work it was doing was execrable, and continued to be so till some years later’284. The immense popularity of Spokesong was not only because of its strengths as a piece of theatre, but also because of this relative paucity of responses to the conflict in the early 1970s. Apart from the obligatory Yeats and/or Revival drama which was produced each year in accordance with the Lyric’s original mission statement, the only new Irish, and specifically Northern Irish, work which was regularly seen at the theatre was that of John Boyd285, whose work didn’t quite manage the potency of his predecessor Sam Thompson or later writers such as Graham Reid, Christina Reid and Martin Lynch. Parker therefore attempted to mount an independent production, and, after ‘nine months of

281 Stewart Parker, ‘Dramatis Personae: A John Malone Memorial Lecture’ (1986), held in the Linen Hall Library Archives, Belfast. 282 Ibid. 283 Stewart Parker, ‘Signposts’, Theatre Ireland, 11 (1985), 27. 284 Stewart Parker, ‘Signposts’, 27. 285 Boyd’s works of the period include The Assassin (1969), The Flats (1971), The Farm (1972) and Guests (1974).

131 lunacy’286, the play was booked into the Dublin Theatre Festival of 1975 where it received wide critical and audience acclaim287.

Parker’s aim in Spokesong was to ‘make manageable the subject of contemporary Irish politics and the nature of the violence I’ve lived through in Belfast for the past ten years’, and he chose to do this in such a way that the audience would be taken completely by surprise, caught without its preconceptions. I decided that the way to do that was to write a play about the history of the bicycle – because that is the most unlikely way in the world to get into the subject of Northern Ireland288. This was an approach to which he would return in his award-winning radio play The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner289. Parker argued that the history of the bicycle is an aspect of social history which runs (I can put it no other way) in tandem with the political history of the Unionist/Nationalist ideological divide, in an uncanny and provocative fashion. The period from Dunlop’s 1888 invention of the pneumatic tyre in Belfast, to the ecology movement bike-revival of the early 1970s, encompasses the end of Parnellism, Randolph Churchill and the Orange

286 Parker, ‘Signposts’, 27. 287 The play was one of the hits of that year’s Festival. It was accorded a London premiere in 1976, a subsequent Broadway season, and an eventual Belfast production in 1989. 288 Berkvist, ‘A Freewheeling Play’. 289 The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner won Parker a Giles Cooper Award for Best Radio Play in 1980. The play continually and inventively makes parallels between post-war Japan and contemporary Northern Ireland. Through his representation of a radically different society, Parker was able to make fairly pointed comments about his own community. By presenting the myth of sacrifice (a theme to which he would return in Northern Star) in such a farcical and absurd way through this collection of old Kamikaze ground staff, he completely subverts the Ulster Protestant focus on battles (in both the past and the present) that are fought, lost and won. Sacrifice becomes meaningless.

132 Card, the Home Rule Bills, the Great War, Partition, and so on, right up to and Bloody Friday290. At the time of Spokesong’s premiere, both the North and South of Ireland were still coming to terms with the violence that had overtaken the North. By distancing the surface plot of his work from Northern Ireland in such imaginative ways, the subsequent comments which Parker makes both in Spokesong and much of his other work (either for the stage or radio)291 assume far more potency.

This use of the history of the bicycle as a central metaphor should be viewed in the context of Parker’s broader concern, ‘with the challenge of forging a unifying dramatic metaphor for the Northern Irish human condition’292. Andrew Parkin examines Parker’s metaphoric use of the bicycle claiming that its two wheels ‘constantly reminds us that Ireland is an island with two peoples, two nations, two religions’. In addition, ‘the penny-farthing cycle, a property used in some productions of the play, is a ready visual aid to remembering the larger island of Great Britain with the smaller Ireland trailing behind’. He takes this even further by arguing that: The play is also set in the early seventies, so... the antique cycle also suggests modern Britain or modern Ireland with the smaller outpost of Ulster. The master of ceremonies figure, the Spokesman, rides a unicycle, suggesting the ideal of , but one that depends upon skill and

290 Parker, ‘Signposts’, 28. 291 Notable examples are The Iceberg (1973) a radio play where two shipbuilders are doomed to roam the decks of the ill-fated Titanic after dying during its construction, Catchpenny Twist (1977) which centres around two aspiring songwriters, The Kamikaze Ground Staff Reunion Dinner (1979) as discussed above, and Nightshade (1980) set in a funeral parlour, run by Quinn, an undertaker and magician. 292 Parker, ‘Signposts’, 28.

133 a delicate sense of balance as opposed to blundering violence293. While Parkin’s analysis borders on the ridiculous in its detail, arguably taking metaphor and equivalency too far, it does point to the depth and complexity of Parker’s work. The many layers of allusion and metaphor which make up Spokesong include a strong focus on the visual. Parker actively engages the full range of his audience’s imaginative senses, ‘playing’ with them and taking them beyond existing frameworks. In the case of Spokesong, the metaphor of the bicycle subverts and questions ways of approaching the conflict in the North.

The play’s central protagonist is Frank Stock, who seems inextricably bound and restricted by his past. Parker extends this to a portrait of Belfast, unable to move forward and beyond sectarian division. Spokesong is set in ‘the early 1970s, and the eighty years preceding them’294, alternating freely between past and present, and it is the character of the Trick Cyclist who provides the link. He acts as a kind of Chorus, framing the scenes through song and movement. Dressed in ‘a typical variety act uniform of bowler hat, shabby tail coat, black tight-fitting trousers, dirty white socks and pumps’, with make-up which is also ‘typically garish’ [(1976) 43], the Trick Cyclist harks back to the days of vaudeville, becoming the ‘MC’ of the evening’s entertainment. Self-conscious theatricality permeates the play, as with Parker’s later work Northern Star. Transitions between scenes are unashamedly theatrical. In one instance the Trick Cyclist as Belfast bureaucrat throws his papers into the air [(1976) 50], while in another Frank spins his bike wheel as the lights on him dim [(1976) 44]. Parker’s device of

293 Andrew Parkin, ‘Metaphor as Dramatic Structure in Plays by Stewart Parker’, in Masaru Sekine (ed.), Irish Writers and the Theatre (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1986), 143. 294 Stewart Parker, ‘Spokesong, Or the Common Wheel’, as published in Plays and Players, 24.3 (1976), 43-50, and Plays and Players, 24.4 (1977), 43-50. All further references will be provided in the text.

134 having the Trick Cyclist play various ‘officials’ serves to highlight the performance’ of politicians, the theatricality of reality. The presence of the Trick Cyclist complicates the play’s naturalistic aspects and places firm focus on Parker’s notions of ‘play’ and the deconstructive and reconstructive potential which it holds. His use of the Trick Cyclist to frame the action with irony and absurdity creates distance for his audience – a way both out of and then back into the sectarianism and violence of the North.

Frank is still living in and running the bicycle shop established by his grandfather Francis. He is ‘stuck’ in the past, detached from the violent realities of 1970s Belfast. The opening scene sees him protesting against the redevelopment of Belfast after his shop is threatened with demolition: It's brutal. It's demented. Ripping out the houses and shops and people – whole communities – so that you can truss up the city centre with enormous roads, coiling thirty feet up in the air, ramming themselves across the river and through parks and into every resident’s nervous condition [(1976) 43]. Frank believes that he can see the ‘big picture’, and instead of arguing against the closure of his shop, he develops a master plan (‘the time has come to rediscover the faithful bicycle’ [(1976) 44]) for fifty thousand free bicycles to be distributed around the city centre: ‘Imagine a fleet of civic bikes... gleaming with the city's coat of arms... stacked on covered racks on the corner of every street... which anybody can ride anywhere, free of charge, inside the city centre’ [(1976) 47]. Frank is a dreamer who lives through the past, through the lives of his grandparents. Throughout the play we see flashbacks of Francis and Kitty, yet rather than being objective representations of history, they are filtered through the memory of Frank (a device we also see in Northern Star and Observe the Sons of Ulster

135

Frank questions Julian, ‘Have you not learned anything at all? comment that ‘You are your own past... Hate it and you hate yourself’ [(1976) 48]. Through the character of Frank, Parker presents his audience with a picture of Ulster Protestant identity bound and restricted by its past. Yet his solution is not to completely reject that past and it is here that we come to the issue of distance providing perspective. Julian claims to have gained from his self-imposed exile a new understanding of the pettiness and parochiality of Belfast. However, in doing so, he has lost touch with a part of himself. Parker advocates neither Frank nor Julian’s position.

Rejecting his home city, Julian sees it, like Frank, as frozen in time, with no inclination to move into the future. His return reinforces this view: I’m a disappointed man... Here I stand, having made the perilous journey... back to the old home town. Because I wanted to be here at the end, Frank. In at the kill. I wanted to take my place amidst the falling masonry. What do I find? Most of the buildings are still standing, most of the people are still alive. It’s most vexatious [(1976) 47]. He expresses wonderment at Frank’s use of the noun ‘meat-safe’: ‘Meat- safe!... God Almighty... How long is it since I heard those words used in living speech... MEAT-SAFE... with one bound he was back in the 19th century’ [(1976) 47]. Reflected in Frank’s linguistic backwardness is a broader desire on his part, and by extension on the part of the broader Ulster Protestant community, to preserve history. This preservation becomes crucial as ‘the old Ulster’ begins to disintegrate. Returning to Albert Memmi’s notions of ‘formalism’, communal Ulster Protestant identity ‘freezes’ as it becomes threatened by change296.

296 See page 25.

137 Frank’s history is suffocating him and preventing him from adequately seeing the present or the future: The place is poison. It’s been building up in the system for generations, and now the boil has burst. You can’t stop it, it’s everywhere, even in your own veins. Bad blood. But that’s just the snag. You can’t get away from it. You just carry it around with you. It is you [(1977) 47]. There is a strong sense throughout the play of history as cyclical, with a potent undercurrent of historical inevitability, a theme Parker was to repeat in Northern Star. However, this pattern of repetition is destabilised as the demands of the present gradually encroach upon Frank’s comfortable existence. The arrival of Daisy, which precedes that of Julian, begins this process of destabilisation. Daisy is a local schoolteacher who provides us with a taste of the real world: ‘It's beginning to get rather foolish, me standing up there, saying, "Now class, open your books at the Wars of the Roses"..., and them fresh in from stoning soldiers... They've already got more history than they can cope with out on the streets’ [(1976) 50]. She is completely baffled by Frank’s way of life and his obsession with ‘the bicycle’: ‘It’s not just a business to you though – it’s more like a religion’ [(1976) 45]. Daisy seems to be the sole voice of reason in Spokesong, representing a middle ground between Frank and Julian – a balance between preoccupation with, and an obsessive rejection of, the past.

At the same time that Frank is being beckoned by the present, we witness him being swamped by his history. Francis and Kitty in their wisdom decided to bequeath their thriving business to Frank while leaving the actual premises to Julian, little knowing that the invention of the car would provide serious competition for the bicycle as a mode of transport. Frank is approaching financial ruin, Daisy's father is a local UDA heavy who comes

138 around to 'suggest' that Frank pays protection money, the pet shop across the road is destroyed by a bomb and, finally, Julian sells the shop underneath Frank's feet and plans to take Daisy back to England (‘Rejoice, Frank, say thank you. I’ve launched you on a great new trip, you’re cycling out of the past into the future’ [(1976) 48]). It is then that Frank makes a direct appeal to the past, to his grandfather: ‘The mud, the mud, the mud. I'm deep into it, Francis, up over the knees... It's just not the same for you. There's no simple enemy. There's no Back Home... I don't know what to do, Granda. I'm lost for something to do. I'm lost for words. I'm lost’ [(1976) 48]. This metaphor of the past as constraining is extended when Frank finds himself in a drunken stupor, believing that his shop is doomed, and that Daisy is gone: It’s all past tense now. Blood under the bridge. This property is condemned. What I want to know is... your past... the past, I'm talking about... the air's full of it... you have to breathe it... but you can't grab hold of it... it's everywhere but you can't locate it... how can something that's fundamental... be irrecoverable... and uncontrollable... answer me that... you take the point... how are you supposed to live? [(1976) 50]. The image of the air being full of ‘one’s past’ effectively communicates Frank’s absolute helplessness. Frank here is rendered completely impotent by the forces of the past which have shaped him. Parker’s implication about Ulster Protestant identity is made clear through Frank’s struggles. Frank’s sense of identity is defined by his past, and as he is dragged into the present, so that identity is dismantled.

It is not until the end of the play that Frank takes action, directly confronting and communicating with his past. Up until this point in the play the past has

139 remained a separate entity, unable to interact explicitly with the present and only able to indirectly impact upon it. Frank exorcises his ghosts, with the aid of the Trick Cyclist: Ssh! Kitty and Franny don’t know we’re here!... He flings open the door and leaps in Boo! I give you Speedo, the magician and exterminator extraordinary who will now demonstrate the amazing and impossible feat of putting the dead to bed [(1977) 49]. Frank is freed from the past through ‘play’, through the powers of imagination. Parker’s message for Ulster can thus be read as a call for creativity, for a move beyond the security (and stasis) of the past.

The end of the play is pure theatrical escapism. Daisy buys the shop from Julian and assumes the role of Kitty, getting the business back up and running. She does, however, refuse to marry Frank. Frank and Daisy ride off the stage on a tandem bike, giving us a refrain of ‘Daisy, Daisy’. It is as though Parker is admitting that there is no real solution to be found in existing frameworks of thought. The only way to conclude the Northern Irish story is by illusion, stepping into unreality and ‘playing’ with ideas. Spokesong prefigures Parker’s 1986 lecture, with his call to reinstate positive notions of ‘play’, and his use of Huizinga’s ‘I play therefore I am’. History becomes fluid and changeable rather than static and consisting of immovable, objective facts. Through this process, the notion of a communal and singular Ulster Protestant identity, defined through Ulster Protestant history, is destabilised.

140 Parker also examines the relationship between Ulster Protestant history and identity in a later work, Northern Star, premiered in 1984297. On the surface the play is Stewart Parker’s most ‘historical’ work, basing itself on the life of Henry Joy McCracken, who led the United Irishmen in Antrim during the 1798 Uprising. Yet rather than attempting to accurately portray the events of McCracken’s life, Parker instead aims to look at the process of constructing history and the emplotment of historical narrative. In the process he plays with notions of historical inevitability and the myth of sacrifice. Northern Star is the first of Parker’s ‘Three Plays for Ireland’298, a trio which he terms a ‘triptych’: ‘Trilogy... may be too strong a word for them. Triptych has a more pleasing ring: three self-contained groups of figures, from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries respectively, hinged together in a continuing comedy of terrors’299. In his introduction to the plays, Parker discusses his own background: The ancestral wraiths at my own elbow are (amongst other things) Scots-Irish, Northern English, immigrant Huguenot... In short the usual Belfast mongrel crew who have contrived between them to entangle me in the Irish- British cat’s cradle and thus to bequeath to me a subject for drama which is comprised of multiplying dualities: two islands (the ‘’), two , two men fighting over a field300. Parker’s notion of ‘ancestral wraiths’ and the role that they play in forming his own personal and, by extension, the broader communal Ulster Protestant, identity, infuses Northern Star. McCracken is presented both as a history-

297 Northern Star was first performed at the Lyric Players Theatre in Belfast in 1984, but given a revival as part of 1798 Uprising bicentennial celebrations in November 1998 in a co- production between Field Day and Tinderbox at the First Presbyterian Church in Belfast. 298 The others being Heavenly Bodies and Pentecost. 299 Stewart Parker, ‘Introduction’, in Three Plays for Ireland: Northern Star, Heavenly Bodies, Pentecost (London: Oberon Books, 1989), 9. 300 Ibid.

141 maker and a victim of history and the play explores the fluid relationship between past and present through his life and death.

The structure of the play is described by Parker as a ‘pastiche’301. McCracken’s flashbacks are broken up into seven ages, with each age being written and performed in the style of a different Irish playwright. The history of Irish theatre appears alongside this examination of the Irish revolutionary. McCracken’s Age of Innocence and Bravado is performed in the style of George Farquhar, the Age of Idealism is given in the melodramatic tones of Boucicault, the Age of Cleverness naturally belongs to Oscar Wilde (with leader Wolfe Tone as Wilde himself), the Age of Dialectics is presented as a Shavian drama, the Age of Heroism is performed à la Synge, the Age of Compromise is performed in the style of O’Casey, while the final age, the Age of Knowledge, gives us Behan and Beckett. Parker through his structure is setting up the idea that everything (even the 1798 Uprising with its unusual allegiances between Catholic and Protestant) can be, in the words of Elmer Andrews, ‘translated into or held within orthodox structures and stereotypes’302. This of course takes us back to the notion of the rhetoric behind Protestant visions of history, the interpreting of history within very specific frameworks.

Historical inevitability is a theme which runs through the play. Parker’s opening stage direction sets the scene as ‘Ireland, the continuous past’303 and Northern Star provides us with a vision of a recurring past. According to Terence Brown, history becomes ‘a nightmare from which it is impossible to

301 Parker, ‘Introduction’, 10. 302 Andrews, ‘The Will’, 20. 303 Stewart Parker, ‘Northern Star’, in Three Plays for Ireland, 13. All further references will be provided in the text.

142 final words: ‘We’ll not meet again now. No place we can meet now, except in the long memory of this town, the long dream’ [58]. The final images of the play lie with McCracken and his despair.

Within Parker’s largely dismal vision of history exists a critique of the Irish heroic myth of sacrifice. Elmer Andrews sees in Northern Star ‘a wholesale critique of Republicanism’305, yet this seems too narrow. Not only is Parker examining how sacrifice functions within Republican ethos, he is also reflecting on the broader notion of the construction of sacrificial heroes, be they Catholic or Protestant, Nationalist or Unionist, Republican or Loyalist. McCracken shows self-irony in one of his many execution speeches, proclaiming: I go willingly to my death in the true faith of a Presbyterian, confident in the blind belief that you will all unite together in freedom this week next week sometime never and I hope you folk at the back can hear me, then and not till then let my autograph be given, RIP, no flowers at the house please, notice the rope, by the way, best quality sisal, sixpence the yard, from my father’s own ropeworks, orders to be taken immediately following the execution, thanks for nothing [15]. But it is Mary who provides the most consistent critique of McCracken as hero. McCracken doubts his ability to lead a ‘normal life’: ‘Can you honestly see me, in some Main Street in Massachusetts, behind the counter of a draper’s shop?’, claiming that: ‘I belong here. Everything I’ve done has been an affirmation of belonging here. How can I leave now?’. To which Mary responds:

305 Andrews, ‘The Will’, 19.

144 Right enough. Especially with the prospect of a brave and glorious death facing you – dangling from a rope’s end, with the shite dribbling out of your britches... It’s not the worst either. There’s what they do to you after you’ve long gone, that’s still to come. And what’s done in your name [53]. Mary clearly expresses here the way in which history is invoked in Northern Ireland to justify the present.

While Maxwell criticises Northern Star, arguing that its ‘stylistic virtuosity tends to distract attention from the desolate matter’306, it could equally be argued that Parker’s use of ‘stylistic virtuosity’ throughout his work approaches ‘the desolate matter’ in a fresh, imaginative, and therefore potent, way. Parker’s broader body of work was praised for its imaginative approaches to the Northern Irish conflict and Tim Loane, co-founder of Tinderbox Theatre Company describes Parker as ‘the most valuable writer for the theatre that Northern Ireland has possibly ever had’307. His approach to the North was unique largely because of his move away from social realism and into an experimentation with form, a by-product of his constant search to find new perspectives. Nowhere is this sense of ‘play’ better illustrated than with the work which brought him to critical attention – Spokesong. The visions of hope which it provided, alongside the depth of affection Parker shows for the people of Belfast, ensured its status as a significant work.

His main preoccupation in Spokesong is with the forces of play and these he uses to break away from the stasis of the Protestant historical vision. Frank breaks away from the history that binds and restricts him by invoking the imaginative powers of the Trick Cyclist to ‘put the dead to bed’ [(1977)

306 DES Maxwell, ‘Northern Ireland’s Political Drama’, Modern Drama, 33.1 (1990), 4. 307 Tim Loane, Personal Interview, 23 February 1998.

145 49]. He frees himself from his ghosts and is thus able to move forward, with Daisy, into the future. Parker’s concern with ghosts is also found in Northern Star, where the Phantom Bride of historical inevitability attempts to ‘possess’ McCracken. In this later play, Parker also subverts the myth of Ulster Protestant sacrifice, thereby challenging one of the central tenets of the singular Ulster Protestant identity. Ultimately, Parker’s vision of history is that it is complex and dynamic, filled with a ‘babble of voices’ rather than being a static and unchanging litany of facts. Ulster Protestant identity becomes similarly fluid, a matter of possibilities rather than known quantities.

Frank McGuinness – attempting to escape ‘Carson’s

Like Stewart Parker, Frank McGuinness actively explores the intersection between history, myth and identity throughout his work. He does so in Baglady (1985), where the concept of personal identity is explored through McGuinness’ central and only character. The Baglady delivers a subjective account of her life, made up of her own historical fictions and expressing the inherent fluidity of memory. Similarly in his later work, Carthaginians (1987), McGuinness explores the role of Bloody Sunday in the formation of both personal and communal Catholic identity in the North308. McGuinness described the play as his ‘elegy to the dead and the living of Derry’309. The work is set in a graveyard and occupies itself with the ghosts of Bloody Sunday. Because of its explorations of the collective past of the North, Carthaginians fell victim to Lynda Henderson’s accusations of a ‘fondness for lament’ amongst contemporary playwrights, yet, as discussed, this

308 McGuinness’ versions of Chekhov – Three Sisters (1990) and Uncle Vanya (1995) – have also explored issues of both personal and collective identity. 309 The author’s introduction to Frank McGuiness: Plays 1 (London: Faber, 1996), x.

146

Its action moves freely between past and present, private and public, reality and fiction.

The play is structured in four sections and its opening section is entitled ‘Remembrance’, introducing McGuiness’ preoccupation with the dialogue between past and present. It involves an old man, Kenneth Pyper, waking up from sleep, underscored by a low drumbeat (reminiscent of the lambeg drum and of drums of war). He is plagued by ghosts and visions of the past, which he begins by rejecting: ‘I am angry at your demand that I continue to probe... I will not talk, I will not listen to you. Invention gives the slaughter shape. That scale of horror has no shape’314. McGuinness’ ideas are given clarity and potency through language which is marked by its extraordinary poetry and simplicity.

Pyper, like Stewart Parker’s Frank and Henry Joy McCracken, is caught between notions of the past as ‘shaped’ and ‘shapeless’315. While the ‘scale of horror has no shape’, it is ultimately Protestant historical rhetoric which provides the framework that allows Pyper to shape the horror. It is in this opening section that Pyper’s ghosts begin to appear – Craig, Roulston and Crawford followed by Moore, Millen, McIlwaine and Anderson – and it seems that through them he finds strength: ‘The house has grown cold. Ulster has grown lonely... Men my age have been burned in their beds. Fenian cowards. They won’t burn me out with their fire. I have defeated fire before. And you will always defend me. You will always guard Ulster. I miss you’ [99]. Holding his arms out to his ghosts, Pyper bids them to ‘dance in the deserted temple of the Lord. Dance unto death before the Lord’ [100], then:

314 Frank McGuinness, ‘Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme’, in Plays 1 (London: Faber, 1996), 97. All further references will be provided in the text. 315 Helen Lojek, ‘Myth and Bonding in Frank McGuinness’ “Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme”’, Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, 14.1 (1988), 46.

148 Pyper sees the ghost of the Younger Pyper. As if introducing that younger self to the other ghosts, he beckons it towards them, invitingly. Myself. My soul. Dance. Dance [101]. Here we get a powerful sense of the relationship between past and present, between Younger and Elder Pyper. Pyper’s obvious ‘remembering’ helps the audience to read the play not as a naturalistic reconstruction, a conventional history play, but instead as a mediated memory, one man’s struggle to come to terms with the past. Yet also clear from Pyper’s call to ‘dance in the deserted temple of the Lord’ is the image of Ulster as sanctuary, but a sanctuary increasingly deserted through violence. The Elder Pyper’s reference to men of his age being ‘burned in their beds’ by ‘Fenian cowards’, places these scenes in the context of the contemporary Troubles, when the position – or ‘sanctuary’ – of ‘Protestant Ulster’ is again threatened.

The eight men of the play between them represent the six counties of Ulster. Not only do they collectively represent the physical terrain of Ulster, they also represent, through their professions, different archetypes of the Ulster Protestant, different facets of the Ulster Protestant communal identity. McIlwaine and Anderson are shipworkers from Belfast, Roulston is an ex- preacher and Pyper was brought up as a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. The second part of McGuinness’ play, ‘Initiation’, is set in a military preparatory camp and introduces us to the men and to their various beliefs. All of them show pride in Ulster and a pride in their Protestant heritage. Craig, Moore and Millen discuss the fact that they were ‘Carson’s men’ and describe an encounter where they tortured and shaved the head of

149 a young Catholic for painting a tricolour on an Orange Lodge [122-3]. The Younger Pyper, upon hearing the tale, responds by roaring with laughter.

Yet the Younger Pyper is not part of this group and he quickly becomes the only dissenting voice amongst the men. Throughout this section of the play he challenges and subverts the men’s notion of collective and personal identity. Craig describes him as a ‘rare Pyper resonates through the play. He exposes Millen and Moore’s bigotry when telling the men a story about his French ‘Papist’ Whore bride with three legs, an anatomical fact which is greeted with affirmation by Moore: MOORE: Don’t laugh. That’s the truth MILLEN: You believe that? MOORE: I’ve heard that three-legged rumour before, but only in relation to nuns. There’s this big convent in

PYPER: She could have started out as a nun. I don’t know. I never got a chance to find out about her. She died on our wedding night. MOORE: What happened? PYPER: She bled to death. MOORE: How? PYPER: I sawed her middle leg off. MOORE: Why? PYPER: My duty as a Protestant. MOORE: Where did you get a saw on your wedding night? PYPER: I’ve heard the same rumour as you, Moore. In I always carried a saw with me. It’s overridden with nuns. MOORE: Did you bury her after you murdered her?

150 PYPER: No. I ate her. Do you not remember I was starving in France? [127]. The absurdity of his story subverts Millen and Moore’s tale of their exploits as Carson’s men, and the various acts of torture they performed on ‘ Pyper delights in confusing and unsettling his fellow soldiers.

On the surface, Pyper is less serious about the war than the other men, describing himself as: ‘Fit for dying. Fit for the grave. Fit for pushing up the daisies’ [111]. He challenges notions of authority within the army, confusing Millen upon his arrival: I asked you why you were here, Mr John Millen. I see I had better tell you. You are here as a volunteer in the army of your king and empire. You are here to train to meet that empire’s foe. You are here as a loyal son of Ulster, for the empire’s foe is Ulster’s foe. You are here to learn, Mr Millen. Learn to defend yourself and your comrades, and while you are here, you will learn to conduct yourself with respect, respect for this army, respect for your position in this army, and respect for all other positions above you. Since there are no ranks beneath you, you will never be at ease again until you leave this army. Do you understand that clearly? [108]. Yet underlying Pyper’s wit is a dark seriousness and a sense of reality which goes beyond all the blustering patriotic pride of the other seven men. He sees their fate as sacrifice, but not in heroic terms: MILLEN: We’ll all survive. This is the best army on God’s good earth. PYPER: But we’re the scum of it. We go first. CRAIG: Not if we fight together.

151 PYPER: We will go first, David. CRAIG: Pyper. PYPER: We will go first, David [135]. Pyper’s voice at this stage of the play parallels that of Mary in Northern Star. His recognition that he and his fellow soldiers are ‘the scum of it’ rather than brave defenders of Empire, doomed to die, recalls Mary’s description of McCracken as ‘dangling from a rope’s end, with the shite dribbling out of your britches’ [53]. These images of the brutal reality behind sacrificial rhetoric ultimately serve to challenge one of the tenets of the Ulster Protestant identity by questioning notions of noble sacrifice.

Although Pyper actively seeks to construct an identity as an outsider, he is inevitably drawn into his own community. Like Frank in Parker’s Spokesong, Pyper is bound by his past, caught between contradictory desires for independence and belonging. He recounts his life as an effort to escape his family, ancestors and his past: I cleared out of this country and went to do something with my heart and my eyes and my hands and my brains. Something I could not do here as the eldest son of a respectable family whose greatest boast is that in their house Sir Edward Carson, of their tribe, danced in the finest gathering Armagh had ever seen. I escaped Carson’s dance [163]. Yet ultimately he found it impossible to escape: ‘When I saw my hands working they were not mine but the hands of my ancestors, interfering, and I could not be rid of that interference. I could not create, I could only preserve’ [163]. In attempting to escape ‘Carson’s Dance’, Pyper travelled extensively, ending up in . He becomes the play’s customary exile or outsider, a constant feature of Northern Irish drama. Yet, like Julian in Spokesong, self-

152 imposed exile changed little. Pyper realises, and we the audience realise about Julian, that to escape is not possible, nor desirable. Ulster Protestant history is inextricably part of Ulster Protestant identity, but the central issue is how much that history is allowed to shape and dominate identity.

Part three of the play is entitled ‘Pairing’. We avoid any direct representation of the horrors of the Somme and jump forward to home leave after five months of fighting. McGuinness splits the stage into four spaces. Each space is occupied by a different ‘pairing’ and each space represents a kind of personal sanctuary for these pairs of men. It is to these private sanctuaries that the men go to gain the inspiration and to summon the strength to return to the public space of battle. Here is emphasised the importance of place, of place as vital to identity. McIlwaine and Anderson go to ‘the Field’ to celebrate the already gone 12th of July. The Field in itself is a highly significant imaginative landscape for the Northern Irish Protestant and it recalls Stewart Parker’s description of ‘two Ulsters, two men fighting 316. Anderson emphasises the importance of the physical landscape: ‘The Boyne is not a river of water. It is a river of blood. The blood that flows through our veins, brothers’ [167]. However, rather than being a strengthening process, McGuinness’ ‘Pairing’ sees the men express disenchantment. They begin to echo Pyper’s sentiments, losing their certainty after five months of battle horrors. McIlwaine parallels their company of troops with the Titanic (‘The pride of Belfast went with it’ [156]): The war’s cursed. It’s good for nothing. A waste of time. We won’t survive. We’re all going to die for nothing. Pyper was right. I know now. We’re on the Titanic. We’re all going down’ [154]. Just as the sinking of the Titanic, inextricably tied up with Protestant self-pride, disrupted the image of Belfast as the main ship-building capital of the British Empire, so the men’s role as

316 Parker, ‘Introduction’, 9.

153 canon fodder at the Somme symbolised the true nature of their place within Empire.

McIlwaine’s patriotic, confident pronouncements have become confusion and uncertainty: ‘Belfast will be lost in this war. The whole of Ulster will be lost. We’re not making a sacrifice. Jesus, you’ve seen this war. We are the sacrifice’ [156]. Similarly, Anderson feels disillusioned: ‘Pyper the bastard was right. It’s all lies. We’re going to die. It’s all lies. We’re going to die for nothing’ [167]. Both men long for the recovery of a sense of belonging, with McIlwaine losing control of his emotions: Oh, for Christ’s sake, Georgie, stop me talking like this. Drown me out, will you? Stop me. Give me noise. Give me the docks. Give me the yard. Steel banging against steel. Hammer in my hands. Fill me with noise, man. Stop me hearing myself. Stop me. Anderson grabs McIlwaine’s fists, bringing them down heavily and repeatedly on the lambeg, until McIlwaine shakes him off and falls heavily against the drum [157]. The noise of the shipyard community will bring McIlwaine back to a sense of belonging, replacing the isolation and horror of war, yet ultimately it is to his relationship with Anderson that he must look for strength. Helen Lojek argues that the ‘shape’ which these men ‘ultimately find is personal, not 317. This is especially so for Pyper, whose deepening relationship with Craig helps him to find meaning in the horrors of war. The public, masculine face of Protestant Ulster is replaced by a faith in personal friendship, a bond between the men318. Their collective consciousness is shaped less by the

317 Lojek, ‘Myth and Bonding’, 49. 318 McGuinness’ use of issues of masculinity and sexuality to subvert the singular Ulster Protestant identity will be discussed in more detail in Chapter Four of this thesis.

154 rhetoric of Ulster and more by the horrors of war which they have experienced.

The last part of Observe the Sons, ‘Bonding’, is set back at the front. Significant here is a re-enactment of the Battle of the Boyne, suggested by Anderson as a way to fill the time before battle. This historical ‘reconstruction’ is intended to serve as a morale booster for the men, much as Ulster Protestant marches reinforce purpose and solidarity. In the face of the uncertainties of war, the men turn to conventional Ulster Protestant historical rhetoric for comfort. Millen and Moore are cast as King James and his horse, while, ironically, the half-Catholic Crawford assumes the role of the very Protestant King Billy. Pyper, with his blonde hair, is cast as King Billy’s white horse, while Anderson is MC declaring: ‘Let battle commence. And, remember, King James, we know the result, you know the result, keep to the result’ [182]. Anderson’s commentary vividly describes the heroism of King Billy: ‘Furious and bold, King Billy will not rest. This time James will fall, and with him mighty Rome in this kingdom. They must fight and fight they will until the victor stands poised before the victim’ [183]. Yet mid-battle Pyper trips and Crawford [King Billy] crashes to the ground. King Billy’s fall is not seen as a good omen and what was meant to solidify resolve serves instead to further shake the men. This historical representation is a manifestation of the impulse to impose shape on the past by reinforcing Protestant victories, helping the men to reinforce their sense of purpose. Through history, the men are reminding themselves of their communal identity. This need for reinforcement becomes crucial as the full implications of war are brought home to the men.

The final moments of the play see Anderson offering Pyper an orange sash to wear into battle: ‘So we’ll recognise you as one of our own. Your own’

155

YOUNGER PYPER: The temple of the lord I ransacked. ELDER PYPER: Ulster. Pyper reaches towards himself. YOUNGER PYPER: Dance in this deserted temple of the Lord. ELDER PYPER: Dance. Darkness [197]. There is no resolution in the play, no answers are given, but questions are asked. The end echoes the beginning and, like Spokesong and Northern Star, provides a kind of cyclical feel evocative of the historical cyclicalism which is so integral to the Protestant historical vision. The engagement of the eight men with Ulster is challenged throughout the play but remains intact, albeit isolated and alone. Frank McGuinness aimed through Observe the Sons of Ulster... in part to answer the question of ‘What led us to battle?’: ‘I knew [the answer]... would be "I love my Ulster" and I knew that I had to get a character that would find that as hard to say as I would find it’320. Pyper is that character.

______

The three works in this chapter all examine the relationship between Ulster Protestant historical myths and Ulster Protestant identity, although, the means by which they do this differ. Stewart Parker uses notions of ‘play’ to challenge history, while Frank McGuinness takes a defining moment of Ulster Protestant historical consciousness, the Battle of the Somme, and looks at its underside, using the ‘private’ to subvert the ‘public’.

320 Helen Lojek, ‘Difference Without Indifference: The Drama of Frank McGuinness and Anne Devlin’, Eire-Ireland, 25.2 (1990), 60.

157 Frank and Henry Joy McCracken are Parker’s protagonists and they are both awkwardly positioned somewhere in between the past and the present, both suffering under the weight of history. Frank is running an outdated bicycle shop in the middle of the contemporary Troubles, while McCracken’s future hope and present action towards a vision of unity in Ireland are thwarted by the atavistic impulses of the past. In Spokesong, Parker resolves Frank’s predicament through the forces of ‘play’. The Trick Cyclist becomes the agent for Frank’s ‘recovery’ and, at the end of the play, he is launched into the late twentieth century on a tandem bike with Daisy, singing a song. The self-conscious theatricality and the overarching metaphor of the history of the bicycle are all ways in which Parker ‘plays’ with the Northern Irish conflict in Spokesong, and its end testifies to Parker’s belief in the reconstructive potential of ‘play’. However, by the time of Northern Star, ten years on, Parker’s vision was decidedly more dismal. With the exception of the character of Hope, McCracken’s world is filled with the weight of historical inevitability and the rhetoric of noble sacrifice. McCracken’s private and personal life is overtaken by the public concerns of the 1798 Uprising. In this can be read Parker’s comment on the relationship between identity and history. McCracken’s inevitable end is as a result of the forces of history, from which he finds he cannot escape.

McGuinness similarly deals with the intersection of identity and history framed in terms of the intersection of the private and the public. Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme locates itself in one of the defining historical moments of Ulster Protestant identity, the Battle of the Somme. McGuinness examines how a group of eight Ulstermen cope with the horrors of battle and their shared struggle with their communal identity. Pyper is the outsider and the play is really his story. It traces his journey from rejection to belonging. He begins the play disaffected, yet becomes a

158 proud Ulsterman who keeps the memory of his long-dead fellow soldiers alive through Ulster Protestant rhetoric. Underneath this rhetoric, which permeates the play, is vulnerability.

Ultimately Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme, and Stewart Parker’s two plays, propose ways in which an apparently fixed and fruitless conception of Ulster Protestant identity can be problematised and invigorated by a reworking of the key myths and moments in the community’s history. This process is vividly expressed in Observe the Sons. McGuinness takes the Battle of the Somme and transforms it from a public, shared historical moment and a representation of Ulster Protestant communal identity, into the site of personal trauma and, ultimately, revelation. This juxtaposition of the private and public serves to subvert Ulster Protestant history and the singular identity which rests upon it.

159 Chapter Three

Centres and Peripheries: the Ulster Protestant as Irish and British

I am an Ulsterman. I was born in the island of Ireland, before the partition of the island. So legally and emotionally too, I am an Irishman. My native language is English; my literary loyalties and political enthusiasms are English. Therefore I am Ulster, Irish, British. And, in that I live in a region of an island in an archipelago off the shores of Europe, I am European. , 19701.

The previous chapter dealt with a breaking away from static historical narratives and replacing them with both a recognition that history is dynamic and fluid, and that the relationship between past and present is a continuing dialogue. In so doing, Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness problematised the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity. Alongside this issue of history and myth, and the way the past shapes identity, is a sense of how that identity is shaped in the present. The dramatists in this chapter approach this question through issues of ethnicity and nationality, taking us back to Field Day’s explorations of national identity. Not only do these contemporary issues provide fodder for continuing public and political

1 Osmond, The Divided Kingdom (London: Constable, 1988), 118.

160 squabbles, they also inform a deeper level of Protestant consciousness. Ulster Protestant identity is imbued with a sense of ‘Britishness’ and its perceived opposite, ‘Irishness’. Just what that means is examined in the work which occupies this chapter.

Northern Ireland is often described as a province ‘stuck’ between two nations – Ireland and Britain. Simple explanations of the Northern Irish Irishness as against the Protestant community’s sense of Britishness, while the reality is more complex. It is, by and large, true that Ulster Protestants primarily consider themselves British, with the rationale behind both Unionist politics and Loyalist paramilitaries being to maintain Ulster’s links with mainland Britain. However, following Eamonn Hughes’ view that ‘Northern Ireland is a place in which identity does not confront difference; rather identity is difference’2, integral to Protestant notions of Britishness are corresponding notions of Irishness. The three plays which will be examined in detail in this chapter all deal with these issues – what it means to be an Ulster Protestant straddling both a British and an Irish identity.

Ian Paisley Jnr is quoted as claiming that ‘Irishness is an all-in-one package providing both national identity and cultural fulfilment’. Britishness, in contrast, ‘has a more nebulous quality’: ‘It is difficult to define. It forms the basis of allegiance but is amenable to numerous definitions, permitting the development of a heterogeneous culture unencumbered with time or specific definitions of identity and place’3. Paisley’s view is not new. Historians and social scientists have often pointed to this difference. While to be Irish

2 Eamonn Hughes, ‘Introduction: Northern Ireland - Border Country’, in Eamonn Hughes (ed.), Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland 1960-1990 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 3. 3 Ian Paisley Jnr, as quoted in Victoria White, ‘The Art of Loyalism’, The Irish Times, 20 March 1997.

161 denotes both an allegiance and an ethnic description, to be British denotes only an allegiance. The Scottish and Welsh peoples are considered British, yet their ethnic identification remains firmly rooted with their Scottishness or Welshness. It is argued that when placed in opposition to Ulster Catholics, secure in their identity, culture and politics, Ulster Protestants appear dispossessed. This is an impression which is intensified by the fervent and almost desperate Loyalism exhibited by sections of the community. However, Ulster Protestants, in spite of the ‘more nebulous quality’ of Britishness, have developed an identity which is grounded in specific definitions of place and which is very much encumbered with time.

Desmond Bell argues that Protestants possess a sense of identity which, rather than being grounded in a specific political ideology, is grounded in symbolic practices. He cites the Orange Order, the Lambeg Drum, the 12th of July Parades, the 11th of July bonfires and the territorial painting of kerbstones as ‘the specific means by which an exclusive Protestant identity is represented and renewed in the Protestant mind’4. Such associations with particular historical events and geographical locations all involve a celebration of Ulster, and a Protestant Ulster at that.

While this constitutes a positive sense of identity, it is arguable that a large part of the personal and communal Ulster Protestant identity revolves around the negative. This identity thus becomes ‘not-Irish’ or ‘not-Catholic’. Perceived positive Protestant qualities, such as loyalty, industriousness and freedom of religion, are contrasted with perceived negative Catholic qualities, such as disloyalty, laziness and religious backwardness. The Ulster Protestant community has always been regarded (and has always regarded itself) as separate from the other inhabitants of the island of Ireland, yet its

4 Desmond Bell, ‘Contemporary Cultural Studies in Ireland and the “Problem” of Protestant The Crane Bag, 9.2 (1985), 95.

162 rejection of Irishness has intensified since the Home Rule Crises and Partition. Fifty years of the Stormont ideology solidified Ulster Protestant independence from the Republic, and the last thirty years have seen a struggle to keep it.

Irishness

Since 1937, when the Constitution of the Irish Free State was put in place by Eamonn de Valera, Articles 2 and 3 of this document have caused many problems for Ulster Protestants. Article 2 declared Irish national territory to consist of ‘the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas’ while Article 3 put this territorial claim on hold ‘pending the reintegration of 5. Given that the Ulster Protestant population consisted of more than half of that of the six counties it is reasonable to assume that such claims to unification included them. Yet the 1937 Constitution implicitly excluded Ulster Protestants through its recognition of Catholicism as the ‘guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of the citizens’6. Successive Irish governments have sought to de-emphasise Articles 2 and 3 and have promised a policy of religious tolerance within a United Ireland. However, the more extreme elements of the Protestant community in the North have frequently pointed to the 1937 Constitution and its continuing existence as evidence of the inevitable disenfranchisement of their community should it ever be absorbed into the Republic7. Similarly the decline of the Protestant population in the South from 12% to 3% after

5 As cited in Conor Cruise O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, 2nd edn (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 155. 6 Ibid. 7 However, as of the Good Friday Peace Agreement in 1998, this situation has changed. An overwhelming majority in the Republic voted in a referendum to remove these contentious claims from the Irish Constitution.

163 Partition, due both to emigration and mixed marriages8 is cited as evidence for maintaining the union with Britain. Many Ulster Protestants believe that a United Ireland – or rather ‘Rome Rule’ – would see a loss of religious and civil liberties9.

What needs to be considered here is where the Republic and Northern Nationalists place the Ulster Protestant community within a united Ireland and what consideration, if any, is given to the legitimacy of Ulster Protestant culture. Conor Cruise O’Brien, high profile revisionist, refers to the ‘squeeze’ of Ulster Protestants by a pan-Catholic and pan-Nationalist consensus10. This ‘squeeze’ stems from a view of the situation which is commonly termed the ‘one-nation’ approach. Eire is seen, by virtue of its geographical integrity, as consisting of one nation. Ulster Protestants are part of this nation whether they recognise it or not. Constitutional Nationalists (the SDLP) are fond of the concept of a democratic majority, with the implicit aim being to ease Unionists and Loyalists away from their attachment to Britain and towards their fellow Irish. The more extreme Republican groups have a simpler explanation which is rooted in an ‘anti- imperialist’ Marxist approach to the conflict, discounting Ulster Protestant self-determination, and viewing the community as merely puppets of the British, having been lured by material advantage during the heyday of the Orange State. An ‘Open Letter’ by members of Sinn Fein articulates this viewpoint clearly, exhorting Loyalist workers to discover ‘their real class interests’ and have ‘the scales of imperialism... drop from their eyes’ 11. Again the aim here is to bring the

8 The Papal Ne Temere decree declares that children of mixed marriages must be brought up in the Catholic faith. 9 This has become less of an issue since the Republic legalised divorce in March 1997. It is now widely accepted that the Republic is becoming more secular in government. 10 O’Brien, Ancestral, 193-6. 11 As cited in Communist Party of Ireland, Armed Struggle (Belfast: Unity Press, 1988), 7.

164 wayward Ulster Protestant sons and daughters back into the heart of Mother Ireland.

The official rhetoric of Northern Nationalists expresses bewilderment at the reluctance of Ulster Protestants. Speaking in 1983, John Hume, leader of the SDLP protested innocence: The heart of this crisis in Ireland is the conviction... of the majority of Protestants in the North that their ethos would simply not survive in an Irish political settlement. This conviction... is rejected by the rest of us in Ireland, equally convinced by our dark past that we could never impose dominance on others, we who have known better than most the misery and sterility of oppression12. Yet for the Ulster Protestant community, it is not official Nationalism which poses the greatest threat, but rather popular Nationalism. The appropriation of the term ‘Irish’ by Catholic Nationalists at the turn of the century has been briefly discussed elsewhere13, however it is worth looking at in more detail. Edna Longley and Gerald Dawe have pointed to the shift which occurred from using the term ‘Anglo-Irish’ to using the term ‘Ulster Protestant’ to denote Protestant Ireland14 and this was a shift aided by the creation of the term ‘Irish Ireland’ in the first decade of this century. The term was taken up and disseminated by DP Moran, editor of the newspaper The Leader. An ‘Irish Irelander’ was seen to possess several distinct characteristics. He or

12 John Hume, ‘Reconciliation of the Irreconcilable’, a speech given at the opening of the on 30 May 1983, as published in Seamus Deane (ed.), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols (Derry: Field Day, 1991), III, 788. As previously mentioned, John Hume and the SDLP are, and always have been, constitutional Nationalists, aiming to achieve unity through political means, and thus separated from the violence. Unlike Sinn Fein, they have no links (either official or unofficial) with any paramilitary group. 13 See pages 27-30. 14 Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley, ‘Introduction’, in Gerald Dawe and Edna Longley (eds.), Across A Roaring Hill: The Protestant Imagination in Modern Ireland (Belfast: Blackstaff Press, 1985), iv.

165 she was Catholic, earnestly nationalistic, enthusiastic about the , opposed to all forms of English influence in Ireland (including Rugby and Cricket), a supporter of the Gaelic Athletic Association and rigidly chaste. The only way that a Protestant could be considered part of the ‘Irish Ireland’ family was if he or she became ‘absorbed’, that is, ‘either a Catholic Nationalist or – at the very least – a loyal adherent, at a subordinate level, to a form of nationalism entirely defined and dominated by Irish Catholics’15. On a baser level, it was Moran also who coined the bigoted term ‘sourfaces’ to denote Protestants: ‘There is something very distinctive about the face of the average Loyalist... They all understand one another, especially when employment is to be given. These brick-complexioned and sourfaced whole and part foreigners rule the country’16. As is clear, while official Nationalism has always maintained a policy of inclusion, popular Nationalism has often done the opposite. Furthermore, while the perception of constant betrayals by Westminster has turned the focus of the Protestant community inward, rather than being the first step towards a united Ireland, this inwards focus has developed into a process of ‘

Playwright Marie Jones provides an interesting case study of a Northern Irish Protestant who has firmly embraced an Irish identity and Republican political ideology. One of the founding members of Charabanc Theatre Company17, she left the group in 1990 to pursue her writing career. In 1991 she teamed up with Pam Brighton (who had directed Charabanc’s first three plays) and Mark Lambert to form DubbelJoint Productions with an aim ‘to create work that is current, exciting and popular, reflecting the unique problems of the whole island of Ireland. Hence the name Dub(lin)-Bel(fast) Joint’18.

15 O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, 41. 16 O’Brien, Ancestral Voices, 39. 17 For a detailed discussion of Charabanc Theatre Company, see Chapter Five. 18 DubbelJoint, Mission Statement, as printed in the programme for A Night in November at the Tricycle Theatre in London, March 1995.

166 DubbelJoint’s underpinning ideology is Republican in slant. The company takes great pride in performing its works at the West Belfast Community Festival, an annual event established in 1987 and focused on celebrating the West Belfast community. While the festival aims to encourage the creativity of all residents of the area regardless of religion, it is often viewed as nothing more than a mouthpiece for Republicanism, a bias illustrated by the Festival’s Gaelic title – Féile an Phobail. In a review of the 1997 festival (at which DubbelJoint was premiering another new work, Binlids, about ‘life in West Belfast from internment in 1971 and the subsequent demonisation of that area and its people’19) the Dublin-based Irish Times’ Pól O Muirí, in revisionist tones, claimed that ‘on the evidence of what is on offer... [the Festival]... seems to reinforce outsiders’ image of west Belfast as being peopled by Irish Sandinistas’ and that ‘the foreword to this year’s programme... contain[ed] a paragraph or two which would not be out of place in a Sinn Fein election leaflet’20. The statement in the programme notes for Binlids about the ‘demonisation’ of West Belfast and its Republican community, indicates Jones’ and DubbelJoint’s position. DubbelJoint sees itself as providing a voice for the Northern Irish Catholic community and the company makes no pretence about its Republican beliefs.

One of DubbelJoint’s more successful productions was Jones’ one man show A Night in November, which premiered at the 1994 West Belfast Community Festival. The play’s protagonist is Kenneth McCallister, Protestant dole clerk from Belfast. Kenneth is our narrator, vividly bringing to life the action and the people that surround him. The ‘night in November’ of the title is a night in November 1993 when Northern Ireland played the Republic in a soccer match that would decide if the Republic would qualify for the 1994 World Cup, to be staged in the . The score, a 1-1

19 As quoted in Pól O Muirí, ‘The Arts Struggle’, The Irish Times, 7 August 1997 20 O Muirí, ‘The Arts Struggle’.

167 draw, was enough to send the Republic to the US, but throughout the match the team was subjected to sectarian abuse which proves the catalyst to Kenneth’s staggering change of life.

Kenneth takes his father-in-law, Ernie, to the match, describing him as having been shaped by ‘sixty-five years of good old loyal bigotry, sixty-five years of salt of the earth racism, and sixty-five years of being bottom of the heap’21. Ernie is one of the first to embrace the sectarian spirit of the occasion while Kenneth remains a voice of reason: Is this a football match Ernie, or a crowd of lions waiting for the Christians... what’s going on here.... Dirty Fenian scum... (Chants.) There’s only one team in Ireland. Come on lads, get stuck into them dirty . (Starts to grunt.) uh uh uh uh... come on boys kick the ballicks off that big gorilla... where’s your spear, you big ape ye... Ernie. What’s wrong with ye, sure they’re fucking black aren’t they?... luk, three black men... (Shouts.) Hey, where did you get your players... the zoo? (Laughs.) Then all around me... Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat, Trick or Treat, Trick or Tre... Hear that Kenny, hear that, our boys miss nothin’... (Laughs, then shouts.) Greysteel seven, Ireland nil... do da, do da... hey listen, Kenny, listen... they’re all at it now, Greysteel seven, Ireland nil, do da do da day... hey, I

21 Marie Jones, A Night in November (Dublin: New Island, 1995), 17. All further references will be provided in the text.

168 started that one and now thousands has joined in, it was me that started it, me Ernie Thompson, magic [13-14]. Less than a month before the match (on 23 October 1993) a fish shop on the very Protestant had been bombed by the IRA, killing ten people and injuring fifty-eight. During the following week, on , in response to this attack, Protestant gunmen had opened fire in a Catholic bar in Greysteel in Derry, killing seven people.

Ernie’s chant leaves Kenneth cold: I felt sick, I felt such shame... ashamed of him, ashamed that I’d married someone who came from him, ashamed of standing in the same place as men like him... it’s beyond words, it’s beyond feeling... I’m numb... Greysteel seven, Ireland nil... trick or treat... men walk into a pub on Halloween, shout Trick or Treat and mow down seven innocent people and these fuckin’ barbarians are laughin’... surely to God, surely to Christ these are not the people I am part of... no, it’s not, don't tell me, I’m not hearing them, I’m not for I can’t fucking handle it [15]. It forces him head on into a confrontation with previously unquestioned beliefs: I drove home that night with the dreaded Ernie... I wanted to scream, wanted to stop the car and throw him out... but did I... no, I sat there and listened and hadn’t the bottle to challenge him... no, too many years of accepting what Ernie accepted, so I sat in silence, knowing in my guts that Ernie had to be wrong, but Jesus Christ, where does that leave Kenneth Norman McCallister [16].

169 A Night in November focuses on Kenneth’s identity crisis. His questioning involves both a rejection of his own background and an acceptance of what is presented by the end of the play as his essential Irishness. This is a highly reductive view of the complexity of the Protestant sense of identity and directly parallels traditional Republican views regarding the North’s majority. The only valid identification is ‘Irish’ and Nationalism is the only solution.

Kenneth’s gradual recognition of his innate ‘Irishness’ begins on this ‘night in November’ but is cemented by his shifting attitude towards his boss, Jerry Duffy, a Catholic. On the morning of the fateful ‘night’ we get a glimpse of the ‘old Kenneth’ when he discovers that he has been accepted as a member of the golf club: ‘Wait until I tell Jerry Duffy, he has been trying to get accepted for two years now... Jesus I can’t wait to see his face... there’s the laugh, he is the supervisor and he can’t get accepted... that’s one up for me’ [11]. Kenneth goes into Jerry’s office, basking in his newfound superiority: Jerry, I just left those files on your desk, I have dealt with them like you asked... oh, by the way, fancy a game of golf on Sunday. Sunday is a tough day to get on the course if you’re not a member, Kenneth. (Out front.) I have waited for years for this moment but I must act casual... I don’t want him to feel inferior, now control yourself Kenneth, it’s all in your stride... right... here goes... Well actually Jerry, that should not be a problem because I have just been accepted as a member and as a member,

170 you will be permitted as long as you’re with me... I’ll call you later to arrange the time. I had to get out, had to go straight out, straight out to the toilet and laughed [11]. He goes on: I couldn’t bear to look back at the envy on his face, the years of gloatin’, with that “I got the post over a Protestant” look wiped off his face... because Jerry son, whether you like it or not, you’ll never be one of us, at the end of the day, when the chips are down... even when the fat lady sings we will always stick to our own [11]. The portrait of the Ulster Protestant which Jones provides through Kenneth is distinctly unflattering. Before his Irishness is revealed to him, Kenneth is petty and bitter, stuck in patterns of bigotry and resentment. The Ulster Protestant community around him, his family and his wife’s family, are similarly denigrated.

The picture that the audience is given is necessarily filtered through Kenneth’s eyes and as he embarks upon his discovery of innate Irishness, so the family as presented by him become more two dimensional. They act as representations of what Kenneth perceives as the negative qualities of Protestant identity. However, Jones chose to set her work in the context of the ‘night in November’ when the sectarian vitriol of elements of Ulster’s Loyalist community was on display. Her own message about Kenneth’s community in this respect is clear – Ulster Protestant culture is both bigoted and misguided.

The soccer match acts as a revelation for Kenneth. The following day he is racked with guilt and self-doubt which is magnified upon discovering that

171 Jerry was also at the game: ‘He looked at me, into my eyes... I felt like he had watched me commit a terrible crime’ [20]. His relationship with his Catholic boss is dramatically changed from this point. Kenneth discovers that Jerry is going to the World Cup, and, after exploding at a dinner party held to celebrate his new membership of the golf club, Kenneth also decides to go to the United States: ‘the most exciting, totally outrageous crazy mad thing I had ever done in my life’ [37]. He gathers up the golf club membership, cashes in some shares, sells his golf clubs and heads off to Dublin, to embrace his newfound Irishness: I drove into the car park... it was a sight I’ll never forget... the whole airport had been taken over by a green, white and gold army.... they were singing and laughing and chanting ‘ole, we’re on our way, we’re on our way to the USA’... So am I, I shouted... it felt good... people with streamers and hats and silly wigs and painted faces and I was part of them [38]. After arriving in New York, the process of finding somewhere to stay begins and Kenneth finds that he is quickly embraced by the Irish community there, ‘in their eyes I was one of them... and I loved it’ [43]. This image of the Irish welcoming Kenneth with open arms can be read as a fairly obvious metaphor for Ulster’s inclusion in the Republic. Belonging to the Ulster Protestant community means condoning and expressing bigoted sectarian views while being a part of the worldwide Irish family means camaraderie and looking out for one another.

The Irish defeat Italy and the celebrations move from the bars and onto the streets of New York. Kenneth is brought back to reality with a policeman telling him of a shooting in Belfast: ‘Some guys were watching the match when a couple of gunmen came in and shot dead six of them’ [47]. The play

172 ends with Kenneth offering to buy Mick – a fellow Protestant from Belfast – a drink: I want you to drink with me, because tonight I can stand here and tell you that I am no part of the men who did that... I am not of them anymore... tonight I absolve myself... I am free of them Mick... I am free of it, I am a free man... I am a Protestant man, I’m an Irish man [47]. Again, Jones’ message is reductive. The assumption made here is that Kenneth has to ‘free’ himself from Protestant hardliners. Only then will he recognise that he can be both Protestant and Irish. No mention is made of the violence perpetrated by Republican extremists. That, for Jones, seems to be irrelevant.

A Night in November deals with the notion of a challenging of stereotypes yet in the process perpetuates them. This is particularly evident in the relationship between Kenneth and Jerry. One night, when Jerry is having problems with his car, Kenneth offers to give him a lift home after which Jerry invites him in for a beer: I had pictured Jerry’s house in my head, well, it couldn’t be up to much I’d thought... he did live in West Belfast and we grew up with the pictures of deprivation and filth and graffiti and too many kids and not enough soap... well, there it was, bigger than mine... detached with a garage, the lawn strewn with bikes and scooters and toy tractors, strewn with life, not like ours, manicured to the last blade... Wife not here, Jerry? No, she’s left a note on the kitchen table, she took a notion to take the kids to the pictures, so I’m to get my own.

173 Oh, God, what freedom, what wonderful unpredictability... and then at the bottom of the note which I strained my eyes to see, what Jerry never bothered to read out... Love You... why should he bother to read that out, it’s a fact, it’s unspoken, it’s taken as read, but she still writes it, as a matter of course, just to make sure Jerry knows.... you lucky bastard, where did it all go wrong for me... where... how...why [25]. Here Jones is setting up a familiar dichotomy between Catholic and Protestant, Irish and English, barbarous and civilised, feminine and masculine. Jerry’s [Catholic] life is spontaneous, chaotic, creative and full of love while Kenneth’s [Protestant] life is the direct antithesis: We are the perfect Prods, we come in kits, we are standard regulation, like those standard kitchens with the exact spaces for standard cookers and fridges, our dimensions never vary and that’s the way we want it, but what happens when the kit is put together and the appliances don’t fit the spaces... what happens... chaos, mayhem and we can’t cope, we can’t cope [23]. This stereotype can be traced back to the Irish Revival of the nineteenth century, when efforts were made to assert the legitimacy and strength of the Gaelic race. The native Irish were presented as a nation of ‘saints and scholars’, to the English in their creativity and cultural ability.

The Ulster Protestant in such a picture becomes essentialised, simply representative of the unimaginative ‘colonisers’. Harking back to the sentiments of DP Moran, an article in The Irish Times advised Margaret Thatcher on how to deal with Unionist opposition to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, claiming that Unionist politicians: ‘are wont to conduct their

174 politics as if it were a series of revival meetings. There is one theme only, there is no questioning or trading – only preaching, enthusiasm and zeal’22. Lack of questioning becomes a lack of imagination and this perceived lack of imagination has been a continued source of embarrassment for the Protestant community. Prior to the 1960s, Protestants in the Orange State were raised to think of themselves as superior, but the late 1960s saw that belief shaken with the rise of a group of educated and articulate young Catholics, associated with the civil rights and Republican movements, including John Hume and Gerry Adams. Northern Nationalists have been seen as far more ‘capable’ publicly, more able to articulate their ideologies and able to gain a wider audience. Nationalism has traditionally allowed a more autonomous role to its intellectuals23, which has led to Irish Nationalism being presented to the outside world as both more comprehensible and more ‘reasonable’.

This perceived lack of creativity and lack of imagination on the part of the Protestant community has been attributed to numerous causes. Liam O’Dowd points to traditional bias in education systems, with the Catholic system favouring the humanities and the arts and Protestant schools opting for a more scientific and technical orientation, while Edna Longley argues for an innate fear of the Other, believing that historically, Ulster Protestants have distrusted literary culture ‘not only because of Calvinism, the business ethic, and fear of free speech... but because it might be latently “Irish”’24. Longley’s argument raises the issue of Ulster Protestant identity having been formed in response to the Catholic South. The Orange State, as discussed in the introduction to this thesis, consciously placed itself in opposition to the

22 As quoted in Liam O’Dowd, ‘Intellectuals and Political Culture: a Unionist-Nationalist Culture and Politics, 153-4. 23 Ibid., 153. 24 Ibid., and Edna Longley, ‘Opening Up: A New Pluralism’, Fortnight, November 1987, 24.

175 Republic, with its efforts primarily directed towards the preservation rather than the definition or construction of a positive and unique Ulster identity.

AE’s cure for the dull Ulster Protestant was simple: ‘Ulster will not be able to express its soul or its Irish character so long as it looks to Great Britain for its cultural ideals’25 and this is not too distant from Jones’ underlying message in A Night in November. Yet the simplification of the issue into a division between Irish and British obscures underlying complexities. Jones’ play is blatantly Republican in sentiment – Irish is good, while Ulster Protestant, and therefore British, is bad. The other Ulster Protestants in the play are thinly sketched and unsympathetically portrayed, a problem not eased by the fact that they are mediated through the eyes of the ‘born-again’ Irishman Kenneth. Tim Loane, actor, director and founder member of Tinderbox Theatre Company26, described the play as ‘naive in its politics’ and 27, and he is right. While the play is well-crafted, it does little but reinforce stereotypes, and contributes nothing new to the debate about Ulster Protestant identity.

However, while critics were cautious in their reviews of the play, A Night in November was well received by audiences. As Sarah Hemming, reviewing the play’s 1995 London tour for The Independent, argued: ‘Simplistic? Yes. Sentimental? Yes. Loaded? Yes. The play wields clichés about the lovable Irish like there is no tomorrow... But you forgive [Jones] all this because of the play’s hopefulness... its ironic humour... and because of Dan Gordon’s 28. Perhaps it was because of its ‘clichés about the lovable Irish’ that the play proved such a success in Dublin,

25 Longley and Dawe, ‘Introduction’, iii. 26 See Chapter Seven for more discussion of Tinderbox Theatre Company. 27 Tim Loane, Personal Interview, 23 February 1998. 28 Sarah Hemming, The Independent, 8 March 1995.

176 London and the United States. The play’s popularity provided it with the power to communicate, yet its simplistic populism in turn reinforced superficial explanations of the Northern Irish conflict. A Night in November toured all over the island of Ireland, but also internationally, to both London and New York. Like the work of Gary Mitchell, which will be discussed in detail in Chapter Seven, it is arguable that Jones’ play achieved success outside the North because it provided audiences with an explanation of the conflict which they could comprehend in their two hours of sitting in the theatre. This doesn’t however explain its success within the North. The play premiered at the West Belfast Festival to what would have been largely Catholic audiences. Perhaps here there is also comfort in the reinforcing of stereotypes, particularly when they serve to bolster one’s own sense of identity.

The play is undoubtedly a subversion of Ulster Protestant identity on one level, with its break away from rigid notions of the Ulster Protestant as ‘British’. Jones’ efforts at inclusiveness are framed by the context of the 1994 ceasefires in the North. However, the reductiveness of A Night in November achieves little more than a restating of stereotypes. Jones’ message seems to be that Nationalism is the solution to the conflict in the North. If Ulster Protestants rejected Britishness and instead recognised their innate Irishness then a United Ireland would be possible and the problem in the North solved. Her work takes us back to the Northern Nationalist ideology of Field Day, albeit to a more simplistic rendering of that ideology.

Britishness

The rigid Britishness of the Ulster Protestant identity developed in part as a response to its exclusion from Irishness. The late nineteenth century in

177 Ireland witnessed the beginnings of the division between Irish and British, Catholic and Protestant. At the turn of the century, an Anglo-Irish Protestant like WB Yeats could lay claim to an Irish identity. However, by the time of Partition in 1922, this was no longer the case. To be Irish was to be Catholic, while the Ulster Protestant remained firmly attached to a sense of Britishness. While the 36th (Ulster) Division sacrificed their lives out of loyalty and duty to the British Empire at the Battle of the Somme in 1916, Patrick Pearse and his fellow took over the General Post Office and declared a new Irish Republic.

Since the first agitation for Home Rule in the 1870s and 1880s, the public voice of Ulster Protestantism has staunchly maintained its Britishness, an ethnic identification which was necessarily formed in opposition to notions of Irishness. Yet this Britishness has never been fully secure, and any threat to the status of Northern Ireland is inevitably greeted with louder protestations of loyalty. Tom Nairn describes the Ulster Protestant community as a ‘self- conscious, advanced “frontier” society’29. It is this ‘self-consciousness’ which proves a barrier to the relationship between Britain and its loyal Ulster subjects: ‘They were always, and they still remain, profoundly and embarrassingly different from the society they are a frontier of’30. There is a sense of confusion which emanates from Westminster and the British people when it comes to the Ulster Protestant community. Its extremist elements are viewed with distaste, which Steve Bruce argues stems from the fact that ‘the English... have a style which disdains loud expressions of national identity as vulgar and crude’31. In addition, little separation is made between

29 Tom Nairn, The Break Up of Britain (London: Verso, 1977), 233. 30 Ibid., 233-4. 31 Steve Bruce, The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 134.

178 Northern Irish Protestants and Catholics – they are all ‘Paddies’ and best left to manage their own affairs.

Inevitably, the British government has gradually distanced itself from the conflict. Arguably, the subtext of British actions in the last 30 years has been a desperation to rid itself of this Irish and therefore ‘foreign’ war. For Ulster Protestants, this British lack of interest in their plight is seen as nothing short of betrayal. Their history and ethnic identity are infused with sacrifice for Empire for which they expect to be rewarded. Marianne Elliott’s Field Day Pamphlet, Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty32, brings up the important issue of the ‘contractarian’ nature of the relationship between Ulster Protestants and Britain. Rather than seeing the privileges of British citizenship as a right, the Ulster Protestant community sees it as something which should be, and has been, earned. As discussed, recent political developments have completely contradicted the Protestant community’s view that it holds a special place in Britain’s heart33. The Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), Downing Street Declaration (1993), and the recent Good Friday Peace Agreement (1998), have been singled out by extreme sections of the Protestant community as evidence that there is little consideration for the wishes of Ulster Unionists and Loyalists in the formation of policy at Westminster. This lack of consideration has caused Ulster Loyalists, in particular, to turn inwards and towards the formation of an identity which is independent of Britain. The UDA, led by , was the first Loyalist group to focus on the preservation of a Protestant Ulster, rather than on the maintenance of the Union. Its adoption of Ian Adamson’s theory of the Cruthin gave historical legitimacy to Protestant claims on Ulster. However, just as this ‘Ulsterisation’ argues for independence from a British identity, it similarly maintains the rejection of an Irish identity.

32 Marianne Elliott, Watchmen in Sion: the Protestant Idea of Liberty (Derry: Field Day, 1985).

179 Ron Hutchinson’s intensely dark, yet disturbingly funny play, Rat in the Skull, premiered in 1984, explores the British attitude towards Northern Ireland and, more particularly, towards the Ulster Protestant. The play has been accorded two London productions34, which gives some indication of its continuing relevance to English audiences. Rat in the Skull is essentially a dialogue between RUC policeman Nelson and alleged IRA terrorist Roche, a dialogue between Protestant and Catholic. However, this dialogue is conducted in an English police station and is overseen by an English policeman. What becomes more important than the opposition between the two central protagonists is the relationship between English and Northern Irish. Throughout the play, Northern Ireland is seen as an alien place, incomprehensible to the English, tribal and ‘uncivilised’. Nelson is acutely conscious of the profound separateness that exists between himself and his fellow British public servants: ‘Belfast-bound or Belfast-been you’re set apart. Cut out from the other arrivals and departures. Corralled-off. Unclean. Infected. Bearing madness, sweating sin’35. Michael Ratcliffe, reviewing the original production of the play for The Observer, argued that: If the English understood the Irish there would be no need for plays like Rat in the Skull... [which] leaves no stone unturned in the necessary task of humiliating our ignorance, indifference and distaste, and sends us quietly out into the night feeling about one inch high36. Ratcliffe’s comments reflect the widespread belief that there is a virtually unbridgeable cultural distance between Ireland and England, reinforcing

33 See pages 41-47. 34 The play was originally premiered at the Royal Court in 1984 and given a second production in 1995. 35 Ron Hutchinson, Rat in the Skull (London: Methuen, 1984), 10. All further references will be provided in the text. 36 Michael Ratcliffe, The Observer, 9 September 1984.

180 Hutchinson’s image of Belfast as a place ‘apart’37, along with Nairn’s description of the North as a ‘frontier’ society38. It remains the periphery to an English centre.

The English policemen in Rat in the Skull see Nelson and Roche both as ‘mad Irish’, all a part of the same tribe. As Nelson says to PC Naylor: ‘You’re stood there, between him and me, Mr Naylor... the umpire between the two sorts of Paddy’ [17]. The idea of Naylor as umpire reinforces the sense that, in Roche’s cell, a game of cat and mouse is being played, which is a source of potent tension in the play. Images of a distinct and incomprehensible Northern Irish ‘tribe’ permeate the work. Nelson becomes simply another – incapable of rationality and scarred by sectarianism: Comments on the progress of my interrogation so far, Mr Naylor?... Unclean, the pair of us. Worth the second look. The one I got from the desk sergeant. The one the briefing officer gave me. The one you gave me, Mr Naylor. The one you’re giving me now. That long look cocked down that so-superior Anglo-Saxon nose. This isn’t honest coppering that look says. And right you are, Mr Naylor, because this isn’t honest coppering. Is it Rochey? [17]. His appeals to Roche for affirmation (‘isn’t that right, Roche’? and ‘is it Rochey’?) only serve to reinforce their separateness and alienation from the English. By the end of the play they are almost co-conspirators as Roche finally accepts Nelson’s offer of a cup of tea ‘quietly, as if the decision was made a long time back’ [24]. His request allows Naylor to leave the cell. In

37 This sense of cultural distance is prefigured in Hutchinson’s earlier work, Says I, Says He (1977), which dealt with the experiences of two Protestant Ulsterman who go ‘across the water’, hoping to make their mark. While the actual physical distance between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain is described by Phelan as ‘the wee trip across the water’ [‘Says I, Says He’, published in Plays and Players, 25.6 (1978), 43-50 and 25.7 (1978), 43-50, (p.43)] the imaginative distance is immense. 38 Nairn, The Break Up of Britain, 233.

181 doing this, Roche implicitly gives Nelson license to inflict the physical bruising which disgusts Nelson’s English ‘colleagues’ and ensures that the chances of a conviction are unlikely.

Nelson’s methods of interrogation are viewed from the start by the English police as suspect. To them he is tainted by the inherent tribalism of Northern Ireland and, by implication, the RUC becomes just another branch of the Protestant tribe. The RUC is seen as more primitive, more passionate, less objective, and possessing less self-control than the English police, which again brings us back to notions of Irishness versus notions of Britishness – barbarousness versus civility. As Nelson says: ‘Interrogation smacks too much of the rubber hose, the wet towel, the sort of thing the word gets round the Paddies get up to between themselves’ [16]. Nelson describes vividly English perception of their behaviour ‘back home’: The RUC helps old ladies into the road... But if it finds halfway across they’re old ladies of a Catholic persuasion, it leaves them there. After hooking their sticks from under them. Because that’s the sort of bad bastards we are, isn’t that right, Roche? [17]. The play presents us with a plethora of stereotypes in an effort to come to some sort of notion of reality. Superintendent Harris describes the textbook Protestant: ‘Narrow, bigoted, thrifty, ambitious and tough, a grim stern people, powerful for good and evil’, a portrait which Nelson finishes: ‘Relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither truth nor pity, but the Protestant Ulsterman, despite his many failings, of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness’ [26]. Nelson also delivers a lengthy diatribe about the Ulster Protestant to PC Naylor: ‘Well we’re all Orangemen of course, we’re born wearing tiny little Orange sashes and the teeniest bowler hats you ever did see – that’s how they know to drown the girls’ [16], along with a

182 one dropped dead’ [18], yet he and Roche are nonetheless inextricably bound together by virtue of their inherent Northern Irishness and their separateness from the English policemen.

PC Naylor and Superintendent Harris become representative of the English people not only in their failure to see beyond stereotype, but also in their confusion about Protestant loyalty. As Nelson puts it, he and his fellow Ulster Protestants are: The True Brit[s]. Seeing the worst of yourselves in us. The Brit boiled down... Not comfortable to live with, are we? The clockwork Orangemen, bobbing along behind our tribal banners, our ranting reverends... so damn confusing loyal to you, we’d blow up every last one of you if we had to, or watch you blown up by Roche’s mob [26]. Superintendent Harris concurs: ‘Acquaintance with your lot, Nelson, wonderfully enlarges one’s understanding of the animal that’s in us all. With all his instincts still intact, the pelt still bristling under the string vest and Burton’s suit’ [26]. Harris’ images of Nelson’s ‘lot’ as animalistic hark back to colonial distinctions between Irish and English, and reflect the distance which England places between itself and ‘irrational’ and irrepressibly ‘Irish’ Ulster.

Christina Reid similarly explores the distance between the Ulster Protestant and Britain through the character of Andy in her play My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1987)40. Yet this distance is self-imposed and viewed with some pride. In interview, Reid stated that since settling in London, she had ‘written more about Irishness’ being ‘much more conscious of my own

40 Initially performed as a radio play (BBC Radio 4, 1987), My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name was given its first stage production by The Yew Theatre Company at The Dublin Theatre Festival in 1989.

184 Irishness... the nature of what Irishness is and what the nature of going and coming back is about’41. Her play is an exploration of Loyalism and one of its two characters is Andy, an old Ulster Loyalist bigot, an example of Nelson’s ‘Brit boiled down’, proud of his service to King and Crown. As his granddaughter Andrea tells us: ‘My granda cut his thumb with a pocket-knife and signed the Ulster Covenant with his own blood’42.

Andy’s views echo those of the extremist elements of Ulster Protestant culture: My loyalty has never been in question. I have always fought for what is right. I wore these medals the day I joined Carson’s army, after the Great War. We beat the English Government then, and we’ll beat them this time round too. Anglo-Irish Agreement be damned!... Carson may be dead, but his spirit, never! [272]. As a child, Andrea listened in wonder to her grandfather’s stories about the Battle of the Somme. She remembers the litany of those from her grandfather’s street who were killed in the battle long after it stops meaning anything to her: Joseph Sloan, Billy Matchett, Isaac Carson, Samuel Thompson, Hugh Montgomery, Frederick Wilson, James Elliott, John Cunningham, Edward Marshall... Pale faces in a sepia photograph in his old tin box. Just a handful of the five and a half thousand Ulstermen who died on the first day of the battle of the Somme [255-6].

41 Christina Reid, Personal Interview, 10 December 1996. 42 Christina Reid, ‘My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name’, in Plays: 1 (London: Methuen, 1997), 272. All further references will be provided in the text.

185 She and her grandfather are extremely close, and his stories of loyalty and sacrifice are told to her so many times as a child that they become an integral part of her sense of what it means to be an Ulster Protestant.

However, while Andy proclaims himself as a fervent Loyalist, he nevertheless sees England as an alien place. When Andrea decides to study on the mainland, he expresses reservations: ‘It’s not that I didn’t want Andrea to have her chance, it’s just that London’s no place for a good girl. They’re not like us over there’ [265]. There is an element of impurity about the mainland, returning to the notion that the Ulster Protestant is the only true Loyalist, possessed of pure and unadulterated ‘Britishness’. As Andrea argues: ‘It’s one of those paradoxes of The Ulster Protestant Mentality – being more British than The British, but at the same time, believing that anybody leaving The Province for The Mainland... is letting the side down. Slighting the family. Betraying the cause’ [265]. Not just an Ulster Protestant versus English problem, this divide also reflects a more basic separation between province and metropolis, country and city. For those on the periphery, asserting an identity independent of, and superior to, the centre becomes an important task. Andy’s assertion of being ‘more British than the British’ aims to do just that while he paradoxically remains a part of the broader British identity.

A conflict which runs throughout the play is that between reality and myth, a theme to which Reid would return in Tea in a China Cup (1983) and The Belle of the Belfast City (1989)43. As Andrea begins to discover the myth behind Andy’s recounting of history, so the Ulster Protestant ideology he so resolutely espouses begins to disintegrate. His Britishness is inevitably called into question. Andrea’s ‘re-education’ begins when she meets

43 For a more detailed discussion of these plays see Chapter Six.

186 Edward Reilly’s grandson and learns the ‘truth’ about the war. Andy speaks of Edward Reilly as a ‘turncoat’: Turned down his medal. Turned traitor. Canvassed for the Labour Party after the war. Made speeches against the Government and the Monarchy. Betrayed all the brave men who fought and died so that we could be British and free. Turncoats and Communists. Catholic throwbacks the lot of them. What sort of a name’s Reilly for a Protestant family. Intermarried way back to raise themselves out of the gutter. But it never leaves them. Popery. Bad blood. Nationalism. Communism. Same difference [261]. When she hears Edward Reilly’s story through his grandson, Andrea begins to question some of her grandfather’s views. She learns about the Ulster Division being sent in first ‘High on alcohol and Ulster Protestant Pride’ [261]. She hears how ‘Eddie’s grandfather mourned them’, and how he lay in the mud for three days, listening to Billy Matchett screaming and sobbing and moaning... he couldn’t help him, because his own legs were broken, and he was half buried in an avalanche of mud and blood and bits of the bodies of Joseph Sloan, Isaac Carson, Samuel Thompson, Hugh Montgomery [262]. Andrea becomes increasingly separated from the views of her grandfather, confused by Andy’s blinding loyalty to ‘Empire’.

This separation intensifies when she moves to England to study. She falls in love with Hanif, her landlord of part-Pakistani extraction. When she tells Andy, he disowns her. Here Reid implicitly identifies Andy’s racism towards Hanif with his sectarian attitudes, a connection she would make again in The Belle of the Belfast City. Meanwhile Hanif has been hospitalised because of

187 a beating by skinheads, and is permanently mentally scarred by the attack. The play ends with no resolution between Andy and Andrea. She is arrested as one of the Greenham Common protestors (a rather unsubtle progression in what is an otherwise complex work) which brings further shame to her grandfather.

Andy’s Loyalism is presented as a security blanket, necessary to cling to because not to do so would make his life’s sacrifices meaningless. Andrea’s journey throughout the play is from being ‘ woman who understands yet rejects his views: ‘Loyalty. Patriotism... You daren’t question what all that has done to you, because once you question even a small part of it, you end up questioning it all. And to do that, would be to negate your whole life’ [275-6]. Yet questioning is precisely what both Reid’s play and Hutchinson’s play aim to do.

Both dramatists deconstruct the concept of a unified Ulster Protestant identity by questioning one of its central tenets – Britishness. Rat in the Skull does this through an exploration of external perceptions of Ulster Protestantism. Hutchinson’s English policemen reject RUC policeman Nelson, who finds himself inextricably connected to the IRA bomber Roche. Nelson recognises his essential separateness from an Irish identity, being ‘half of everything and nothing much of anything, Anglo-Irish, Irish-Scots, Anglo-Scots, Irish-Brit, but never just the one, and certain fact, one thing for sure in the entire bloody boiling – no way straight Irish on the rocks’ [12]. He nonetheless stakes claim to Ulster and to Ireland, and, on a broader level, attacks Roche for Irish Republicanism’s exclusive notions of Irishness: How easy it is for you to grab the monopoly of love for the place, while you’re wading through the blood of the people who lived there. I’m your fellow countryman, Roche. Look

188 at me, smell me – hate me for it, hate me the more because of it – but with me too it’s the heart over the head for it, it’s the churning in the gut for it. I belong. We belonged [23]. This ‘churning’ is what distances Nelson from Britain and from staking a claim to Britishness.

Playwright Robin Glendinning supports this plurality, arguing that Northern Irish people 'should recognise more the mixture of identities that we are'44. The issue of ethnicity is crucial to the formation of the Ulster Protestant identity, which has at its core a notion of Britishness, maintained and reinforced through history, myth, symbols and ideology. Crucial to this Britishness is an opposing sense of Irishness, and Marie Jones’ A Night in November puts forward the argument that Protestants are in fact intrinsically Irish. Through Kenneth’s journey, Jones echoes the Irish Republican party line that if Protestants would only recognise and embrace their Irishness then the Northern Irish conflict would end. Yet what she is doing is merely replacing one unified identity with another. Britishness and Irishness still stand as mutually exclusive.

Ron Hutchinson and Christina Reid have more success in illuminating the fluidity inherent in the Ulster Protestant sense of identity. Like Jones, both writers subvert Ulster Protestant Loyalism by raising the question of what Ulster Protestants are loyal to. However, unlike Jones, they posit a diversity of ethnicity, rejecting absolute categories of identity and favouring instead a complex mix of both Britishness and Irishness. While Hutchinson examines external conceptions of Ulster Protestant identity, Christina Reid examines

44 Robin Glendinning in Marilyn Hyndman, Further Afield: Journeys From a Protestant Past (Dublin: Beyond the Pale, 1996), 239.

189 internal conceptions. Andy’s extreme Loyalism and his blinding profession of Britishness are challenged by the journey which Andrea takes. She increasingly comes to personally reject that loyalty. Reid also implicitly broadens her analysis by introducing issues of racism and discussing Andrea’s participation at the Greenham common protest. Ultimately, Andrea’s Ulster Protestant identity is diversified and broadened beyond simplistic notions of British and Irish. Through this hybridity of ethnicity, these two dramatists irretrievably blur the portrait of a unified, loyal and British Ulster Protestant community.

190 Chapter Four

The Angst of the Middle Classes: Graham Reid, Bill Morrison and Robin Glendinning

I think it was the language that did it. The words ‘traitor’, ‘shame’, ‘ignominy’, ‘enemy’ and ‘betrayal’ sounded so overblown as they reached me via the car radio... The colourful rhetoric of the Ulster members as they questioned the Prime Minister on the Anglo-Irish Agreement in the House of Commons continued and I could detect the chuckles of other honourable members at its quaint Biblical fervour... On the radio, the desperate earnestness of a rural Ulster member was greeted with mock ‘ohhs’ and ‘ahhs’ by sophisticates amused at his hyperbole. Ignoring this he continued, raising the volume and the dramatic timbre of his voice in the unmistakable rhythm of an evangelical sermon. ‘The honourable gentleman is working himself up’, said the Prime Minister with languid confidence and her six hundred-odd supporters laughed. At that, the hat came down on my head covering my ears with its floppy brim. It was one of those semi- conical hats that 19th century Punch cartoonists used to draw on their version of the archetypal Paddy. Under it my jaw thickened into a lantern shape and I scowled from beneath beetle brows. The metamorphosis was complete. I had been Paddy-ised. Robin Glendinning, 19851.

1 Robin Glendinning, ‘Personal Angle’, Fortnight, December 15th 1985, from the programme for the Field Day production of Pentecost (1987).

191 While Robin Glendinning’s vivid language says much about the British attitude towards Northern Ireland, it is equally important for its expression of the difficulties of political disaffection in the North. The aim of the plays discussed in this chapter is to break down the image of a politicised Northern Irish majority, blindingly loyal and bigoted. They explore this question of a singular Ulster Protestant identity through issues of class, masculinity and sexuality. The male, middle class protagonists of these plays are faced with the inescapability of the Northern Irish conflict. They are rendered both metaphorically and physically impotent by the political allegiance and unswerving masculinity of Ulster ‘hard men’. Issues of masculinity, sexuality and class merge to undermine the traditional portrait of the loyal Ulsterman.

Broadly speaking, geographical division can be said to reflect the separation of classes in the North. Just as much of the geography of Belfast is divided into distinctly Catholic and Protestant territories – the Falls and Shankill Roads among many – so middle class and ‘well-to-do’ areas are clearly definable. They remain comparatively untouched by the conflict with violence concentrated in the working class areas of the city. This geographical distance and separation translates into a mental and emotional separation. As a result, a certain confusion remains about the motivations of political extremists and the persistence of conflict. Steve Bruce describes this phenomenon as the ‘liberal’ attitude to the conflict, arguing that ‘Protestant and Catholic liberals mix and find that they have much in common’ and that they ‘are thus readily drawn to the idea that the conflict is caused by misunderstanding and ignorance’. This leads to the belief that if ‘working-class people also mixed, they would learn that their stereotypes are mistaken – “they” do not have horns – and that they are just like us. End of

192 conflict’2. Yet such liberal logic negates the genuine political desires of both sides in Northern Ireland. Frequent use in the public forum of the word ‘tradition’ coupled with the notion of ‘respecting each other’s traditions’, obscures the power of sectarianism and ignores the ethnic basis of the conflict: A tradition sounds nice and cuddly, something for the tourist and heritage industries. Unionism is neutered to bright banners, bowler hats, and Somme memorials; Nationalism is reduced to whistle music, knitted sweaters, stout, and turf fires. The notion of tradition also contains the hope that the political desires of those peoples will be fixed in the past and thus prevented from contaminating the future. Nationalists and Unionists are now to celebrate the history of their political differences, but not pursue their different interests in the present3. Bruce’s notion of ‘tradition’ has as its undercurrent the ongoing and violent sectarian clashes in the North. This is reflected in the predicament of the Northern Irish middle and educated classes. While Robin Glendinning as a middle class, ‘secular’ Protestant feels innately different from his community’s representatives at Westminster, he is inevitably associated with them, unable to avoid metamorphosis into a thick-jawed ‘Paddy’.

Since the Troubles began in 1969, theatre in the North has tended to focus on working class communities. This reflects media coverage of the conflict, in which Belfast and Derry are reduced to images of the Falls and Shankill Roads and the Bogside. The middle and educated classes are to some degree viewed as irrelevant, and certainly not interesting enough subjects for

2 Steve Bruce, The Edge of the Union: The Ulster Loyalist Political Vision (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 134. 3 Ibid., 140.

193 journalistic or artistic attention. Playwright John McClelland wrote of his experience attending a conference entitled ‘Staging the Troubles’ at the Ulster Arts Club in Belfast. He found himself from the start alienated: I listen, I listen more carefully, I keep listening. I am not an intellectual but I think the message is that the troubles consist of Bloody Sunday and the Hunger Strike, that all theatre is middle class and bourgeois, that Friel, McGuinness, Guthrie, Boyd, Reid, Thompson, Lynch, etc. etc. etc. have either sold out, patronised the natives or are closet Unionists. That (I think) Lady Gregory, Yeats, D’Arcy are OK and that ‘the people’ – a homogeneous group found only in West Belfast and the Bogside must empower themselves by staging the troubles and telling it like it is4. By virtue of his background and beliefs (‘I do not adhere to Nationalist principles... I want to be an integrated citizen of the United Kingdom rather than an ignored minority in the Conservative Catholic theocracy of blessed Mother Ireland’5), McClelland is effectively silenced: ‘I am not an intellectual. I do not have the answers. Worse, I am middle class, Protestant born and want to write plays. I pray that the ground will open and swallow me up. It doesn’t’6. This is manifested in what Tim Loane, Northern Irish actor and director, describes as ‘stage Northern 7. Northern Irish life in this stereotype is depicted as consisting of working class oppression, sectarian violence and paramilitary organisations.

This world is also an extremely masculine world. The public face of the North – political parties, religious leaders and paramilitary heads – is almost

4 John McClelland, ‘Conferring Troubles’, Theatre Ireland, 31 (1993), 74. 5 Ibid., 76. 6 Ibid., 75. 7 Tim Loane, Personal Interview, 23 February 1998. For further discussion of this issue see Chapter Seven.

194 exclusively male. The domestic drama of Charabanc and Christina Reid, which will be discussed in the following chapters, attempts to counter this. We also see an attempt to subvert this masculinity in the three plays of this chapter. The traditional and masculine public realm of the North is undermined by the private insecurity and vulnerability of Graham Reid’s, Bill

Inherent in this ‘theatre at the battlelines’ attitude, described by McClelland and Loane, is a certain insularity and parochialism, a fact which has not escaped the attention of writer Bill Morrison, who claims that: ‘The great difficulty about Northern Irish writing particularly and Irish writing generally is that it is parochial, it looks inwards’8. As a writer, Morrison feels that: ‘There is no point pretending that I grew up listening to the and the reels and the boys on the corner. I didn’t. I grew up listening to Charlie Parker. I was and am plugged into the twentieth century’9. Peter Quigley, actor and theatre director, holds similar views: The themes in modern Irish plays have this search for identity and a preoccupation with the past. It’s introspective.... It disappoints me that we concentrate on Brian Friel type plays in the theatre and Marie Jones for the community drama scene... We are European and we should be broadening our horizons10. This sense of ‘broader horizons’ is arguably a luxury of being middle class and educated. The world of the Northern Irish middle and educated classes is broader, informed by travel and education outside the province. In addition, Malone Road front gardens are rarely threatened by paramilitary

8 Bill Morrison, Personal Interview, 6 December 1996. 9 Ibid. 10 Peter Quigley in Marilyn Hyndman, Further Afield: Journeys From a Protestant Past (Dublin: Beyond the Pale, 1996), 12.

195 activity. In a culture so affected by sectarian violence, there is obviously a need for theatre to delve into Northern Ireland’s atavistic and tribal elements, but this enterprise must have its limits. The mark of a developed culture is that it possesses the capacity to move beyond the confines of its own identity. The fact that Northern Irish society is still coming to terms with the question of identity is reflected in its frequent inward focus.

The absence of a Northern Irish Protestant (and Catholic) middle class on contemporary stages has been compounded by the widely held view that a Protestant middle class doesn’t really exist, all Protestants being wealthy at the expense of working class Catholics11. Robin Glendinning’s first play, Stuffing It (1982), was about a middle class Protestant family living on the Malone Road, a reasonably well-off area in Belfast. The central character was the vice-principal of a school. Glendinning describes being ‘tackled by a young socialist of some kind’ at a performance of the play during its season at the Tricycle Theatre in London: I don’t know what group he belonged to but he would have been to the far left of the Labour Party... he told me that my play was irrelevant. When I asked him why he said ‘Well it’s about the Protestant middle class isn’t it... and there aren’t many of those are there’, as if the Protestant middle class was some tiny minority12. Glendinning and the other two writers examined in this chapter – Graham Reid and Bill Morrison – all attempt to subvert this image of a ‘tiny minority’.

In their work, class division becomes crucially important, and the catalyst for all three works examined in this chapter is a clash of classes. The political engagement of the working class characters we meet in these plays brings

11 The presence of middle class Catholics is an even more disputed fact. 12 Robin Glendinning, Personal Interview, 13 November 1996.

196 into sharp focus the converse disengagement of their middle class protagonists, further complicating established notions of the loyal Ulster Protestant. Alongside this issue of class sits the issue of masculinity, also used in the three plays as a way of subverting the singular Ulster Protestant identity. Ultimately, the Protestant middle classes are presented as dispossessed and alienated, desperate to escape the violence of the North, yet finding themselves inevitably drawn into it.

Graham Reid and Bill Morrison: The Impotence of the Middle Class Protestant

Two relatively early works by Graham Reid and Bill Morrison have as their central metaphor sexual impotence. This impotence, foisted on their two lead male characters, illustrates well the way in which both writers use issues of masculinity and sexuality to reflect upon the condition of the Northern Irish middle classes in general – paralysed and rendered useless by the violence and conflict which surrounds them.

Graham Reid’s play, The Death of Humpty Dumpty (1979), focuses on a central middle class male protagonist George, whose confrontation with Ulster ‘hard men’ leads to his downfall. In this Reid prefigures a later work, The Hidden Curriculum (1982), which would similarly show a middle class teacher’s confrontation with the violence of the North. It is in his earlier play, however, that we see the position of the Northern Irish middle classes more successfully raised, through Reid’s focus on issues of masculinity and sexuality.

The play opens with the clearly working class Doyle, or rather the ghost of Doyle, extolling the virtues of mountain air. He talks of his relationship with

197 George and immediately we are given clues as to George’s (and Doyle’s) social status: ‘He was a schoolteacher... His wife and kids were nice, friendly. I expected them to be stuck up, but they weren’t... They were nice people. But I had to be in one of these, (Slapping an arm of his wheelchair) before I could meet people like that’13. The Death of Humpty Dumpty is George’s story. The second scene of the play is set in his home and establishes images of home as ‘sanctuary’ and the outside world as an incomprehensible ‘wilderness’. When George goes to pick up his eldest daughter and returns home later than expected, his wife Judith is distressed: ‘I’ve been sitting here worried sick... I’ve heard sirens at least four times since you left. The University cafe, you know how dangerous that area is, George’ [10-11]. This opening scene also establishes the gender politics of the household. While Heather is flustered, unable to stop her children from fighting and busy with household duties, George adopts a dominant masculine role. He remains in control, stopping the argument with a few words and leisurely spending time with his children. His authority within his own house is evident. The play depicts a rather conventional Northern Irish family, who occupy traditional gender roles, in the sense that authority rests with the ‘man of the house’.

It is George’s activities outside the sanctuary of the family home which lead to disaster. After an illicit meeting with his mistress, George is the unfortunate witness of paramilitaries trying to dispose of a dead body. Frightened of being identified, these ‘hard men’ attempt to assassinate George and he is left a quadriplegic. His infidelity transgresses accepted familial boundaries and it brings the violence of the outside world into his family’s lives. George is left crippled by the gunmen just as in a broader sense the middle classes in the North are crippled by extremists. The power

13 J Graham Reid, The Death of Humpty Dumpty (Dublin: Coop Books, 1980), 5. All further references will be provided in the text.

198 to control his own life is taken away from him, as the Nursing Sister explains to his family: ‘Have you the remotest idea what those gunmen have done to your husband? They’ve destroyed him. He’s a helpless cripple. He can do nothing for himself, except talk, shout, swear’ [19].

A physical manifestation of George’s powerlessness lies in his lack of sexual potency, which the cruel nurse Willy delights in drawing to George’s attention: ‘There it is, like a member of the Unionist Party, stripped of its power of independent action. It’s still there, a reminder of past glories. Like a moose head on the wall. It’ll never rise to sink your rubber duck again’ [21]. The comparison of his inactive penis to ‘a member of the Unionist Party’ is particularly interesting given its reference to the fall of Stormont. The imagery of impotence is crucial here: George’s identity as a traditional Ulster Protestant male is subverted as his virility, a central tenet of his masculinity, is taken away from him. Similarly the identity of Ulster Unionism in a broader sense was subverted when the Unionist Party lost power with the imposition of Direct Rule.

As a result of his absolute powerlessness, George’s middle class propriety is soon replaced by cynicism, harsh realism and bitterness, which he directs with vitriol towards his family: I’m sick and tired of the two-faced patronising hypocrisy that I’m forced to listen to every day. You’re all at it... You talk to me like you would to a retarded child. Yes, yes, you, you... you make excuses for me when my conduct is inexcusable. You apologise for me when what I say is beyond any apology [17]. He sees himself as the innocent victim of a conflict which he consciously tried to keep away from and it is this attitude which Doyle initially attempts to

199 change: ‘You feel you’re too good to be a cripple, don’t you? It’s beneath your dignity, isn’t it? I mean you’re a schoolteacher. You’re middle class. You’re well off. It’s so unfair that you should be relegated from Volvo to wheelchair’ [25]. The friendship that develops between the two men is interesting when read as a metaphor for the relationship between middle class Protestants and working class Catholics in the North. Doyle initially provides comfort for George and plays an important part in George’s emotional and mental recovery. However, after his death, Doyle becomes a voice in George’s head, a destructive force which prevents him from recovering the relationship with his family. Doyle is both a friend and an enemy, an ally and a threat, evocative of the conflicting attitudes of both the Anglo-Irish of pre-Partition and the middle class Protestants of the North to the ‘oppressed’, to working class Catholics.

The play reaches a turning point when, as she is tidying the house, Heather discovers George’s diary, in which he has detailed all his marital infidelities. From that point, she and her children refuse to care for George, leaving him at the mercy of state institutions. It is left to David to explain the situation to his father, because, as the Sister tells him, he is ‘the man of the house now’ and he should go up and tell his father ‘what your intentions are’ [51], again reflecting traditional notions of masculine strength and forthrightness. In the last scene, David visits the hospital and the play ends with David smothering his father: If we bring you home you’ll spend the rest of your life begging and trying to appear grateful. We’d never be able to look each other in the eyes again. I couldn’t... I couldn’t bear it. We can’t take you home.... but I can’t leave you here [55].

200 This melodramatic ending jars slightly with Reid’s hitherto uncompromising social realism14, however, Reid’s message is clear. George’s confrontation with political extremism has led to his crippling and ultimately his death. In broader terms we see a middle class whose will to ‘civility’ and ‘reasonableness’ is crippled and rendered powerless, effectively dead. George’s masculinity is stripped from him. His vulnerability, coupled with Heather’s self-assertion through her rejection of him, subverts the traditional gender politics of the North. Reid uses this subversion of masculinity, along with the play’s clash of classes, to challenge the public and very male Ulster Protestant identity.

Like The Death of Humpty Dumpty , Bill Morrison’s Flying Blind (1977)15 uses issues of class, masculinity and sexuality to explore the question of Ulster Protestant identity, yet the structure of this play is vastly different. Morrison rejects realism in favour of the technique of farce as a means of distancing his audience from the action being presented. In this, his work is a more inventive examination of Ulster Protestant identity, rejecting any parochialism. In Morrison’s play, the extremists are parodied and their ludicrousness is presented as intruding upon the surface rationality of Liz and Dan’s house.

Again, in Flying Blind, we are given a very specific location: ‘a large three storey house in the university district of Belfast’ with a decor that is ‘not rich, 16. Again, offstage space is used to give a

14 This social realism prefigures Reid’s work of the early 1980s – The Closed Door (1980), Dorothy (1980), The Hidden Curriculum (1982), Remembrance (1984) and Callers (1985). Since this period, Reid has primarily written for television. 15 Morrison’s long career includes work for theatre, television and radio. His two major works on the subject of the North are Flying Blind and A Love Song for Ulster (1994), as briefly discussed on page 10. 16 Bill Morrison, Flying Blind (London: Faber, 1978), 9. All further references will be provided in the text.

201 sense of sanctuary versus wilderness. When the Gas Board men arrive, they warn Michael that he should keep the door locked, explaining that ‘this is Belfast’ and that ‘anything can happen’ [11]. Michael, the house guest, is the obligatory exile. A device used in many Northern Irish plays17, the presence of the returned exile serves to bring into focus questions of identity and political allegiance. The ‘outsider’ helps define what constitutes belonging to the particular community. Returning from England, Michael was ‘afraid of landing. Landing here’ [13]. He is an idealist, educated with socialist aspirations: ‘Don't you think it’s essential that both sides, I mean the working class, must get together here, that any solution must come from them’ [14]. Michael is engaged from afar with the politics of his home territory: ‘In London I’m glued to the bulletins to hear anything about Ulster’ [21], yet Dan, the owner of the house, seems desperate to escape from it all. Whenever things get too much for him, he slips on his headphones and listens to Charlie Parker. Morrison’s choice of Charlie Parker as Dan’s escape route reflects his own rejection of Ulster parochialism.

Despite Morrison’s broadening of focus, the violence of Northern Ireland remains the central force in the play. In response to Michael’s amazement at his host’s lack of interest in Ulster news, Dan gives his own rendition of the daily bulletins: Beep. Beep. Beep. Here is the Northern Ireland News. The latest scoreline is Protestants 720; Catholics 992. Four bombs, three murders, a tar and feathering; a statement in Parliament that it is only a matter of time before the Army defeats terrorism; Paisley says NO! – he hadn’t heard the question but he knows the answer; an ex- Unionist MP says it is all a red plot financed by Moscow,

17 And one we have already seen in Stewart Parker’s Pentecost (1987), Spokesong (1975), and Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985).

202 and he’s opening a new restaurant. PS Three more British-owned factories have closed and unemployment in selected areas is over 40 per cent. The situation is changing all the time [21]. Like Graham Reid’s George, Dan feels utterly powerless. He attempts to escape from everything that matters, including his wife Liz and daughter Rosy. When Liz confronts him about his absent parenting he confesses: ‘I don’t know how to tell her that I am helpless... that I feel helpless to defend her... and helpless to secure her future’ [29]. Dan’s metaphorical impotence is reflected in his physical impotence, again merging issues of masculinity and sexuality. In fact, all of the middle class male characters of the play – Dan, Michael and Boyd – struggle with this at some point during the narrative, allowing Morrison to comment on the disaffection and powerlessness of the Ulster middle class Protestant.

Particularly evocative of this sense of helplessness and impotence is the exchange between the three men with regard to the vulnerability of the human body, provoked by the revelation of threats against Boyd’s life: BOYD: If we were evolving properly, we would be bullet- proof. But we’re not... Look at the skin. What a pathetic envelope.... What a piece of work. Hair pulls out. Neck, shoulders, arms, spine, all dislocate with a single twist. Would you call these ribs a decent battlement? Liver and kidneys exposed to one sharp dig. And as for his balls, one good squeeze and he’d sing a high C that would crack glasses. Legs can’t outrun a bullet MICHAEL: We have a brain. We can think.

203 BOYD: That’s the easiest of all. One injection. Or put the hood over my head, play the noise in my ears, stand me in a corner for three days, and I’ll break myself with my ability to think... Or just frighten me enough, or fill my head with hate from the moment I can stand [31]. The vulnerability of these three male characters reflects the uncertainty of their existence. Ultimately they are vulnerable because they sit outside traditional definitions of class and masculinity, threatened by the politically active ‘hard men’ of the North. The broader picture that emerges is of a Northern Irish middle class that is vulnerable because of its rootlessness and lack of allegiance. As Liz tells Bertha: ‘We couldn’t defend this because we don’t know what we have to defend’ [37]. Morrison’s characters don’t understand the extremism that dictates the politics of the North, and therefore don’t know how to protect themselves from it.

It is at the end of Act One that events in the play are brought to a head, with the intrusion of Loyalist paramilitaries wanting to ‘borrow’ Dan’s car. Here the active meets the passive, or rather, the hard men meet Morrison’s disaffected liberals, echoing The Death of Humpty Dumpty. As terrorist Mac tells Dan: ‘You people make me sick. You won’t do nothing for yourselves, you haven’t the stomach for it. You wait for us to clean up the mess... And when we’ve done the job you’ll say, thanks very much, now fuck off’ [62]. It is this confrontation with the outside world that brings the problems within the house into sharp focus. Yet Morrison’s hard men are almost caricatures, their seriousness and self-consciousness an object of humour both for the inhabitants of the house and for the audience. This does not, however, diminish their power. By holding guns, these extremist ‘clowns’ immediately assume authority and render the seeming rationality and civility of Morrison’s middle class helpless.

204 The second act of the play descends into farcical hysteria. After the Loyalists leave, a complementary pair of Republican terrorists, Una and Sean, enter, only to be frightened away by Dan and Bertha’s sexual advances. Images of sexuality abound as, in different rooms upstairs, Michael and the babysitter Carol, and Boyd and Liz are attempting intercourse. Dan regains his potency while Michael finds that he is impotent: ‘I am devoured. My root is blasted away. I don’t recognise the streets. I don’t recognise the faces. I have no place left. You have destroyed it, taken it from me’ [72], and becomes increasingly hysterical.

The final moments of the play are filled with frenzied activity, culminating in the deaths of Boyd and Mac and the reconciliation of Liz and Dan. It is the surface use of techniques of farce which strengthens the undertone of violence and allows these final moments to have their full impact on the audience. The play closes on an image of Dan reciting over and over ‘Bud Powell. Bud Powell. Bud Powell. Bud Powell....’ [75]. He is finally silenced when Liz puts her arms around him. Boyd’s death comes as a shock in the play. Morrison sets up what seems to be the Northern Irish equivalent of a drawing-room comedy, with lots of sex, sexual innuendo and varied shenanigans. This blending of genres serves to further confuse and disorient his audience. The violent ending of the play comes out of this confusion and, as a result, is extremely powerful in effect. The dramatist’s message seems to be that, despite their inherent absurdity, Northern Irish extremists should be taken seriously – that the middle classes cannot remain separate from the conflict. Their emotional and physical distance cannot protect them from the violence and, in many ways, their detachment makes them more vulnerable to it.

205 Reid’s and Morrison’s middle class characters express a kind of pride, either explicit or implicit, at their social or intellectual separateness from the conflict that surrounds them. They see themselves as comparatively ‘civil’ compared to the ‘barbarity’ of political extremists. Yet alongside this superiority is a feeling of guilt about their ineffectiveness. The most powerful metaphor running through these plays is that of the characters’ physical impotence. Their masculinity is threatened, and their powerlessness emphasised, when placed in contrast with the clearly defined masculinity of the play’s Loyalist and Republican ‘hard men’.

This impotence seems to be Reid’s and Morrison’s most pointed comment about the condition of the Northern Irish middle classes. Their distance from the conflict appears as a choice, yet underlying this choice is the recognition that they have no power to effect change, even if they possessed the necessary desire.

Robin Glendinning: Remnants of the Anglo-Irish Aristocracy

Robin Glendinning’s Mumbo Jumbo is set in an Ulster Protestant public boys’ school and similarly makes use of notions of class and masculinity to lead into the question of Ulster Protestant identity. The opening scene of the play features an English Dean and an imperial chant, ‘The Congo Song’, subtitled ‘A study of the Negro Race’ (the words of which are printed as an appendix to the published version of the play): ‘A roaring epic rag-time tune/ From the mouth of the Congo/ To the Mountains of the Moon’18. Images of the British Empire permeate the play. The Dean is of the old school, with a colonialist’s attitude to his Ulster students: ‘You are victims of your

18 Robin Glendinning, Mumbo Jumbo (London: Chappell Plays, 1987), 14. All further references will be provided in the text.

206 environment... Your speech is sloppy, slovenly, dull, restricted, constricted, no freedom, no reticence, not from here’ [3]. Similarly, Mr Howlett, the headmaster, and his wife (who are the only other school staff that Glendinning presents) bring a patronising attitude to those of their pupils and pupils’ parents who are too different, too distinctly Irish. Towards the end of the play, while at a school function, Mrs Howlett makes apologies for her husband, providing the following explanation: Howlie will be along in a minute; dealing with an awkward parent. man. (She makes a truly awful attempt at a Ballymena accent) ‘I dunna thunk are wee Wullie’s being properly straitched Mr Howlett Surrr!’ (They laugh) Our ‘Wullie’, God bless him is as thick as two short planks. Can’t tell that to a Ballymena man. Ballymena man as thick as three short planks. (They laugh.) [82]. Throughout the play, Glendinning depicts the distance which exists between the Unionist establishment and Protestant Loyalists. It is portrayed as a remnant of the Anglo-Irish colonial attitude – patronising and dismissive in tone.

The central focus in the play is the relationship between two boys, Barry and Creaney, and their relationship in turn with the Dean. Glendinning has said that he ‘had particularly wanted to write a play where there was a ferocious Loyalist who had a credible argument, someone with whom one could identify. It seemed to me that Loyalists were always portrayed as buffoons in plays and I always thought they were much more dangerous than buffoons’19. Creaney provides us with just such a Loyalist. The Dean describes Creaney as exhibiting ‘a certain rustic vulgarity in speech and

19 Glendinning in Hyndman, Further Afield, 237.

207 political outlook’ [18] and is affronted by the boy’s political convictions, arguing that they stem from ignorance and short-sightedness: I cannot abide.... that parochial arrogance bordering on the wilfully stupid. That is what is wrong with Ulster, isn’t it? As for the lack of generosity, the refusal to see the other fellow’s point of view, the insistence that every mention of compromise is some sort of sell-out. I find that very frustrating; don’t you? [17-18]. Creaney’s ‘parochial arrogance bordering on the wilfully stupid’ recalls the English portrait of the ‘barbarous’ Irish, as well as Winston Churchill’s derision at the Irish insistence on ‘the integrity of their quarrel’20. The Dean views Creaney as an irrational and unsophisticated ‘Paddy’.

These two male characters embody two contrary notions of Ulster manhood. The Dean represents traditional Anglo-Irish civility and rationality, a controlled masculinity. Creaney, by contrast, is Glendinning’s Loyalist, an Ulster ‘hard man’ in the making, passionate and convinced of a cause. Masculinity and class intersect here to separate the man and the boy. Barry, Glendinning’s central protagonist, is caught between these two masculine worlds – between extreme Loyalism and entrenched, ruling class Unionism.

While for the Dean, Creaney is a ‘Neanderthal man’ [10], he singles out Barry as being of a like mind to himself, a moderate. He encourages Barry to be creative and to think, supporting his endeavours at writing poetry and casting him as Hamlet in the school play. From the start of the play, Barry is distanced from his fellow students not just because of the way he is treated by the Dean, but because of his own attitudes. While Creaney is secure in the strength of his beliefs, Barry remains unsure:

20 Winston Churchill as quoted in ATQ Stewart, The Narrow Ground: Patterns of Ulster History (Belfast: Pretani Press, 1977), 179.

208 It’s always seemed to me that the country isn’t really ours.... The tradition and the history are all theirs. The Gaelic language, the music, the dancing, all that sort of thing. We dispossessed them. Discrimination.... It’s as if they are the people and we are the interlopers, colonisers; we have no history in this place [37]. Creaney provides a response to all of Barry’s doubts and this time he uses the example of the Cruthin21 to assert what he perceives as Protestant Ulster’s inviolable right to the land they occupy.

Barry’s uncertainty questions the unswerving loyalty and masculinity of Creaney and the Dean’s two worlds. This challenge is most explicit in the homosexual undertones which emerge in the relationship between Barry and Creaney. This sexual confusion reflects Barry’s broader confusion of identity. He slowly begins to reject the traditional, Unionist, masculine culture which his father and the Dean so clearly represent. The sexual ambiguity of the relationship between Barry and Creaney forms an integral part of the broader subversion of the ‘Ulster Protestant’ which occurs in the play. This relationship calls into question the firm tenets of heterosexuality and male dominance that support the public Ulster Protestant identity.

We see this process also at work in Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme. Barry and Creaney’s friendship recalls that between Pyper and Craig in McGuinness’ play. In addition to Pyper’s obvious intellectual distance from his fellow soldiers, he is further distanced from them by his sexuality. Throughout the early scenes of the play, his sexual ambiguity subverts the notion of the Protestant Ulsterman. He delights in unsettling Craig and Millen. After cutting his thumb he asks

21 For a fuller discussion of the Cruthin, see page 47.

209 Craig to ‘kiss it better’22 and poses a question to Millen: ‘I have remarkably fine skin, don’t I? For a man, remarkably fine’ [109]. Craig and Pyper become friends and then lovers. Like the relationship between Barry and Creaney, this homosexuality acts to complicate the conventional ‘masculinity’ of Protestant Ulster.

In Mumbo Jumbo, Barry’s questioning of sexuality extends to a questioning of his family’s and community’s traditional beliefs and attitudes. Like George and Heather in The Death of Humpty Dumpty, Barry’s mother and father occupy traditional gender roles. Barry berates his mother after she avoids his request to become a day-boy: ‘You’ve got so used to not being asked questions, real questions, you don’t know how to answer them’ [51]. Barry’s father, Bill, is the dominant partner in the marriage and Barry gradually comes to realise and reject this. He begins to feel suffocated by his environment, trapped by the conservativeness of his family and longing for a break away from the propriety of his existence: ‘Why must everything be reasonable and rational? WHY? Maybe things aren’t! Maybe they’re confused and dark and sudden and bloody and fierce and terrible’ [87]. Events do become ‘confused’ and ‘terrible’. The play reaches its climax as Barry’s father is gunned down by terrorists.

After the trauma of these climactic moments, the play ends with resolution and calm. The final scene shows Barry at home with his mother, having escaped from the traditional masculine confines of his boarding school to become a day-boy. He finally kisses the girl next door, Angela, and the play concludes with him reciting ‘The Congo Song’ and passing through various states of emotion, from quiet, to laughter, to exultant joy and then:

22 Frank McGuinness, ‘Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme’, in his Plays: 1 (London: Faber, 1996), 103. All further references will be provided in the text.

210 (Laughter slowly dying away. Quietly now, very still) Mumbo Jumbo is dead in the jungle, dead in the jungle I’m glad... you’re dead in the jungle, glad you’re dead in the jungle, dead in the jungle, dead in the jungle (Bursting into uncontrollable sobbing) dead in the jungle, dead in the jungle, I’m glad you’re dead in the jungle. (Through gritted teeth and with clenched fist) Then I saw the congo, creeping through the black, cutting through the forest with a golden track. Boomlay Boomlay Boomlay Boom! Boomlay Boomlay Boomlay – (He vaults the fence, landing on the far side with the final) Boom! [99]. Barry expresses feelings of release and freedom, yet his new identity as a ‘day-boy’ is inevitably framed by his past, as represented by The Congo Song. Regardless of his desire for escape, Barry remains tainted by all that his father, his schoolmaster and Creaney represent – the masculine worlds of entrenched, ruling class Unionism, and its necessary counterpart, extreme Loyalism23.

Barry is the moderate caught between two extremes, reflecting Robin Glendinning’s own experiences. Glendinning grew up as a member of the Ulster Protestant Ascendancy, where religious fundamentalism was frowned upon, and moderation and education praised: Politics were discussed at great lengths in our house and there was always a tolerance for different political outlooks on life. One side of my family were staunchly Unionist.... The other side of the family were Protestant Home Rulers, a forgotten group of people in Northern Ireland these

23 The relationships between these central male characters in Mumbo Jumbo serve to reflect both upon the fragmentation of the Ulster Protestant identity and upon the inevitable collusion of its disparate elements.

211 days.... For me, though, I would say that I was much more under the influence of the Unionists side of the family. Generally it would have been British rather than local politics which I found most interesting.... I always had this sense that local politics were nasty, dirty, fixed in concrete and I suppose quite ludicrous because nothing ever changed24. Glendinning was a founding member of the Northern Ireland Alliance Party in 1970, a non-sectarian, moderate Unionist political party. He identifies with Protestantism in a cultural sense – a true secular Protestant, distanced from both extreme Loyalism and the ruling class Unionism of his background. Secular Protestantism is a theme he also explores in Stuffing It (1982), Culture Vultures (1988) and The Summerhouse (1994).

However, Mumbo Jumbo is his most successful evocation of this theme. It is an extremely powerful play and we quickly develop interest in the characters, interest which Glendinning manages to sustain. Barry’s confusion follows on from that of Graham Reid’s George and Bill Morrison’s Dan in representing the broader confusion of the Ulster moderate, the disaffected Protestant middle classes. Also following on from The Death of Humpty Dumpty and Flying Blind, Glendinning’s play uses notions of class, alongside issues of masculinity and sexuality, to question the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity.

The world of these three plays is masculine, with women remaining in the background. The narrative revolves around male protagonists, George, Dan, Boyd and Michael, and Barry. These protagonists are forced into a confrontation with their masculinity, which is questioned in a number of ways.

24 Glendinning in Hyndman, Further Afield, 232.

212 Firstly, through the existence of active and violent Ulster ‘hard men’ – paramilitaries, and Glendinning’s resolutely loyal Creaney. The dominance of these characters throws the powerlessness of the play’s protagonists into focus. This powerlessness leads us to the second way in which notions of masculinity are questioned – through the metaphor of impotence. The physical impotence of Morrison and Reid’s male characters is a striking metaphor for their powerlessness in the face of the conflict in the North. Finally, through the homosexual undertones of the relationship between Barry and Creaney, Glendinning subverts the masculine world of his Ulster Protestant boys’ school, and by extension the masculine world of Protestant Ulster.

These issues of masculinity and sexuality intersect with the broader question of class in the North. Graham Reid, Bill Morrison and Robin Glendinning present their audiences with a view of a middle and educated class which defines itself in opposition to those communities around them. There is a conscious attempt made by these characters to distance themselves from the conflict, and a strong sense of pride in that distance, be it pride in social position, intellectuality, civility or secularity. In The Death of Humpty Dumpty and Mumbo Jumbo this pride is explicit. George feels himself an innocent while the teachers and parents that surround Barry exhibit an openly patronising attitude towards the more extremist elements of their community. In Flying Blind however, the characters’ pride is less explicit. Michael, through his fascination with Ulster politics becomes an outside observer, detached and therefore more ‘rational’. Boyd and Liz both want to ‘do good’ seeing themselves as in a social position to do so. Dan, arguably Morrison’s key protagonist, is a slightly more complicated member of the Northern Irish middle class. He appears as confused and alienated, yet above all bored,

213 and it is through this boredom and its implicit emotional detachment that Dan places himself above the sectarian conflict.

Class complicates sectarian division in the North, but is in turn restricted by it. The Protestant middle and educated classes in these plays cannot escape definition along sectarian lines. They are caught between the need for distance and the impossibility of obtaining it, and between the sense of superiority and the desire to help. The plays all resist closure, suggesting the unresolvability of these issues. Flying Blind is essentially left open, avoiding any decision or statement, or perhaps admitting that there can be none. The Death of Humpty Dumpty and Mumbo Jumbo have traditional narrative closure, yet no real resolution. Secular Protestantism remains overshadowed and ‘out-spoken’ by extremists.

Yet by their presence on stage, these middle class and educated protagonists theatrically subvert the notion that the Ulster Protestant is either a wealthy Unionist politician or a working class Loyalist, committed to the opposition of Home Rule. Just as the work which has preceded this chapter has approached the question of Protestant identity through issues of history, myth and ethnicity, so here it is approached through issues of class, masculinity and sexuality. These three issues are used to complicate the image of a singular Protestant identity defined by its masculinity or by its blind and unquestioned opposition to the idea of a United Ireland.

214 its continued style of questioning and subversion. The company’s work is most often noted for its foregrounding of the female experience in the North. A concern with the issue of gender politics runs throughout its twelve year history, from the early devised work which occupies this chapter to the adapted classic, Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, which marked the end of the company in 1993. This focus on gender crossed the sectarian divide. Alongside the work examined in this chapter sit plays which specifically focus on the Northern Irish Catholic and Nationalist community, most notably Somewhere Over the Balcony (1988), which was set in Divis Flats, and The Blind Fiddler of Glenadaugh (1990), which was specifically commissioned by the West Belfast Community Festival and dealt with traditional Irish culture. However, in the context of this thesis, Charabanc is particularly interesting because of its treatment of the question of Ulster Protestant identity, and it is in the company’s first three plays that we find this most clearly illustrated. Eleanor Methven, Charabanc co-founder, argues that the function of theatre is to stimulate the imagination, to challenge and subvert existing stereotypes. She believes that theatre in the North has only comparatively recently begun to perform such a function: ‘Belfast has been the industrial base, and it has been the Protestant base, and it’s therefore been the state base. If you own the state the last thing you want is theatre, which has been, and should be, a tool of both challenge and subversion’2. The very basis of the Orange State was consciously unimaginative, with imagination being perceived as a threat. Methven describes this as ‘the Northern Irish thing’: It’s defensive thinking all the time. That’s what Northern Ireland is, it’s the failure of criticism, the failure of imagination, both political imagination and personal imagination’3. As argued, Ulster Protestant drama prior to the outbreak of the Troubles was

2 As quoted in Helen Lojek, ‘Seeding New Writing, Seeking More Analysis: Belfast’s Charabanc Theatre Company’, Irish Studies Review, 8 (1994), 34. 3 Ibid., 30.

216 frequently derivative and rarely challenging in its presentation of the province. By relegating sectarian division into the background, the Unionist monolith remained unquestioned.

However, since the outbreak of the Troubles, Northern Irish drama has sought to examine the question of Ulster Protestant identity in more detail and with a more critical approach. For Eleanor Methven, as a child in the 1960s, growing up in a small town in rural South Derry: There were no cultural activities for us because ‘we were Protestant’. You went to the guides, you went to the brownies, you did everything British kids did... The arts wouldn’t make you any money and the arts wasn’t a proper job, therefore it was seen as for the Catholics. And the arts, it seems to me, will always flourish with people who are pressing against something. Whereas the Protestant mentality is a siege mentality, or certainly was4. Methven explains that part of the explosion of drama in the North in the 1980s came from an adult generation who had grown up with the Troubles and who ‘eventually began to think “What if it’s not like this?”... Charabanc was part of this movement, was an exploration of being Protestant, asking “Why are we Protestant? Who are they? What are the Catholics about?”’5. Implicit in this questioning was, and is, a recognition of the complexities and diversity of the communities of the North. Methven argues that: ‘Often the cultural brief here seems to recognise only that there is a Catholic culture and a Protestant culture.... But you’ve got class culture, gender culture, sectarian. It’s a very mixed bag of stuff’6. These alternative ‘cultures’ work to

4 Eleanor Methven, Personal Interview, 6 November 1996. 5 Ibid. 6 Eleanor Methven in Helen Lojek, ‘Challenging Cultural Certainties: Charabanc in its Causeway, Autumn 1994, 49.

217 undermine the picture of a unified and resistant Ulster Protestant community. The very basis of the Orange monolith was a continued opposition between images of the ‘loyal Ulsterman’ and a ‘disloyal Irishman’. The work examined in the previous chapter tackled these stereotypes through an examination of masculinity and the disaffected Northern Irish middle class. In its first three plays, Charabanc focused its attentions on women and on the working class. In so doing, it also rejected this simplistic and reductive opposition and ultimately challenged the concept of a singular Ulster Protestant identity.

In interview, Eleanor Methven called for cultural diversity, believing that: ‘If we get a lot of art forms going, we’ll be encouraged to address given truths, truisms and to confront issues and contribute to the debate and not stay within our narrow camps’7. Her pluralism is resolutely idealistic. However, an examination of the ‘narrow camps’ of which she speaks is just as important as this recognition of cultural diversity. Charabanc did achieve both, presenting in its first three works a complex society, with Protestant and Catholic extremists standing alongside Protestant and Catholic moderates. There is enormous affection for characters in Charabanc productions, flaws and all, and it seems as though one of the company’s aims was to re-emphasise the humanity of Northern Irish people. Charabanc allowed its audiences to reclaim an identity which was independent of the Troubles and sectarian violence. These early works can also be read as a message to the Ulster Protestant community, as an attempt to draw Ulster Protestants away from sectarianism and into a recognition of their community’s pluralism.

7 Methven in Lojek, ‘Challenging Cultural Certainties’.

218 The approach taken by the company was one of both entertainment and didacticism. The term ‘charabanc’ denotes an open-topped touring bus, a feature of Belfast around the turn of the century, and the company’s initial mission statements drew from this image: Lift your sprits on a Charabanc.... Charabanc is a date to remember, an occasion of songs and laughter, a nostalgic reminder of the brighter side of old Belfast. But don’t be deceived. The Charabanc may have promised a little pleasure but it was a brief relief from the tedium and stresses of ordinary life8. Similarly, the mission statement claimed that ‘working people’s lives were enriched by their sense of community... people learned how to derive some happiness from their surroundings’9. Here, ‘nostalgic reminders’ of Belfast are seen to enrich a ‘sense of community’. This points to the first aspect of Charabanc’s work. Belfast’s stories provided the company with its material and inspiration and it had the aim of sharing these stories with the Belfast community itself. So, first and foremost, this work revolved around who they themselves were, the stories they told and the audience who heard the stories from them, all of which would prove important in their portrayal of Ulster Protestantism.

However, Charabanc’s mission statement also included the claim that: ‘Within a divided, reactive and conservative society such as ours, the company’s contribution must be to confront accepted truths and pose 10. Already here we see more than just ‘the brighter side of old Belfast’. Indeed, Eleanor Methven is particularly proud of the company’s achievements in confronting ‘accepted truths’ and ‘posing dilemmas’.

8 Charabanc, ‘Mission Statement’ (1983), held in the Linen Hall Library Archive, Belfast. 9 Ibid. 10 Ibid.

219 She described a performance of Gold in the Streets (1986) which the company gave at the Divis Flats. The play consisted of three one-act plays set in three different eras, all based on the theme of Irish emigration to England. The last play revolved around a young Protestant woman. Initially the Divis Flats audience liked this character. As Methven described – this character is ‘great craic’11. Following this introduction to the character, there is a scene in which her husband announces that he is going to join the RUC. While up until this point, the audience had been enjoying the play, as Methven tells: All of a sudden there was this tension – ‘What the hell are we supposed to do with this? Are we supposed to feel for this woman?’. At the end of the show, chatting to the audience, what they did say was ‘I suppose we’re all human and I suppose it’s hard for them too’ and that was a breakthrough12. The company’s work aimed take its audience beyond their ‘interpretive 13 and into new perspectives. Theatre here is seen as transgressing boundaries, aiming to educate as well as entertain its audience.

Yet despite this pedagogical intent, Eleanor Methven rejects the notion that the company was proposing solutions: [Charabanc] wasn’t coming at something where we said ‘We are going to make a theatre company that will say, for instance, socialism is the way forward’. We never posed solutions to anything because we didn’t have any.

11 Methven, Interview. 12 lbid. 13 Stanley E Fish, Is There A Text in this Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980), 171.

220 Although there was always a left-wing bias in the work, there’s no doubt about that14. However, it would be short-sighted to argue for a complete absence of ideology in the company’s work. There is a clearly discernible socialist perspective that emerges, particularly from its first three productions. At times this ‘left-wing bias’ (to borrow Methven’s phrase) is expressed rather crudely and dogmatically. This is particularly so with the characters of Belle in Lay Up Your Ends (1983) and Sam in Oul’ Delf and False Teeth (1984). Both characters are agitators for social reform. They actively seek to unite their respective communities – Belle stands behind a banner of union solidarity, while Sam canvasses for the Northern Ireland Labour Party. They are both mouthpieces for Charabanc’s underpinning ideology and, as a result, their language is often crowded with socialist rhetoric. However, Charabanc’s significance for this thesis lies in its success in providing a new perspective on the question of Ulster Protestant identity. This significance overrides the company’s simplistic political ideology.

Lay Up Your Ends (1983)

What ensured the success of Charabanc’s first production was the extent to which the play was grounded in the Belfast community. Lay Up Your Ends, co-written with Martin Lynch, was set in the York Street Linen Mill in Belfast, in 1911, documenting the two week strike of that year led by James Connolly15. Initially meant to be a one-off venture, the success of the show

14 Methven, Interview. 15 The writing of this show began with the women exploring the lives of their own mothers and grandmothers. During this process of research, they came across a woman called Sadie Patterson, who had been involved with the unionisation of mill-workers in Belfast. It was her story that provided the setting and focus for the play [Methven, Interview].

221 persuaded Charabanc to establish itself as a fully-fledged company16. Devised from interviews with old Linen Mill women and their families and from extensive research of archives in Belfast, the play was received with great enthusiasm by its audiences.

The work frequently breaks with theatrical convention. Its structure refuses to be categorised, blurring the distinction between naturalism, music hall and pantomime through its interspersing of bawdy songs and jokes with a series of short scenes and with direct addresses to the audience. These direct addresses had the effect of breaking the fourth wall and directly engaging the audience in a fluid and changing relationship with the characters on stage.

Due to the practicalities of touring, Charabanc’s sets had to be portable and were therefore fairly minimal. This had the effect of engaging the imagination of its audiences. For Lay Up Your Ends, the set consisted of six beer crates, and was described as follows by Maria Di Cenzo: They simply used a backdrop of linen, some linen frames, a hat stand, and wooden beer crates that became everything from cars to seats. The costumes consisted of skirts, mill aprons and shawls and jackets and caps for playing the men. They also made resourceful use of sound effects as a scenic element17.

16 The show opened in May 1983 at the Arts Theatre in Belfast, ‘to the unfamiliar sight of hundreds of people queuing right down Botanic Avenue’ [Jane Coyle, ‘Charabanc in Top , 10 August 1984, as quoted in Ophelia Byrne, The Stage in Ulster From the Eighteenth Century (Belfast: The Linen Hall Library, 1997), 70]. After touring all over Ireland, in community centres both rural and urban, and to both Catholic and Protestant audiences, the show closed in October of that same year, and by the end of this initial run, it had been seen by 13, 515 people, in 96 performances at 59 different venues [Ibid.]. 17 Maria R Di Cenzo, ‘Charabanc Theatre Company: Placing Women Centre-Stage in Theatre Journal, 45. 2 (1993), 179.

222

Crucially, Lay Up Your Ends showed a group of Ulster Protestants who fell outside the stereotype of a wealthy Ulster Protestant community. They replace the picture of the privileged and unquestioning loyal Ulsterman with one of a diverse group of Protestant women, questioning the system by striking. The York Street women struggle against poverty, having to take on extra work to support their families. At one point, as Belle is washing down dead bodies for extra cash, she directly addresses the audience: ‘Look at us, look around ye, what d’ye see? Prosperous Belfast, eh? Like, I’m not too good at the sums but I’ll tell yis what I do know – ye can’t take nothin’ away from nothin' [30]. While Belle’s ‘sums’ lead her to fight for the establishment of a mill workers’ union, the other women lead more downtrodden and pathetic lives. Ethna is the play’s most tragic figure. The audience sees her constantly trying to hide from money lenders and having to pawn off basic possessions to pay her debts. At one point in the play, she is forced to beg amongst her neighbours for money to take her sick child to the doctor. The basic human needs of these women override sectarian concerns.

Alongside poverty is the very prevalent issue of domestic violence. Again, Ethna is portrayed as a victim, as she jokes: ‘I get it that often, I was might as well go the whole hog and take up professional boxin’. Like I’m getting quare and good at jukin’ and jumpin’ outta the way. And a can take a punch. That’s one thing, a can take a quare punch’ [14]. Effective use is made throughout the play of monologic technique, for comment as well as necessary exposition. Florrie, in her direct address to the audience, paints a bleak picture of Belfast: ‘People’s livin’ one on top of the other in the wee streets – you never hardly see the sun. It’s dark when you go in in the mornin’ and dark when you’re comin’ out agin at nights’ [8]. Yet despite these hardships, the women still manage to enjoy themselves, to have some ‘good craic’. This is depicted both in Act One, Scene Two, at the Custom

224 House Steps, and in Act Two, Scene Seven, where, again at Belle’s instigation, the women take a ride on a charabanc into the country. Belle and her co-workers maintain their strength through their comradeship. It is this strong sense of community that helps to lift the women’s spirits. Here we see reflections of Charabanc’s initial mission statement, which argued that ‘working people’s lives were enriched by their sense of community’21. The women of Lay Up Your Ends suffer hardship regardless of their religion. The fact that they are female and working class plays a larger part in their day to day existence than sectarian division. By highlighting this, Charabanc subverts the notion of an Ulster Protestant identity dependent on notions of religion and ethnicity.

While presenting the plight of Belle and the mill girls sympathetically, Charabanc satirically presents Protestant upper class women. After the striking mill girls, or ‘shawlies’, write obscenities about Mr Bingham (the owner of the mill) on the wall of the York Street Mill, his wife Ursula is incensed: ‘You house them, you give them a living, try to get them out of their slum-ridden conditions by providing work for them. Those... those... bitches!’ [53]. Yet Lydia, talking to Ursula at a Gilbert and Sullivan rehearsal, has a more altruistic, yet nonetheless patronising, view of the ‘shawlies’ plight: ‘Well I’ve always thought that if they had some of the finer things in life – take their minds off striking... Some Gilbert and Sullivan, perhaps... some poetry.... Some of the lighter, more romantic poets’ [53]. Lydia, Ursula and their fellow thespians are portrayed in a distant and, at times, caricatured manner, in stark contrast to the well-rounded presentation of Belle and the mill girls. Again, the divisions between these two groups of women argue for class as a more potent mode of identification than sectarian division.

21 Charabanc, Mission Statement.

225 Lay Up Your Ends clearly presents the ‘divide and rule’ tactic of the Orange State, where Ulster Protestant workers were lured away from any socialist aspirations by the threat of Home Rule. The words of James Connolly inspire the mill girls into believing that, as Belle says: ‘Great industrial Belfast wud be nothin’ without the workers’ [29]. Belle is inspired by Connolly’s message, yet this message is obscured for some of the women by his Catholicism and status as a Dubliner. He thus becomes an agent for the Papacy, a suspicion expressed by Lizzie’s husband Charlie: ‘Yer man Connolly is for the Home Rule business...We cud be sold down the river, Lizzie... It’s a plot til git the Prods and Catholics under the wan banner, then, Lizzie dear, there is no hope for our wee childer’ [35]. Lizzie represents a more conservative viewpoint, unsure about the militancy of her co-workers. Her questioning of Belle gives Lizzie the appearance of possessing an independent mind. However, this independence is quickly undermined when the audience sees the interaction between Lizzie and her husband. As a subordinate wife to the staunchly Protestant and loyal Charlie, she prefigures Thelma of Now You’re Talkin’. Yet, in giving these two characters voice, Charabanc is consciously presenting the full spectrum of Protestant opinion and highlighting Ulster Protestant diversity.

Ultimately, the mill women are forced back to work after running out of strike funds. However, the trade union spirit has been firmly established amongst the women. If one woman sings at work and is reprimanded, all of the women sing. If one combs her hair, all comb their hair, and so on. In a final address to the audience, Florrie tells of the two weeks following their return to work in November of 1911, as the first Belfast branch of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union is formed.

226 Lay Up Your Ends is, in subject matter, fairly standard agit-prop. The play is often too didactic in its presentation of a left-wing ideology, particularly when Belle is attempting to inspire and rally the other women. Charabanc’s message seems to be that if only Catholic and Protestant workers would unite, sectarianism would disappear. The main mouthpieces for this idea are obviously the characters of James Connolly and the militant Belle. Yet alongside this rather simplistic didacticism is the depiction of diversity. The characters of Lizzie and Lydia provide us with such diversity of opinion, along with a complex portrait of Jim Doran. Doran, the ‘slave driver’, is the arch of the mill girls, controlling their employment and working conditions. However, in Act One, Scene Six, he is presented as merely a puppet of Mr Bingham, his boss. Doran appears here as obsequious and pathetic, thereby exposing the hierarchical basis of the Unionist establishment.

Although Helen Lojek’s argument that ‘multiplicity and lack of dogma is [Charabanc’s] politics’22 is in stark contrast to the reality of the company’s simplistically articulated socialist position, she does provide insight when she argues that: Charabanc’s work parallels the structure of the best of what is often described as ‘women’s talk’ – there is a recognition of the value of the communications process.... [with an] awareness of multiple perspectives and [a] delight in the creativity which often results from their clash23. In her use of the notion of ‘women’s talk’, Lojek highlights Charabanc’s approach to the question of Ulster Protestant identity. The company’s characters are first and foremost defined by the fact that they are women. Class comes a close second, while religion and political allegiance sit firmly

22 Lojek, ‘Playing with Politics’, 17. 23 lbid.

227 in the background. Gender and class become the focal issues of these plays rather than sectarian divide. Also significant in Lay Up Your Ends is the co-existence of characters like Belle, Lizzie, Lydia and Ursula – all Protestant women, but all from vastly different backgrounds and representative of vastly different political standpoints. Diversity and plurality become the hallmark of Ulster Protestant identity.

Oul’ Delf and False Teeth (1984)

Charabanc’s second production, Oul’ Delf and False Teeth, followed Lay Up Your Ends in this focus on class, gender and diversity. The play is set in and around the Markets area of Belfast during the lead up to the 1949 Stormont Parliament Elections. The construction of the Welfare State in the late 1940s in the United Kingdom saw enormous expectations of the dawning of a new age. The historical importance of this 1949 election lay in its outcome, which has had a direct impact on contemporary Northern Ireland. At no point during this century has the Northern Ireland Labour Party had much electoral success. During the Stormont years, it never held more than four of the parliament’s fifty-two seats. While socialist ideas did develop amongst some working class communities, it was qualified socialism, ‘a sort of sectarian socialism’ which was led by ‘keen trade unionists, often leftward-leaning; but they identified not with the working class as such, but only with the Protestant sector of it’24. It was this 1949 election which was thought to be the Labour Party’s big chance and, in hindsight, became their last chance. Oul’ Delf and False Teeth centres around the election, as told in particular from the Ulster Protestant viewpoint. The growing tension between Catholic Bridie and Protestant Bertha throughout the play

24 David McKittrick, ‘The Class Structure of Unionism’, in Mark Patrick Hederman and Richard Kearney (eds.), The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 2 vols (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1982 and 1987), I, 666.

228 symbolises the re-emergence of sectarianism, a sectarianism which would exclude socialist possibilities.

Like Lay Up Your Ends, Oul’ Delf and False Teeth uses direct address, songs and sound bytes for exposition, again showing fluidity of structure. The opening scene establishes character through this device of direct address, allowing the characters to tell their own stories and to set political context. It includes a portion of a speech from Stormont Prime Minister, Sir Basil Brooke: Our country is in danger. Today we fight to defend our very existence and the heritage of our Ulster children. The British government has agreed to abide by the decision of the Ulster people. It is therefore imperative that our determination to remain under the Union Jack should be immediately and overwhelmingly reaffirmed. No Surrender. We are King’s Men25. This is followed by Sam, who is to become a central protagonist, expressing his frustration and despair: SAM: I fought in a war for over two years, wakin’ up every mornin thinkin’ it was goin’ to be my last, because we thought it was worth fightin’ something as wrong as Fascism. But, now, when I hear Mr Brooke sayin’ things like that or things about Catholics such as... DOROTHY: ‘I recommend those people who are Loyalists not to employ Roman Catholics’ SAM: It makes me realise that this country’s run by another bunch of fascists [I.i].

25 Marie Jones and Charabanc Theatre Company, Oul’ Delf and False Teeth (1984), I.i, held in the Linen Hall Library Archive, Belfast. All further references will be provided in the text.

229 These opening moments establish the historical context of the play, as well as setting up a contrast between Sam and Dorothy, who quickly come to symbolise the two extremes of Ulster Protestant viewpoint.

The play then shifts into song, with the rest of the cast, apart from Dorothy and Sam, coming on stage to set up the market scene and sing: Did you think that we would let A dirty Fenian ghett Destroy a leaf of a lily oh For there’s not a flower in Ireland Like the Loyal, Loyal Orange Lily-oh Like the Loyal, Loyal Orange Lily-oh [I.i]. Throughout the play, there is a strong sense of the ‘old’ Belfast, as in Lay Up Your Ends. The Unionist establishment during the Stormont years expended much effort to present Belfast as a prosperous, industrious and happy city, despite the fact that traditional sources of employment were drying up – that the linen mills and shipyards were closing down. In Act One, Scene Three, Sam describes his father as stuck in the past, and proceeds to launch into an old Belfast song: ‘ Shankill / With a lily in my hand / Roamin’ up the Shankill / With a wee accordian band / When the band begins to play / Kick the Pope or Dolly’s Brae / Sure its lovely I.iii]. This use of song evokes an image of a community wanting to maintain a particular image of itself through a constant sense of nostalgia. This nostalgia ties in directly with the company’s mission statements, and its stated aim of strengthening the Belfast community through the encouragement of a sense of a shared past.

Sam, Bertha and Dorothy are the three central Protestant characters of the play and each represents a different facet of Protestant political belief.

230 Dorothy is a member of the Protestant establishment. She comes from the ‘right side of the tracks’ and is linked to those who control and make the decisions in Belfast. She feels that her class has the responsibility to educate and to lead: ‘There are people in this world whose experience and breeding over generations has given them a heavy weight of historical responsibility to protect and to preserve Ulster’ [I.iv]. Dorothy represents the status quo and all the various efforts to maintain it. However, despite her conservatism, she remains likeable. This is largely achieved through the relationship that develops between her and Sam’s Catholic wife Anna. In a diary recording the process of writing Oul’ Delf and False Teeth, director Pam Brighton records that Eleanor Methven (who would subsequently play Dorothy) is ‘reshaping Dorothy’s language – we want to avoid all semblance of a silly woman. It’s imperative that Anna finds in her something to aspire to – there has to be at least the flesh of an articulate, dignified, confident 26. Dorothy gives Anna advice throughout the play and it is their relationship that fleshes out Dorothy as a character. She becomes more than just the mouthpiece of the Unionist establishment, and again Charabanc complicates the picture.

Anna’s husband Sam is a Protestant but does not hold Unionist or Loyalist political beliefs. He thus sits outside conventional sectarian categories. Sam is a young idealist, full of the possibilities of the new Welfare State. This brings him into conflict with the traditional Unionism of Dorothy, yet also with his wife Anna. For Sam, who is canvassing for the Labour Party, the 1949 election is about rejecting sectarianism. His background is staunchly Loyalist, yet he sees the destruction caused by sectarian politics: I was brought up in a house where everywhere you turned, there was an orange sash, a picture of the King, or King

26 Pam Brighton, ‘Six Characters In Search of a Story’, Theatre Ireland, 6 (1984), 146.

231 Billy crossing the Boyne. I was hatin’ Catholics before I even knew any. It’s like a curse you’re born with, and no easy job tryin’ t’fight it aff. I use to watch my ma cryin’ cos she’d no money to pay the rent, and my near to tears too, cos he’d no money to give her. So nigh, when I see people ready to tear each other apart like animals, I have to say to myself; there’s no Kings, or flags or nations or constitutions worth fighting for, if it makes us hate so much that we cud be ready to kill another human being [I.vii]. Again, class difference is presented as more significant than sectarian division. Sam’s socialist aspirations recall the sentiments and activism of Belle in Lay Up Your Ends. Yet his initially unwavering idealism is painted as just as destructive as Dorothy’s conservatism. His commitment to the election campaign is responsible for the almost irretrievable deterioration of his relationship with Anna. Charabanc’s message seems to be that it is important not to allow politics to take over – not to lose sight of the important things, one’s humanity and one’s relationship with family.

Bertha is an example of the type of voter to whom Sam hopes to appeal. She is the play’s working-class Loyalist, uneducated and easily led into the threat of Home Rule by the Unionist establishment, as represented by Dorothy. While Dorothy and Bertha are united in their political beliefs, the gulf between their classes prevents any real connection developing. When Edward Carson’s son addresses a Unionist rally in Belfast, Bertha is desperate to get in to the hall and she begs Dorothy to use her influence: ‘Take me in with you. I’ll get in if I go w’you.... Go on Missus, it won’t hurt ye. Sure we’re all the same, we’re all Unionists. Ah go on. I wanna see him. I’ll

232 squeeze in beside you and your chum. I don’t take up much room’ [II.viii]. But Dorothy rejects her: DOROTHY:.... Mrs Riley, the speech will be relayed through speakers, if you wait patiently like everybody else. BERTHA: I want in! I wanna see him! I wanna be in there! It’s not the same out here. Please Missus, here’s a pound. Luk take it, just take me in with you. DOROTHY: The answer is no! So please Mrs Riley move out of the way. You’re wasting my time. BERTHA: Just let on y’know me, that’s all. I won’t annoy ye. I just want in. DOROTHY: (Almost screaming) Don’t touch me! [II.viii]. The distance between Dorothy and Bertha, both Protestants and both Unionists, is far greater than that between Bertha and Bridie, despite their differing religious and political beliefs. Through this distance, Charabanc again highlights the importance of class as a defining feature of identity.

As the play progresses, both Sam and the audience begin to see the futility of his enterprise. Class unity is not possible when: Catholics and Protestants are driven into their own corners with fear of each other. And what’s the result eh?.... Labour men gettin’ up and talkin’ about houses, jobs, education, the things that are important to people, and the same people are cloddin’ them w’stones and everything else they can get their hands on..... Unionist candidates batin’ up rubber Popes and the crowds wetting themselves with excitement [I.vi]. It is Dorothy who represents that Unionist extremism: ‘There’s only one issue in this election, and that is are we to have rule from Britain or rule from

233 Rome!’ [I.iv]. Even the most loyal of Sam’s supporters begin to buckle under the pressure of Home Rule threats. In addition, Protestant Bertha begins to reject Catholic Bridie. The increasing distance between these two friends, formerly inseparable, illustrates the destructiveness of sectarianism and acts as a microcosm of the broader picture.

The end of the play is filled with doom. The Labour Party has polled badly and the audience knows what the long term outcome will be – the outbreak and continuance of the Troubles. The final moments see the full cast on stage singing the rather melancholy song ‘Belfast the Glory of the ’. This use of song to lament rather than celebrate fits in with the broader tone of Oul’ Delf and False Teeth. It is a much darker piece than Lay Up Your Ends, dealing as it does with a negative turning point in history. While Lay Up Your Ends examined the establishment of the union spirit at the expense of sectarianism, Oul’ Delf and False Teeth sees that union spirit destroyed.

Yet the play has in common with its predecessor a vibrant sense of humour, expressed particularly through the character of Bridie, hard drinker and floozy. Charabanc delights in irony, and this is nowhere more in evidence than in Dorothy’s description of their lunch menu to fellow Loyalist Sheila: ‘Well, you’re not going to be disappointed. We’re having fresh Dublin Bay prawns followed by smoked Irish ham’ [I.iii]. Oul’ Delf and False Teeth has the same message to offer its audience, that of replacing sectarianism with more ‘sensible’ divisions, divisions of class and gender. Again, this message does come across in a rather simplistic way. Sam becomes the mouthpiece for Charabanc’s ideology, following on from Belle in Lay Up Your Ends. Again, the message seems to be directed at Ulster Protestants, as the play focuses on the divisions within Ulster Protestantism. To its credit the play, like Lay Up Your Ends, does present its audience with a complex portrait of

234 the Protestant community. Sam, Dorothy and Bertha are all Ulster Protestants, yet possess little shared identification, a point vividly illustrated through the constant conflict between Sam and Dorothy, and the confrontation between Dorothy and Bertha outside the Unionist rally. Their class becomes a more significant defining feature than their religion. Again, as in the work of the previous chapter, Charabanc uses this to challenge the portrait of a singular Ulster Protestant identity, defined by its Unionist aspirations and loyalty to the British Crown.

Now You’re Talkin’ (1985)

Now You’re Talkin’ completed the first (and unplanned) trilogy of plays from Charabanc. Following on from Lay Up Your Ends and Oul’ Delf and False Teeth in chronological order, the play was given a contemporary setting. Now You’re Talkin’ returns to a focus specifically on women, centring around five women of different classes and different religions (three are Catholic and two are Protestant) who go to a retreat at ‘Portrock Reconciliation Centre’ run by a ‘self-help’ American couple whose aim is to develop and promote ‘understanding’ in the North, to ‘release the hate’. This is a more naturalistic piece than its predecessors, although similar theatrical strategies are used, with characters directly addressing the audience. Each of the five women represents a different attitude or political standpoint. Veronica and Thelma are the two extremists: Veronica is a radical Sinn Feiner while Thelma is a conservative, Ian Paisley-voting Loyalist. In contrast, Collette is a moderate Catholic Nationalist, while Jackie is her Protestant counterpart. The fifth member of the group, Madeleine, completely politically disaffected, is uninvited, and arrives at the centre in an effort to escape from her husband.

235 In the first scene of the play, Carter, the American ‘facilitator’, asks each of the women to define what the word ‘freedom’ means to them, and it is through this exercise that their individual political positions are expressed. Veronica’s response is simple – ‘Freedom, For Ireland!’27 – while Collette and Jackie come up with generic notions of freedom as choice and discovery, independent of any political meaning. Thelma’s response, however, proves to be the most revealing: Well, now, I have a very good man and I have all the ‘freedom’ I want. Now, I know there’s many another one that is chained to the house, but I was very lucky with my Ronnie. You see, you never know who you’re you get them, and once you’ve got, you’ve got, and there’s no gettin’ out of it [I.i]. The character of Thelma recalls that of Lizzie in Lay Up Your Ends. She defines herself primarily through her staunchly loyal husband. Her first words, spoken directly to the audience, express anxiety at being separated, albeit temporarily, from ‘her Ronnie’: ‘I shouldn’t be here – he won’t manage on his own. It was wee Mrs Watson and our Olive coaxed me intil it! He was all for it too, but wait’ll he sees them dishes pilin’ up and the dust startin’ t’gather.... he’ll miss me, I know he will’ [I.i]. This opening scene establishes a division between Veronica and Thelma, who both seem restricted by the traditional gender politics of Northern Ireland, and Collette and Jackie, who seem content to present themselves to the group as individuals, independent of political categories.

However, a predictable division along sectarian lines seems to prevail initially amongst the women. Act One, Scene Five begins with the women dancing to the song ‘The Farmer and the Cow Man Should Be Friends’, after which

27 Marie Jones and Charabanc, Now You’re Talkin’ (1985), I.i, held in the Linen Hall Library Archive, Belfast. All further references will be provided in the text.

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Jackie lunges at him, screaming: ‘Yes! Yes! We do hate each other! We bloody well hate each other! That’s what all this trouble is about. What the hell do you know about it? You don’t know anything about it! Why don’t you I.v].

Jackie’s vitriol towards Carter brings up the issue of his irrelevance. The ‘farmer’ and ‘cow man’ were feuding in Oklahoma, not in sectarian Northern Ireland. One of the main messages of the play is that Northern Ireland’s problems can ultimately only be solved by Northern Irish people. As if to emphasise this, the character of Carter is almost caricatured in portrayal. Before his entrance, the women discuss him: COLLETTE: Carter who? THELMA: The man. JACKIE: He’s going to be our Group Leader VERONICA: ‘That the Yank? [I.i]. His characteristics don’t extend much further than ‘male’ and ‘American’. Americanness’ he is absolutely misguided in the approach that he takes with the five women, to the point of ludicrousness. Similarly, his sleazy approaches towards Veronica in Act One, Scene Two, are typically ‘male’. The women need to develop self-reliance, and, as Colette expresses, ‘reconciliation is really going to have to begin with the people of Northern II.vi].

Throughout the play, a distinction develops between the moderates and extremists, and the sectarian divisions initially established become irrelevant. Veronica and Thelma, in their intransigence, become more and more alike. Jackie expresses her frustration to Veronica: ‘We are prepared to meet you halfway and you don’t want to know. You’re as bad as her over there [Indicating Thelma] – she doesn’t want to know either. Oh you know all right

238 – you just don’t want to listen’ [34]. Now You’re Talkin’ is notable for its presentation of the Protestant ‘moderate’, through the character of Jackie. Jackie is alienated from Unionist extremists and has little affinity with Thelma, despite a common religion. Carter attempts to send the women home after they prove unresponsive to his exercises, but they refuse. The five women then ‘occupy’ the camp in unified protest and at the beginning of Act Two, Scene Five, a brick is thrown through the window by Protestant extremists with a note attached. Jackie reads it aloud: Dear Sisters, Don’t be misled by Catholic scum... Furthermore, remember your duties, remember your womanhood... Protestant women are not rebels. Continue this pact with evil and you will suffer the just deserts of a traitor! Signed: CTLD – Carson’s True and Loyal Defenders – for the Protestant people of Ulster [II.v]. She is incensed at this extremist, masculine intimidation. It emphasises her inherent voicelessness: Bastards! Evil bastards! They don’t speak for me! The Protestant people of Ulster – who is the Protestant people of Ulster? These maniacs are – until the ordinary Protestant has the courage to stand up and say... If only they would be reasonable and listen to the Catholics!... This country would have been all right if they’d listened to the Catholics in ‘sixty-nine. I agreed! I agreed with Civil Rights and nobody wanted to know! [II.v]. Even in 1985, such sentiments were rarely heard on Northern Irish stages. Jackie’s words reflect the broader questioning of identity that was occurring in the North. As a politically disaffected Ulster Protestant she recalls the central protagonists of the previous chapter. Jackie’s rejection of imposed

239 sectarian categories makes her particularly important for this thesis, placing her outside conventional notions of the Ulster Protestant identity.

While Jackie’s character was intended presumably to enlighten audiences as to the moderate Protestant predicament, Veronica’s character provided Protestant audience members with a more complex portrait of the Republican viewpoint. Eleanor Methven described how their identification with Veronica worked: [Veronica]... was acerbic and witty and the women in the audience absolutely loved her, she was a gas. But then, just before the interval, she came out with her party line which was Sinn Fein. All those Protestant women who had been going ‘oh, she’s great’ began gasping. They liked her a minute ago, they recognised that she had the same experience as them and sure, now they started disagreeing with her. The aim is not to make them suddenly agree with her, but to promote some understanding at least28. The character of Veronica functioned in the same way as that of the RUC policeman’s wife in its subsequent production of Gold in the Streets in 1986. The idea of ‘promoting understanding’ highlights the pedagogical aim of the company. A Charabanc audience was not merely supposed to have fun, they were supposed to come away from the theatre with new understanding.

It was hoped that such understanding would in some way replace blind fear, as voiced through the character of Jackie as she reasons with Veronica: Do you realise how frightened I am of you? You see, when I was growing up I was told about the evil of Popery and how awful things were going to happen to me if there was

28 Methven, Interview.

240 ever a United Ireland.... there would be poverty – we’d all be ruled by priests and nuns [II.vii]. She distances herself from the politicians who claim to represent her: Just try not to blame me for everything that has happened to you. I don't run the country. The leaders, the politicians – blame them for feeding us hatred and lies about you... Is it any wonder.. that we’ve all been driven mad? I don’t know where to turn.... I’m scared.... bloody scared!.... And I hate having this fear of ordinary people like you – but what else do you expect? Fuck bein’ proud to be British.... It’s not pride – it’s fear!.... I’m Irish too – but I’m not allowed to be! [II.vii]. Jackie’s assertion of her own Irishness, and its Republican implications, further complicates her character. Her politics and ethnicity are blurred and the resulting complexity is typical of Charabanc’s approach to Ulster Protestantism. Jackie is a diverse mix of female, Irish, British, Protestant, Unionist and even Republican, in no particular order.

Now You’re Talkin’ and its precursors, Lay Up Your Ends and Oul’ Delf and False Teeth, together directed a powerful message to the Ulster Protestant community and, to a lesser extent, Ulster Catholics. Through their foregrounding of the female experience and through their depiction of class differences, all three plays express the idea that sectarian divisions are too narrow and restrictive, recalling Eleanor Methven’s claim that in the North it is ‘a very mixed bag of stuff’29. Charabanc presented its audiences with a more complex and diverse picture of the North. Nowhere is this more evident than in its representations of the Ulster Protestant community. All shades of political opinion are represented – from Thelma and Lizzie, bound

29 Methven in Lojek, ‘Challenging Cultural Certainties’.

241 to traditional notions of Protestant womanhood, to Belle and Jackie, both of whom explore alternative ways of viewing their society. The direct dialogue between these viewpoints, without judgement, is most strikingly illustrated by the growing relationship between Jackie and Veronica. It is the importance of this diverse picture which outweighs the often simplistic socialist politics of the plays. Protestant culture is neither absent nor denigrated. It is treated with understanding and, at times, affection30. In addition, underlying all three plays was a deep affection for the city of Belfast, as articulated rather crudely by Veronica: ‘Aye, it’s Belfast people, isn’t it? Like, you see when they want to hate, they can really friggin’ hate.... but you see when they wanna love, they can do it in an even bigger way. Belfast..... it’s friggin’ magic’ [39]. These first three productions were made rather unique because of these efforts to reignite community pride, coupled with Charabanc’s aim of promoting understanding across the province’s sectarian divide.

Charabanc and Field Day

Charabanc’s ultimate aim was inclusiveness, and its work succeeded in reaching all sections of the community not simply because of the company’s program of extensive touring, but also because it approached questions of identity, both Protestant and Catholic, without judgement. Charabanc’s success can be compared with the Field Day enterprise, which also aimed for inclusiveness, but ultimately failed in its efforts, as argued above. Charabanc took its audiences beyond sectarian division and into issues of

30 This appreciation and affection for Protestant culture found later expression in Marie Jones’ Weddins, Weeins and Wakes, originally commissioned by the BBC as an exploration of the Belfast accent and first performed at the Shankill Community Festival in 1989. Through the use of verse, rhyme and language play, the play celebrates Protestant culture and, in doing so, presented its audience with the picture of a community thriving on its own terms, not being sustained by the threat of the Other, of ‘Rome Rule’.

242 class and gender. Field Day, by contrast, restricted itself to sectarian frameworks by its insistence on dealing with the ‘atavisms’ of the North.

To examine these two companies is to embark on a study of contrast, not just in terms of their attitudes towards plurality or their representations of Ulster Protestantism. In interview, Eleanor Methven described their differences: When Field Day started, they started off with a mission, they started off very male, they had big heavyweights, Heaney and Paulin. We had ourselves, a couple of mates we got to put down the five pound deposit to form a company and we didn’t start out with a mission statement. With the result that it was a lot harder for us. We were reasonably young women, we didn’t have that kind of clout31. The ‘kind of clout’ Methven is referring to is the fact that Field Day’s initial six board members were all high-profile, respected and successful as individuals. In contrast, Charabanc’s founding members were five unemployed actresses – Marie Jones, Eleanor Methven, Carol Scanlan, Brenda Winter and Maureen McAuley – with little public profile.

The established reputations of the Field Day board members made it easier for the company to obtain publicity. Field Day’s first production was of Translations, a much-awaited new play by a well-known playwright, Brian Friel. Helen Lojek contrasts this with Charabanc’s first production. Not only was the title of this first work, Lay Up Your Ends, ‘variously misreported as “Hand Up Your Ends” and “Lay Down Your Ends”’, but the seriousness of the enterprise was undermined by pre-publicity and reviews which were

31 Methven, Interview.

243 ‘likely to refer to the actors as “girls”, or as Martin 32. Field Day’s established reputation also guaranteed that it received Arts Council funding right from the start, whereas Charabanc initially had to rely only on support, as well as a government funded social welfare scheme.

The contrast between the establishment of the two companies is reflected in their respective ‘ideologies’. As discussed in Chapter One, Field Day’s theatrical work was inevitably and often intentionally associated with its theoretical pronouncements, under the auspices of its publishing wing and the overt Northern Nationalism of Seamus Deane. Comparing the two companies, Helen Lojek argues that Field Day ‘began with a pronouncement about its purpose, with a new play by an established and popular author, and with extensive verbiage to support both its artistic and its theoretical work’, whereas ‘Charabanc began with an effort to create employment opportunities for a talented group of unemployed women, with a collaboratively written play, with programs which focused on information rather than on cultural theory, and with no additional supporting published words’33. For Charabanc, focus remained on specific productions rather than a broader cultural program. As Eleanor Methven explained in interview: ‘We wanted to work and we knew the kind of work we wanted to do, that is, from this place, about our own people and to put women’s work strongly to the fore. Other things evolved along the way’34. Methven’s words and Lojek’s analysis point to the way in which Charabanc presented itself. While Field Day possessed ‘clout’, Charabanc was founded, according to Methven, by ‘ourselves’ and their ‘couple of mates’ who supplied the five pound deposit. This begins a picture of Charabanc as pragmatic, working class, under-

32 Lojek, ‘Playing with Politics’, 7. 33 Ibid., 11. 34 Methven, Interview.

244

Methven’s point is valid. By the mid 1980s Field Day’s productions were less about Northern Irish stories, as told to Northern Irish people by Northern Irish voices, and more about the broader theoretical issues espoused by the company’s critical wing. This distance from the community only increased as the company began to import outside theorists and dramatists. This shift in focus had as its admirable aim the broadening of debate, but it ultimately served to remove Field Day’s work from its initial grounding in the North.

By contrast, Charabanc’s first six productions36, from 1983 to 1989, were based on direct interaction with its audience – on interviews, research and direct involvement with the community. The company’s working methods followed on from this grounded community focus. Its earlier work was strongly collaborative, being researched and devised by the company, with the final task of writing left to Marie Jones. Material was often taken directly from taped interviews, and Methven claims that Charabanc’s interviewees ‘loved’ the whole experience: They’re always listed by name in the program with special thanks. They probably don’t go to the theatre. So they come to an opening night in Belfast and they’ve got a free ticket with a special invitation, and they’ve got a seat. It’s exciting for them37. The relationship between actor and audience was fluid and changeable. Scripts would be altered to accommodate a new line or a new joke, even one which came from outside the company, as Methven describes:

36 Lay Up Your Ends (1983), Oul’ Delf and False Teeth (1984), Now You’re Talkin’ (1985), Gold in the Streets (1986), The Girls in the Big Picture (1987) and Somewhere Over the Balcony (1988). These plays were all the product of collaborative research, although the main writing credit remained with Marie Jones. 37 Carol Martin, ‘Charabanc Theatre Company: ‘‘Quare" Women "Sleggin" and "Geggin" the Standards of Northern Ireland by "Tappin' the People’’’, The Drama Review, 31.2 (1987), 92.

246 When we played Gold in the Streets in Belfast, a man we know, the manager of the hotel next door, used to come every night before the show and say, ‘I’ve got a great joke you’ve got to put in your show’. And he would come back to make sure we put it in38. Martin Lynch helped the company write its first show, Lay Up Your Ends, and was instrumental in persuading Charabanc to write its own material. Lynch is a well-known Northern Irish Catholic playwright and had worked for many years (and continues to work) in community theatre39. His influence can be clearly seen in these first productions, which were underpinned by a philosophy of a fluid relationship between audience and actor.

In addition to this, Charabanc quickly developed a reputation for neutrality, in contrast to the perceived Northern Nationalist bias of Field Day. Particularly illustrative of this was its 1988 production, Somewhere Over the Balcony, which looked at the hardship suffered by women in the North, and was set in a Divis-like housing estate. Eleanor Methven, Marie Jones and Carol Moore are all of Protestant backgrounds, yet were accepted into the staunchly Republican world of the Divis Flats to research their production. Methven looks back on the experience with a certain amount of pride, recalling ‘the privilege of being there and being with women of our own generation... who were strongly IRA and strongly Sinn Fein’: They responded to us wonderfully. We just walked in and said ‘look, this is who we are’ and they’d heard of us anyway, we’d played there a couple of times. It’s a matter of gaining people’s confidence. It was the first time

38 Martin, ‘Charabanc Theatre Company’, 92. 39 Lynch, along with Christina Reid, Graham Reid and Robin Glendinning among others, was one of the group of dramatists who emerged in the North in the late 1970s and early 1980s. As well as his writing work, Lynch is involved in the Community Arts Forum in Belfast.

247 anybody from here, not a foreign journalist, was interested. Of course it took a while, and I’m sure we were thoroughly checked out by somebody. We ended up being their guest at Internment Night and getting pissed with them. It was just wonderful40. While Seamus Deane and his Field Day colleagues never managed to ‘get through’ to ‘an audience... who would be put off just by our names, by the fact that two of us are called Seamus’41, Charabanc managed to gain not only the respect and acceptance of the Protestant community, but also, more strikingly as a group of three Protestant women42, the acceptance of the Catholic community in the North.

Throughout its twelve year history43, Charabanc was an integral part of the Northern Irish theatrical scene. In gauging the success of the company’s venture, one need only look at the continued support which it received from both critics and audiences. The uniqueness of the company’s working methods – its research and collaboration – ensured that each of its productions (particularly in the first five years) was eagerly anticipated and well attended. The company was appropriated as distinctly ‘Belfast’ in character, which stemmed from its focus on telling Belfast stories to Belfast audiences (as well as audiences on tour, of course). Charabanc’s importance in giving voice to the concerns of the working class urban community cannot be underestimated, and in this it follows the work of Sam Thompson. Its relationship to the Belfast community was established at the

40 Methven, Interview. 41 Seamus Deane, Richard Kearney and Ciaran Carty, ‘Why Ireland Needs a Fifth Sunday Independent, 22 January 1984. 42 By this stage, Brenda Winter and Maureen MacAuley had left the company to pursue other interests. 43 Marie Jones resigned from the company in 1990 and, following her departure, the company produced a series of commissioned works and adapted classics. In July 1995, Charabanc announced that they were 'getting off the bus’ [Charabanc press release, as quoted in Byrne, The Stage in Ulster, 73].

248 sound of the first mill horn in Lay Up Your Ends, and was strengthened through association with the women of the Divis Flats. Charabanc also made an effort to foreground the concerns of working class women, and in this, its work parallels that of Christina Reid.

Focus was given to both diverting and instructing audiences, yet a successful balance between the two was not always established. While claiming that it was not offering ‘solutions’, the company’s work was often over-stated and simplistic in the socialism which it so obviously put forward as an alternative to sectarianism. The clear message that emerged from the company’s definitive first three productions was that the narrowness and restrictiveness of existing sectarian categories should be replaced with association along lines of class and gender. This focus on class and gender was used as a means of challenging and questioning Ulster Protestant identity. Effort was put into shaking the audience out of existing modes of thought, as illustrated by the two stories told by Eleanor Methven about the function of the RUC policeman’s wife in Gold in the Streets and Veronica in Now You’re Talkin’.

Particularly important was Charabanc’s message both to, and about, Ulster Protestants. A notable feature of its work was its portrayal of Ulster Protestantism in the North as diverse and complex, in stark contrast to Field Day. The company’s first three plays worked consciously at presenting a wide spectrum of Protestant political ideas and encouraging audiences to understand what motivates Protestant characters. No judgement is made of, and more significantly no apology is made for, extreme Protestantism. While in other work that has been examined, the Unionist establishment and Loyalist extremists are somehow presented as alien, in Charabanc’s work, the women who support such extremism are presented in an affectionate

249 way. Lizzie, Dorothy, Bertha and Thelma are all likeable characters, possessed of humanity and compassion.

Charabanc centred its work on societal divisions based upon lines of class and gender rather than sectarian division. Class and gender are used by the company to undermine the confluence of Protestant history, myth and identity through the positing of a diverse group of Protestant women, whose daily concerns override the political situation in the North. This juxtaposition of the reality of the domestic and private female experience, as contrasted with the superficiality of the public and very male political face of the North, is a theme also explored by Christina Reid, and it is to her work that this thesis now turns.

250 Chapter Six

Christina Reid: the Ulster Protestant Female

The public faces of Catholic and Protestant paramilitaries are all men. All the people who talk about religion and the Church are all men. Women are never the leaders, the faces, the voices. Ian Paisley and the Pope are basically in total agreement over what a woman’s role in the home should be. Christina Reid, 19901.

As Christina Reid implies in the above quotation, the traditional portrait of the ‘Ulster Protestant’ is male, consisting of either -wearing member of the Orange Order, or the balaclava-sporting paramilitary. Traditional Northern Irish politics are masculine and the public face of Northern Ireland is still almost exclusively male. Reid’s plays aim to subvert this public face and in doing so, to subvert the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity.

Reid’s work touches on issues of history and myth, collective and individual memory, class and ethnicity, yet it is particularly noteworthy for its exploration of gender issues in the North. She focuses on the Ulster Protestant female experience and, in this, she can be compared with Charabanc Theatre Company. Gender is used to lead into the question of

1 The Irish Post, 22 September 1990, as quoted in Maria Del Gardo, ‘Introduction – Beyond the Troubles: The Political Drama of Christina Reid’, Christina Reid Plays: 1 (London: Methuen Drama, 1997), xv.

251 Ulster Protestant identity, and Reid’s work replaces the rigidity of this largely masculine identity with the fluidity of the female experience. Her female characters are primarily defined by their gender, not their Protestantism, and in this she undermines the concerns of traditional Northern Irish politics, and ultimately further problematises the conventional portrait of the Ulster Protestant.

Reid firmly believes in the overarching similarities between Protestant and Catholic women. She compares her own family to that of fellow playwright and Catholic, Martin Lynch: His father and my father were both dockers. His father was like mine, you know, smoked too much, drank too much, always down at the bookies, always thinking he was going to bet a horse or a dog that was going to make him a fortune. So alike. I’ve met his mother and his sisters and they are the same as mine. A big working-class, close knit family2. This description of Reid and Lynch’s fathers points to the role of men in the North, as protected and vulnerable children. Reid tells of her father’s ‘vanishing acts’, where after an episode of binge drinking he would ‘vanish for days on end’, only to be eventually located ‘staying with his sister, two houses up the street’. As she explains: ‘His sister wouldn’t tell my mother because she would protect him. This thing of protecting men from themselves is very, very strong, very strong still’3.

Women in this equation become the main source of physical and emotional support for the family. Increasingly coupled with this is financial support. Monica McWilliams describes what she terms the ‘feminisation’ of poverty,

2 Christina Reid, Personal Interview, 10 December 1996. 3 lbid.

252 arguing that it is women in the North ‘who experience poverty as prisoner’s wives, as widows, as single parents, divorced, separated or unmarried, as managers of unemployed families, as single and elderly women living alone, or as low-paid wage earners’. She argues that for most of these women the experience ‘is both humiliating and degrading’4. The obverse of such humiliation is a heightened sense of propriety, as Reid describes in relation to her own family: If they had bleak moments, which they did, they were hidden. As the saying goes, ‘never let the neighbours know your business’, so if a woman was being appallingly treated at home, or was miserably unhappy with her life it would be very rare for her to give way to that outside5. All of these factors place enormous pressure on women in the North.

The role of religion in the politics and public life of the North complicates gender politics, and goes a long way towards explaining why Northern Ireland has lagged behind the rest of the United Kingdom on issues of women’s rights6. Women are given a limited number of roles or identities to choose from. Catholic and Nationalist ideology provides for the Virgin Mary and Mother Ireland as role models7. Protestant ideology is also deeply patriarchal yet it takes a further step of making women ‘invisible’8. They are

4 Monica McWilliams, ‘Women in Northern Ireland: An Overview’, in Eamonn Hughes (ed.), Culture and Politics in Northern Ireland: 1960-1990 (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991), 92. 5 Reid, Interview. 6 While the disparities are now less evident, up until the early 1980s, Northern Ireland trailed the UK in the introduction of a number of social reforms, such as divorce legislation, domestic violence legislation and abortion legislation. For more detail see McWilliams, ‘Women in Northern Ireland’. 7 Margaret Ward and Marie-Thérèse McGivern, ‘Images of Women in Northern Ireland’, in Mark Patrick Hederman and Richard Kearney (eds.), The Crane Bag Book of Irish Studies, 2 vols (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1982 and 1987), I, 581, and McWilliams, ‘Women in

8 Reid, Interview.

253 relegated to the background of Northern Irish Protestant life, expected to assume the role of the steadfast and loyal nurturer.

Yet in spite of the pressure placed upon women, one of Reid’s most enduring memories is of the humour of the women in her family, which is reflected throughout both Tea in a China Cup (1983) and The Belle of the Belfast City (1989), the two plays which occupy this chapter. Reid’s work is often drawn from her personal history. She recounts being a child surrounded by adult women, ‘so proper and Protestant’, always wearing ‘a hat on a Sunday, gloves, handbags and the lot’: ‘But once they all got together, particularly when the men weren’t there, one glass of sherry and my mum and her sisters had their skirts up to their bums and were dancing on the kitchen table’9. The vivid visual imagination and sense of fun that we see in her work comes from this strong tradition of ‘play’. Similarly, her constant concern with the fluid relationship between fact and fiction stems from the fact that all of her family were ‘great story-tellers’10. Equally as problematic as this relationship between fact and fiction, is that between past and present, a concern which also runs throughout her plays. In this she reflects the plays of Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness explored in Chapter Two of this thesis.

Reid presents her characters with great affection and understanding, despite their flaws. They appear as complex and lifted above reduction and stereotype. Characteristically, her work possesses a fluidity of structure and form, extending beyond realism. It is also firmly located in the North, despite the fact that Reid has lived in London since the mid 1980s. This is the case with Did You Hear the One About the Irishman? (1985), which deals with a romance across the sectarian divide, Joyriders (1986), which focuses on a

9 Reid, Interview. 10 lbid.

254 group of young Northern Irish people in a Youth Training Programme, and its sequel, Clowns (1996), all of which are set in Belfast.

Similarly, the two plays which occupy this chapter, Tea in A China Cup and The Belle of the Belfast City are very much grounded in the Belfast community and they both foreground the experience of women. What makes them particularly appropriate for this thesis is the fact that, like My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name, they deal specifically with Protestant history, memory, mythology and symbols. Reid’s aim is to lift the Ulster Protestant female out of invisibility. Through this firm focus on gender and the diversity of her Ulster Protestant women, she attempts to challenge the notion of a singular Protestant identity.

Tea in a China Cup (1983)

Tea in a China Cup was first performed at Belfast’s Lyric Theatre in 1983. It is set in Belfast, and centres around the relationship between a mother and daughter, Sarah and Beth. The play begins as Beth is preparing for her mother’s imminent death, then takes the audience back through Beth and Sarah’s lives. Through flashback and the mediated memories of her characters, Reid explores the blurred lines between history and myth. She problematises the relationships between past and present, fact and fiction, paralleling her own life, where family stories were told so many times that she ‘grew up thinking I’d been somewhere or done something because I’d heard it so often, but actually I hadn’t. I’ve got a clear image of places I couldn’t possibly have been. I can see it as if I was there’11. The play’s fluid form shifts from conventional realism to heightened memory. It is Beth who provides the link between past and present. She remembers stories told to

11 Reid, Interview.

255 her countless times, until, like Reid, what she herself never experienced becomes a vivid memory for her: ‘I can remember and see clearly things that happened even before I was born’12. Like Stewart Parker’s Frank in Spokesong, Beth’s sense of identity is defined by these memories. It is defined by a history which is intertwined with, and inseparable from, myth.

Reid uses symbols throughout the play, reflecting the role that they play in the formation of Ulster Protestant identity. The sounds of Orange bands and loyalist songs feature in the opening scenes of the play, linking the past and present, and setting the imaginative territory of the play as both Protestant and male. But Reid more strikingly makes use of symbolic objects. With the conscious lack of scenery, stage props take on greater significance. Reid’s opening description pinpoints key objects: A velvet sofa symbolises Beth’s elegant house…. A china cabinet plus three large framed photographs of: the grandfather in First World War uniform; his son Samuel in Second World War uniform; his grandson Sammy in modern army uniform, symbolise the little house that is occupied first of all by the grandparents and subsequently by Sarah [2]. Here instead we have a different kind of symbol, that belonging to a private and distinctly female world, as opposed to the very public and male Orange bands. Sarah’s life is articulated through two sets of objects – the role of the men in her life is emphasised through their photos and the importance of propriety is reinforced through her china cabinet. The playÕs final moment sees Beth holding on to a Belleek china cup, inherited from her estranged husbandÕs aunt. This china cup (or a ‘bit of fine bone china’ and ‘good table

12 Christina Reid, ‘Tea in a China Cup’, in Plays:1 (London: Methuen, 1997), 10. All further references will be given in the text.

256 linen’ [25]) functions throughout the play as a particularly female symbol of Protestant pride and propriety.

Throughout the course of the play we see Beth struggle with her Ulster Protestant female heritage. Reid presents her audience with a picture of a deeply patriarchal society and one of the play’s main concerns is the way in which women function in a world which is dominated by masculine values. Sarah represents an older generation of Ulster women, whose identities are primarily defined by this public and masculine world which surrounds them. Her sense of identity in bound up in a notion of Protestantism as it is presented to her by male politicians. The Orange marching bands ‘always get the oul Protestant blood going’ [8] for Sarah and she, along with her own mother and aunt, appears as filled with the sectarian rhetoric of the Orange State.

Reid depicts this older generation of women as stubborn, narrow minded and bigoted. These women are caught up in notions of respectability, which are linked both to issues of class, and to perceived sectarian differences. For Aunt Maisie and the Grandmother, Protestant respectability means a pride in oneself that revolves around being proud that one is ‘not Catholic’. They are fond of making comparisons between what they perceive as Protestant dignity and a converse Catholic lack of dignity: We don’t go about cryin’ poverty and puttin’ a poor mouth on ourselves the way they do neither. Did you hear thon oul Nationalist politician on the wireless the other day? Tellin’ the world about goin’ to school bare-fut in his da’s cut-down trousers? I would cut my tongue out before I’d demean my family like that [23-4].

257 Their own behaviour becomes defined by its opposition to perceived ‘ behaviour, bringing to the fore the fact that Protestant identity is not formed in isolation. Crucial to a sense of identity are principles of inclusion and exclusion, reflecting issues of ethnicity and JanMohamed’s notion of the manichean Other13.

Beth represents a new generation of Ulster Protestant women. She rejects what she recognises to be imposed gender roles and imposed sectarian division. Nonetheless, when it comes to marriage, she finds herself repeating the mistakes made by her mother. Beth described her father as a ‘waster’, who had women continually making excuses for his behaviour. Despite the fact that he left Sarah to go through labour alone, without even the money to get a taxi to the hospital [22], Sarah still makes excuses: He wasn’t a bad man your father, just weak, easily led, he loved us all you know, especially you… he could have been worse.... he never lifted a finger to any of us in his life, he just had a weakness for the drink and the bettin’... he couldn’t help it, he was only a man, God help him [38]. Beth’s own husband Stephen turns out to have similar weaknesses. Whereas her father ‘gambled in half-crowns and ten-shilling notes’, Stephen ‘gambles in thousands of pounds and bits of paper called stocks and shares’. Similarly, just as when Beth’s father ‘had blown his entire pay packet at the dog track… he used to hide out with one of his married sisters’, so ‘when Stephen’s creditors began to hammer on the door, he fled to his aunt in America’ [60]. Beth’s recognition of this unwanted inheritance is the first step towards the independence which she discovers by the end of the play.

13 See page 25.

258 However, it is the relationships between the women in the play that Reid focuses on, as she establishes the image of a ‘community of women’, supporting and sustaining each other. Recalling Reid’s description of the women of her own family with their ‘skirts up to their bums’, ‘dancing on the Tea in a China Cup have their own, distinctly female, reveries. During one of the play’s flashback scenes, in July 1952, and again marked by the sound of Orange bands (this time playing ‘The Sash My Father Wore’, Reid pointing again to the prominence of the The GRANDMOTHER, MAISIE and BETH as a child of eleven come dancing into the GRANDMOTHER’S house, singing and giggling. They all fall laughing on to the sofa’ [23]. An important part of Reid’s ‘women’s business’ is superstition, which brings yet another contrast with the masculine, devoutly religious, Protestant evangelical leadership. Sarah instils in Beth a respect for old wives’ remedies – ‘Don’t scoff at the old remedies. Without them you wouldn’t have survived your first year’ [32] – while the Grandmother and Maisie take her with them to ‘dress’ the body of Granda Jamison [34ff].

Along with the newfound independence that Beth discovers at the end of the play comes an acceptance of her heritage. It is her mother’s death which sees Beth accepting her part as one among a community of Ulster Protestant women. After her mother’s death, and before sending ‘for a minister, a doctor [or]... an undertaker’, Beth recounts that she ‘covered the mirrors in the house with white starched linen cloths, just as my grandmother had shown me, so that the evil spirits could not reflect away her soul’ [63]. In covering the mirrors in the house, she finds herself following the actions of generations of women before her. In this sense of a female ‘community’, Reid follows on from the work of Charabanc. Their identity as women,

259 whether they are consciously aware of it or not, separates these characters from the public, and ultimately male, face of the Ulster Protestant.

This is the main issue overriding the play – that of the divide between masculine and feminine in the North. Throughout the play Reid juxtaposes the strength of her female characters with their wayward men, fond of gambling and drinking, and prone to romanticising war. While men are seen as dominating the public world of the North, women have control of the private domain. When Samuel, Sarah’s brother, goes off to fight in the Second World War, no amount of his mother’s sense can prevent him from going or from losing his life. While his father believes that the war will ‘make a man of him’, his mother argues that ‘he’s only eighteen’: ‘I want him to grow into a man here, in his own street with his own ones all around him, not in some stinkin’ hole in the ground in France among strangers’ [11]. Her message is clear – ‘Never you mind the medals, Samuel. You just keep your head down, and come home in one piece’ [13]. The telegram informing the Grandmother of Samuel’s death, through the juxtaposition of the cold repetition of numbers with the Grandmother’s ‘translation’, further emphasises the gender divide: OFFICER: Number 1473529.... GRANDMOTHER: Gunner Samuel Bell...... OFFICER: The nature of the wound... GRANDMOTHER: Gunshot wounds in the chest...... The GRANDMOTHER holds the letter to her face and exits, weeping. As she leaves, the OFFICER intones impassively. OFFICER: If replying, please quote number ED stroke CAS stroke N [15-16].

260 History repeats itself when Sarah’s own son, Sammy, leaves for the army. On Reid’s instructions, Sammy’s departure is a conscious re-enactment of

However, just as Reid deals with female exclusion from the public domain in the North, so she touches on the converse exclusion of men from the private domain. This is most clearly expressed through the Grandfather’s struggle to stifle his emotion upon learning of his son’s death. He feels compelled to hide it from the women around him, blowing his nose noisily [13], and quietly utters that ‘he was my son too, you know’ [20]. The men along with the women in Reid’s plays are presented as victims of this division.

Moreover, the men in Tea in a China Cup are largely mediated through Reid’s female characters. They all appear as flawed, with the notable exception of Sarah’s brother Samuel, whose early death at war ensured that he remained in their hearts forever young, forever true, a perfect son and brother, a perfect man. If he had survived the war, I wonder would he have lived up to all their expectations. No one will ever know. Perhaps the Germans, without realising it, killed the only truly honest Ulsterman who ever lived [31]. Beth’s father and husband are ‘wasters’, while the Grandfather is a victim of restrictive notions of Ulster manhood. It is Reid’s women who are dynamic and strong, restricted by their gender to an unequal status, yet ultimately propelled forward by the vibrant community of women to which they belong.

261 The Belle of the Belfast City (1989)

The Belle of the Belfast City follows on from Tea In a China Cup in both concerns and form. Again it is set in Belfast (as suggested by the title) and again it was accorded a premiere at the Lyric Theatre. Like Tea in a China Cup, it specifically examines notions of a female Ulster Protestant identity, and vividly portrays the gender divide in the North. The narrative revolves around the coming together of a family of five women, headed by the ageing matriarch Dolly, who lives in a world that has all but disappeared, sustained only through photographs and constant memory lapses into the past. Dolly lives in a small Belfast shop, run by her elder daughter Vi. The action of the play begins as her younger daughter Rose, a much-travelled news photographer, resident in London, comes to stay. Rose brings her own daughter Belle, keen to discover her Belfast roots. Also in the female family portrait is Dolly’s niece Janet, estranged from her husband Peter. Outside the private world of these five women sit Reid’s male characters. First and foremost among these men is Janet’s brother Jack, loyalist politician, sexist and bigot. But there are other male characters that stand further on the periphery of Reid’s female centre, all of which were played by the same actor in the original production of the play. They are: Janet’s estranged husband Peter, a Catholic RUC policeman; Davy, a deaf and mute local boy who helps Vi in the shop; Tom Bailey, colleague of Jack, member of the National Front movement; the cameo role of Isaac Standaloft, evangelical preacher; and an unnamed Customs man.

While the above list seems merely a reworking of the play’s dramatis personae, the range of characters is indicative of both the play’s complicated plot, but more importantly, illustrative of Reid’s foregrounding of the private world of her five women. She continues her juxtaposition of the masculinity

262 of the Northern Irish public realm with the femininity of its private realm, and examines the points at which they intersect. The action of the play takes place during a very specific time in Belfast’s recent history – November 1986, a year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Agreement. Ulster Protestants are mobilising to take to the streets and protest the Agreement. This public, outside world intrudes throughout the play on the private and enclosed world of Dolly and her family.

Each of the female characters in the play deals with the gender politics and sectarian divide of the North in a different way. Janet is Reid’s most obvious victim. She is caught between her sexually repressed and fundamentally religious brother and her impotent husband. Her journey throughout the play is towards a gradual discovery of independence. While visiting Rose in London, she had a short-lived affair with a younger man, and this new sexual freedom she finds intensely frightening. But, as the play progresses, she embraces her newly discovered strength and is finally able to reject both Jack and Peter. The metaphors of sexual repression and sexual impotence here reflect upon issues of masculinity, linking back to the work explored in Chapter Four of this thesis. They convey ideas of stasis versus dynamism that are relevant to the conflict in the North, but they also subvert the public image of the Ulster Protestant male, dominant and controlling.

The relationship between Reid’s two sisters, Vi and Rose, also provides for an interesting examination of the roles of women in Northern Ireland. Their opposing viewpoints point to a diversity in Ulster Protestant identity. Broadly speaking, while Vi accepts the gender politics of the North, Rose rejects them. Yet, as the play progresses, they begin to discover common ground. While Rose’s time in Belfast is a flying visit, it is Vi who carries the day to day responsibility of looking after their mother. It has been that way throughout

263 her life: ‘I never remember a time when I was really young, the way children are. As soon as I was tall enough to see over the counter, Dolly kept me off school to work in the shop’14. She harbours resentment about the freedoms that Rose has had. This resentment finally emerges over a discussion about politics. While Rose has the luxury of distance from everyday violence, Vi is surrounded by it. She supports the Loyalist political cause by selling sectarian magazines, while she tacitly supports the Loyalist paramilitaries through regular contributions to the Loyalist Prisoners Fund (which is in reality a protection racket). Rose’s disapproval prompts Vi into a direct attack: It’s all very fine and easy livin’ in London and makin’ noble decisions about what’s right and what’s wrong about how we live here. I’m the one who has to live here… Talk’s cheap. And it’s easy to be brave when you’ve somewhere safe to run [199]. While Rose has been travelling, Vi’s world has consisted of only the nearest patch of ground, and her views are a classic exposition of the Protestant Loyalist position. Significantly, Reid makes no apologies for her, instead allowing her audience to understand Vi’s position by presenting these small community attitudes and values as an inevitable product of the violence that surrounds her.

But, just as Janet comes to understand her own strength as the end of the play approaches, so Vi begins to reject Protestant leadership, beginning with her decision not to close the shop on the day of the anniversary protest, despite pressure from Jack and the local ‘defence committee’. Similarly, Rose’s fervent left-wing idealism is softened by the realities of her sister’s life.

14 Christina Reid, ‘The Belle of the Belfast City’, in Plays:1 (London: Methuen, 1997), 216. All further references will be given in the text.

264 These three characters are framed by the female ‘outsiders’ of the play, Dolly and Belle, grandmother and granddaughter. While Vi, Rose and Janet become embroiled in the politics – both public and private – of the North, Dolly and Belle remain somehow removed from it all. Dolly looks in on the action from a position of temporal distance. Her life is lived through memories, as illustrated through Reid’s opening set descriptions. Dolly’s room contains a dressing-up box and ‘many framed photographs, old and new’ . Her walking-stick is juxtaposed with the ‘largest and most dominant’ framed image, that of ‘the young DOLLY on a concert poster circa 1925 when she topped the bill in the halls as “The Belle of the Belfast City”’ [179]. Again here, following on from Tea in a China Cup, we see the importance of symbols.

Belle remains culturally distant from the central action of the play. This is her first visit to the North and she is eager to explore her maternal heritage. However, her father was African American, and her colour immediately distances her from the people of the North. In addition to feeling cultural and emotional distance from the politics of Northern Ireland, she is perceived as an outsider. At the beginning of Act Two, she directly addresses the audience with her impressions of Belfast, explaining that: My Aunt Vi has lived here all her life and has never set foot in West Belfast. Injun Country. The Badlands. Her images of the Falls Road are conjured by Nationalist songs and stories and recitations. And the news bulletins and the rhetoric of the Reverend Ian Paisley confirm everything she fears to be true. She votes for the Unionist Party to keep the Republican Party out [213-4].

265 Belle’s separation enables her to act as a voice for Vi’s extreme loyalism. Her status as an outsider provides her with the perspective to comment somewhat objectively. Reid uses this status to place Belle in the role of narrator at specific points in the play.

In opposition to this private and female world, Reid places the traditional masculine politics of the North. Jack becomes the most obvious embodiment of these politics and within his character is merged religious fundamentalism with strident Loyalism. His political savvy as he enters the stage ‘very neatly and expensively dressed’, wearing ‘slightly tinted glasses’, moving ‘silently’ and with ‘careful and controlled’ movements [182], is combined with his evangelical fervour, with Reid depicting his ‘state of masturbatory ecstasy’ as he practises a sermon-like speech: ‘Guard our women. Guard our children. Lest they succumb to the insidious evil that festers and grows in our land. The phallic worship of priests in scarlet and gold. The pagan rites of black nuns’ [241-2]. Through the character of Jack, Reid makes an explicit connection between Loyalist politics, religious fundamentalism, sectarian hatred, misogyny and racism15. This is emphasised both through his relationship with Tom Bailey and his thinly disguised discomfort about Belle’s colour.

Again, as with Tea in a China Cup, Reid’s male characters are all flawed, with the exception of Dolly’s dead husband who ‘was a rare bird’, ‘an Ulsterman who could cook’ [195]. Davy appears as a naive and misguided boy, whose political extremism is simply a case of following the crowd. Peter’s sexual impotence reflects upon his broader personal problems, while Tom and Isaac exist as merely sinister representations of the masculine politics of the North. They are all rather thinly sketched and seem to exist

15 Del Gardo, ‘Introduction’, xiii.

266 only in opposition to Reid’s complex, and well-rounded, strong female characters.

The exception to this is the way Jack appears in the private sphere. Like the Grandfather in Tea in a China Cup, Jack is excluded from the bond which exists between this family of five women. Paralleling Reid’s own memories of kitchen-table reveries, Dolly’s first flashback introduces her and the girls dressing up, singing and dancing. It also introduces Jack’s separateness: JACK does not dress up nor join in the love and laughter that envelops the girls’ [179]. This obvious isolation complicates his character by adding vulnerability to it. His religious fundamentalism and the emotional repression that comes with it is presented as a product of his upbringing. Dolly describes how Jack and Janet’s mother beat them ‘with words’: ‘words like sin, the world and the devil... Jack’s job as the man of the house was to protect his sister from temptation’ [196]. Here Reid theatrically represents the relationship between ‘play’ and identity, so potently argued by Stewart Parker. Jack’s repression and stasis has been caused by an absence of ‘play’. All of this adds depth to his character. Reid doesn’t merely reduce him to a masculine contrast to her family of women, she gives him depth and complexity, allowing her audience to understand him.

Tea in a China Cup and The Belle of the Belfast City are specifically Belfast plays. Their narrative is confined to the present and past of Belfast. They both premiered at the Lyric Theatre, to Belfast audiences. Yet their imaginative territory extends much further. The structure of the two plays which occupy this chapter reflects the complexity of the issues with which they deal. Action constantly shifts between past and present, fact and selected memory, song and dialogue, and even dream-like states. As in the work of Stewart Parker, Christina Reid’s plays defy existing narrative

267 structures, and any attempt to place her in a theatrical ‘genre’ is fruitless. She deals with issues of history, memory and myth through her depiction of a fluid relationship between past and present. She also touches on issues of ethnicity, sectarianism and racism.

However, the concern which dominates these plays is the contrast Reid posits between the public and masculine, as against the private and feminine, worlds of the North. Northern Ireland is a patriarchally dominated society. Its politics and religion are almost exclusively male and the extent to which religion dominates the society ensures that women are confined to the predetermined role of a steadfast nurturer.

Reid foregrounds the Ulster Protestant female and, like Charabanc, uses this as a way into questions of Ulster Protestant identity. She sets up a divide between her ‘two worlds’, between her female and male characters. In both plays Reid establishes a clear sense of a community of women. This community remains a constant, emphasised through Reid’s excursions into the past. The sense of belonging that it provides enables her female characters to find strength. Her male characters remain excluded from this community. In addition, she contrasts the strength of her female characters with the absolute hopelessness of the men around them. While dominant in the public arena, in politics and religion, when placed within the framework of the private and personal, their vulnerability and inherent weakness is emphasised. Tea in a China Cup presents us with male characters who are all flawed. Beth’s father was an alcoholic and chronic gambler while her husband Stephen gambled 'in thousands of pounds and bits of paper called stocks and shares’ [60]. The Grandfather is unable to express emotion while the two Samuels lose their lives fighting for their country. Just as the women are victims of a masculine world, so are their men. The Belle of the Belfast

268 City shows men similarly trapped and impotent. Davy’s physical disability renders him powerless, a ‘follower’ of Jack and his political allies. Peter, Janet’s husband, is sexually incapable. While Jack is enormously powerful in the public arena, he is isolated and impotent in the private and female world of his family.

Reid also challenges the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity through her portrayal of the differences between the women themselves. While Sarah, Maisie and the Grandmother express the rhetoric of Protestant pride and propriety, Beth breaks away from her unhappy marriage to find independence and strength outside the confines of a traditional role as ‘wife’. Janet undertakes a similar journey, while the conflict between Vi and Rose examines the contradictory positions of rejection and acceptance. Rose escaped the North by moving to London and establishing a successful career. Vi chose to stay behind, to accept the role of nurturer and loyal Ulsterwoman. Rose’s left-wing views provide a contrast to Vi’s conservative Loyalism and their moments of confrontation in the play serve both to subdue Vi’s conservatism and also to temper Rose’s value judgements.

Like the work of Charabanc, Christina Reid’s plays present Protestant Loyalism without apology. The character of Vi is perhaps the clearest expression of this. While Loyalist extremism, and by extension extremism of any kind, is portrayed negatively through links with rampant masculinity, misogyny and racism, the central tenets of Vi’s Loyalism remain rationally argued, they stand firm. A multitude of perspectives are seen to co-exist without the need for one solution, or one answer. She rejects outright any reductive and restrictive view of the Ulster Protestant, and places in its stead a complex and diverse community whose views can and do co-exist. Alongside the work of Stewart Parker, Reid’s two plays exist as the clearest

269 synthesis of many of the issues discussed in the thesis thus far – the relationship between history and myth, the role of ethnicity in the maintenance of the Northern Irish conflict, and the issue of class. Significantly, she adds to this list the role of gender in the formation of identity in the North. Her female characters all undertake journeys of some kind, leading them towards an acceptance of their Protestant heritage, yet also an intimate understanding of how it has constricted them. What emerges from this process is a recognition of the fluidity and plurality of female identities in the North, liberated from the image of a singular and loyal Protestant Ulsterman.

270 Chapter Seven

Gary Mitchell: a New Protestant Voice?

There is a new generation coming up and I hope that they express whatever it is they feel in a ‘post-80s, post- ceasefire, now back on, not on ceasefire’. Whatever it is they want to say about it will come out. Eleanor Methven, 19961.

Writing about and from within this particular place and time is an enterprise full of traps and snares. The raw material of drama is over-abundant here, easy pickings. Domestic bickering, street wit, tension in the shadows, patrolling soldiers, a fight, an explosion, a shot, a tragic death, another Ulster play written. What statement has it made? That the situation is grim, that Catholics and Protestants hate each other, that it’s all shocking and terribly sad, but that the human spirit is remarkably resilient for all that. Such a play certainly reflects aspects of life here. But it fails to reflect adequately upon them. Stewart Parker, 19862.

Gary Mitchell is a young writer who is part of the ‘new generation’ of playwrights described above by Eleanor Methven. More particularly for the

1 Eleanor Methven, Personal Interview, 6 November 1996. 2 Stewart Parker, ‘Dramatis Personae: A John Malone Memorial Lecture’ (1986), held in the Linen Hall Library Archive, Belfast.

271 purposes of this thesis, Mitchell is Protestant and chooses in his work to depict the working class Protestant community from which he himself comes. Yet ironically his work possesses a narrow and closed quality, and it serves to illustrate how reductive Ulster Protestant identity can become when viewed solely from an internal perspective. In this, Mitchell falls victim to Parker’s above mentioned ‘traps’ and ‘snares’. As an end point to this thesis, the two plays of Mitchell in this chapter are wholly unsatisfying, yet his status as the ‘new voice of Ulster Protestantism’ demands that he be included in analysis. Moreover, as will be shown, this status raises particular questions about external perceptions of Ulster Protestant identity, recalling the work examined in Chapter Three of this thesis.

Mitchell began his writing career with radio plays. In 1991, his play The World of Flesh and the Devil won a BBC-run competition and he followed this success with further radio work, including Stranded which will be discussed in detail below. His first stage play, Independent Voice, was premiered by Tinderbox Theatre Company in March 1993, and received the Stewart Parker Award for New Writing in 1994. He has also written for television. 1997 saw Mitchell achieve wider renown with the premiere of In A Little World of Our Own at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. The critical acclaim which this play received culminated in his receiving the 1998 Irish Times Best New Play Award, and his taking up the position of Resident Playwright at the Royal National Theatre3.

This success is largely due to Mitchell’s focus on the Ulster Protestant working classes. He is seen by critics and audiences as exploring uncharted

3 Mitchell’s success continued beyond In a Little World of Our Own. His output since that time can only be described as prolific. Tearing the Loom was premiered at the Lyric Theatre, Belfast in March 1998. The Peacock Theatre, Dublin, premiered As the Beast Sleeps in June 1998 and the Royal Court premiered Trust in March 1999. In addition, RTE screened Mitchell’s drama about Wolfe Tone, The Officer From France, in November 1998.

272 believes that in the area of drama, both on stage and television, Protestant culture has been misrepresented: Every time there is something about Protestants there is a feeling of suspicion and a feeling of hurt and injury. For example, Protestant paramilitaries are often jokes and comic figures yet they feel that their organisation and what they believe in is very serious, serious enough to die for and to kill for7. This suspicion isolates Ulster Protestants from the medium of television. Protestants will ‘generally not watch plays on television about Northern Ireland and they certainly won’t go to theatres... Therefore people don’t get themselves involved as spectators and then further on in actually producing work’8. This isolation extends to the medium of film which largely ignores the Ulster Protestant in its depictions of the conflict in Northern Ireland, preferring instead to follow what Robert McLiam Wilson terms a ‘global appetite’ for Irishness9 . As Fintan O’Toole argues: ‘Dogged defenders of the status quo just don’t have the same romantic appeal’10.

However, Mitchell also argues that Protestant writers haven’t done enough, that they haven’t represented their community in the way that he believes it should be represented. While talking about theatre he claims that: ‘I don’t think that a lot of the plays are valid’. He believes that, in contrast to his own work, ‘most Protestant writers are writing about things that they have chosen to move away from.... there is an element of not wanting to be considered part of the establishment or part of Protestantism’11. Graham Reid’s The Billy

7 Mitchell, Interview. 8 Ibid. 9 Robert McLiam Wilson, ‘Sticks and Stones: The Irish Identity’, Grand Street, 62 (1997), as sourced online at www.grandstreet.com on 15 March 1998. 10 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Silver Screen Troubles’, The Irish Times, 11 February 1998. 11 Mitchell, Interview.

274 be changed or destroyed in seconds’15, and Stranded makes full use of this capacity, presenting the listener with an uncensored look at Ulster Protestant Loyalist extremism through a series of dialogues, framed by sound bites and song. The form Mitchell adopts is striking, but ultimately it is at the expense of the play’s message. Tim Loane argues that while the play’s ‘form and narrative is peculiar and interesting, its content can be written on the back of a postage stamp’16. Mitchell depicts Ulster Protestant extremism, but provides little analysis.

The play opens with a series of overlapping voices, increasing in speed and pitch, declaring the Ulster Protestant will: ‘Ulster says No! Never! Not an 17. The voices quickly become hysterical and are followed by the sounds of battle – horses hooves galloping and inaudible yelling – accompanied by the beating of a the heathen bastard!’, and ‘God and King William!’. This opening leaves the listener in no doubt that the imaginative territory Mitchell has chosen to explore is staunchly Protestant and staunchly Loyalist.

While, on the surface, the structure of the play seems disjointed, with no sense of conventional narrative, there is a framework within the play, provided by phrases, sounds, and most significantly, recurrent evangelical ravings. This evangelism is introduced early in the piece as we hear a sermon on the significance of the Pope’s title, ‘Vicar of the Son of God’: ‘The letters of the Latin or Roman phrase have the numerical volume 666’. In addition to the religious motif, is the political, with a politician’s voice

15 Frances Gray and Janet Bray, ‘The Mind as Theatre: Radio Drama since 1971’, New Theatre Quarterly, 1.3 (1985), 293. 16 Tim Loane, Personal Interview, 23 February 1998. 17 Gary Mitchell, Stranded, first aired on BBC Radio 3, 29 April 1995. This and all subsequent references are from a transcription from a tape provided by the BBC Northern Ireland in November 1996.

276 declaring that: ‘we’re for peace so long as that peace doesn’t involve surrender’. Recurring sounds throughout the piece include the use of lambeg drums and flutes, while two Protestant songs are repeated in different voices and styles: We are, we are, we are the . We are, we are, we are the Billy boys. And we’re up to our necks in Fenian blood, Surrender or you die We are the Billy, Billy boys, and, No, no Pope in Rome... No nuns and no priests and no rosary beads Every day is of July. ‘Billy Boys’ is initially sung by a rousing chorus of male voices, but later on in the piece it is sung by a lone female voice, adding an eerie air to the song.

The use of sound effects in the play is very effective, with a clear sense of narrative established by the simplest of sounds. Particularly striking is the ‘terrorist attack’, where a simple sequence of sounds creates a sense of the horror of the violence in Northern Ireland. It begins with a van door closing as indicated by the sound of the ‘sliding across’ of the door, followed by feet stomping up stairs, a woman screaming and a baby crying. Four simple sounds conjure up an entire visual scene for the listener.

In amongst the sound bites are short dialogues between ordinary Northern Irish Protestants. It is here that Mitchell’s piece fails. There is little subtlety, and nothing beyond the immediate recognition that these intimate conversations are supposed to be seen as a microcosm of broader problems in the North. Illustrative of this simplicity is a conversation between two

277 neighbours, David (Protestant) and Brian (Catholic), arguing over car parking spaces: DAVID: No, I said No, I’m not moving an inch, moving one single solitary inch BRIAN: Be reasonable, you just can’t keep going on

DAVID: Is this my house? Is that my space? Is this my house? Is that my space? Is this my house?.... BRIAN: Yes DAVID: Yes, that’s right... BRIAN: Oh, I don’t believe it. You said yes, I didn’t think you knew that word DAVID: Well you see you. You can be as funny as you like but you just blew it and do you know why. See this? See it? This is my house and see that? That’s my car and my car is in my space outside my house and you can pray to the saint of car parkin if you like but it’ll do you no good because the Church of Rome has no say around here. I park my car in my free space outside my free house in my free country!. A similar use is made of a scene involving a Protestant community hall under threat. When a community worker tells those using the hall that it may have to be closed due to a lack of money and asks, ‘What would youse think if the hall was open to Catholics?’, there is outrage and fierce objection. The ensuing conversation is full of phrases which could easily be heard in a broader context: ‘This is a Protestant hall for Protestant people’, ‘If we allow the Catholics to use the hall on Thursday nights we’ll be in a position to keep the hall open’, ‘No way, My ma says once they’re in they’ll stay in’, and

278 ‘We’re not allowed in their halls’. In Stranded, we see Protestant insecurity clearly expressed, yet Mitchell offers no real analysis of the situation.

Everything in the play is linked in some way, both through broad themes and on a more specific level. One sequence in particular stands out. It begins with the signing of the Solemn League and Covenant and a Carson-like voice: I say that in signing the Solemn League and Covenant that day in September 1912, four hundred and seventy thousand of us have agreed that we will use all means which may be found necessary to defeat the present conspiracy to set up a Home Rule Parliament in Ireland. I tell the British people if there is any attempt to take away one jot or tittle of your rights as British citizens I will call out the . This impression of the original UVF is directly followed by the modern day UVF, as the piece shifts into a news broadcast with an English journalist’s voice reporting: ‘Two UVF gunmen walked through the front door. It was not a frenzied attack, they calmly walked in and carefully targeted their victims’. We then hear a Unionist politician rejecting these paramilitaries: Obviously these people are psychopaths, nothing short of it, and I feel shocked and disgusted to think that these people call themselves Loyalists. I am an Ulster Unionist Councillor and there is no way that I would want to be associated with this type of individual. This is one of the few genuine insights with which Mitchell provides the listener. In summarising the UVF’s descent from ‘glorious’ and ‘noble’ beginnings into vicious sectarian behaviour, Mitchell expresses some of the

279

Little World of Our Own , carries on with a reductive and simplistic approach to the question of Protestant identity.

In a Little World of Our Own (1997)

In a Little World of Our Own brought Gary Mitchell’s work to a wider audience. It purports to be a realistic depiction of the Northern Irish Loyalist community. As we shall see, the critical attention that it received speaks volumes about the way in which that community is perceived outside the North. The narrative revolves around three brothers from a Loyalist housing estate, modelled on Mitchell’s own community at Rathcoole. The eldest, Gordon, is desperate to escape from the political violence of the estate, yet in doing so he has chosen another extreme, the religious. He is a ‘recently baptised born-again Christian’, about to marry Deborah, who wants to set up house elsewhere. The youngest brother, Richard, is described in the author’s notes as suffering from ‘a mild-nervous disorder’, and he relies on the middle brother Ray to look after him. Ray is a local ‘hard man’, involved with the Rathcoole UDA and frequently to be found ‘sorting out’ petty thieves. The closeness of Ray and Richard’s relationship is emphasised upon their entrance, they are dressed identically. This closeness ultimately proves damaging, as Richard is unavoidably dragged in to Ray’s world, when Ray rapes and murders the girl Richard perceives as his girlfriend, Susan, the local UDA leader’s daughter. Throughout the play, the only other character we encounter is Walter, the local ‘Community Liaison Officer for Rathcoole UDA’, who acts as a link between the brothers and the outside world.

The play has a fairly conventional structure. David Benedict in his review of the London production of the play commented that ‘the most curious thing

281 about the play is how old-fashioned it is. Take away the contemporary working-class Loyalist setting, the textual references to UDA and paramilitary violence and you could be in a Fifties drawing-room thriller’18. Fintan O’Toole in his review of the original Dublin production more poetically argued that the play followed: The classical unities – a single action (the destruction of three brothers), played out in a single place (the garish sitting room of their house), over a single day. As in a Greek tragedy, all of the violent events – beating, rape, murder – take place off stage. And one character.... acts as both Chorus (filling in offstage details, prompting the action, laying out the alternatives) and Messenger, bringing word to and from the paramilitary leadership19. This narrow focus of action allows Mitchell to create and maintain intensity in the play. The world of the three brothers is presented as intensely claustrophobic, heightened by Mitchell’s choice of having his action take place only in one room. Despite the conflict between them, the three brothers are obviously close. Their father is absent, while their mother never appears onstage but lies in the upstairs part of the house, too ill to make an appearance.

Mitchell represents his world as both tribal and masculine – the only female character we encounter is Gordon’s intended bride, Deborah, who is distanced from the brothers by her Christian faith. Family is of the utmost importance, and Deborah can never really be a part of their ‘tribe’. The outsiders in the play are all presented as a threat to this tribe. Michael Billington in his review of the play pointed to the ‘sacred attitude to family’20

18 David Benedict, The Independent, 6 March 1998. 19 Fintan O’Toole, ‘Doomed Dreams of Decency’, The Irish Times, 18 February 1997. 20 Michael Billington, The Guardian, 5 March 1998.

282 which Mitchell depicts. The outside characters all threaten the family in some way. Deborah wants to split the brothers up, while Walter and Susan are the agents who ultimately lead to its disintegration. In focusing on the violent tribalism of his world, Mitchell falls victim to what Philomena Muinzer saw in 1987 as a dramaturgical crisis in Ulster playwriting. He resorts to outdated modes of analysis, where the Northern Irish conflict can only be interpreted within the structure of certain themes. Two of Muinzer’s themes are inherent tribalism, and the idea of violence feeding upon violence21, both of which are present in Mitchell’s narrow world.

One of his main concerns in the play is the inevitability and inescapability of violence in Northern Irish society. Extreme violence has become normalised for Ray, Richard and Gordon’s community, and, as the play progresses, each of the brothers is forced to confront their own attitudes towards this violence. Ray is introduced to the audience as a ‘hard man’, who sees violence as a necessary tool for keeping the community ‘in line’. For Ray violence is ‘common sense’, a way of maintaining community standards. In this, he represents the old way of doing things, in contrast to what he sees as a disintegration of these values: ‘Used to be a time when taigs were shit scared of walking anywhere near Rathcoole. They just wouldn’t do it. And now, they seem to be turning up all over the place’22. A speech like this is unusual in the sense that it presents the views of Loyalist paramilitaries on stage. To give Mitchell credit, Ray’s inarticulacy could be read as a comment on the Ulster Loyalist condition, alienated and dispossessed. However, in the context of the play as a whole – dealing as it does with a rather narrow portrait of the North, with thinly sketched characters and a

21 Philomena Muinzer, ‘Evacuating the Museum: the Crisis of Playwriting in Ulster’, New Theatre Quarterly, 3.9 (1987), 44-63. 22 Gary Mitchell, In A Little World of Our Own (London: Nick Hern Books, 1998), 5. All further references will be provided in the text.

283 rather cliched plot – Ray’s language, although authentic in dialect and undoubtedly authentic in sentiment, is reductive and simply articulates rather than explicates the conflict in the North.

Ray’s initial talk of bringing young hoodlums ‘into line’ seems justified, and it doesn’t necessarily diminish him in the eyes of the audience. His violence is presented as a part of the working class urban Northern Irish environment, and his motivation is simply one of trying to protect his community. However, as it begins to become clear that it is Ray who has raped and attacked Susan, his violence becomes pathological, he becomes evil and inhuman. By combining both notions of violence in the character of Ray, Mitchell seems to be rejecting any division between the two types of violence. Ray’s community ‘policing’ is inseparable from his vicious attack on Susan.

In A Little World of Our Own is, in its social realism, a direct descendant of the early 1980s work of Graham Reid, most particularly his television work – The Billy Plays – which also focus on a working-class Protestant family. While Mitchell’s explorations of violence and tribalism are interesting, The Billy Plays are ultimately more significant and arguably more sophisticated in their analysis. The violence of the North is the subtext to Reid’s work, with the domestic violence suffered at the hands of Billy’s father, Norman, acting as a microcosm for wider violence in the community. Reid’s Protestant family, the Martins, like Ray, Richard and Gordon, struggle with the inevitability and inescapability of violence, yet this struggle is presented in a more subtle and ultimately more illuminating way. In addition, the Martins grapple with everyday concerns. Poverty and family strife are of far more importance than ‘the taigs’. Tim Loane, founder and director of Tinderbox Theatre Company in Belfast, argues that Mitchell’s work ‘can be divisive’: ‘It

284 suggests that this is what working class Protestants spend their lives worrying about’23. Reid’s family was far more representative of Ulster Protestants than Mitchell’s ‘tribe’. Their lives existed beyond the sectarian violence, and this kind of broader focus was ultimately more meaningful for the question of Ulster Protestant identity, enriching it and diversifying it beyond narrow sectarian categories.

Critical response to In A Little World of Our Own focused on the violent and claustrophobic tribalism of the play. Luke Clancy made the rather tired comparison between Mitchell and American film director Quentin Tarantino: ‘Mitchell’s denouement is inevitably Tarantino-esque but its violence is less lovingly portrayed. When blood flows in Rathcoole it is in the context of a society which has normalised violence’24. David Nowlan similarly commented that: Here is an enclosed world where amoral pragmatism, enveloped in intimidation and violence, is the norm. Here is a world in which familial loyalties and love must be expressed in a societal chaos of power-plays and the mere possibility of survival... The world is Mr Mitchell’s own patch of North Belfast25. Significant here is the term ‘own patch’, which labels Mitchell’s voice again as ‘authentic’. Here again we have the classic expression of the idea of Northern Ireland as an alien outpost. Mitchell puts forward a picture of the North that confirms outside stereotype. The province becomes a tribal- driven, violent, exoticised British outpost while the Northern Irish Loyalist becomes a ranting extremist, blinded, and ultimately dehumanised, by the surrounding violence.

23 Loane, Interview. 24 Luke Clancy, ‘Banality of Evil’, The Times, 24 Feb 1997. 25 David Nowlan, The Irish Times, 14 Feb 1997.

285 Mitchell’s achievements are unusual for a Belfast-born writer. Arguably Brian Friel is the only other Northern Irish playwright who has received the same level of attention. Mitchell is seen as unique because of his perceived talent and, more importantly, because he is young, working class, and Protestant. Michael Billington, in his review of the London opening of In A Little World of Our Own , argued that Mitchell ‘opens a window on a closed 26. Similarly, Charles Spencer argued that ‘in the current remarkable flowering of Irish Drama, very little has come from the North, still less from the Loyalist community’, believing that with ‘the “peace process” in its present precarious state, this is a play that screams for attention’27. However, there have been dissenting voices amongst the critical community, with suggestions made that Mitchell’s title as ‘a playwright to be watched’ may be misguided. Michael Coveney argued that the play was ‘wildly over-praised’, that it was a ‘simple-minded Loyalist sitcom’, mixing ‘hysteria with violence, and the burbling of a resident retard with a numbing degree of negative nullity’28. Coveney attributed Mitchell’s success to that fact that he is ‘superficially competent, fashionably Irish and not a Republican’29. John Mullin, in a review of Mitchell’s Tearing the Loom, commissioned by the Lyric Theatre in Belfast to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the 1798 Uprising30, argued that while Mitchell was ‘a fine young playwright’, ‘the reputation which Northern Ireland’s equivalent of the chattering classes thrust upon him might be premature’, ending his review, however, on a note of encouragement: ‘if you don’t try, you don’t succeed, and Mitchell will

26 Billington, 'The Guardian’. 27 Charles Spencer, Daily Telegraph, 6 March 1998. 28 Michael Coveney, Daily Mail, 13 March 1998. 29 Ibid. 30 Which he labelled ‘superficial’ with ‘little subtlety’, arguing that the ‘storyline is thin enough, the characters are shallow and the dialogue veers dangerously through the centuries’ (John Mullin, The Guardian, 31 March 1998)

286 surely develop’31. While Mullin points to the Northern Irish ‘chattering classes’, Mitchell’s biggest initial supporters were in fact theatre critics in Dublin and London, returning to the ‘novelty’ value of Mitchell’s working class and Protestant perspective. In A Little World of Our Own had actually been rejected by two theatre companies in Belfast, Tinderbox Theatre Company and the Lyric Theatre, although the latter would commission him to write Tearing the Loom following his success in Dublin.

Tinderbox Theatre Company was founded in 1988 by Lalor Roddy and Tim Loane, two young actors, in response to the fact that ‘nobody was, as far as we could see, producing work that actually reflected what new writers...were creating in response to their environment’32. They premiered Mitchell’s first play, Independent Voice, and make it part of their mission statement to premiere two or three new plays a year. They rejected In A Little World of Our Own , and Tim Loane, director of Independent Voice, had both praise and criticism of Mitchell’s work in interview. Loane is pointed about what he perceives as a lack of explorations of Protestantism on contemporary Northern Irish stages: ‘There are so few people who actually write plays about what it is to be Protestant or who look at the fact that we are not all Catholic Nationalists in Northern Ireland’33. It is for this reason, he argues, that ‘Gary’s work is so refreshing’: ‘The Protestant working class is not known for its expressiveness. They are only now starting to become more active in community arts, including playwriting’34. Ultimately, however, he feels that Mitchell’s work is ‘responsive’ rather than ‘considered’ art: ‘Rather than trying to explore how and why things happen, he comments on what is happening’. Loane compares Mitchell’s work, in these terms, unfavourably

31 Mullin, ‘The Guardian’. 32 Loane, Interview. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid.

287

that defends the single religious beliefs of the Protestant people37. Yet despite such diversity, Mitchell nonetheless claims that he is in a unique position to speak for the single entity of ‘the Protestant People’, as do theatre critics, practitioners and journalists. As Tim Loane argues, ‘maybe if a few more people in Rathcoole were writing plays then the debate would open’38. The portrait of the North which emerges from Mitchell’s work is one of a desperate, tribal society where violence has become normalised. Ultimately, Stranded and In a Little World of Our Own reinforce the picture of Ulster which is perpetuated in popular film, literature and television. Even though Mitchell is writing about his ‘own patch’, the picture that he presents is no different to reductive notions expressed from outside that community.

If we compare Mitchell’s work to that of the Protestant dramatists who precede him – Stewart Parker, Graham Reid, Christina Reid, and so on – both Stranded and In A Little World of Our Own are striking for their lack of optimism. Mitchell is writing from the perspective of a younger generation, brought up within the context of sectarian violence, and now experiencing an uncertain ceasefire. His viewpoint is unique in that it examines the very darkest depths of the Loyalist psyche, and this is what both of the above pieces succeed in doing. This is important in the sense that it does provide a new perspective on Ulster Protestant identity, and, indeed, criticism of Field Day’s work revolved around its exclusion of . However, Mitchell never manages to pull his work out of these depths, and, as a result, leaves his audiences with little but stereotyped and cliched analysis of Ulster Protestant identity.

37 Mitchell, Interview. 38 Loane, Interview.

289

Conclusion

The notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity has been irretrievably fragmented by contemporary Northern Irish drama. Issues of history and myth, ethnicity, class and gender have all been used to challenge and subvert Ulster Protestant modes of identification, and the portrait of Ulster Protestant identity that has emerged is one of fluidity and diversity.

This thesis began with the work of Field Day Theatre Company, which was arguably the most broadly significant theatrical group to emerge in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. By advocating an explicit cultural program, Field Day reflected the growing feeling amongst theatre practitioners in the North that theatre could play a part in dismantling the entrenched political and sectarian assumptions that ensured the continuance of the Troubles.

This altruistic aim is what Field Day and its contemporaries share. The outpouring of work in the North throughout the 1980s formed part of a general and delayed response to the upheaval of violence and to the end of the Stormont years. Field Day, Charabanc and the dramatists who feature in this thesis aimed to find new ways of looking at the province, to challenge existing assumptions, and ultimately to deconstruct the static categories and binaries which had been set up. Nowhere is the success of this new approach more evident than in the work of Stewart Parker. The visions which Parker created – Francis Stock signing up for the WWI Bicycle Battalion, Henry Joy McCracken being straddled by the Phantom Bride of historical inevitability, Lenny from Pentecost watching a ‘flock’ of nuns bath nude in the sea – linger because of their inventiveness, imagistic poetry and striking potency. All of the dramatists and the two companies discussed in this thesis, from Brian Friel through to Gary Mitchell, start their work with the

291 assumption that theatre can challenge existing assumptions and change out- moded patterns.

Similarly, Field Day and its contemporaries share assumptions about their audiences. All were, and are, specifically writing stories for the North. As Brian Friel expressed it: ‘I think that for the first time... there is some kind of confidence, some kind of coming together of Irish dramatists... We are talking to ourselves as we must and if we are overheard in America, or England, so much the better’1. Field Day rehearsed and premiered its work in Derry, touring extensively around the island of Ireland. Charabanc researched, rehearsed and premiered its work in Belfast, similarly following this with a tour of Ireland.

However, despite these similarities, Field Day is separated from Charabanc and the other dramatists in this thesis by its overtly Nationalist ideology. As Tim Loane puts it, its ‘very ethos [was] publicly centred upon an exploration 2. In this area, it raised critical issues and opened up debate, but, by virtue of its adherence to a framework of post- coloniality, their work consistently ignored, or essentialised, the Ulster Protestant community. Colm Tóibín described the company as ‘perhaps the last serious outing that unreconstructed Nationalism will ever have’3, and its consistent maintenance of simplistic binary oppositions and implicitly conservative approach to Irish literature, coupled with its collective attitude towards Protestantism, ensured that the company attracted the vitriol of revisionist critics. What underpinned the debate was the issue of the contrary positions of adherence to binary oppositions versus the recognition of pluralism.

1 Brian Friel in Paddy Agnew, ‘Talking to Ourselves’, Magill, December 1980, 60. 2 Tim Loane, Personal Interview, 23 February 1998. 3 Colm Tóibín, ‘On the Literary Wing’, Times Literary Supplement, 28 April 1995.

292 Clearly, some binary oppositions are relevant. The divisions between Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist, and Republican and Loyalist are meaningful on one level, as continuing sectarian conflict has inevitably informed Northern Irish modes of identification. It is important, however, to recognise that there are pluralities within each side. Identity is not a singular entity in the North. Charabanc and the dramatists examined here are broadly revisionist in that they reject the Field Day vision of colonial division and simplistic binaries, but also the notion of a singular Ulster Protestant identity established by the Orange State, by fifty years of Unionist leadership. They are all rewriting Ulster Protestantism, replacing this vision with a contrary portrait of complexity, fluidity and diversity.

The matriarch of Northern Ireland’s revisionist critics, Edna Longley, argues that: Writers born into an over-determined, over-defined environment, into a tension between political simplicities and cultural complexity, have felt impelled to redefine: to explore and criticise language, images, categories, stereotypes, myths. Northern writing does not fit the binary shapes cut out by Nationalism and Unionism. It trellises the harsh girders with myriad details. It overspills borders and manifests a web of affiliation that stretches beyond any heartland – to the rest of Ireland, Britain, Europe. But the range of styles, histories, myths and influences perhaps could only enter the imagination in this unique zone of ‘problems and cleavages’ (John Hewitt’s phrase). All the

293 ‘cultural traditions’ count somewhere; nor are the political divisions discounted4. The plays discussed here all act as a response to this ‘over-determined’ environment. This process of examination began in earnest with Sam Thompson’s Over the Bridge in 1960, followed by Stewart Parker and Bill Morrison in the 1970s, and then Graham Reid, Christina Reid, Charabanc, Robin Glendinning, Ron Hutchinson and Frank McGuinness in the 1980s. There has been a general rejection of imposed frameworks of any description, in favour of fluidity and plurality.

Simplistic binaries have been replaced. Firstly the division between history and myth has been blurred through an exploration of the Ulster Protestant historical imagination. Protestant ‘historical myths’ have been exposed and deconstructed by Stewart Parker and Frank McGuinness, as well as Christina Reid. Siege, sanctuary and sacrifice, the three tenets of the Protestant historical imagination, are exposed as meaningless, but not to be forgotten. This is most eloquently expressed through the character of Pyper in McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985), who, in the play, begins as a disaffected member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, but ends as a committed Loyalist, determined to find a shape for his memories of the horrors of the Somme, and finding it only in the staunch Loyalism of his dead colleagues. Parker and McGuinness explore the relationship between past and present, and history and myth. These explorations ultimately serve to subvert and deconstruct Ulster Protestant conceptions of the past, challenging the foundation myths of Ulster Protestant identity.

4 Edna Longley, ‘From Cathleen to Anorexia: “The Breakdown of ”’, in The Living Stream: Literature & Revisionism in Ireland (Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, 1994), 194-5.

294 This identity has also been challenged through a focus on issues of ethnicity. Simplistic explanations of the Northern Irish conflict stress a division between Irish and British, Catholic and Protestant. The new Ulster Protestant identity which emerges is a mixture of ethnicities, a mixture of Irishness and Britishness. The work of Ron Hutchinson and Christina Reid, both of whom are now living outside of the North, puts forward a picture of a dispossessed community, excluded from both Irishness and Britishness, yet finding themselves inextricably bound to both categories. Marie Jones in A Night in November (1994) sees the solution to this Protestant identity crisis lying in a rather simplistic recognition of Irishness. However, Hutchinson and Reid see the situation as more complex. Nelson in Rat in the Skull (1984) and Andy and Andrea from My Name, Shall I Tell You My Name (1989), identify as Ulster Protestants, yet separate themselves from both Irish Catholics and the rest of Britain. The solution which both writers seem to advocate is a move towards independence, an answer which presents itself again in Gary Mitchell’s Stranded (1995).

Thirdly, the notion of the Protestant community as consisting of a bowler-hat wearing upper class and a balaclava wearing working class has been subverted by Graham Reid’s, Bill Morrison’s and Robin depictions of a dispossessed and alienated Ulster Protestant middle class. Through a focus on issues of class, masculinity and sexuality, these three dramatists subvert the portrait of the blindly loyal Ulsterman. Images of impotence are used as a metaphor for the inherent powerlessness of the Northern Irish middle class, a fact emphasised throughout The Death of Humpty Dumpty (1979), Flying Blind (1977) and Mumbo Jumbo (1986). All of these characters attempt to distance themselves from the violence which surrounds them, but ultimately discover that it is inescapable.

295 Charabanc similarly uses issues of class and gender, but its focus is instead on the female, working class Ulster Protestant. In its first three productions – Lay Up Your Ends (1983), Oul’ Delf and False Teeth (1984) and Now You’re Talkin’ (1985) – Charabanc undermined the picture of a unified and male Protestant identity through a focus on class and gender divisions. The working class Catholic Bridie and working class Protestant Bertha in Oul Delf and False Teeth share more in common than Bertha and her fellow Protestant, upper class Dorothy. Similarly, sectarian divisions are undermined in Now You’re Talkin’ as the six women bond, eventually rejecting both Carter’s vision and the extremist politics of the North. Charabanc’s foregrounding of class as a defining mode of identification in the North at times led to the expression of a rather simplistic and dogmatic socialism. However, the importance of the company’s message to Ulster Protestants stands firm. Charabanc ultimately calls for Northern Irish people to reject sectarian division in favour of a celebration of diversity.

Alongside its explorations of Protestant history and myth, and notions of Britishness and Irishness, the work of Christina Reid also foregrounds the female, working class experience in the North. Traditional politics in the North are very male, and a divide exists between the masculinity of the public, and converse femininity of the private, domain in the province. Reid presents her audience with an alternative version of Ulster Protestantism through her examination of how women respond to life in Northern Ireland, and, as such, she subverts traditional portraits of the Troubles. This is the fifth and final area of dissension. By focusing on two families of women, Reid reveals that these women aren’t defined by the violence which surrounds them, but rather through their humanity. Like the work of Charabanc, Reid presents us with a ‘community’ of women, who derive strength from their association. And, also like Charabanc, she makes no

296 apologies for extreme Loyalist views. Aunt Maisie’s sectarian bigotry in Tea in a China Cup (1983) is seen as a product of her generation, just as Vi’s Loyalist views in The Belle of the Belfast City (1989) are seen as coming from the situation in which she finds herself. Reid has enormous affection for her characters and this shines through in her work, as she draws from personal experience.

Virtually all of the plays discussed in this thesis have as a common link a central Protestant character (or characters) undergoing a crisis of identity. Examples include Charabanc’s Lizzie, Anna, Jackie and Veronica, Stewart Parker’s Frank Stock and Henry Joy McCracken, Frank Pyper, Marie Jones’ Kenneth, Ron Hutchinson’s Nelson, Christina Reid’s Andrea, Beth, Vi, Janet and Rose, Graham Reid’s George, Bill Morrison’s Dan, Robin Glendinning’s Barry and Gary Mitchell’s Gordon – and so the list continues. This dramatic device is particularly appropriate to the North. All of the above characters discover that their modes of thought and patterns of behaviour are no longer adequate to the situation in which they find themselves. Here we return to the idea of an Ulster Protestant identity which is frozen or trapped. These characters find themselves victims of a conflict between personal and communal identification, highlighting the difficulty of separating these two modes in contemporary Northern Ireland.

The work that stands out in this context is that which does not reject or ignore the past, but which embraces it and moves forward. The Ulster Protestant identity has been re-remembered and in its new form is contained the past, the present and the future. Stewart Parker, Christina Reid and Frank McGuinness’ Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme deserve particular mention as eloquently and powerfully representing these issues and challenges. The characters of Frank in

297 Spokesong and Beth in Tea in A China Cup particularly illustrate this. Both undertake journeys of reinvention. They develop from being victims of the past, trapped within its framework, into newly independent and strong individuals, able to move into the future. Yet both contain the past within this new future. Beth keeps her Belleek cup and saucer, while Frank maintains his bicycle shop.

However, these explorations of Protestant diversity have not always been successful and this is particularly the case when we turn to recent work. The chronological starting point for this thesis was Stewart Parker’s Spokesong in 1974. Its end point is Gary Mitchell’s In a Little World of Our Own in 1997. While Parker’s play aimed, through his unifying metaphor of the history of the bicycle, to remove itself from the conflict and thereby gain new perspective, Gary Mitchell’s violent, tribal enclave drags his audience into the depths of sectarian violence. Mitchell is being touted as ‘the new voice’ of Ulster Loyalism, yet all he succeeds in doing is presenting the North as ‘a place exoticised.

Mitchell’s success in London and Dublin serves to reflect the complex relationship that exists between Ireland, England and Ulster Protestantism. Ulster Protestant identity doesn’t exist in isolation, and both Irish and English audiences have played their part in explorations of Protestant identity on stage. Implicit in the success of certain plays has been a notion of how authentic their representations have been. This was particularly evident with critical reception of Ron Hutchinson’s Rat in the Skull in London, Marie Jones’ A Night in November and the more recent work of Gary Mitchell. Mitchell’s voice was praised as authentic by outsiders in Dublin and London, entirely independent of the opinions of his fellow Ulster Protestants, and it was this which boosted his career. What the rapid rise of Mitchell illustrates

298 is that the work which has been the most popular with audiences has not necessarily been that which has most sensitively explored Ulster Protestantism. What In a Little World of Our Own and Marie Jones’ A Night in November succeed in doing is giving their audiences a clear, linear narrative. The two plays allow an audience to grasp what they perceive the ‘answers’ to the North might be. This goes a long way towards explaining the two dramatists’ successes outside of their home town, in part because of their reductive portrayals of Ulster Protestant identity. While Hutchinson presented his English audiences with stereotype in Rat in the Skull, in order to then subvert and challenge it, Mitchell only manages the first step. Ultimately all he achieves is the creation of a new stereotype. He replaces the loyal Orange Ulsterman with a violent, dispossessed, working class loyalist. By claiming to speak for the Protestant community, Mitchell, despite his statements to the contrary, is in fact suggesting that there is a singular, definable Protestant identity.

This brings us to the broader question of which theatrical forms are the most successful in dealing with the question of Ulster Protestant identity. An underlying aspect of all drama in the North is inevitably the relationship between language and identity. Language has the power to define, and when we look at the work of Gary Mitchell we see a restricted use of language and therefore a restricted perspective. Mitchell’s stage work is social realism in its most conventional form. Tim Loane labels it ‘responsive’ art5 and its documentary feel and inward focus limit imaginative scope. His is a dismal and fatalistic vision of the North.

This is in stark contrast to the fluid theatrical forms adopted by particularly Stewart Parker and Christina Reid. These two playwrights show a capacity

5 Loane, Interview.

299 to move beyond existing and established narrative structures, allowing for a broader focus. Based on the work in this thesis, it would seem that this approach proves more appropriate for the exploration of the pluralistic possibilities of the Ulster Protestant identity.

The picture that emerges from this thesis is of a fragmented Ulster Protestant identity, made up of a variety of complex and diverse modes of identification. The intersection between history and myth is explored, and the relationship between nationalism and identity is problematised. In the works discussed we do not see an identity based around masculinity, loyalty and Britishness, but rather a complex mixture of class, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. Dramatists have used all of these issues as a means of approaching the question of Ulster Protestant identity, and the end result is fluidity. Placed in the context of broader cultural debate in the North, this work represents a growing recognition of pluralism. Broadly revisionist in ideology, it sets itself up against the Northern Nationalist ideology so fervently expressed by Field Day. Binaries are rejected in favour of diversity – the singular Ulster Protestant identity becomes instead a plurality of identities.

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318 McBride, Ian, ‘Ulster and the British Problem’, in Richard English and Graham Walker (eds.), Unionism in Modern Ireland: New Perspectives on Politics and Culture (London: Macmillan, 1996), 1- 18

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321 Nelson, Sarah, ‘Joke Irish’, Fortnight, 19 December 1975, 7-8

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323 Parker, Stewart (cont’d) Three Plays for Ireland: Northern Star, Heavenly Bodies, Pentecost (London: Oberon Books, 1989)

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327 Whyte, John, Interpreting Northern Ireland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)

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Yeats, WB, The Poems, edited by Daniel Albright (London: JM Dent and Sons, 1990)

328