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Études irlandaises

46-1 | 2021Passer au crible les traces du passé : modèles,cadres et métaphoresFine-Combing the Past: Frames, Patterns and Metaphors

Nathalie Sebbane et Mathew Staunton (dir.)

Édition électroniqueURL : https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/10454DOI : 10.4000/etudesirlandaises.10454ISSN : 2259-8863

ÉditeurPresses universitaires de Caen

Édition impriméeDate de publication : 8 juillet 2021ISBN : 978-2-38185-030-6ISSN : 0183-973X

Référence électroniqueNathalie Sebbane et Mathew Staunton (dir.), Études irlandaises, 46-1 | 2021, « Passer au crible lestraces du passé : modèles, cadres et métaphores » [En ligne], mis en ligne le 08 juillet 2021, consulté le10 juillet 2021. URL : https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/10454 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/etudesirlandaises.10454

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Presses

univers i ta ires

de Caen

Études

irlandaises2021 | 46-1

Passer au crible les traces du passé :

modèles, cadres et métaphores

—

Fine-Combing the Past:

Frames, Patterns and Metaphors

Revue publiée avec le soutien :– de l’Équipe de recherches interdisciplinaires sur les îles Britanniques, l’Irlande et l’Amérique du Nord – ERIBIA (université de Caen Normandie) ;– du Centre d’études en civilisations, langues et lettres étrangères – CECILLE (université de Lille) ;– de l’équipe Langues, textes, arts et cultures du monde anglophone – PRISMES (université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3).

Tous droits de traduction, d’adaptation et de reproduction, sous quelque forme que ce soit, réservés pour tous pays.

ISSN : 0183-973X ISBN : 978-2-38185-030-6

© Presses universitaires de Caen, 2021 14032 Caen Cedex – France

Études irlandaises

Passer au crible les traces du passé : modèles, cadres et métaphores

–

Fine-Combing the Past: Frames, Patterns and Metaphors

Sous la direction de Nathalie Sebbane et Mathew Staunton

46-1 | 2021

ERIBIA Équipe de recherches interdisciplinaires

sur les îles Britanniques, l’Irlande et l’Amérique du Nord

Université de Caen Normandie

Directeur de publicationLamri Adoui, président de l’université de Caen Normandie

Comité de rédactionKarin Fischer (université d’Orléans), responsable

Fiona McCann (université de Lille), responsable littérature

Hélène Lecossois (université de Lille), responsable littérature

Mathew Staunton (École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs – ENSAD), responsable civilisation

Joana Etchart (université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour), responsable civilisation

Valérie Morisson (université de Bourgogne), responsable arts visuels

Thierry Robin (université d’Orléans), responsable des comptes rendus

Comité scientifiqueIl s’agit d’un conseil de revue composé de trois sous-comités :

• Comité de directionCatherine Maignant, Christophe Gillissen, Wesley Hutchinson, Pascale Amiot, Anne-Catherine de Bouvier, Françoise Canon-Roger, Karin Fischer, Yann Bevant.

• Comité consultatifKevin Barry (NUI Galway), Fabrice Bensimon (Sorbonne Université), Michael Bøss (Aarhus Universitet), Fabienne Dabrigeon (professeure émérite, université de Lille), Philippe Cauvet (université de Poitiers), Noreen Doody (St Patrick’s College DCU), Marianne Elliott (University of Liverpool), Maurice Elliott (York University, Toronto), Claude Fierobe (professeur honoraire, université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne), Anne Fogarty (University College Dublin), Roy Foster (Hertford Col-lege, Oxford), Irene Gilsenan Nordin (Dalarna University), Anne Goarzin (univer-sité Rennes 2), Nicholas Grene (Trinity College Dublin), Richard Kearney (Boston College), Declan Kiberd (University of Notre Dame), Filomena Louro (Universidade do Minho, Braga), Eamon Maher (Institute of Technology Tallaght, Dublin), Sylvie Mikowski (université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne), Clíona Ní Ríordáin (univer-sité Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3), Mervyn O’Driscoll (University College Cork), Manuela Palacios (Universidade de Santiago de Compostela), Michael Parker (University of Central Lancashire), Ondrej Pilny (Univerzita Karlova, Prague), Shaun Richards (Staffordshire University), Christelle Serée-Chaussinand (université de Dijon), David Shaw (University of Liverpool), Alexandra Slaby (université de Caen Normandie).

• Représentants des unités de rechercheAlexandra Poulain (université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3), Martine Pelletier (université de Tours), Bertrand Cardin (université de Caen Normandie), Carle Bonafous-Murat (université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3), Maryvonne Boisseau (université de Strasbourg), Stéphane Jousni (université Rennes 2).

Sommaire

Mathew Staunton : Introduction : Notes from a Bunker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Sean Campbell : NME’s “Irish Troubles” : Political Conflict, Media Crisis and the British Music Press . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Joana Etchart : “You just went out and talked to them.” An Interview with Maurice Hayes (1927-2017) on the Work of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission (1969-1975) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Fabrice Mourlon : The Jazz Seen : An Ethnographic View of Contemporary Jazz in Northern Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Valérie Morisson : L’urbex : déchiffrage / défrichage critique . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93

Moonyoung Hong : Waking (for) the Nation : Immaterial Materialism and the Feminine Body in Tom Murphy’s The Wake (1998) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

Audrey Rousseau : Représenter l’expérience vécue dans les Magdalen Laundries en passant par la « voie longue » de l’herméneutique et l’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123

Patrick Gormally : The War That Never Came : Creating, Transmitting and Main-taining Handed-Down Memories of the Emergency in Ireland. Acknowledging Family Recollections of WWII . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Comptes rendus | Book reviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Notes sur les auteurs | Notes on contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Études irlandaises, no 46-1, 2021 – p. 7-10

Introduction: Notes from a Bunker

The past is absent.

We think about it incessantly, write about it as if our life depended on it, get very

excited about it, even obsess about it, but no matter how much we (as academics)

would like it (or sometimes need it) to be otherwise, the past is not a foreign country

where they do things differently, a place we could potentially visit and explore if

only we could hit upon the right methodological approach. It is more like a long-lost

city, existing only in stories. We sometimes manipulate bits and pieces of it in our

hands, study them for clues, transform them into “traces” and “evidence”, write

up articles about them and send our conclusions out into the world but, as Alun

Munslow has playfully pointed out 1, the past is what it was and that’s all there is to

it. We have no choice but to accept that it can only be accessed in those narratives

(texts, films, songs, films, dances) we choose to create about it.

We sometimes dream it otherwise. In Life is Elsewhere, Milan Kundera describes

an imaginary modus operandi that would surely appeal to Irish studies researchers of

every stripe: an observatory that can be placed anywhere along a character’s timeline.

[…] we’re looking at Jaromil from an observatory I’ve erected at the point of his death.

For us his childhood is in the distances where months merge into years; he has come

with his mama from these misty distances right up to the observatory, where everything

is as visible as the foreground of an old painting in which the eye can distinguish every

leaf on a tree and every leaf’s delicate tracing of veins 2.

This corresponds, more or less, to how many of us imagine our practice. And

why shouldn’t we? We close our eyes and aestheticise the part of the past we are

interested in into existence, making people move about and act according to our

interpretation of a body of archival material (the bits and pieces of the past),

a corpus of testimony or a collection of memories, and our ability to craft this

interpretation into a coherent story. Some of us might even describe this process

as “reconstructing” the past, but this is a very risky business. If we are not careful

(or humble) enough we might accidentally emulate master “restorers” Michael J.

O’Kelly or Eugène Viollet-le-Duc 3 and present fantastical architecture extrapolated

1. See Alun Munslow, The Aesthetics of History, London, Routledge, 2019.

2. Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere, Aaron Asher (trans.), New York, HarperCollins, 2000, p. 260.

3. Professor O’Kelly’s unconvincing “restoration” of the tumulus at Newgrange using steel-reinforced

concrete is highly controversial. Similarly, much of Viollet-le-Duc’s “restoration” work is now

considered to be the result of pure fantasy.

8 M at h ew Stau n to n

with great energy from piles of silent stones as the past reborn as if that past were a jigsaw and we had all the pieces and the box at our disposal.

Aesthetics is the name or our game (hats off to O’Kelly and Viollet-le-Duc on

that score) but we are not reconstructing or accessing the past directly. We have

no time machine or Kunderan observatory. The past is absent. We are sitting in

a bunker with whatever bits and pieces we have managed to accumulate and we

are staring at a concrete wall. As we curate our backgrounds and interact with the

rectangles on our screens, we arrange our ideas, papers, maps and photographs

on the wall and try to provoke epiphanies. Some of us imagine that we are looking

through our documents as if they were windows into the past but there is no through.

Only paper and wall. The absent past stays where it is in the absent past and we

remain where we are in the present, aestheticising our favourite parts of the past

into (hopefully) compelling narratives.

Narrative is crucial, then. Without it the bits and pieces of the past cannot

become evidence. Without a narrative what would they be evidence for? Without

evidence, though, narratives about the past are often experienced (or denigrated)

as fiction. Not necessarily fake, or false or untrue (although some colleagues use

the word “fiction” to mean just that), but not the stuff of proper academic research

either. This need not worry us overly. We are not in the business of truth-telling

(whatever that might mean in 2021) or religion. Our theatre of war is reality. We

aestheticise our personal vision of the past in complex narratives not to convince

our peers that we have discovered some new truth in some old archive or that

our interpretation of the machinations behind some past event are undoubtedly

true. We do what we do to maintain or modify reality. As French philosopher,

anthropologist and sociologist Bruno Latour has helpfully pointed out, reality is

that which resists modification after attacks by dissenters:

[…] reality as the latin word res indicates, is what resists. What does it resist? Trials of strength. If, in a given situation, no dissenter is able to modify the shape of a new

object, then that’s it, it is reality […] 4.

What remains standing after the dust has settled is what we call reality. Col-

lectively, we add and subtract, chip away at and nail pieces to reality, transforming

it minute by minute and article by article. Remember, though, that Latour’s

context is scientific. He is thinking about laboratories and the evidence they

produce and aestheticise into theories. From our perspective in the third decade

of the 21st century, however, it is clear that if packaged attractively enough and

released into the world at the right moment by the right influencer, even the

most nonsensical narrative is capable of modifying reality, no matter how much

scientific evidence is built into the barricades. Sometimes, a narrative can create

evidence out of nothing.

4. Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, Cambridge,

Harvard University Press, 1987, p. 93.

9In t ro du c t i o n : Not e s f ro m a Bu n k e r

Fortunately, this is not the abominable notion that it seems and is altogether in keeping with classical notions of evidence. French historian François Hartog elegantly reminds us in his Évidence de l’histoire 5 that the word “evidence” came to us via the Latin evidentia, coined by Cicero to translate the Greek word enargeia. Enargeia was the vividness of description that made a powerful impression on the perception of readers, transforming them into spectators of past events. The

adjective enargès was used to describe those moments of epiphany when gods

appeared before mortals, making the invisible spectacularly visible and replacing

faith with proof. Enargeia is the visual image created by a text that imbues it with

the power to “show”. It is the power of narrative to modify reality.

As we explained in our call for contributions in the time before the pandemic, the

raison d’être of this thematic issue is to showcase innovative, experimental and

disruptive approaches to transforming the absent Irish past into narratives and

evidence in our present.

In an effort to hibernicise the German word vergangenheitsbewältigung we

embraced the Irish expression mionchíoradh an am atá caite (“fine-combing

the past”) to help us engage with and process the past and organise the articles

in this volume. This expression implies the evolution, renovation or creation of

methodologies to disentangle and sift the traces of the past and work towards

healthier narratives. Simultaneously, cíoradh also implies disturbing, shaking

things up, harassing, aggravating, and challenging established reality with a view

to modifying it.

In the difficult year that has inserted itself between the now and then, we have

re-prioritised our needs and desires. More conscious than ever of our bunkered

practice, we have set a watch for moments of joy and playfulness and thankfully

found much to smile about in the response to our call for contributions. The

lengthy correspondence with contributors has been of particular comfort. We

have also enjoyed the passionate, innovative and, frankly, exciting methodologies

and strategies deployed by our colleagues, especially those we were encountering

for the first time.

Sean Campbell’s ground-breaking article on the coverage of the Northern Ireland

conflict in the New Musical Express opens this thematic issue. “Ground-breaking”

is an overused term and has come to mean almost nothing (or almost anything)

but it is justified and meaningful in this case. Simultaneously opening paths into

publishing history and the history of the Troubles, Campbell’s scholarship is fresh

and invigorating.

Joana Etchart is also looking at the conflict in Northern Ireland but through

the prism of a revisited interview with the late Maurice Hayes. Beyond the obvious

value of the insightful words of a well-placed and keenly observant public figure,

5. François Hartog, Évidence de l’histoire: ce que voient les historiens, Paris, Gallimard, 2007, p. 12.

10 M at h ew Stau n to n

this article highlights the methodological benefits of re-exploring oral history

interviews conducted in the past (is this a source for a study of Hayes’ past or a

historical trace of the interview itself?) while pointing out the many dangers inherent

in approaching such material without a thorough understanding of the context in

which the initial interview was carried out.

Remaining in the geographical context of Northern Ireland but engaging with

a very different subject from an unorthodox (and, for that reason, significant) angle,

Fabrice Mourlon takes a part ethnological, part historical look at the Northern Ireland

jazz scene. Asserting that a satisfactory study of the scene cannot be accomplished by

an outsider positioned behind a desk, Mourlon ventures out into the jazz community,

using his priceless insider status as a jazz singer and his network of relationships

with jazz practitioners to craft a convincing narrative.

Moving into the domain of visual culture, Valérie Morisson’s article guides us

skilfully through the unfamiliar world of urban exploration (urbex), the exploration

of abandoned, artificial structures, industrial ruins and all that is hidden (mostly

right under our noses) in the built environment, shedding light on the meticulous

(historiographical) work of dedicated practitioners. Despite engaging in a clandestine

and often illegal activity, Morisson shows us that urbexers are profoundly concerned

with conserving and documenting a past that has generally been excluded from

official histories, collectively producing photographic records on websites and social

media that engage with absence and death in fresh and dynamic ways.

Moonyoung Hong’s article on Tom Murphy’s play The Wake stands out as

our only literary contribution, but it is a worthy ambassador. In a careful analysis

of the symbolic 2016 staging (as part of the Abbey Theatre’s 1916 celebration),

she argues that Irish theatre remains a force to be reckoned with when it comes to

revealing what popular and official discourses often shy away from. Hong eloquently

navigates the disturbing moral and cultural landscape of a past that clearly extends

through our allegedly progressive present into a future still under construction

and up for grabs.

Sociologist Audrey Rousseau takes an extremely fine comb to a similarly disturb-

ing past as she applies an experimental methodology combining computer-assisted

discourse analysis and Ricoeur’s hermeneutics to the collected testimony of the

survivors of the Magdalene Laundries and press articles on their lives to reveal what

political and academic discourses generally overlook.

We end this issue with a very personal contribution from Patrick Gormally,

who studies the methodological potential of his own family’s narratives of “The

Emergency” (a.k.a World War II) to shed light on what is very much an under-

explored part of the Irish past.

Mathew Staunton

École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs – ENSAD


NME’s “Irish Troubles”: Political Conflict,

Media Crisis and the British Music Press 1

Abstract: This article explores coverage of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968-1998) in

Britain’s weekly music press, focusing on the country’s leading music paper, the New Musical Express (NME), during its 1980s “heyday”, when it attracted a weekly readership of between

one and two million people. The article shows how this paper (despite its principal remit as a

popular-music publication) strove to cover the Troubles through a series of feature articles,

letters page debates, and (even) a special themed issue, offering space to oppositional views

and – crucially – affording a platform to the voice of its readers, at a time when much of

Britain’s media was reluctant to address the conflict. Drawing on original interviews with

key NME writers, as well as extensive trawling of press archives, the article excavates the

intricacies of NME’s account of the conflict, charting its shifting approach to the Troubles,

and tracing tensions that this generated between – and amongst – its writers and readers.

Keywords: Northern Ireland – conflict, British media, music press, New Musical Express, 1980s.

Résumé : Cet article explore la couverture du conflit nord irlandais (1968-1998) dans la presse

musicale hebdomadaire britannique, en se concentrant sur son magazine phare, le New Musical

Express (NME) alors qu’il était à son apogée dans les années 1980. L’article montre comment

ce magazine, essentiellement spécialisé dans la musique populaire, s’est efforcé de couvrir la

période des Troubles à travers une série d’articles de fond, de débats dans la rubrique courrier,

ainsi qu’un numéro thématique spécial offrant un espace à des points de vue divergents et

une plateforme aux voix de ses lecteurs, à une époque où la plupart des médias britanniques

hésitaient à aborder le conflit. S’appuyant sur des entretiens originaux avec des auteurs clés du

NME ainsi que sur l’exploration extensive des archives de presse, l’article étudie les subtilités

du récit du conflit par NME, retraçant son approche changeante des Troubles et les tensions

générées entre auteurs et lecteurs.

Mots clés : Irlande du Nord – conflit, médias britanniques, presse musicale, New Musical

Express, années 1980.

Introduction

Invocations of the Northern Ireland conflict (1968-1998) have resurfaced, in recent

years, at the forefront of British popular and literary culture via a sequence of

1. This title serves as a self-conscious echo of Robert Savage’s study of the BBC and the Northern

Ireland conflict (Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”: Television, Conflict and Northern

Ireland, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015).

12 Se a n C a m pb e l l

successful novels and television series, such as Derry Girls (Channel Four, 2018-), Milkman (Anna Burns, 2018), Spotlight on the Troubles (BBC4, 2019), and For the Good Times (David Keenan, 2019) 2. Indeed, this period came to constitute, explained David Keenan, “a kind of Troubles ‘moment’” in expressive culture 3. It was not only in the creative sphere, though, that the conflict would reappear, for

political discourse in Britain became eclipsed – amidst the fractious and protracted

“Brexit” crisis – by debates about the “Irish backstop”, precipitating concerns about

the potential return of paramilitary violence 4.

Against this increased awareness of Northern Ireland (and its troubled past)

came a stark reminder – via embargoed files released in 2019 – of high-level British

disinterest in the region: one such document detailed that Margaret Thatcher would

“switch off” when the topic of Northern Ireland came up during Cabinet meetings

in the 1980s 5. The former Conservative Prime Minister was, of course, hardly alone

in this respect; for much of Britain’s left also exhibited a lack of interest 6. In this

context, certain Labour MPs, such as John Mackintosh, would confess that they,

too, had “switched off” to the conflict 7. Despite the significant social and economic

costs of the Troubles then, the issue remained, says David Miller, “very low on the

political agenda” 8.

At the same time, the conflict had an especially inhibiting effect on Britain’s

“fourth estate”, engendering (what Miller calls) “a substantial chill factor” across

the mediascape 9. For Peter Taylor, a BBC journalist with considerable experience

of covering Northern Ireland, the conflict was “the most sensitive issue in British

broadcasting” 10. Certainly many media accounts of the Troubles were – in the

words of the British television producer, David Elstein – “censored […] banned,

postponed [or] cut”, with coverage that questioned British policy being “equated

with treachery, with undermining the security forces, with endangering lives, with

2. For an account of such work, see Caroline Magennis, “In Derry Girls and Milkman, Teenage Girls

Dance through the Troubles”, Prospect, 4 March 2019; Alison Flood, “David Keenan’s Troubles

Novel For the Good Times Wins Gordon Burn Prize”, The Guardian, 11 October 2019.

3. David Keenan, “Top 10 Books about the Troubles”, The Guardian, 30 January 2019.

4. Oliver Wright, “Is an Irish Backstop Breakthrough on the Horizon?”, The Times, 11 September 2019;

Patrick Cockburn, “If the Troubles Return after Brexit, It Won’t Just Be Because of the Irish Border

Issue”, The Independent, 31 August 2018.

5. Brian Hutton, “Thatcher ‘Switches Off’ when Northern Ireland Comes Up”, The Irish Times,

28 December 2019.

6. See, for example, Sam Porter, Denis O’Hearn, “New Left Podsnappery: The British Left and

Ireland”, New Left Review, July-August 1995, p. 131.

7. Festival 40: What Do You Think of It So Far?, BBC2, 29 August 1976. Mackintosh’s comments in

this broadcast were reprinted in the Campaign for Free Speech on Ireland, The British Media and Ireland. Truth: The First Casualty, London, Information on Ireland, 1978, p. 7.

8. David Miller, Don’t Mention the War: Northern Ireland, Propaganda and the Media, London,

Pluto, 1994, p. 3.

9. Ibid., p. 58.

10. Peter Taylor, “Reporting Northern Ireland”, in The British Media and Ireland: Truth – The First Casualty, Campaign for Free Speech on Ireland (ed.), London, Information on Ireland, 1979,

p. 22.

13N M E ’ s “ Iri sh Trou b l e s ” : Po l i t i c a l C o n f l i c t, Me d ia C ri s i s …

encouraging rebels” 11. In this context, then, the media became an important terrain in the contest to narrate and frame the conflict, forming the site of what Liz Curtis

called “the propaganda war”, in which participants sought to secure “the hearts

and minds of the British people on the question of Ireland” 12. Consequently, a

key question for journalists was how to keep the public informed of the Troubles

without succumbing to the views of its key actors (whether the British government

and its armed forces, or republican and loyalist political or paramilitary groups) 13.

A considerable amount of scholarship has addressed media coverage of the

conflict 14. Much of this work is concerned with broadcast (and specifically tele-

vision) – rather than print – media, often in relation to the 1988 “broadcasting ban”,

which constituted “the most severe assault on media freedom during the Northern

Ireland conflict” 15, with its prohibition of “the broadcast of direct statements [on

British media] by representatives or supporters of eleven Irish political and military

organisations” 16. Whilst the ban served as a significant milestone in the media’s

handling of the Troubles, it was, arguably, only the apex of an ongoing “trajectory

of media control” 17, that endured throughout the conflict. To this end, this article

attends to the period immediately prior to the ban, and addresses the sphere of

print, which has arguably been overshadowed by a concern with audio-visual

media in accounts of Troubles coverage 18. Where print has been explored, the

11. David Elstein, “Why Can’t We Broadcast the Truth?”, in The British Media and Ireland…, p. 14.

12. Liz Curtis, Ireland: The Propaganda War. The British Media and the “Battle for Hearts and Minds”,

London, Pluto, 1984, p. 1.

13. Brian Hamilton-Tweedale, The British Press and Northern Ireland: A Case Study in the Reporting of Violent Political Conflict, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 1987, p. 110.

14. See, for example, David Butler, The Trouble with Reporting Northern Ireland: The British State,

the Broadcast Media and Nonfictional Representation of the Conflict, Aldershot, Avebury, 1995;

Liz Curtis, Ireland: The Propaganda War…; David Miller, Don’t Mention the War…; The Media

and Northern Ireland: Covering the Troubles, Bill Rolston (ed.), London, Palgrave, 1991; War and

Words: The Northern Ireland Media Reader, Bill Rolston, David Miller (eds.), Belfast, Beyond the

Pale, 1996; Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”…

15. Max Pettigrew, “The ‘Oxygen of Publicity’ and the Suffocation of Censorship: National Newspaper

Representations of the British Broadcasting Ban (1988-94)”, in The Northern Ireland Troubles

in Britain: Impacts, Engagements, Legacies and Memories, Graham Dawson, Jo Dover, Stephen

Hopkins (eds.), Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2017, p. 227. For work that focuses

on broadcasting, see, for instance, Gary Edgerton, “Quelling the ‘Oxygen of Publicity’: British

Broadcasting and ‘The Troubles’ during the Thatcher Years”, The Journal of Popular Culture,

vol. 30, no. 1, 1996, p. 115-131; Lesley Henderson, David Miller, Jacqueline Reilly, Speak No Evil:

The British Broadcasting Ban, the Media and the Conflict in Ireland, Glasgow, Glasgow University

Media Group, 1990; Rita Lago, “Interviewing Sinn Féin under the New Political Environment:

A Comparative Analysis of Interviews with Sinn Féin on British Television”, Media, Culture

and Society, vol. 20, no. 4, 1998, p. 677-685; Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”…; David

Miller, Don’t Mention the War…; Ed Moloney, “Closing Down the Airwaves: The Story of the

Broadcasting Ban”, in The Media and Northern Ireland…, p. 8-50.

16. David Miller, “The Media and Northern Ireland: Censorship, Information Management and the

Broadcasting Ban”, in Glasgow Media Group Reader, vol. II, Industry, Economy, War and Politics,

Greg Philo (ed.), London, Routledge, 1995, p. 48.

17. Max Pettigrew, “The ‘Oxygen of Publicity’ and the Suffocation of Censorship…”, p. 239.

18. Brian Hamilton-Tweedale, The British Press and Northern Ireland…, p. 79.


focus has largely been on daily news publications 19. Although this emphasis is, of course, understandable, it has had the effect of eliding the broader span of (weekly

and monthly) print publications, and eclipsing the diverse means through which

discrete papers and magazines sought to frame or stage the conflict. This proclivity

to concentrate on the daily press has, significantly, bequeathed a view of print as a

less critical or questioning sector – in its coverage of the Troubles – than television,

despite the fact that the latter was subjected to greater regulatory constraints 20.

The publication explored here serves to challenge this perspective, in that it was

a popular and widely-circulated print outlet that addressed the conflict in ways

that ran contrary to the views of the mainstream press and broadcast media, and

afforded space to oppositional views, not least those of its readers.

The significance of New Musical Express (henceforth NME) on the British

print landscape – particularly during its 1980s “heyday” – is difficult to overstate.

At that time, the paper enjoyed an extraordinary public reach, achieving a weekly

readership of between one and two million young people (depending on shifts in

circulation), with sales of up to 230,000 copies per week, and with each physical

copy being browsed by up to nine people 21. Moreover, NME performed, for many

readers, an expressly pedagogical role 22. In this context, the cultural critic Mark

Fisher once explained that his “education didn’t come from school […] it came

from reading NME” 23. Beyond the paper’s immediate popular-cultural remit

(encompassing music, film and television), NME also engaged, at this time, with

a range of social and political themes, issuing feature articles on – and devoting

front covers to – inter alia animal rights, unemployment, the miners’ strike, “race”

riots, South Africa, nuclear war, and environmentalism 24. In this context, the paper

19. See, for example, Liz Curtis, Ireland: The Propaganda War…; Brian Hamilton-Tweedale, The British Press and Northern Ireland…; Max Pettigrew, “The ‘Oxygen of Publicity’ and the Suffocation of

Censorship…”; Greg McLaughlin, Stephen Baker, “‘Every Man an Emperor’: The British Press,

Bloody Sunday and the Image of the British Army”, in Northern Ireland Troubles in Britain…,

p. 183-198.

20. Greg McLaughlin, Stephen Baker, “‘Every Man an Emperor’…”, p. 185.

21. Patrick Glen, Youth and Permissive Social Change in British Music Papers, 1967-1983, London,

Palgrave, 2019, p. 153; Patrick Glen, “‘Sometimes Good Guys Don’t Wear White’: Morality in the

Music Press, 1967-1983”, PhD thesis, University of Sheffield, 2013, p. 23.

22. Laura Snapes, “‘Its Soul Was Lost Somewhere’: Inside the Demise of NME”, The Guardian,

14 March 2018.

23. Andrew Broaks, “Do You Miss the Future? Mark Fisher Interviewed”, CrackMagazine, 12 September

2014, on line: https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/mark-fisher-interviewed.

24. See, for example, Chris Salewicz, “Carnival”, NME, 6 May 1978, p. 31-33; Andrew Tyler, “Return

of the Anti-Nazi League”, NME, 7 March 1981, p. 16-18; Mick Duffy, “Life in the War Zone”,

NME, 8 August 1981, p. 7-8; X. Moore, “The Road to Blackpool Pier”, NME, 24 October 1981,

p. 31-35; Richard McDermott, “Together We Can Stop the Bomb”, NME, 31 October 1981,

p. 18-19; Andrew Tyler, “CND Fights March Ban”, NME, 2 May 1981, p. 12; Andrew Tyler,

“Turning to Green”, NME, 31 October 1981, p. 24-27; Andrew Tyler, “W.O.R.K. No No My Daddy

Don’t…”, NME, 6 June 1981, p. 4, 14; Ray Lowry, “The Walker Brothers”, NME, 23 May 1981,

p. 29, 55; Paul Du Noyer, “The Burning of Southall”, NME, 11 July 1981, p. 3; Ray Lowry, Chris

Salewicz, “Anarchy in the UK: The Reality”, NME, 18 July 1981, p. 4-6; Andrew Tyler, “Britain

on the Junkheap, Part One: Britain’s Big Sleep”, NME, 26 February 1983, p. 20-22, 33; Andrew

https://crackmagazine.net/article/long-reads/mark-fisher-interviewed


also sought to address the Northern Ireland conflict, publishing – at key points

in the 1980s – dedicated feature articles and letters page debates on this topic,

and even convening a special themed issue on Northern Ireland that included

(amongst other things) an interview with Martin McGuinness, who at the time was

deputy leader of Sinn Féin (and widely assumed to be the IRA’s Chief of Staff) 25.

Neil Spencer, who was editor of NME for most of this period, suggests that

the paper’s engagement with Northern Ireland was born of a wish to address the

inadequate coverage offered to the issue by mainstream media outlets 26, which

at that time were seen to have “fail[ed]”, as Brian Hamilton-Tweedale explains,

“in their public duty to provide a comprehensive and meaningful account of the

Irish conflict” 27. In this context, then, Spencer sought to prise open a space for

public discussion of the topic in NME 28. Crucially, this coverage would draw not

only on the views of its writers, but also those of the paper’s young readers, who

regularly deployed “Gasbag” – the NME’s letters page – to express their views on

the conflict 29. Reflecting on this point, Spencer relates that such views were unlikely

to be afforded space elsewhere on the British mediascape: “Where else were young

people going to write tirades about the Northern Irish question? Where would

their voices ever be heard?” 30.

It is certainly true that NME’s letters page, which often acted, in the 1980s, as an

unusually erudite forum for social and political debate 31, published a striking number

of exchanges that addressed the Irish conflict. Indeed, NME would occasionally

devote its entire letters section to readers’ views on this issue 32. It was, moreover,

a reader’s intervention on this topic – in the letters page in August 1980 – that

instigated NME’s engagement with the conflict. In this missive, the reader (from

Derry in Northern Ireland) assailed NME for eliding Northern Ireland in its cov-

erage of contemporaneous political concerns (the paper had published a range of

Tyler, “Britain on the Junkheap, Part Two: No Future in the UK”, NME, 5 March 1983, p. 12-14;

Andrew Tyler, “Britain on the Junkheap, Part Three: Sweet and Sour City”, NME, 12 March 1983,

p. 20-22; Julie Burchill, “Silencing the Song of Freedom”, NME, 22 October 1983, p. 27; Andrew

Tyler, “Mandela: 21 Years of Forced Silence”, NME, 16 July 1983, p. 8; Andrew Tyler, “Sending

Down the Lawless”, NME, 15 October 1983, p. 22-23, 26; Paolo Hewitt, “Dumbstruck and Doomed

Down on Animal Farm”, NME, 17 December 1983, p. 26-28; X. Moore, “Lives on the Line”, NME,

5 January 1985, p. 20-22, 26; X. Moore, “Lives on the Line: Part 2”, NME, 12 January 1985, p. 6-7,

28; Steven Wells, “Ghetto Blasts”, NME, 21 September 1985, p. 29; Tim Jarvis, “War of the Worlds”,

NME, 9 November 1985, p. 6-7; Donald McRae, “Freedom Road”, NME, 9 November 1985, p. 8;

Donald McRae, “Rhythms of Resistance”, NME, 16 January 1988, p. 26-28.

25. For the McGuiness interview, see Stuart Cosgrove, Sean O’Hagan, Gavin Martin, “Those Petrol

Emotions”, NME, 10 May 1986, p. 24-25, 27.

26. Neil Spencer, interview with the author, 30 April 2019.

27. Brian Hamilton-Tweedale, The British Press and Northern Ireland…, p. 120.

28. Neil Spencer, interview with the author.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Mark Sinker, interview with the author, 18 June 2019.

32. See, for example, “Gasbag: The Irish No-Joke”, Charles Shaar Murray (ed.), NME, 4 October 1980,

p. 62-63.


political articles that year). In light of the points made by the reader, it is worth quoting their letter at length:

NME does it again. The champion of the oppressed and the representative of caring

humanity has again bombarded us with articles about the [nuclear] holocaust, suppression

of dissidents in Czechoslovakia, genocide of Indians in Chile and other causes. Don’t get

me wrong – I’m not knocking your coverage of these subjects […]. It just seems strange

that you deal with all these things and then dismiss events here in Northern Ireland as

something that shouldn’t be dealt with. […] NME writers who regularly give off about

violations of human rights […] tend to ignore the Irish situation. They complain about

police harassment of minorities in England yet ignore the daily obscenities perpetrated by

the so-called “security forces” in the ghettoes of Belfast and Derry. They ignore the total

disregard for such concerns as justice or even decency that keep the Northern Ireland

legal system going; the H-blocks of Long Kesh are the inevitable result of this system […]

Is this because, unlike many of NME’s pet subjects, the British government doesn’t like

coverage of something so controversial? If people in England were put through a legal

system which involved torture, lengthy internment periods, no jury courts and judgement

by men obviously sectarian and partisan, we’d hear enough about it in your pages […].

It strikes me that your political hobby-horses are all safe ones that cause little worry to

those in power. The “Troubles” have gone on for 11 years now and, more urgently, the

H-block question for nearly four years. You have made yourself political and therefore

your failure to cover these issues is not quite the same as Sounds’ or Melody Maker’s

failure – they don’t care at all but you claim you do. Ignoring Ireland won’t make it go

away. The “problem” might be solved if more people in England gave a damn. Or is

NME really full of ostriches 33?

The publication of this complaint, in the paper’s letters page, precipitated a

plethora of further missives on the matter, prompting Charles Shaar Murray – one

of NME’s most celebrated writers – to observe that letters on Northern Ireland had,

during that time, “completely swamped all other topics” in NME’s mail bag 34. This

would, in turn, provoke the paper to convene a special issue of “Gasbag” focused

solely on the conflict 35, before the paper issued its first feature article on this topic

(albeit encased in an account of Belfast’s music scene) 36. Subsequent letters page

debates, and feature articles, would, moreover, be published across the decade. For

much of the 1980s, then, NME sought to address one of the most contentious issues in

British politics, whilst other (more obviously political) outlets appeared to eschew it 37.

33. The letter appeared in “Gasbag”, Paul Rambali (ed.), NME, 30 August 1980, p. 54. The articles to

which the letter-writer referred included: Andy Gill, “Starlin Wars”, NME, 26 July 1980, p. 31; Angus

MacKinnon, “Trident: Britain’s Brand New Passport to Armageddon”, NME, 9 August 1980, p. 6-8;

Vivien Goldman, “E.P. Thompson: The Man Who’d Save the World”, NME, 16 August 1980, p. 27,

53; Ian MacDonald, “The NME Consumers’ Guide to 1984”, NME, 23 August 1980, p. 29-32.

34. “Gasbag: The Irish No-Joke”, Charles Shaar Murray (ed.), p. 62.

35. Ibid.

36. Gavin Martin, “Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and the Reality”, NME, 11 October 1980, p. 31-34,

61.

37. Sam Porter, Denis O’Hearn, “New Left Podsnappery…”, p. 131.


This endeavour to address the Troubles did not go unobserved by NME’s

readers, some of whom praised the paper’s coverage of the conflict, noting that it

had the effect of “shaming the self-styled ‘progressive’ left (Guardian, City Limits, New Socialist et al…)” in Britain “for their timidity and refusal to address […] the

one ‘problem’ in British politics that simply won’t go away” 38. Despite this fact – that

NME had confronted the conflict at a time when many left-wing publications were

conspicuously quiet on the topic (and when much of the mainstream media was

deeply wary of it) – the paper’s engagement with the Troubles has been ignored

in scholarly work on media coverage of the conflict, and in academic (and jour-

nalistic) accounts of the British music press 39. While the announcement of NME’s

closure as a print outlet in 2018 (after sixty-six years of publication) prompted a

profusion of public eulogies across the media, highlighting the paper’s history and

significance 40, scant regard was paid to NME’s political commentary, despite the

fact that this constituted one of its key characteristics in its (most) celebrated phase

in the 1970s and 1980s. This article seeks to extend, then, existing accounts of the

media and Northern Ireland – beyond the orthodox orbit of broadcasting and

the broadsheets – by exploring the (hitherto overlooked) coverage of the conflict

that emerged in the British music press, whilst also expanding extant work on the

music press (with its focus on style, individual critics, and chronicling of canonical

“scenes”) 41 by excavating, and addressing, its political commentaries. The article

offers the first sustained account of this aspect of NME, unveiling the intricate – and

often fraught – efforts of this non-news publication to address what was arguably

the most controversial question in British politics: the Irish conflict.

38. See letter in “Big Baad Bag”, Sean O’Hagan (ed.), NME, 31 May 1986, p. 50 (original emphasis).

39. There is a significant body of scholarship on the popular-music press. See, for instance, Eamonn

Forde, “From Polyglottism to Branding: On the Decline of Personality Journalism in the British

Music Press”, Journalism, vol. 2, no. 1, 2001, p. 23-43; Simon Frith, Sound Effects: Youth, Leisure and the Politics of Rock, London, Constable, 1983, p. 165-177; Pop Music and the Press, Steve

Jones (ed.), Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 2002; Dave Laing, “Anglo-American Music

Journalism: Texts and Contexts”, in The Popular Music Studies Reader, Andy Bennett, Barry

Shank, Jason Toynbee (eds.), London, Routledge, 2006, p. 333-339; Dave Laing, “‘The World’s

Best Rock Dead’: Let It Rock 1972-75”, Popular Music and Society, vol. 33, no. 4, 2010, p. 449-463;

John Street, Rebel Rock: The Politics of Popular Music, London, Blackwell, 1986, p. 83-88; Jason

Toynbee, “Policing Bohemia, Pinning Up Grunge: The Music Press and Generic Change in British

Pop and Rock”, Popular Music, vol. 12, no. 3, October 1993, p. 289-300.

40. See, for example, Laura Snapes, “‘Its Soul Was Lost Somewhere’…”; Jack Shepherd, “NME Closes

Print Edition: Bands and Journalists Pay Tribute”, The Independent, 7 March 2018; Ben Beaumont-

Thomas, Laura Snapes, “The Stories behind NME’s Greatest Covers”, The Guardian, 9 March 2018.

41. See, for example, Pop Music and the Press. A modest amount of reflection on the politics of the

music press has emerged in the accounts of music journalists. See, for instance, Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write: Adventures in the Music Press, London, Sanctuary, 2001; Pat Long, The History of the NME: High Times and Low Lives at the World’s Most Famous Music Magazine, London,

Portico, 2012; A Hidden Landscape Once a Week: The Unruly Curiosity of the UK Music Press from the 1960s-80s, in the Words of Those Who Were There, Mark Sinker (ed.), London, Strange

Attractor Press, 2018. However, none of this work explores NME’s coverage of the Northern

Ireland conflict.


The article deploys original interviews that the author has conducted with key

NME writers (such as Stuart Bailie, Len Brown, Stuart Cosgrove, Paolo Hewitt,

Danny Kelly, Gavin Martin, Lucy O’Brien and Neil Spencer), as well as journalists

from competitor papers, such as Barry McIlheney (who wrote for Melody Maker

before editing Smash Hits), and Mark Sinker (who contributed to NME before editing

The Wire), to illuminate decision-making issues at editorial level. The article integrates

these interviews with an extensive archival trawling of NME’s back issues, enabling

closely-focused content analyses, and affording new insights into the process by which

a high-profile popular-cultural platform strove to address the Troubles. The article

charts the different rhetorical modes and techniques – as well as the discrete themes

and standpoints – that NME deployed in its account of the conflict, exploring the

dilemmas that its writers faced in addressing this issue, and tracing the tensions that

this induced between (and amongst) the paper’s writers and readers. The article also

unveils the operation of antithetical codes, at NME, with the paper endeavouring, on

the one hand, to act as an oppositional, counter-cultural voice (by espousing partisan

views), whilst seeking, on the other, to adhere to quasi-“public-service” values (by

appearing “balanced”). Before exploring these points, though, it is necessary to place

NME – as a publication – in the particular political and popular-cultural context of

the time, and reflect on its expressly ideological profile during the 1980s.

Political NME

The immediate context for NME’s political commentary in the 1980s lay in the

special political and popular-musical nexus of the late 1970s. During that period,

the youth subculture of punk – and its associated musical “scene” – had punctured

the prevailing codes of Anglo-American popular music, and, in consequence, had

the effect, in the words of the former NME writer, Paolo Hewitt, of “politicising

pop” 42. In this context, the pages of the music press became, in light of the few

available platforms at the time, a key space in which punk could “take place” 43, and

through which its “politicising” effects could percolate. And though NME was not

the first of the British music papers to document punk 44, it was, without doubt, the

one in which its “politicising” process was most clearly registered. Indeed, certain

musicians at that time saw NME as “the most PC [politically correct] of all the music

magazines”: “Within their ranks there was a lot of almost politicians, who had a

certain party line”, observed Hugh Cornwell 45. This view of the paper was perhaps

informed by the fact that its editor from 1978 until 1985 – Neil Spencer – was “a

42. Paolo Hewitt, interview with the author, 13 June 2019. For an account of punk, see Dick Hebdige,

Subculture: The Meaning of Style, London, Methuen, 1979; Jon Savage, England’s Dreaming: Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, London, Faber, 1991.

43. Neil Spencer, in Inky Fingers: The NME Story, BBC Four, 4 July 2005.

44. Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 131.

45. Hugh Cornwell, in Inky Fingers…


committed Labour Party member” who moulded NME, as Pat Long explains, as “a voice of dissent”, with an “increasingly politicised” outlook 46.

The paper’s ideological orientation echoed, of course, the increasing socio-political

consciousness that, at the time, informed the popular-musical milieu, via initiatives

such as Rock Against Racism (1976-1982), Two-Tone (1979-1985), and Red Wedge

(1985-1990) 47. At the same time, mainstream British politics had been marked by an

especially right-wing turn, following the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979, and

the ascent of “Thatcherism” following successive election victories in 1983 and 1987 48.

This specific conjuncture – between an increasingly oppositional popular-music

culture and a concomitantly reactionary political one – “made it quite easy”, says

Spencer, for NME “to extend music journalism into social and political commentary” 49.

Elaborating on this point, Hewitt suggests that the radical, right-wing ethos of the

Thatcher government – “and the environment and the atmosphere it created” –

“really pushed us [the NME staff] towards a very strong, left-wing position” 50. Thus,

the paper openly aligned itself with the Labour Party 51, most notably by publishing

two issues – in 1985 and 1987, respectively – that featured Neil Kinnock, the (then)

Labour leader, as cover “star” 52. Such endorsements were underscored by NME’s

(usually approving) accounts of Labour Party conferences, as well as its publication

of interviews with leading left-wing figures, such as Ken Livingstone, Tony Benn

and E. P. Thompson 53.

It is clear, then, that the specific context of the time played a crucial role in

prompting NME’s political coverage, and leftist orientation 54. However, the paper’s

penchant for social commentary, and left-wing views, had a much longer prove-

nance, dating back to the early 1970s when NME had sought to rejuvenate itself

– following a period of decline – by recruiting a series of writers (such as Nick Kent,

Ian MacDonald and Charles Shaar Murray) from the British “underground” press,

a coalition of “alternative” publications, such as Oz, IT (International Times) and

Friends / Frendz, which accrued a special profile in the late 1960s and early 1970s

as an oppositional, and expressly youth-cultural, voice 55.


47. See Daniel Rachel, Walls Come Tumbling Down: The Music and Politics of Rock Against Racism, 2 Tone and Red Wedge, London, Picador, 2016.

48. Stuart Hall, The Hard Road to Renewal: Thatcherism and the Crisis of the Left, London, Verso,

1988.


50. Paolo Hewitt, interview with the author.


52. Paolo Hewitt, “The Neil Kinnock Interview”, NME, 27 April 1985, p. 12-14; Denis Campbell,

“Neil’s Wild Years”, NME, 13 June 1987, p. 24-25.

53. Tony Parsons, “The Dignity of Labour”, NME, 15 October 1983, p. 8; Andrew Tyler, “Dread Ken:

A Capital Leader”, NME, 9 April 1983, p. 16-17, 43; Nick Martin, “Jobs, Peace, and Other Pipe

Dreams”, NME, 1 May 1982, p. 19-20; Goldman, “E. P. Thompson”, p. 27, 53.

54. Lucy O’Brien, interview with the author, 10 June 2019; Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author,

27 May 2019; Paolo Hewitt, interview with the author.

55. Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 56-57.


A key aim of the “underground” press was, in the words of Mick Farren (a contributor to IT, who later relocated to NME), to cover issues that had been overlooked by mainstream outlets, and thus “provide a forum for people who are excluded from mass media” 56. Significantly, its coverage of social and political issues

was accompanied by articles on popular music 57. Such coverage served not only

to leaven the press’s more “serious” commentaries, but also to attract investment

in the form of advertising revenue from the music industry 58.

NME’s self-conscious effort to incorporate the staff, as well as the ethos, of the

“underground” press in the early 1970s 59 brought a “broader political and cultural

span” to the paper 60, which (re)positioned itself as a quasi-counter-cultural plat-

form 61, with expressly extra-musical interests, a point epitomised in (former editor)

Tony Tyler’s injunction that articles in NME should “not just [be] about the music”,

but “about all of the things that the music’s about”, which at that time included, of

course, social and political issues 62. The paper’s recruitment of “underground” staff

continued, moreover, across the decade 63, with NME sustaining, as Long explains,

“the ethos, style and content of the underground press well past punk, up to the

end of the decade [the 1970s] and beyond” 64. Indeed, at the point that Spencer

became editor (in June 1978), at least six of the paper’s writers / contributors had

come from the “underground” press, including Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray,

Mick Farren, John May, Barry Miles, and Pennie Smith 65.

Significantly, the political coverage that had appeared in the “underground”

press had included a considerable amount of commentary on the Irish conflict 66,

with key papers devoting front covers, as well as feature articles, to this topic 67.

56. Mick Farren, cited in Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 47.

57. The “underground” papers also engaged with issues such as South Africa (IT, no. 37, 9-22 August

1968), the Black Panthers (IT, no. 35, 12-25 July 1968), Rastafarians and Black Power (IT, no. 122,

27 January-10 February 1972), and state surveillance (IT, no. 142, 17 November-1 December

1972). For examples of its accounts of popular music, see IT, no. 53, 28 March-10 April 1969; IT,

no. 82, 3-16 July 1970; IT, no. 109, 29 July-12 August 1971.

58. Paul Gorman, In Their Own Write…, p. 73-74.

59. Nigel Fountain, Underground: The London Alternative Press, 1966-74, London, Routledge, 1988,

p. 183.

60. Charles Shaar Murray, cited in A Hidden Landscape Once a Week…, p. 144.

61. John Street, Rebel Rock…, p. 83-88.

62. Tony Tyler, cited in Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 71.

63. Over the course of the decade this included Nick Kent, Charles Shaar Murray, Ian MacDonald,

Mick Farren, Penny Reel, Barry Miles, John May, Joe Stevens, Pennie Smith and Barney Bubbles

(Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 65, 74-75, 123, 128; A Hidden Landscape Once a Week…,

p. 170, 178).


65. Anonymous, “T-Zers”, NME, 10 June 1978, p. 63. See also NME masthead on 10 June 1978, p. 63.

66. Nigel Fountain, Underground…, p. 97, 134-139, 162, 167.

67. For “underground” press articles on the Northern Ireland conflict, see, for example, A Special

Correspondent, “Military Intelligence Predicts… Civil War!”, IT, no. 78, 24 April-7 May 1970, p. 1-2;

Anonymous, “Ireland for the Irish – England for the Pigs?”, IT, no. 122, 27 January-10 February 1972,

p. 12-14; Jonathon Green, “Bringing the War Back Home”, IT, no. 123, 10-24 February 1972, p. 11;

George Snow, Rosemary Bignell, “George Snow’s Iraland Pics”, IT, no. 128, 20 April-4 May 1972,


This coverage often evinced an overt sympathy with the experience of the Catholic

minority in Northern Ireland 68. Indeed, there was an apparent perception, amongst

readers, that the “underground” press had signalled an allegiance with militant Irish

republicanism. In this context, letters appeared in IT objecting to the “underground”

press’s “support” for the IRA, and encouraging contributors to distinguish between

the ideology of Irish republicanism (which many readers had endorsed) and the

actions of the IRA (which they often disavowed) 69.

Despite this view of the “underground” press as championing the IRA, though,

many of its writers held highly ambivalent views on the conflict. Reflecting on this

point, Jerome Burne, a contributor to Friends / Frendz and IT, relates: “The IRA was

always a problematical issue. On one hand we weren’t in favour of violence, but we

were obviously against the British Army. We wanted to overthrow the State, but

we weren’t quite sure that we wanted a lot of bombers. That was a tricky one” 70. In

a similar vein, Dick Pountain – who played a leading role at Oz – recalls attending

“appalling all-afternoon meetings in order to make up our minds what our attitude

to the provisional IRA was” 71, a point echoed by another Oz contributor, Nigel

Fountain, who recollects debates about “the right line to be taken on the issue:

Was it to be support for the IRA? Support for a socialist Ireland? Critical support

for the IRA? And which IRA?” 72.

Similar quandaries would surface at NME in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Spencer points, in this context, to his “personal attitude to the Northern Ireland

problem” at that time, suggesting that this was “that there was no place in that

dialogue for someone like me”. He goes on:

It was a mess, and where did one engage with it? Were you on the side of Stormont

and British troops? Were you on the side of the IRA? No. […] Neither. A pox on both

p. 26-29, 44; Kevin Mellows, George Snow, “Bloody Sunday, Bloody 1973”, IT, no. 147, 8-23 February

1973, p. 10-13; Richard Trench, “A Nice Kid…”, IT, no. 154, 17-31 May 1973, p. 3. The con-

flict also featured on the cover of many “underground” press papers. See, for example, Friends, no. 25, 8 March 1971; Friends, no. 28, 3 May 1971; Frendz, no. 18, 6 January 1972; Frendz, no. 21,

17 February 1972; Ink, no. 21, 2 November 1971; Ink, no. 25, 31 December 1971; Ink, no. 28,

11 February 1972.

68. See, for example, “Ireland Resists Aggression”, Ink, no. 28, 11 February 1972 and “Solidarity with

the People of Derry”, Frendz, no. 21, 17 February 1972. Elsewhere, IT published a cover featuring

images of British soldiers in riot helmets rendered in a playful pop-art style and illustrated with

the caption: “Bang, You’re Dead!” (IT, no. 123, 10-24 February 1972).

69. One reader would inform IT: “I’m getting fucking sick with the way the underground press supports

the IRA. Are you too damn swollen up in Revolution against the Establishment that you cannot

see what a load of lying, murdering bastards the IRA Provisionals are?” (“Letters”, IT, no. 120,

30 December 1971-13 January 1972, p. 14). Meanwhile, other readers would endorse “the support

the underground press gives to the IRA”, whilst qualifying this with criticism of “the tactics of fear,

murder and repression” that they felt had been adopted by republican paramilitaries in Northern

Ireland (“Letters”, IT, no. 123, 10-24 February 1972, p. 2).

70. Jerome Burne, cited in Jonathon Green, Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground 1961-1971, London, Pimlico, 1998, p. 362.

71. Dick Pountain, cited in Jonathon Green, Days in the Life…, p. 375.

72. Nigel Fountain, Underground…, p. 97.


their houses. […] So, it was very hard to find a way to engage with that, and really, it

wasn’t our problem. It wasn’t a thing that affected us 73.

Notwithstanding the fact that NME had, of course, engaged with issues beyond

the immediate orbit of its staff, it is clear that the Troubles had, by the late 1970s,

extended – via the IRA’s bombing campaign – into English cites, and thus the

conflict had undoubtedly come to “affect” the lives of its writers and readers. With

this in mind, it appears that NME was – in spite of its overt concern with political

issues – initially reluctant to address the Northern Ireland conflict. An inevitable

problem with this was, of course, that the paper’s continuing lack of engagement

with the Troubles would become (in the context of its concomitant coverage of

other political themes) increasingly conspicuous and, by extension, questionable.

Moreover, in the absence of any focused account of Northern Ireland, the conflict

would nevertheless come to penetrate the discourse of the music press through

other narrative means, some of which were not unproblematic. Perhaps most

striking, in this regard, was the practice – evident across the British music press in

the 1970s – of reporting on British bands on tour in Northern Ireland, in which the

spatial locale was deployed as a dramatic backdrop, usually via images of the band

members in Belfast, alongside reports that invoked the conflict, with journalists

noting the presence of armed soldiers, military vehicles, and bombed-out buildings 74.

Although this sort of coverage had been evident since the early 1970s, its best

known instance centred on the visit of The Clash to Belfast in 1977, an event that

attracted widespread attention, appearing on the front covers – and inside pages – of

both of NME’s weekly competitors, Sounds and Melody Maker 75. The currency of

such coverage functioned, first and foremost, at the photographic level, hence the

images of The Clash (that illustrated both the covers and feature articles in Sounds and Melody Maker) depicting the band members in close proximity to armed British

soldiers and Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) officers, amidst conspicuous forms

of surveillance apparatus. Such images were underscored, in the accompanying

reports, by semantic invocations of Belfast’s oppressive ambience, laying stress on

“steel barricades”, “barbed wire fences”, and “endless devastation” 76.

Significantly, NME sought to distance itself, at the time, from such coverage,

affording the event (only) a short news item, with the acerbic headline: “Clash

Visit Belfast for Picture Session” (which nevertheless included a photograph from

73. Neil Spencer, interview with the author (original emphasis).

74. For examples of this practice, see James Johnson, “The Sonic Warlords in Belfast”, NME,

24 March 1973, p. 28; Anonymous, “Rolling out the Blarney Stone”, Record Mirror, 3 May

1975; Angie Errigo, “Feelgoods Triumph in a Po-Go Zone”, NME, 8 October 1977, p. 15-16;

Allan Jones, “What the El!”, Melody Maker, 25 March 1978, p. 3; Jane Suck, “Vicarious Thrills

+ Pol-a-Ticks: Crossing the Irish Sea with the Adverts”, Sounds, 18 February 1978, p. 16-17;

Colin Irwin, “The Jewel in the Crown”, Melody Maker, 15 December 1984, p. 24-25, 31.

75. Giovanni Dadomo, Caroline Coon, “Clash in the City of the Dead”, Sounds, 29 October 1977,

p. 25-27; Ian Birch, “Clash Lose Control…”, Melody Maker, 29 October 1977, p. 30-32.

76. Giovanni Dadomo, Caroline Coon, “Clash in the City of the Dead”, p. 27; Ian Birch, “Clash Lose

Control…”, p. 30.


the trip) 77. Moreover, the paper would subsequently remind its readers, in its first

focused feature on Northern Ireland (in October 1980), that The Clash had “found

time [on their short trip to Belfast] for some holiday snaps and a Melody Maker front

cover” 78. Despite its critical response to such reportage, though, the NME had itself

– only two weeks prior to the Clash coverage in Sounds and Melody Maker – pub-

lished a similar account of another British band’s (Dr. Feelgood) visit to Northern

Ireland, embellished with an image of that group behind (what the accompanying

photo-caption called) a “bomb-guard in Belfast”, and commencing with a stand-first

stressing that the interview took place “behind the Ulster barricades” 79.

This was, moreover, not the first time that NME had traded in such tropes. In

fact, the paper had arguably helped to beget the very practice of tracking British

bands’ visits to Belfast, as evidenced by a piece (on Hawkwind) in 1973, in which

the local setting, and the effects of the conflict, are consciously stressed, with NME

noting “shops, houses and bars […] blasted into ruins”, whilst spotlighting a British

soldier (“his rifle waist high”) who “looked as nervous as hell”: “It was obvious the

whole city was a war zone” 80.

Whether such coverage was born of a wish to acknowledge the conflict (rather

than simply ignore it), or an opportunistic attempt to exploit the Troubles as a

compelling backdrop, it is clear that this tendency would, by the late 1970s, come

to be seen, at least by NME, as questionable. Thus, the paper would retract from

this practice, even while its competitors continued to pursue it into the 1980s 81.

Reflecting on this point (with four decades hindsight), Spencer suggests that music-

press photos of bands “posing with British troops” became, from his perspective,

“problematical” 82. This point is echoed by Danny Kelly, a subsequent editor of NME

(and staff writer in the 1980s), who explains that such coverage “didn’t say anything

about what was going on, except there was a sense of danger”, and thus risked trading

in “a kind of ‘danger chic’” 83. Such material would, of course, make NME’s lack of

overt commentary on the conflict seem (even) more questionable, as Kelly explains:

“The danger is if you don’t write something serious and political, you end up using

Northern Ireland as a backdrop, a dramatic backdrop to things” 84. Rather than

restricting invocations of the conflict to this “dramatic” capacity, then, the subject

required (as Spencer increasingly came to recognise) a more upfront approach 85.

The paper’s pursuance of this approach was expedited, according to Spencer, by

two concurrent developments: first, the arrival at NME of a Belfast correspondent,

Gavin Martin, who brought to the paper a legitimising local voice, and, second,

77. Anonymous, “Clash Visit Belfast for Picture Session”, NME, 29 October 1977, p. 9-10.

78. Gavin Martin, “Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and the Reality”.

79. Angie Errigo, “Feelgoods Triumph in a Po-Go Zone”, p. 15.

80. James Johnson, “The Sonic Warlords in Belfast”.

81. See, for example, Jane Suck, “Vicarious Thrills…”; Colin Irwin, “The Jewel in the Crown”.


83. Danny Kelly, interview with the author, 20 August 2019.

84. Ibid.85. Neil Spencer, interview with the author.


the emergence of a Northern Irish punk “scene”, which called for coverage of the conflict as part of the bands’ social context 86. These concomitant shifts would

precipitate the paper’s first feature article on the conflict (albeit in the context of

an account of Belfast’s music scene), in a piece entitled “Northern Ireland: The

Fantasy and the Reality”, written by Martin, in October 1980. The publication of

this piece was, however, preceded by the intervention of the Derry letter-writer

cited above, which in turn provoked a plethora of letters that addressed the Irish

conflict. Three such letters would be published in one issue in September 1980,

before the staff felt compelled – by the sheer volume of subsequent letters – to

convene a dedicated “Gasbag”, focused solely on the conflict, in October of that

year. In conjunction with the Martin feature, this special issue of “Gasbag” served

as NME’s first focused engagement with the conflict. Before addressing Martin’s

piece, then, I will explore these letters page debates. The letters surveyed here, and

throughout the article, present a range of interpretive frames through which the

Troubles were viewed, pointing to what scholars have called “a ‘meta-conflict’, a

conflict about what the conflict is about” 87. The readers thus invoke existing (exog-

enous and endogenous) explanations, rehearsing republican, unionist and socialist

views, with some letters claiming that the conflict was essentially sectarian, whilst

others called for the withdrawal of British troops. Alongside such perspectives,

though, many readers spotlighted the absence of debate in Britain on the conflict,

critiquing mainstream media coverage, and issuing highly “active” responses,

suggesting a far from passive audience.

1980: “Now we’ve got a platform […] what are we going to do about it?”

A number of letters appeared in “Gasbag” in September 1980 that were clearly

prompted by the comments of the Derry reader (cited above), and which extended

the latter’s critique of the inadequate coverage that the Irish conflict had received

in Britain’s media. The first letter begins, significantly, by endorsing the Derry

letter-writer, and noting their own “surprise” to see such a letter in NME: “[…]

perhaps this is the beginning of something big?!”, they speculate. The key point

of the letter, though, is to highlight “the way ignorant / misinformed journalists

either evade any controversial involvement with the province […] or denounce the

‘evil’ terrorists whilst knowing little or nothing about their cause”. In addition, this

reader would insist that it was incumbent on NME not merely to intervene on this

matter, but to act as a pioneering platform: “I think it is about time you”, relayed

the reader, “as the custodian of the humanitarian ideals that are so dear to all of


87. John McGarry, Brendan O’Leary, Explaining Northern Ireland: Broken Images, Oxford, Blackwell,

1995, p. 1. For a survey of such frames, see John Whyte, Interpreting Northern Ireland, Oxford,

Clarendon, 1990, p. 117-206.


us, took the lead and did something” 88. The second letter (from a reader in Cork),

echoed this view, observing “the ignorance of the people of Britain […] of their

position in our country”, before issuing an “appeal to all British readers of NME”:

Your government, through your army, is occupying part of my country. They are doing

this in your name. Are you aware of this? […] People […] are being killed every day

and every day because of your silence the killing will continue. Only public opinion in

Britain can change the situation. Won’t you help?

This reader concluded by stressing that “an informed public debate in Britain

would get the ball rolling”, noting: “Now is the time for it to start” 89. A key part of

the discourse at this point, then, is the perceived lack of debate, and the necessity

for such exchange, and the question of where and how it might occur. The third

letter (from Ormskirk, in England), drew on a different strand of contemporary

commentary on the Troubles, which saw the conflict as essentially sectarian, and

presented the “problem” as Catholics and Protestants not being able to “live together”,

prescribing – as a remedy to “religious war” – the erection of “integrated schools

and housing estates” 90.

It is, of course, unclear to what extent these letters were selected by NME

to reflect a certain view, but it would certainly seem, from the editorial ripostes

– issued by Monty Smith – that the paper broadly endorsed their sentiments. The

views expressed in these letters (calling for increased coverage of the conflict, and

critiquing sectarianism) were sufficiently palatable for a paper such as NME to

accommodate, and tacitly endorse. The paper’s response to these letters, issued

through Smith’s bold-type remarks, perhaps serves as a clue to NME’s (then)

current view. A key theme, in the retorts, is the deflection of readers’ questions

onto other communicative sites. Thus, following the first letter’s call for more

informed media coverage of the conflict, Smith turned the question back onto

the readers: “Now we’ve got a platform […] what are we going to do about it?” 91.

Similarly, Smith reacts to the second letter – which resounded the reflections of

the first – by redirecting the enquiry onto mainstream media outlets, rhetorically

rerouting the reader’s appeal: “please […] so-called uncensored media, when is it

going to happen?” 92.

Although this response seemed at variance with the “underground” ethos that

had informed NME since the early 1970s (in which “alternative” outlets actively

undertook coverage of overlooked issues) 93, Smith did, at least, make clear that

the conflict would continue to be “discussed in these pages [i.e. ‘Gasbag’] as long

88. The letters appeared in “Gasbag now!”, Monty Smith (ed.), NME, 20 September 1980, p. 58.

89. Ibid.90. Ibid.91. Ibid.92. Ibid.93. If the mainstream media failed to provide adequate coverage of an urgent issue, then it was the

task of the “underground” press to afford space to this, rather than summoning that mainstream

to do more (see Mick Farren, cited in Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 47).


as you’re prepared to voice your opinions” 94, even if this (once again) placed the imperative on the readers. This letters-page exchange, in any case, served as NME’s

first tentative foray into addressing the conflict.

Significantly, the paper received an even larger volume of readers’ letters on this

topic over the next two weeks, prompting the paper to curate a dedicated issue of

“Gasbag” – focused solely on the Troubles – in October 1980 (fig. 1). This arguably

acted as NME’s first self-conscious account of the conflict, for while it adhered to

the editorial sentiments of the September “Gasbag” in placing the imperative on

its readers, it was, atypically for a letters-page debate, announced via a cover-line

on the paper’s front page (stating simply “Northern Ireland”), and featured – again

uncharacteristically for “Gasbag” – its own themed title, “The Irish No-Joke”, and

illustration: a photograph of armed British soldiers next to young children 95.

It also included, against convention, an introduction and epilogue, authored

by that week’s “Gasbag” editor, Charles Shaar Murray. It would not, however,

offer editorial comments in response to the individual letters (the letters page was

typically punctuated with pithy ripostes to each letter). Indeed, the bold-type pull-

out quotes that appeared in this “Gasbag” – more often associated with a feature

article – were drawn from the readers’ views. Consequently, “The Irish No-Joke”

was a letters page that bore many of the graphic and editorial qualities of a feature

article, thus elevating it – if only visually – to the status of an authored piece, and in

turn appearing as the paper’s own response, rather than one generated by its readers.

At the same time, the paper’s preface stressed the value of readers’ views over

editorial interventions: “[…] we’re turning this week’s Bagspace over to your letters”,

relayed Murray, “without the customary editorial refereeing” 96. Thus, if NME had, in

the September issue, summoned mainstream media to take up the task of tackling

the conflict, then it was now – in light of the sheer volume of letters that the paper

had received on this topic – turning to the readers to speak on the topic, suggesting

that the paper’s inchoate stance on handling the Troubles was to harness its readers’

views. This was underscored in the page’s sole editorial comment, located in a

lengthy, bold-type coda, which disavowed the very possibility of NME expressing

a collective view: “There’s no such thing as a consensus on the subject of the British

‘presence’ in Northern Ireland, here at NME or anywhere else”. Notwithstanding

this contraction of the conflict to “the British ‘presence’”, Murray went on:

Speaking as one person offering one person’s opinion – and not claiming to represent the

NME collective – I deplore the bombings, the terror, the violence inflicted on innocent

94. “Gasbag now!”, Monty Smith (ed.), p. 58.

95. The photograph had previously appeared in a photo essay in the journal Camerawork in 1978

(Anonymous, “British Troops on Irish Streets”, Camerawork, no. 9, March 1978, p. 10). The

article that introduced this photo essay addressed media coverage of Northern Ireland, noting:

“The best weapon in any propaganda campaign is not biased information, but ignorance. No one

gets excited about something that they do not know is happening […] Northern Ireland has been

very badly reported in the British Press” (ibid., p. 9).



Fig. 1 – NME, 4 October 1980, p. 62.

people who are on a firing line through no fault or choice of their own. But at the same

time, I believe just as wholeheartedly that the solution to the Irish “problem” must be

an Irish solution. What happens in Ireland should be a matter of concern to England,

but interference and occupation should not be the means by which this concern should

be expressed. If this view seems contradictory, that’s because it is contradictory 97.

97. Ibid., p. 63.


Perhaps unsurprisingly, the paper’s readership expressed, across eight epistles, more forthright positions. One such letter (from a reader in Liverpool) critiqued the then prevalent view, promulgated by “government and popular media”, that the conflict was simply sectarian, before making a not uncontroversial claim about

the provenance of Ulster unionists:

[…] we will get nowhere until we stop deceiving ourselves that the war in Northern Ireland

is a purely sectarian one, so absolving ourselves from blame. Much as I sympathise with

the unionist point of view – they have known no other home but N.I., and it has been a

part of Britain throughout their lifetime – the fact remains that they are the descendants

of an invading force, supported by an army of occupation 98.

A second letter (from Edgeware in London) echoed this view that the conflict

should not be seen as simply sectarian, assailing the outlook of “the typical liberal

Englishman” – who perceived “the problem” as “religiously prejudiced Irishmen” –

and arguing for “an opening of minds to Irish problems by the British public”. This

reader thus reiterated the calls, in the previous letters, for wider understanding

of the conflict, born of an implicit view that media outlets, such as NME, could

play a crucial role in this. They went on, moreover, to challenge the claim that the

“troops are in Ireland to protect the Irish from themselves” 99, a point underscored

by a large pull-out quote, extracted from the letter, declaiming “The troops are not

in Ireland to protect the Irish. Anyone who thinks that is an idiot”, that served to

bequeath, alongside the page’s only illustration – a large photo of armed British

soldiers facing young children – a sceptical view of the British military presence.

Other letters would chastise the role of religious institutions in the conflict, claiming

that the latter’s “ambivalent attitude to sectarianism” had done little “to diminish

the violence they pretend to deplore” 100.

The fact that extracts from each of these letters were selected by the paper

to appear in bold-type quotes perhaps offered an insight into NME’s own view,

with one reader problematising the presence of the British Army, whilst the other

rebuked the role of the Church. Neither of these views was especially controversial

at the time: there was a sizeable Troops Out Movement in Britain, which had been

founded in 1972, and enjoyed some support on British university campuses 101. The

final letter in the special issue (sent from Dublin) takes up the theme of British

ignorance, arguing that “the British people are […] ‘shielded’ from the truth about

Northern Ireland” 102.

Other letters offered more conservative views. One of these (from a reader in

Newtownabbey in Northern Ireland) expressed a moderate unionist standpoint,


99. Ibid.100. Ibid.101. See Aly Renwick, “Something in the Air: The Rise of the Troops Out Movement”, in The Northern

Ireland Troubles in Britain…, p. 111-126.



whilst positing that readers outside of Ireland might not be “sufficiently well informed

of the situation to put forward a constructive argument”, and advising NME to “not

mix politics and music” 103. This, then, was the obverse of the letter-writer from Derry;

for rather than summoning NME, and the wider British public, to engage with the

conflict, it counselled the paper to eschew commentary on it.

Regardless of this appeal, NME continued to address the topic, with the following

week’s issue offering a five-page feature article (entitled “Northern Ireland: The

Fantasy and the Reality”), by Gavin Martin (fig. 2).

As with the previous week’s letters page, this article was announced via a

cover-line on the paper’s front page, stating “Ulster’s Alternative” – a pun on the

celebrated Stiff Little Fingers’ song, “Alternative Ulster” (1978), the title of which was

sourced from a Belfast fanzine, founded by Martin. The fact that the latter was now

a contributor to NME clearly gave the paper confidence to increase its commentary

on the conflict. Martin, who was raised in a family with “a very committed trade

union” outlook (in a Protestant milieu in Bangor, Co. Down), was “driven”, says

former NME writer Stuart Cosgrove, “by a sense of cross-community balance” 104.

Certainly the comments that Martin made on the conflict in NME were suffused

with anti-sectarian, socialist sentiments.

The stand-first that announced Martin’s debut article relates that NME had

“asked” him “to give [the paper] an account of rock amid the rubble” 105. This,

then, was the justification for NME’s first full piece on Northern Ireland: framing

“the rubble” as part of the context for “rock”. Significantly, Martin would seek, at

the outset of his piece, to distance it from press coverage of The Clash in Belfast,

critiquing reports of that event 106, and stressing that his account was a corrective

to the conventional ways in which the conflict had been configured in music-press

discourse. Although the article is chiefly concerned with popular music in Northern

Ireland, Martin prefaces it with a reflection on Troubles, and it is this section that

I focus on here. “For the past 11 years”, relates Martin:

[…] people in Northern Ireland have lived in the dark shadow of terrorist disorder. In

terms of geography, history and politics it is a situation unique this side of the equator.

Disregarding the rights and wrongs of the political collusions, religious confusions

and military confrontations […] one thing’s for sure: the ordinary and the innocent

(regardless of their mode of worship or political allegiance) are the ones who have had

the hardest time of it 107.

The piece’s central point regarding Northern Ireland is what Martin calls “the

acute paucity of alternatives” available to the public beyond the highly binarised

political culture (nationalism / republicanism or unionism / loyalism). However,

103. Ibid.104. Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author; Gavin Martin, interview with the author, 18 March 2019.

105. Gavin Martin, “Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and the Reality”, p. 31.

106. Ibid. 107. Ibid.


the article also informed readers that the region had “the worst unemployment figures, the lowest wages and the worst housing in the UK”, implying that this

might help explain some of the background to the conflict. What Martin – and,

by extension, NME – ultimately offer in this piece is a class-based critique of the

conflict, underscored with an explicit anti-sectarianism:

Fig. 2 – Gavin Martin, “Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and the Reality”,

NME, 11 October 1980, p. 31.


What the Northern Ireland situation amounts to is a lot of young people being used as “pawns in the game.” Whether that young person be in the British Army, the Provisional IRA or the UVF, chances are they come from one of the most deprived areas in the UK (N.E. England, Scotland or Belfast) and have been thrown in at the deep end of a

struggle which does nothing but keep the lowlife fighting among themselves 108.

For Martin, then, “the problem” in Northern Ireland was “social, not sectarian” 109.

Consequently, the first real standpoint that NME would assume on the Troubles

– in a focused, feature article – was to frame the problem in class terms, through a

broadly socialist lens. The article – alongside Murray’s “Gasbag” – received praise

from the paper’s readership for drawing attention to the conflict. However, NME

was also rebuked, in this period, for its lack of sustained engagement with Northern

Ireland. Thus, in a letter that appeared in June 1981 (shortly after the death of hunger

striker, Bobby Sands), a reader – again from Derry – praised NME for the “increase

in the number of mentions that Northern Ireland” had received in the paper, whilst

at the same time chastising it for the lack of any “serious attempt to explain / deal

with / open discussion on the real situation”:

Last November we had a Gavin Martin article [“Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and

the Reality”] which was a short round up of Belfast music and said nothing about the

outside world in the north at all […] Do you really believe that The Outcasts and Rudi

[two of the bands covered in Martin’s piece] are more important than H-Block […] 110?

Notwithstanding the fact that Martin’s piece was much more than “a short round

up”, and had engaged with “the outside world” (as outlined above), the point to note

here is NME’s response to this letter, which laid stress on the forum-like nature of the

paper in addressing such issues, before suggesting – somewhat surprisingly – that if

readers wished for a “serious attempt” to address the conflict, then they could peruse

a bookshop. “I believe that papers […] like NME”, explained Ray Lowry – that week’s

“Gasbag” editor – “should at the least provide a forum for discussion of the wider

issues affecting the lives of their readers and those of the people whose doings they

chronicle” 111. However, he then proceeded to rebuff the reader’s plea for NME to

make a more “serious attempt” to engage with the conflict, suggesting: “Bookshops

are full of publications detailing the history and present conditions in N. Ireland” 112.

Perhaps this was an admission, on Lowry’s part, that the music press was not

commensurate to the task of covering an issue as complex as the Northern Ireland

conflict. Whether or not this was the case, it clearly echoed Smith and Murray’s reac-

tions (outlined above), which offset similar appeals by, first, calling on the mainstream

media to do more, and, then, rallying readers to submit their views. In directing the

latter towards the bookshop, NME again seemed engaged in an act of deflection.

108. Gavin Martin, “Northern Ireland: The Fantasy and the Reality”, p. 32.

109. Ibid.110. “Miserable Old Bagger”, Ray Lowry (ed.), NME, 6 June 1981, p. 58.

111. Ibid.112. Ibid.


Following this period of intense – if somewhat anxious – coverage of the

Troubles, NME underwent a period of apparent withdrawal from the conflict

(indeed, it would be more than three years before the paper offered its next sub-

stantial address, in November 1984). Significantly, the fact of the paper’s renewed

reticence on Northern Ireland would itself provide the focus of readers’ letters to

NME. I will explore one key instance of this, before addressing the 1984 article. In

March of that year, a letter from a reader (in Galway, Ireland) chastised the paper

for its lack of coverage of Northern Ireland: “Whilst NME’s position on Thatcher,

Reagan and those far off political revolutions is quite clear, the only indication of

recognition of the war in the six counties, usually just in passing, is from the bigoted

Tory drivel of [Julie] Burchill and [Tony] Parsons” 113.

That week’s “Gasbag” editor, Paolo Hewitt, offered a response that perhaps

served as an insight into a prevalent NME view. “The situation in Northern Ireland

is a complex matter”, explained Hewitt, “and one that I wouldn’t comment on” 114.

This admission would, in turn, attract its own ripostes. The first of these (from a

reader in County Mayo, Ireland) argued:

Hewitt’s reply […] summed up British attitudes to N Ireland. Paolo wouldn’t comment

on it, brushing it away as a complex issue […]. The British media neither knows nor

wants to know fuck all about N Ireland […]. Make no mistake, if you support present

British policy you support repression and discrimination on a sectarian basis. […] Are

you awake? Do you care? You mouth liberal platitudes but I don’t think any of you

give a monkey’s. Howsabout interviewing Gerry Adams or Donny [sic] Morrison 115.

Meanwhile, another reader wondered why NME was reluctant to comment on

the conflict when leading figures on the British left had felt able to express views

on it: “If, as Paolo Hewitt said last month, the situation [in Northern Ireland] is

‘too complex’ to comment on, how come Ken Livingstone and Tony Benn have

such a good understanding of the subject?” 116. Hewitt’s response to this query was

marked, once again, by a defensive reticence:

Just because I won’t be drawn on a subject doesn’t automatically mean that there is

a “left wing media silence”. If Susan Williams [a pseudonym of NME writer Steven

Wells, who was associated with the Socialist Workers Party] or any number of NME writers had answered the letters that week, you’d have got the comment you seem so

desperate to receive 117.

Reflecting on this point (with thirty-five years hindsight), Hewitt says:

113. “Gasbag”, Paolo Hewitt (ed.), NME, 10 March 1984, p. 58.

114. Ibid. (emphases added).

115. See “Gasbag”, Penny Reel (ed.), NME, 7 April 1984, p. 42. Danny Morrison was at that time Sinn

Féin’s publicity director.

116. “Gasbag”, Paolo Hewitt (ed.), NME, 28 April 1984, p. 51.

117. Ibid. (original emphasis).


I remember thinking, it was such an explosive situation, and I just didn’t feel that I could make any comment about it in the way that I could maybe make a comment about Thatcher’s government or the coal-mining strike. […] I just always thought,

“woah, woah, woah, I’m not wading into this” 118.

Regarding the reaction that this provoked from NME readers, Hewitt recollects,

of his outlook at the time:

I would’ve just thought, “I’ve made my position clear, I’m not getting involved in this,

and you trying to goad me with this isn’t going to work, cos I’m not going near this”.

[…] People are dying. It’s serious. It’s not, you know, “shall I be a vegetarian?”, you

know “Up the Animal Liberation Front!”. […] People were dying 119.

Elaborating, retrospectively, on this reticence, Hewitt explains: “I didn’t feel like

I had any right to get involved with it. I really didn’t. I didn’t have any experience

of it”. In this sense, he suggests that he would have deferred, at the time, to the

Northern Ireland-born writers at NME (such as Gavin Martin and Sean O’Hagan),

who, he says, had “lived through it [the conflict]” 120.

Following this period of apparent caution regarding commentary on the

Troubles, the paper would publish, in November 1984, its first full feature article

focused solely on the conflict, entitled “Bomb Culture”. Significantly, this article

– which seems to have been prompted by the IRA’s bomb attack on the Thatcher

Cabinet at Brighton in October 1984 – was authored by Andrew Tyler, who had

been a regular music writer at NME in the 1970s, before leaving the paper to report

on social issues for mainstream news outlets 121. Tyler would, however, return

to NME in the early 1980s as an occasional contributor of (non-music) articles,

addressing social concerns, such as unemployment, drugs, and the resurgence of

the far right 122. By November 1984, then, Tyler had acquired a profile, at NME,

for “serious” commentary, and was seen, says Stuart Bailie (who wrote for NME

in the late 1980s and early 1990s), as “more like a news reporter who dropped in

and out of the NME” rather than an in-house music writer 123. Deploying Tyler

(as opposed to one of the paper’s music writers) to address the Troubles afforded

NME’s next intervention on this topic more gravitas, enabling the publication to

comment on the conflict more precisely. I will address this article here.

118. Paolo Hewitt, interview with the author.

119. Ibid.120. Ibid.121. See Andrew Tyler, My Life as an Animal: A Memoir – Adventures, Music, Animal Rights, Tonbridge,

Loop, 2017, p. 195.

122. See, for instance, Andrew Tyler, “CND Fights March Ban”; Andrew Tyler, “W.O.R.K. No No My

Daddy Don’t…”; Andrew Tyler, “Turning to Green”; Andrew Tyler, “Mandela: 21 Years of Forced

Silence”; Andrew Tyler, “Sending Down the Lawless”; Andrew Tyler, “Return of the Anti-Nazi

League”; Andrew Tyler, “Britain on the Junkheap, Part One…”.

123. Stuart Bailie, interview with the author, 5 June 2019.


1984: “Troops out?… Who can argue?”

Tyler’s four-page piece, which was signposted via a striking cover-line on the front page, reading: “Gunpowder! Northern Ireland – A Suspect Device?” (fig. 3),

appeared three weeks after the IRA’s bomb attack on the Thatcher Cabinet at

Brighton’s Grand Hotel (on 12 October 1984), which took the lives of five people

and injured thirty others.

The attack provoked widespread anger in Britain, and prompted public calls,

from figures such as Lord Denning, for the perpetrators to be “hanged for high

treason”: “They are just as guilty as Guy Fawkes was 380 years ago”, said Denning

after the attack 124. This, then, was the immediate context for NME’s emotive cover-

line, invoking Fawkes’ “Gunpowder plot”. Although it is difficult to ascertain

the process by which the piece came about (Tyler passed away in 2017), Spencer

suggests that “it was probably Andrew’s idea”, pointing to the paper’s practice,

at the time, of asking writers to provide “the lead as to what [NME] should be

doing” 125. Moreover, in Tyler’s posthumously published memoir, he reflects

on his mid-1980s contributions to NME, noting that the paper “was receptive

to substantial pieces from [him] that hit the right socio-political spot”, citing

– specifically – an article that “looked at Northern Ireland politics” 126, suggesting

that he proposed the piece.

In any case, NME would explicitly link the article (fig. 4) – via a bold-type

stand-first – with the (then very recent) Brighton bomb, whilst querying prevailing

views of the conflict:

We all know the IRA are nuts, they bomb Tory cabinets don’t they? But are they also

nuts in Barnsley, Brixton, Toxteth, Moss Side… Or is there a lesson to be learnt from

life in Northern Ireland. Andrew Tyler went to Derry to find out 127.

Although the piece is trailed, in the byline, as a visit to Derry, it details the

author’s time in both Derry and Belfast. However, Tyler states that it was in Derry

that he “spent most of [his] time for this article” – citing his “four days” in that

city – and an image from Bloody Sunday (illustrating the centre-pages of the piece)

highlights this locale 128.

Crucially, the article is framed as an intervention against the coverage that

the conflict typically received in the British media, with Tyler critiquing press

and broadcast accounts. In this context, he observes that the Troubles have been

explained to the British public

124. See Trevor Kavanagh, “Hang the IRA Bombers Says Big Sun Poll”, The Sun, 19 October 1984,

p. 1; Anonymous, “Denning Calls for Use of Treason Law”, The Times, 18 October 1984, p. 2.


126. Andrew Tyler, My Life as an Animal…, p. 111.

127. Andrew Tyler, “Bomb Culture”, NME, 3 November 1984, p. 29.

128. Ibid., p. 30-31.


[…] by a particular kind of media coverage designed to spread weariness. All sections of the popular press practise it but none more efficiently than television news which

offers up the most precise propaganda images […]. These Irish, the images are saying,

they are fucking crazy animals. We hold them apart 129.

129. Ibid., p. 29 (original emphasis).

Fig. 3 – NME, 3 November 1984, front page.


Fig. 4 – Andrew Tyler, “Bomb Culture”, NME, 3 November 1984, p. 29.


In countering this, the piece – which is written from, and addressed to, a

community overtly hailed as “we English” – claims that media caricatures of the

IRA as “twisted perverts” and “mindless hooligans” are at odds with “the British

establishment’s own view”, citing a Defence Intelligence report that characterised

the IRA leadership as “intelligent, astute and experienced” 130. Indeed, the article

proceeds to invite sympathy for Sinn Féin by stressing the party’s commonalities

with the cosmopolitan Labour left (a constituency with which NME, of course,

identified):

What we rarely get on the mainland [sic] is Sinn Féin’s avowed doctrine which, aside

from the siren call for 32 county autonomy, also includes […] a range of gay, feminist

and community-based policies that puts them roughly in the same camp as Livingstone’s

GLC [Greater London Council] 131.

Such comments had the effect of steering NME away from the strictly class-

based, anti-sectarian stance on the conflict that they had offered in 1980, intimating

– instead – at inchoate affinities with Sinn Féin, by emphasising aspects of that

party’s outlook that echoed with the views of NME. In this context, the paper, via

Tyler, expressed respect for “the sophisticated line [of socialist thought] invoked by

the likes of Gerry Adams and Danny Morrison”, underlining this by accentuating

Sinn Féin’s leftwards shift, and claiming a concomitant shift among loyalist groups,

leading Tyler to speculate that a future class-based coalition could serve to fracture

the violent sectarianism associated with Northern Ireland. “In tandem with Sinn

Féin’s leftward hike”, relayed Tyler,

[…] there are factions of the key loyalist groups associated with violence – the Ulster

Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force – that are also beginning to deduce

a class struggle, which would make not the Catholics their enemies but the big bosses

and the British establishment 132.

This shift pointed, said Tyler, to what he called “a two-way drift” away from sec-

tarian politics and towards “the prospect of a Catholic-Protestant working class

coalescence that has traditionally been considered ‘impossible’” 133. If this passage

returned the piece to the outlook offered by Martin, then the ensuing portions

would position it towards a more republican view.

Here Tyler records an exchange with Christie Tucker, who is described as an

“IRA activist” who had been imprisoned for “eight years in Long Kesh”; Tucker, in

turn, acquaints Tyler with Tommy Collins, who, as NME notes, had been engaged

130. Andrew Tyler, “Bomb Culture”, p. 29.

131. Ibid.132. Ibid. This was perhaps a reference to the Progressive Unionist Party, a left-wing initiative associated

with the Ulster Volunteer Force, that had emerged in the late 1970s (James W. McAuley, Scott

Hislop, “‘Many Roads Forward’: Politics and Ideology within the Progressive Unionist Party”,

Études irlandaises, no. 25-1, 2000, p. 173-192).

133. Ibid.


in “armed struggle” before being imprisoned for IRA-related activities 134. They then

both converse with Tyler, “on their own behalf, not for any republican organisa-

tion” 135. In this context, Tyler relates that the “roots of anger” for both men lay in

“the civil rights era” of the late 1960s 136.

Perhaps in an effort to offset orthodox accounts of the Troubles, the article

is not particularly critical of IRA actions, endeavouring instead to clarify (what

it calls) the “announced republican strategy”, which is “not”, stresses Tyler, “to

harass random Protestants” but “to hit select targets, such as the British soldiers

who were killed just before and after I was in town” 137. The piece also seeks to

repudiate received ideas about republicans being socially conservative or sectarian,

noting that neither of its republican interviewees “hold Vatican views on abortion

or contraception” or “have hate for Protestants” 138. Tyler does detail, however, that

Tucker and Collins “continue to support the Provos’ war against the bulwarks of

unionism” 139.

Towards the end of the fourth – and final – page of the piece, Tyler ponders,

as an (apparent) afterthought: “But what of the fears on the Protestant side” 140.

This reflection is followed by a relatively short interview with Gregory Campbell,

who at the time was a Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) councillor on Derry

City Council, and is described, in the piece, as the “chief political mouthpiece” of

Derry Protestants 141. While Tucker and Collins – who are granted a much longer

interview – appear in a large photograph, the succinct segment on Campbell lacks

any corresponding image. In its absence, he receives an unflattering descriptive

portrait, with NME imparting that Campbell “espoused the politics of thuggery”,

adding that this “turned” Tyler’s “stomach” 142. “On such a dismal note we cannot

bring this piece to a close”, reflects Tyler, before wondering: “Troops Out? Who

can credibly argue against it?” 143.

This overt support for Troops Out, alongside the article’s implied affinity with

Sinn Féin (and uneven handling of Tucker / Collins and Campbell), signalled a

shift in NME’s stance, with the paper broaching a partisan view. This provoked

consternation among some NME readers, not least in Northern Ireland. Stuart Bailie,

a music journalist from Belfast (who later wrote for NME), felt at the time that

Tyler’s piece had espoused a “very heavy”, “hardline left” point of view: “essentially

the message was ‘Troops Out’ […]. And I remember at the time there were intakes

of breath […] in Belfast. It was like, ‘Oh Jesus, you know, this is what they [NME]

134. Andrew Tyler, “Bomb Culture”, p. 30-31.

135. Ibid., p. 31.

136. Ibid.137. Ibid., p. 30.

138. Ibid., p. 31.

139. Ibid.140. Ibid., p. 32.

141. Ibid.142. Ibid.143. Ibid.


think’” 144. Similarly, Barry McIlheney, who at the time wrote for Melody Maker, and had been raised in Belfast, recalls discomfort at Tyler’s piece, and NME’s broader treatment of the Troubles. Reflecting on this in 2019, McIlheney explains:

The basic problem with the NME’s coverage of the war in Ireland was that it automatically

adopted the prevailing and simplistic pro-republican narrative of the day. Broadly, if

you were anti-apartheid and pro-Palestine – and who in their right mind wouldn’t

be? – then you were by definition pro-republican. Ergo anti-unionist. Which meant

you were clearly setting out your stall against a million people. Among them a host of

music-loving, NME-reading, anti-apartheid, pro-Palestine kids such as me. So when

something like Andrew Tyler’s infamous “Bomb Culture” piece appeared […] it was

hard not to feel that your favourite magazine in the world had already made its mind

up and that “sorry son, but you’re no longer welcome here” 145.

The piece aroused an array of letters, several of which appeared across two issues

of NME. Many of these took umbrage with Tyler’s view, expressing objection to

the article’s portrayal of Ulster Protestants: “‘Pity the poor misguided protestants’

oozes like festering pus from your article Mr. Tyler”, observed one reader. Others

sought to rebut the piece’s endorsement of Troops Out: “‘Troops out? Who can…

argue…?’ I can, I’m British – I want to be British”. Elsewhere, the fact that Tyler had

not been raised in Northern Ireland was perceived as a problem 146. Other missives

dismissed Tyler’s detection of a socialist drift among loyalist groups (“there will

never ever be a significant movement of Protestants towards full-scale Socialism”),

whilst rejecting his claim that the republican movement was non-sectarian: “Sinn

Féin’s support for the ‘armed struggle’ is a campaign of genocide against the Prot-

estant population” 147.

In light of these objections to the republican leanings of the “Bomb Culture”

piece, and the fact that its author was not from Northern Ireland, it seems significant

that the writer that would act as editor of the letters page in which the first batch of

post-“Bomb Culture” letters appeared was Sean O’Hagan. The latter had been raised

in a republican milieu in Armagh, Northern Ireland 148. O’Hagan has explained that

as a youth he often engaged – alongside his peers – in confrontations with the police

and military: “I spent many a Saturday in the early 70s”, he recalls, “throwing stones

and bottles at the RUC and British Army patrols that regularly skirted the housing

estates, playing cat-and-mouse with the snatch squads who hit the ground running

from the backs of Saracens and Land Rovers” 149.

144. Stuart Bailie, interview with the author.

145. Barry McIlheney, interview with the author, 26 July 2019.

146. “Gasbag”, Sean O’Hagan (ed.), NME, 17 November 1984, p. 62.

147. Ibid.148. Sean O’Hagan, “Northern Ireland’s Lost Moment: How the Peaceful Protests of ’68 Escalated into

Years of Bloody Conflict”, The Observer, 22 April 2018; Sean O’Hagan, “The Day I Never Thought

Would Come”, The Guardian, 6 May 2007.

149. Sean O’Hagan, “An Accidental Death”, The Observer, 21 April 2002.


Deploying the paper’s only writer who, at that time, came from a republican background in Northern Ireland to deal with the readers’ responses to “Bomb Culture” perhaps served to extend the shift – signalled in that piece – in NME’s

stance on the conflict. Strikingly, O’Hagan countered the criticisms levelled by

readers at Tyler by citing the sectarianism that had sparked the civil rights initia-

tive in Northern Ireland in the 1960s, arguing that: “[…] the ‘No Surrender’ mob

wish for a return to a past which included discrimination against Catholics when

it came to jobs, homes and the right to a separate cultural identity”. He went on:

Your “Ulster will always be British” tack is about as helpful as “No Surrender” – at least

Tyler presented a case whilst you fall back on the kind of sloganeering that helps no

one, offers nothing and should have been ditched years ago 150.

Moreover, the last letter that appeared in this “Gasbag” – and which served as the

final word, so to speak – espoused a republican view:

After your much-needed (but long overdue) article about the problems of Northern

Ireland, I’m sure that you’ll receive many letters from outraged readers whose main

contribution will be a knee-jerk condemnation of your truthful and sympathetic por-

trayal of the Republican struggle. You will probably be denounced for speaking with

IRA and Sinn Féin supporters, who will be predictably described as “Religious bigots,

murderers and psychopaths” […] I would therefore like to say that your article was not

only serious and intelligent, but also productive; it actually gave practical suggestions

(eg the Troops Out movement) rather than indulging in an orgy of hand-wringing and

empty moralising. It was also well-researched and (rare for the NME) unpretentious 151.

Not only was this letter granted a privileged place at the end of “Gasbag”,

but it also received no remark from O’Hagan, thus implying endorsement. The

readership’s reaction to “Bomb Culture” would, however, continue in the next

week’s paper. Significantly, the first missive to appear there came from a musician,

Paul Burgess (of the Belfast punk band, Ruefrex), who explained that – prior to

the publication of “Bomb Culture” – he had been contacted by NME with a view

to him accompanying Tyler in Belfast:

When researching your piece for “Bomb culture”, you professed a wish to spend some

time in Belfast with myself as your guide. However your time in Derry overran and you

returned to write the article, as I feared, comparatively “mono-informed” 152.

Burgess then chastised the paper’s inadequate engagement with “the Protestant

working classes”, suggesting that its effort to cover the latter via “a brief drive down

the Shankill Road, and a talk with some hard line Paisleyite” was – “in an article of

this size and importance” – “criminal negligence”. His main objection to the piece

150. “Gasbag”, Sean O’Hagan (ed.), NME, 17 November 1984, p. 62.

151. Ibid.152. “Gasbag”, Andy Gill (ed.), NME, 24 November 1984, p. 58.


centred, then, on “what it omits”. Another letter from Belfast expressed a similar view, claiming that Tyler was “risking his reputation by spouting about Ireland after a two-minute visit”, before concluding: “Why is it that the only protestant

permitted to speak in the article was the most reactionary you could dig up?” 153.

This was, perhaps, the first time that NME had been chastised for the way in

which it had handled the conflict, for most complaints on this topic in the past had

addressed the paper’s lack of attention to it. The Tyler piece, though – with its overt

asymmetries – provoked criticism not only for its preferential view of republicans,

but also for the way it portrayed Protestants. Significantly, Tyler would recall, in his

memoir, that his research for this piece had included a meeting with an “English

soldier who’d been posted to Northern Ireland”, and who had “a compelling story

to tell” 154. If such an interview took place, it did not appear in the article.

Although it had taken NME four years – following Martin’s feature – to return

to Northern Ireland, the paper would come back to the topic much more quickly

after the “Bomb Culture” piece. As mentioned above, a letter had appeared in

NME in 1984 enquiring why the paper had not interviewed Gerry Adams, then

president of Sinn Féin, or Danny Morrison, who at the time was Sinn Féin’s director

of publicity. Whether or not it was prompted by this reader, by 1986, the paper

had sought to speak with Adams, after contacting Morrison 155. This endeavour

would lead, moreover, to the curation of NME’s special issue on Northern Ireland,

which came together through rather complex (not to say contradictory) means. I

will explore this issue here.

1986: “Perilous waters… without a map”

NME’s coverage of the conflict peaked with the publication of a special themed

issue on this topic in 1986. The driving force behind this issue, which featured five

distinct articles focused on Northern Ireland, seems to have been Stuart Cosgrove,

who was then a leading figure at the paper through his role as media editor 156.

However, in the period after Spencer’s departure as editor in 1985 157, Cosgrove

accrued even greater power in the NME office, emerging as a dominant voice after

the appointment of Spencer’s replacement, Ian Pye, who was seen by staff as a

somewhat ineffectual editor 158. Indeed, though Pye was formally in charge of NME,

Cosgrove would often act, suggests Gavin Martin – who was then a senior writer

at the paper – as “the major force in deciding editorial policy” 159.

153. Ibid.154. Andrew Tyler, My Life as an Animal…, p. 111.

155. Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author; Lucy O’Brien, interview with the author

156. Ibid.; Mark Sinker, interview with the author.

157. Neil Spencer, “Ten Years in an Open Plan Office”, NME, 20 July 1985, p. 3.

158. Danny Kelly, interview with the author; Mark Sinker, interview with the author; Paul Gorman,

In Their Own Write…, p. 310.

159. Gavin Martin, interview with the author.


During this period, Cosgrove felt that NME “should do more on Ireland”, sensing, along with O’Hagan, that “this subject was being virtually ignored”, not least by the British left (with which the paper was, of course, bound up), who

often seemed, says Cosgrove, “reluctant to deal with Northern Ireland” 160, a point

confirmed by the fact that Britain’s leading left-wing journal, the New Left Review,

failed to publish a discrete piece on this topic during the 1980s 161.

As Cosgrove explains, there were two specific motivations for NME extending

its coverage of the Troubles. First, there was, he says, “a vested interest element

to this for the paper” in that a number of bands then popular with NME readers

hailed from the island of Ireland and had, in various ways, invoked the conflict,

and thus some coverage of this was required to contextualise their work 162. Second,

Cosgrove felt, in his capacity as media editor, that it was part of his “job spec”

(as he puts it) to address contemporary media issues, and “one of the biggest

[such] issues around”, he says, was media coverage of Northern Ireland. “The more

establishment mainstream media [at that time] were rock solid scared of Ireland”,

recalls Cosgrove 163. In this context, his wish for NME to address the conflict was

informed by a broader concern with “subjects that the mainstream media seemed

frightened of”, with Northern Ireland becoming, during that period, the key cur-

rent-affairs issue that “spooked people” 164. Part of the immediate context for this

– in the months leading up to NME’s special issue – lay in the BBC’s Real Lives crisis, which had unfolded during the previous year 165.

This crisis centred on a planned BBC television documentary on the Troubles

entitled Real Lives: The Edge of the Union that (controversially) included an inter-

view with Martin McGuinness. Prior to the announcement of the film, Margaret

Thatcher had made a (now famous) speech, calling on media to “starve the terrorist

[…] of the oxygen of publicity” 166, which sent a clear signal to journalists seeking

to engage with the conflict. Her government would, indeed, intervene with the

Real Lives film, leading to its withdrawal, and prompting a highly publicised BBC

strike 167.

The controversy had begun when the (then) British Home Secretary, Leon

Brittan – who felt that an interview with McGuinness could “give succour” to Sinn

Féin and the IRA – expressed his concerns to the BBC, whose Board of Governors

conceded that the programme should not be broadcast in its intended form 168.

This, in turn, provoked a high-profile strike, in which “2,000 BBC journalists

160. Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author.

161. Sam Porter, Denis O’Hearn, “New Left Podsnappery…”, p. 131.

162. For an account of such musicians, see Sean Campbell, “‘Agitate, Educate, Organise’: Partisanship,

Popular Music and the Northern Ireland Conflict”, Popular Music, vol. 39, no. 2, 2020, p. 233-256.


164. Ibid.

165. Ibid. For an account of this context, see Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”…, p. 251-259.

166. Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”…, p. 253.

167. Ibid., p. 251-259.

168. Ibid., p. 254, 256.


and staff staged an unprecedented walk out and NCA [news and current affairs]

programming on television and radio was blacked out” 169. Although the planned

programme, including the McGuinness interview, would eventually be shown,

the issues that the controversy raised – about the media’s capacity to cover Irish

republicanism – became a key censorship issue in Britain at that time (as evidenced

by the introduction of the “broadcasting ban” in 1988).

The Real Lives crisis was, then, part of the immediate context for NME’s 1986

special issue. Planning for the issue appears to have begun with Cosgrove seeking

an interview with the leadership of Sinn Féin 170. The “motivation” for this was

– in the words of the former NME writer Lucy O’Brien – to “get the voice of the

IRA and Sinn Féin” in the paper, and thus afford them “a platform, at a time when

they were being denied a voice” 171. This suggests that the inclusion of such views

in the NME did not constitute an overt endorsement; rather it sought to ensure

that republican perspectives were publicly aired. In this context, Spencer reflects

that, during his editorship of NME (1978-1985), none of the writers “held any

brief for Sinn Féin”. “I can’t think of anybody ever sticking up for those people”,

he relates, only conceding that there might have been “a sort of possibly misplaced

sense of romanticism” towards Irish republicanism 172. Cosgrove extends this point,

explaining that while NME was “not a republican paper”, “it was perceived that

republican communities […] were more attuned to the values of the NME”. “Of the

various traditions within Northern Ireland”, he suggests, “the republican movement

was closer to the NME”, not least because unionist politics “tended to be further

to the right” 173.

In any case, Cosgrove made contact with Morrison at Sinn Féin’s office in

Belfast, with a view to meeting Adams 174. However, this plan would gradually

switch, says Cosgrove, “for a whole range of reasons”, not the least of which was the

fact that NME wished, in his words, “to report from Derry” (because of its musical

associations with bands such as The Undertones and That Petrol Emotion), more

than Belfast 175. Cosgrove’s interview would, in turn, be with Martin McGuinness,

a native and resident of Derry. McGuinness was also, as Cosgrove notes, “a hugely

controversial character, a hugely divisive character”, and a figure, he says, “that the

British state truly hated”. In this context, “getting an interview with him wasn’t

simple”, says Cosgrove: “we had to negotiate it” 176. Once arranged, Cosgrove travelled

to Derry, where the interview was staged in the city’s Bogside, a republican enclave.

He recounts the complex arrangements that preceded the rendezvous:

169. Ibid., p. 256-257.

170. Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author; Lucy O’Brien, interview with the author.

171. Lucy O’Brien, interview with the author.



174. Ibid.; Lucy O’Brien, interview with the author.


176. Ibid.


I was taken to a small house in the Bogside […] [and] they put a kind of blindfold around me […] over my eyes […] to slightly disorientate me to where I was going, and then I was led out the back door, and up through a back stairwell of a garden, and into another house, and then round another house, and up to a third house, and then brought out to this road where a car was parked. I get up to the top and I’m put into the back of this car. By this time, the face mask has come off. And I’m sitting right

behind this man, who’s in the passenger seat, and I’m in the back seat […]. The guy in

the passenger seat was Martin McGuinness […]. So we began the interview 177.

The conversation was marked, says Cosgrove, by “a degree of caution, even

nervousness on both sides”. McGuinness seemed “very tense”, he reflects. Similarly,

Cosgrove was, not unexpectedly, quite anxious: “‘Shitting it’ might be the best

colloquial expression”, he recalls 178. Consequently, the dynamics of the interview

were somewhat circumscribed. In this context, Cosgrove explains: “I wasn’t going

to exactly argue or threaten him or anything like that ’cos it was not that kind of

environment”. However, it seems that there was also a degree of compatibility

between much of what McGuinness said – in terms of his political views – and

what Cosgrove at the time felt. Reflecting on this (with more than three decades

hindsight), Cosgrove suggests that:

The only thing I can remember sort of disagreeing with him about [was the phrase]

“I take my politics from home, and my religion from Rome”, and whilst it’s a nice

little kind of catchphrase, I kind of felt it let him off the hook on what I would call the

less savoury elements of kind of Vatican theology at that time, issues like abortion or

contraception 179.

For Cosgrove, these were issues that “made you question whether as a pro-

gressive politician taking your religion from Rome is always necessarily the best

thing to do”. “But that was the only thing that I remember him saying that I felt was

contentious”, Cosgrove says. “The rest of the things were kind of fairly mainstream

republican politics […]. I’m a Scottish republican myself so I didn’t find a lot of

it kind of challenging” 180. To be fair to Cosgrove, though, he did refer, during the

interview, to the fact that his cousin, Philip Geddes, had been killed in the IRA

bombing of Harrods in London in 1983. Although McGuinness’ response to this

point was, he says, “respectful”, Cosgrove decided – “for reasons now buried in

time” – to exclude this exchange from the article 181.

After the interview had concluded, Cosgrove evidently informed McGuinness

of his wish for the published article to be featured on the NME cover, suggesting

that the potential for this would be assisted by a striking image that evoked the

interview’s themes. Recounting this point, Cosgrove explains:


178. Ibid.179. Ibid.180. Ibid.181. Ibid.


I said to Martin McGuinness, “Martin, one of the things that we actually need is photo-graphs”. And I said “there’s a debate that we might put this on the front page”. I always knew that was going to be fairly tricky because the NME didn’t really like politics on the front cover, they preferred bands. And so I had this conversation with him and I said: “We’re looking for what might make a good photograph for the NME”, and he said to me, jokingly: “Do you not think I cut it as an NME front cover star?” And I said: “well, no, not really”. And he said “what could you do?” And I said “I know it may be a wee bit of a cliché, but we could take some young active service volunteers and maybe photograph them against the graffiti or the Derry walls or something like that” […].

So we chatted about that and within maybe something like ten minutes his team had

assembled four young men in balaclavas who were armed. They were armed volunteers 182.

At this point, the photographer who had accompanied Cosgrove to Derry

took shots of the four figures for the proposed NME cover, although none of these

subsequently appeared in the issue, either on the front cover (which in the end

featured the Irish boxer, Barry McGuigan), or in the McGuinness piece 183. Instead,

the interview was illustrated with a conventional photograph of McGuinness outside

a republican information centre in Derry.

Before addressing the article, it is necessary to first of all note that, prior to

its publication, a significant change emerged in NME’s conceptualisation of the

piece, with the paper electing to append an additional interview – with an Ulster

unionist figure – in order to afford some ostensible balance to its McGuinness

coverage 184. As Cosgrove explains, this wish to complement the McGuinness piece

with a corresponding exchange with a unionist spokesperson “came about out of

the crude kind of BBC idea of balance”, and hence was “a fudge”, in the sense of

an unsatisfactory equivocation 185. The paper would, then, seek to amend its initial

(“underground”-informed) impetus for the McGuinness interview by re-conceiving

the coverage, from an editorial perspective, within a quasi-public-service framework,

and with concern for “balance”.

This shift appears to have emerged from the office of the then editor, Ian Pye.

Mark Sinker, a contributor to NME in the 1980s, suggests that Pye often “dealt

with conflict” in the paper by “moving around” articles in “a bureaucratic way, so

that they balanced” 186. In the ensuing effort to offset the McGuinness interview by

adding an exchange with a unionist MP, Gavin Martin was dispatched to Belfast to

speak with Peter Robinson, the (then) deputy leader of the DUP, who at the time

was seen, says Martin, as a unionist equivalent of McGuinness. “They decided that

182. Ibid.183. It has, moreover, proved impossible to locate the photographs. Those that appear in the issue are

credited to Susan Elliot. She politely declined a request to be interviewed for this article.

184. This anxiety to produce coverage that appeared balanced often permeated Troubles coverage,

particularly in scenarios where republicans had been offered a platform. For an account of “balance”

in relation to media coverage of the conflict, see Robert Savage, The BBC’s “Irish Troubles”…,

p. 110-151.


186. Mark Sinker, interview with the author.


they needed to leaven it”, relates Martin, “and put the other side of the equation”. This wish to extend coverage to (what Martin calls) “both sides of the thing” 187

was, of course, entirely reasonable, particularly in light of the criticism that the

paper had received, in 1984, for its asymmetric treatment of the conflict. The plan

to append the Robinson piece was, nonetheless, problematic in two key ways.

First, as Martin explains, the plan for him to conduct the interview was “a rather

crass bit of typecasting”: “the nominal Protestant in the office was seconded to go

over” and meet Robinson 188. Second, it is clear that Martin, in marked contrast to

Cosgrove (who had, of course, wanted to interview McGuinness, and sympathised

with at least some of his views), had no wish to speak with Robinson, and was not,

as Cosgrove notes, “a fan” of the DUP 189.

Moreover, while Martin recognised that part of the reasoning for the McGuinness

article emerged from a concern with censorship 190, he is, in retrospect, sceptical of the

coverage. “What the hell was the NME doing, really, interviewing these people?”, he

wonders, adding: “Perilous waters to be treading in without a map”. “What was the

goal or the aim?”, asks Martin, expressing regret for his involvement in the piece: “It

makes me sick to my stomach to think that […] we were giving propaganda space to

these two poisonous men” 191. Whether or not NME should have offered a platform

to such figures, it is clear that the reason for including the Robinson interview (to

contrive a sort of balance) was in the end undermined by the fact that Cosgrove’s

account of McGuinness was quite sympathetic, while Martin’s portrait of Robinson

was hostile; thus, if “balance” was achieved, it was only through the fact that both

politicians appeared, rather than via the way that they were viewed or handled.

This points to a crucial flaw in the special issue: NME set out, in this effort, to

critique mainstream coverage of the conflict, and afford space to sidelined views

(specifically those of Irish republicans). However, in the process of production,

the issue was repositioned towards a (more) “public-service” approach, albeit

unsatisfactorily. This raises a key dilemma regarding NME’s role: was it a counter-

cultural platform (like the “underground” press on which it drew), or was it a

“public-service” outlet, addressing issues in quasi-balanced ways. Whilst the paper

had expressed emphatic views – in partisan ways – on key political themes (such

as the 1984-1985 miners’ strike, or Apartheid in South Africa), on the question of

Northern Ireland, it could not speak unequivocally.

This wish to seem “balanced” was rendered explicit in the paper’s layout and

presentation of the McGuinness and Robinson interviews, which appeared – in

the end – as a single piece, with a shared stand-first, on the same double-page

spread, as if the interviews had been conceived and conducted at the same time,

thus bequeathing a veneer of (preplanned) editorial / ideological balance on NME’s


188. Ibid.189. Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author.

190. Gavin Martin, interview with the author; Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author.



part. Ironically, though, the contrived proximity of the published interviews had the effect of amplifying the prevailing predilections of the NME office at that time,

which – whilst not overtly republican or pro-IRA – were perceptibly more disposed

to the politics of Sinn Féin than they were to the values of the DUP.

The paper’s preferences were pronounced across the McGuinness / Robinson

piece (fig. 5). Even its byline displayed a subtle bias, chronicling that Cosgrove

“met with McGuinness in the Bogside”, whilst Martin “interviewed Robinson at

Stormont” 192. This is underscored by certain graphic qualities. Each side of the

double-page spread is illustrated with two images; the left, focused on McGuinness,

features a photo of the famous “Free Derry” wall, as well as a middle-distance shot

of McGuinness (taken by NME), wearing a plain sweater, and facing the camera,

outside a drab building (with mesh windows), whose signage reads: “Republican

information centre”. Conversely, the Robinson piece, on the right-hand page, is

illustrated with a (Press Association) close-up of a besuited, bespectacled Robinson,

looking somewhat stern, and glancing off camera, alongside an image of Belfast City

Hall, bedecked in a banner that reads: “Belfast Says No”, and captioned with the

(at the time) widely-circulated joke: “But the man from Del Monte says ‘Yes!’” 193.

Whilst the respective photographs of McGuinness and Robinson present a

clear contrast, the distinction between (and positioning of) the location shots is

more striking, with the “Free Derry” wall appearing at the top left-hand side of the

double-page feature (thus framing the interviews), while the “Belfast Says No” photo

is placed at the bottom right-hand side, thus pictorially punctuating the piece. The

geo-political binaries invoked here (Derry / Belfast, republicanism / unionism) thus

commence with an image conjuring “freedom”, and culminate in one connoting

negation.

This visual scheme is echoed in the respective interviews. Though the McGuinness

piece does not shy away from his association with paramilitary activism (noting that

he is “alleged […] to be Chief of Staff of the IRA”) 194, the article seeks to make sense

of (rather than dismiss) its interviewee’s politics. It explores four key themes: the

mainstream media’s coverage of the conflict (and its treatment of Sinn Féin); the

legitimacy of political violence; McGuinness’ political formation; and the perceived

tensions between Catholicism and socialism.

The feature begins with a critique of media accounts of Sinn Féin, referencing the

Real Lives film, and reflecting on the restricted coverage received by the republican

movement, whilst stressing NME’s wish to intervene against mainstream reportage.

Thus, Cosgrove explains that “Whilst the Provos engage in a war with the British

army, Sinn Féin struggle to promote their Republican socialist cause against an

establishment media which is directly opposed to all they stand for” 195. If the tone here

192. Stuart Cosgrove, Sean O’Hagan, Gavin Martin, “Those Petrol Emotions”, p. 24-25.

193. At the time, a popular television advert for Del Monte orange juice featured the catchphrase:

“The man from Del Monte, he says yes!”.

194. Stuart Cosgrove, Sean O’Hagan, Gavin Martin, “Those Petrol Emotions”, p. 24.

195. Ibid.


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invites sympathy, it also suggests affinities between the outlook of NME and that of

Sinn Féin, both of whom, at the time, saw themselves as espousing a “socialist cause

against an establishment media”. However, the key way in which NME addressed the

conflict – in this special issue – was via an anti-censorship stance. Rather than overtly

taking sides, then, the paper set out a case for granting space to the republican view,

on the grounds that it was more marginalised (or mischaracterised) in the mainstream

mediascape. In this context, Cosgrove quotes McGuinness, in the piece, explaining:

[…] there is very heavy censorship of the Sinn Féin position, of the Republican position

generally, and […] people haven’t had the opportunity to make a fair assessment based

on the facts. The media has not given Irish Republican spokespersons the opportunity

to articulate our policies, in the same way they have afforded opportunities to, for

example, Ian Paisley and the Unionists.

Consequently, for McGuinness, “the Republican position is virtually unknown” 196.

The latter also points, in the piece, to overt censorship of Irish republicans on

British media platforms, citing the apparent practice of “British newspapers and

British-based television companies making programmes about Ireland without ever

contacting a spokesperson for the Republican movement”. In this way, the British

Government had, McGuinness claimed: “[…] very cleverly engineered a situation

where we cannot either be seen or heard through the media” 197. This suggestion

(that Sinn Féin had been subjected to de facto censorship) was, of course, the very

premise on which NME had conceived the interview, though this wish was, of

course, obscured in the paper’s gradual switch towards “balance”.

A more problematic theme than this was, of course, that of paramilitary violence.

On this point, McGuinness was unequivocal: “[…] the IRA have the right to use

armed struggle to end what I believe to be an evil form of government in this part

of Ireland” 198. At this point in the exchange, Cosgrove poses a brace of questions

related to the Harrods bombing. The first seems to hail very much from Cosgrove’s

own point of view (in that his cousin had been killed in the bombing): “[…] many

people, including people who are sympathetic to Republican politics, see your

defence of the armed struggle as part of a policy of violent actions that includes

indiscriminate bombings like that which occurred at Harrods”. Cosgrove appends

this point with his most combative query, probing Sinn Féin’s socialism: “Surely you

don’t justify that [bombings of retail stores] in the name of socialism?”. Stating that

“the bombing of Harrods was seen by almost everyone in Britain as an atrocious act”,

Cosgrove suggests that the attack was “of a different status than violence between

the IRA and members of the British army” 199. At this point, McGuinness replies that

“After the Harrods bombing you did have a statement from the IRA saying that this

particular type of operation was not acceptable to them”. Thus, while McGuinness

196. Stuart Cosgrove, Sean O’Hagan, Gavin Martin, “Those Petrol Emotions”, p. 24.197. Ibid.198. Ibid.199. Ibid.


“unambiguously defends” (as Cosgrove notes in the piece) “the killing of ‘legitimate targets’”, he adds that “there shouldn’t be civilian bombings” (a nuance that perhaps made the Sinn Féin position on paramilitary action more palatable to NME) 200.

The article then turns attention – on a separate page, thereby extending the inter-

view in a manner not afforded to Robinson – to its final two points: McGuinness’

political formation, and the possible tensions been Catholicism and socialism. The

first of these undoubtedly has the effect of rendering McGuinness more relatable

to the reader, and summons sympathy for the standpoint he has reached. “What

personal events led to McGuinness’ politicisation?”, ponders Cosgrove. In turn,

McGuinness suggests that the “significant step” was “the situation at the time of

the Civil Rights campaign in 1968 when we were demanding ‘one person, one

vote’ and […] the Unionist establishment were not willing to grant it”. “That led”,

he relates, “to a stand-up battle between the people of this area [the Bogside] and

the RUC, who would constantly invade the area, beating people in their homes”.

Such events had, he recalls:

[…] a traumatic effect on me. Out of the trauma came a realisation that what was hap-

pening was not simply a question of the right to vote, it was about the national question,

and my opinion that there would never be peace in this country until that was resolved.

This realisation was underlined, he says, on 9 August 1971, the day that internment

was introduced in Northern Ireland. “My life changed absolutely [on that day]”,

McGuinness says: “I was just working normally, like any other person; but then

my home was raided by British soldiers” 201. In light of the fact that such comments

appeared during a period in which the British government (and much of the country’s

mainstream media) were seeking – in Max Pettigrew’s words – to “depoliticise and

de-legitimise the motivations of the republican movement by representing republi-

cans as ‘terrorists’ and ‘criminals’” 202, this piece – in common with the Tyler feature

two years earlier – presented an alternate view, ascribing reason to republicanism.

The final topic explored by NME in the piece is how McGuinness reconciled

Catholic teachings with socialist policies. In this context, Cosgrove wondered if the

historical association of Irish republicanism with both Catholicism and socialism con-

tained “a contradiction”. At this point, McGuinness deployed the above-mentioned

line – “we take our religion from Rome and our politics from home” – with which

Cosgrove took issue. Nevertheless, McGuinness did concede, in the interview, to

encountering certain dilemmas in assimilating his faith and politics. “I have problems

within the church with certain aspects of Catholic theology that do not square with

my socialism”, he explained, pointing to the view of the Church on “homosexuals”

and “divorcees” 203. Such concessions (whether consciously or not) helped bequeath

an impression of Sinn Féin that was less at variance with the outlook of NME.

200. Stuart Cosgrove, Sean O’Hagan, Gavin Martin, “Those Petrol Emotions”, p. 24.201. Ibid., p. 27.

202. Max Pettigrew, “The ‘Oxygen of Publicity’ and the Suffocation of Censorship…”, p. 234.



The tone of the Robinson piece is quite different. It begins with a quote from

the latter invoking his “love” for “the monarchy, the flag, the symbols of the state”

(situating him in opposition to the “underground” values of NME), while Martin

informs readers that “Robinson is so keen to prove his Britishness that he […]

will fight against British law in order to stay British!”. In marked contrast to the

amenable and open-minded introduction that NME afforded McGuinness, then,

Robinson is flagrantly mocked. At the same time, though, Martin is keen to castigate

– in a manner which mirrored much of his commentary on the conflict – both the

DUP and Sinn Féin: “Robinson’s brand of politics”, he explained, “is every bit as

dogmatic and dangerous as Republican extremism” 204.

It seems clear at this point, then, that Cosgrove and Martin hold different views:

the former had not characterised McGuinness – who, as Sinn Féin deputy, and

alleged Chief of Staff of the IRA, could be viewed as an “extremist” – as remotely

“dogmatic” or “dangerous”. In contrast, Martin sees Robinson’s “fiery rhetoric

and barely veiled threats” as exacerbating the conflict, claiming that “hypocrisy,

contradiction and illogic are recurring undertones in [Robinson]’s polemic”. Martin

also lays stress on Robinson’s support for the Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign,

an initiative that would have been starkly at odds with the ethos of NME 205. In what

is perhaps the most damning line in the piece, though, Martin relates that Robinson

“looks the politician most likely to cross over” the “fine line between militant

Unionism and paramilitary activity” 206. Thus, though relatively little attention was

paid in the McGuinness interview to his alleged role as IRA Chief of Staff, special

reference is made, on the adjacent page, to Robinson’s paramilitary potential. If

some sort of “balance” had been achieved, then, by adding the Robinson piece, it

was only through simple inclusion, rather than treatment or handling. Of course,

NME was not, at the end of the day, a “public-service” outlet, but a left-leaning,

youth-cultural platform with a special debt to the “underground” press. Thus, it was

unlikely to be equitable in appraising the DUP against Sinn Féin. In the process of

producing the 1986 special issue, the paper became caught in a conundrum regarding

its own ethos and codes, initially conceiving the coverage through an oppositional

lens, before switching, once the McGuinness piece was complete, towards a sort of

“public-service” stance. Ironically, though, the adjacent placing of the McGuinness

and Robinson interviews that this shift brought about only served to foreground

NME’s preferences. This would, in turn, prompt multiple letters of complaint.

Significantly, Sean O’Hagan would (again) respond to the readers’ views. The

first such letter (from a reader in Lossiemouth in Scotland) enquired: “When will

hacks of the music press and NME in particular stop pontificating on ‘the troubles’

in N. Ireland? We read article after article full of endless clichés that say and solve

204. Ibid., p. 25.

205. The Save Ulster from Sodomy campaign was launched in the late 1970s by Ian Paisley, the then

leader of the DUP, in an effort to prevent the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Northern

Ireland.



nothing”. Such articles “invariably adopt”, the reader claimed, “the trendy pro-Left

wing (ie Republican) stance and portray any Loyalist viewpoint as the ramblings

of some neo-fascist crackpot”. The reader then chastised the “hacks” who had

issued commentary on the conflict for being “naively ignorant of the facts and

totally unqualified to write about the problems of Ulster” 207. O’Hagan’s response

stressed the original aim of the special issue. “The N. Ireland articles weren’t out

to ‘solve’ anything”, relayed O’Hagan, but were instead “an attempt to rupture the

prevailing media silence that hangs over Britain’s longest war”. With regards to the

view that NME’s writers were “ignorant” and “unqualified”, O’Hagan explained:

“Both Gavin and myself were born and bred in Northern Ireland” 208.

A similar missive (from a reader in Edinburgh) staged a short parody of the

McGuinness / Robinson interviews, reducing the exchanges to a pair of highly

exaggerated questions in order to highlight the paper’s bias. A comically uncritical

one for McGuinness (“Well, Martin, tell us how Sinn Féin has been pursuing the

struggle for a free and just Ireland ridden of British oppression?”) was followed by

a menacingly sectarian one for Robinson (“You raving Ulster proddies are all the

same. The sooner our boys, the Freedom Fighters in green, get you, the better!”)

before the reader exclaimed, in their own voice: “And Republicanism has got

bugger all to do with socialism” 209. This question of whether Sinn Féin could be

considered socialist emerged in many readers’ letters following the special issue.

In this context, one reader (from Belfast) explained: “I am sickened to read that

Martin McGuinness in any way considers himself a ‘socialist’. His references to

‘our socialism’ are McGuinness-speak for largely unjustified acts of murder and

intimidation, part of a concerted campaign of violence”. The reader then went

on to enfold Robinson in their socialist critique of sectarianism: “[…] people like

McGuinness and Peter Robinson promote the politics of working class division

along sectarian lines […] The cause of socialism in the province will be continually

held back as long as it is associated with people like McGuinness” 210.

While Gavin Martin would, at least in retrospect, express a similar view,

O’Hagan endeavoured, at the time, to advance a case for Sinn Féin’s socialism.

“I personally think”, he replied, “the issue of self-determination for Ireland has

a great deal to do with socialism and the idea of Britain dividing a country, then

upholding the ‘Britishness’ of the colonial state is, surely, the vast antithesis of

socialism”. For O’Hagan, then, “the ideals” that had been “espouse[d]” by “the

republican movement” should “find favour with any socialist” 211. Three other letters

appeared in that week’s issue, sequenced after the critiques outlined above, and

which praised NME’s coverage in the special issue, stressing that it was “refreshing

to find argument and analysis from both points of view”, and applauding the paper

207. “Big Baad Bag”, Sean O’Hagan (ed.), p. 50.

208. Ibid.209. Ibid.210. Ibid.211. Ibid.


for the “time, space and group of writers” that it had “devoted” to the topic 212. More letters appeared in the following weeks, including one (from Kenilworth in England) that took exception to NME’s habit of using “Gasbag” to host debates on the Troubles: “When I pick up the NME it pisses me off to find a letters page

devoted entirely to Northern Ireland”, the reader explained 213.

In the six years since 1980, then, “Gasbag” had gone from registering readers’

complaints about NME’s lack of engagement with the conflict, to printing claims

that it had granted too much space to this issue. Indeed, the paper would begin to

withdraw from this topic, publishing its final piece on the conflict in March 1987,

addressing (again) the issue of inadequate media coverage, and describing Northern

Ireland as “the British media’s enduring blind spot” 214. This article thus returned

NME’s engagement with the Troubles to the debate initiated by the reader from

Derry in August 1980 215, exploring a theme (the paucity of media reports) that served

as a safe and uncontroversial means by which to address the conflict. Subsequent

invocations of the Troubles would be restricted to en passant comments by outspoken

writers such as Steven Wells 216. Indeed, when major events related to the conflict

occurred, such as the Gibraltar killings in March 1988, or the “broadcasting ban”

in October 1988, they were addressed via short news items, rather than lengthy

articles 217. Furthermore, NME would turn, at this time, away from politics per se,

following a series of personnel changes that its publisher, IPC, forced on the paper in

reaction to a front page endorsement of Neil Kinnock in the 1987 General Election,

as well as in the aftermath of a withdrawn censorship cover later that year (that saw

many staff, including Cosgrove, leave NME) 218. By the end of the 1980s, then, the

paper had exchanged its “highly politicised” outlook for what Simon Reynolds has

called “a more tabloid, populist” ethos 219.

Conclusion

Although NME strove to engage with the Irish conflict, it could not achieve con-

sensus on it among its staff or readers. As Danny Kelly observes, coverage of any

social conflict that is “in the nature of civil war” (such as that of the Troubles in

Northern Ireland) will necessarily attract claims that it is “biased one way or the

other”. “That’s the problem of reporting what’s going on in Northern Ireland”, he

212. Ibid.213. “Big Baad Bag”, Steven Wells (ed.), NME, 21 June 1986, p. 54.

214. Denis Campbell, “A Deafening Silence”, NME, 21 March 1987, p. 34.

215. Ibid.216. Steven Wells, “God Save Us from the USA”, NME, 11 June 1988, p. 29.

217. Anonymous, “Strummer Slams ‘State Terrorism’”, NME, 21 May 1988, p. 5; Anonymous, “Pogues

Fall from Grace with Government”, NME, 19 November 1988, p. 3.

218. Pat Long, The History of the NME…, p. 171-173; Stuart Cosgrove, interview with the author; Lucy

O’Brien, interview with the author.

219. Simon Reynolds, “Return of the Inkies”, New Statesman and Society, 31 August 1990, p. 26.


explains, “whichever way your piece leaned, you were going to get criticism” 220. Moreover, Kelly questions the very possibility of a popular-cultural publication, such as NME, engaging with what he calls “serious” politics, suggesting that while “all writing about art has to be ‘small p’ political”, when such discourse becomes

“properly political, overtly political, ‘big P’ political” – particularly in the pages of

the music press – it seems, in his words, “clunky” 221.

Whether or not this is true, NME at least sought (and often struggled) to offer

coverage of the conflict at a time when many “serious” publications eschewed it.

The paper pursued a range of different positions on the topic, from deploying it

as background in tour reports, to surveying readers’ views, shifting from reticence

(i.e. not commenting) to redirection (encouraging other outlets to speak), whilst

admonishing mainstream media coverage, before expressing anti-sectarian, class-

based views, ahead of its endorsements of “Troops Out”, and signalling of affinities

with republicanism, before it returned to the safer terrain of media critique. The

paper’s shifting views and approaches were born, in part, of the practicalities

of convening a weekly publication (to a tight deadline) in a collaborative (and

often conflicted) workspace 222, but also point to a tension, at the heart of NME,

between a wish to act as an oppositional outlet (for example by endorsing Irish

republicanism), and an inclination to operate as a “public-service” platform (by

presenting both republican and unionist views). The fact that NME did not over-

look the conflict, nor adhere to the often simplistic coverage offered by much of

the mainstream press 223, is surely noteworthy. The content excavated here serves,

alongside the insights afforded by the interviews, to illuminate the operations of

a high-profile print outlet in its interventions on the Irish conflict, unveiling the

issues that emerged when a music paper endeavoured to engage with political

concerns. If other media outlets had made a commensurate effort to address the

conflict, then perhaps the British public (both at the time and in the context of

the recent “Brexit” crisis) might have accrued a more nuanced conception of the

conflict, and Anglo-Irish politics in general 224.

Sean Campbell

Cambridge School of Creative Industries Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge

220. Danny Kelly, interview with the author.

221. Ibid.

222. Len Brown, interview with the author, 20 July 2020.

223. For examples of this coverage, see Liz Curtis, Ireland: The Propaganda War…

224. Stephanie Boland, “As Brexit Comes Closer, British Ignorance about Ireland Becomes Unforgivable”,

Prospect, 27 November 2017; Megan Nolan, “I Didn’t Mind the English, Until Now”, The New York Times, 19 October 2018, p. 35.


“You just went out and talked to them.”

An Interview with Maurice Hayes (1927-2017)

on the Work of the Northern Ireland

Community Relations Commission (1969-1975)

Abstract: This article reflects on the practice of reusing past interviews in order to improve our knowledge of historical events. It focuses on the period of the early years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland and draws on Martin J. McCleery’s recent work on internment (2015) to stress the importance of personal testimonies in reassessing the historical impact of micro-events and / or local events on people’s lives. By revisiting an interview with Maurice Hayes conducted in 2004, the author investigates how the interviewee gives meaning to his personal experience of violence by using the scientific framework provided by specialists in oral history. The interview also serves to uncover some aspects of the ground-breaking work that had been implemented by the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission (1969-1975).

Keywords: history, Northern Ireland, interview, testimonies, Troubles.

Résumé : L’article propose une réflexion sur la pratique de la réutilisation d’entretiens effectués par le passé dans le but de développer la connaissance historique. Il se concentre sur la période du début du conflit des Troubles en Irlande du Nord et s’inspire des travaux menés récemment par Martin J. McCleery (2015) sur la mesure de l’internement administratif. L’auteure souligne l’importance du témoignage qui permet de réévaluer l’impact sur la vie des gens d’épisodes qui ont pu se produire à l’échelle locale et / ou de la micro-histoire. En réanalysant un entretien mené avec Maurice Hayes en 2004, l’auteure s’intéresse à la manière dont il donne sens à son expérience personnelle de la violence en ayant recours au cadre scientifique développé par les spécialistes de l’histoire orale. L’entretien permet également de mettre en lumière certains aspects méconnus du travail extrêmement novateur mené par la Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission entre 1969 et 1975.

Mots clés : histoire, Irlande du Nord, entretien, témoignage, Troubles.

Who was Maurice Hayes?

Maurice Hayes was a key figure in the recent history of Northern Ireland in many ways. He was the first Catholic to be appointed Ombudsman for Northern Ireland and was also a member of the Patten Commission in 1998, which eventually contributed to the creation of the Police Service of Northern Ireland. As a leading Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) figure and a former high-ranking Stormont

56 Joa na Etc ha rt

civil servant, he was a well-respected, extremely resourceful person. He was also a prominent figure in the Republic of Ireland, where he was nominated to Seanad Éireann by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in 1997 and re-nominated in 2002.

He was also involved in the first statutory policy promoting community relations in Northern Ireland 1 which was put in place during a highly troubled period, in 1969, by the Stormont administration under the influence of Harold Wilson’s Labour government 2. No such policy had ever been put in place since the creation of the regional government in 1921. In reality there was little enthusiasm in Stormont for this new policy of community relations, as indicated by the fact that six different ministers were appointed in five years (1969-1974) 3. Besides, the position was unfilled for two months in September and October 1971, during the crisis triggered by the introduction of internment in August 4.

The community relations policy was spearheaded by two statutory bodies between 1969 and 1975: the Community Relations (CR) Ministry and Commission (NICRC). The latter was in charge of a novel approach which sought to involve the community at large by supporting “local voluntary organisations” 5. Its two main leaders, chairman Maurice Hayes and director Hywel Griffiths, developed a series of audacious and ground-breaking policies in the fields of reconciliation and community development (CD) 6.

In 2004, when I was researching the history of the NICRC as part of my doctoral thesis, I met Maurice Hayes in Leinster House, Dublin. He had a very clear, insightful recollection of the work of the Commission in the short period in which he had chaired it (1969-1972). Hayes’ memories and reflections were key to understanding what was taking place at the time. Additional sources were also

1. In Northern Ireland, the 1969 community relations policies sought to improve relations between Catholics and Protestants.

2. The full historical analysis of the policy is available in: Joana Etchart, Les premières politiques de réconciliation en Irlande du Nord (1969-1998): l’histoire d’un renoncement, Brussels, P. Lang, 2017.

3. Robert Simpson (Stormont – Unionist): December 1969-March 1971; David W. Bleakley (Stormont – Northern Ireland Labour Party): March 1971-September 1971; Vacant: September-October 1971; W. B. McIvor (Stormont – Unionist): October 1971-March 1972; William van Straubenzee (Westminster Northern Ireland Office – Conservative): March-April 1972; Lord Windlesham (Westminster Northern Ireland Office – Conservative): April 1972-November 1973; Ivan Cooper (Stormont Assembly – Social Democratic and Labour Party): November 1973-May 1974.

4. On the meaning and consequences of internment, see: Martin J. McCleery, Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath: A New History of the Use of Internment without Trial in Northern Ireland, 1971-75, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2015.

5. This had been introduced by C. J. Bateman, Joint Working Party on Community Relations, Final Report, in Cabinet Meeting 2nd October 1969, Belfast, Offices of the Cabinet, 1969, CAB/4/1478/11, p. 1-2: “But it ought to encourage the growth of local voluntary organisations – only in this way can it get down to the ‘grass roots’ and involve local religious and political leaders”.

6. Additional explanations on the history and meanings of community development in Northern Ireland may be found in: Joana Etchart, “Community Development: Origins and Hybridization in Northern Ireland”, Revue Miroirs, no. 2, 2015, p. 139-152.

57A n In t e rv i ew w i t h M au ri c e H ay e s ( 1 9 2 7 - 2 0 1 7 ) …

used 7, but interviewing him – and Griffiths 8 – was deemed necessary to confirm some historical aspects concerning the inception of the policy.

But what is the relevance of listening to that interview again more than fifteen years later and, besides, of publishing it?

On the practice of revisiting interviews

Joanna Bornat reflected in 2010 9 on the possibility of revisiting interviews, which in itself is a contested practice in the field of oral history 10. Can they simply be considered as historical traces that may be explored and re-explored by others? While fine-combing through past testimonies may have pitfalls – especially as regards the necessity of having an excellent knowledge of the historical, social, political and economic context of the interview to be able to revisit it, we will argue that reusing interviews may also be central to better understanding the past.

Concerning the history of the early years of the Troubles, which is the historical episode that we are concerned with, it must be noted that oral history interviews have become quite readily available since the 1990s 11. They could be studied to

7. Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict: Experiences of a Catholic Public Servant, Belfast, Blackstaff Press, 1995; Maurice Hayes, Community Relations and the Role of the Community Relations Commission in Northern Ireland, London, Runnymede Trust, 1972; Maurice Hayes, Conflict Research, Coleraine, Centre for the Study of Conflict, University of Ulster, 1990; Maurice Hayes, Why Can’t They Be Like Us, Belfast, John Malone Memorial Committee, 1984; Maurice Hayes, Community Relations – A Historical Perspective, Belfast, Standing Advisory Commission on Human Rights, 1987; Maurice Hayes, Northern Ireland Administration in Retrospect: Challenge 90 Seminar, Belfast, unpublished, 1990; Maurice Hayes, “Neither Orange March nor Irish Jig: Finding Compromise in Northern Ireland”, in The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland. Peace Lectures from the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, Marianne Elliott (ed.), Liverpool, Liverpool University Press, 2002, p. 96-108.

8. Interview with Hywel Griffiths, Cardiff, 8 April 2005.9. Joanna Bornat, “Remembering and Reworking Emotions. The Reanalysis of Emotions in an

Interview”, Oral History, vol. 38, no. 2, 2010, p. 43-52.10. I should wish to thank my colleague Simona Tobia, who is a specialist in oral history, for providing

information and insight into these issues.11. For example, the following four major projects could be cited: INCORE (International Con-

flict Research Institute), University of Ulster, “Accounts of the Conflict. A Digital Archive of Personal Accounts of the Conflict in and about Northern Ireland”; Queen Mary University of London, in association with Dundalk Institute of Technology and Trinity College Dublin, “The Peace Process: Layers of Meaning – Layers of Meaning Online Directory”; Falls Community Council, “Dúchas Oral History Archive”; Northern Visions, “Our Generation – The Northern Irish Archive”. Written transcripts of interviews related to the early years of the Troubles and various forms of community activism may also be found in a series of pamphlets published by Michael Hall in 2005-2006: Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 1, Recollections by May Blood and Joe Camplisson, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 2, Recollections by Fr. Des Wilson and Tommy Gorman, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 3, Recollections by Jim McCorry and Jackie Hewitt, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset

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better apprehend the importance of historical events which are considered as critical moments in many interviews, such as the 1969 rioting and the episode of internment (1971-1975).

Precisely, McCleery 12 recently proposed to reappraise the historical episode of internment by looking at the impact of that decision on local communities outside Belfast. He argued that the consequences of internment were far-reaching because of the extent and brutality 13 of the arrests, which contributed to generalising the conflict outside the urban areas of Derry and Belfast. McCleery also links internment with the prisoners’ protest movements in the 1979-1982 period: according to him, a de facto special status was attributed to the internees 14 which was then extended to republican prisoners in July 1972. However, this status was repealed in 1975 and a major crisis ensued in prisons. It also led to a surge of contest movements such as the rent and rates strikes by tenants in public housing 15.

McCleery’s study forcefully brings back to the fore the violent context of the late 1960s and early 1970s and the harsh realities of people’s lives. His work emphasises two central aspects of the conflict that were also present in the interviews I had made back in the 2000s. Firstly, the pervasive, invasive, brutal and profoundly sad reality of violence is made apparent when McCleery mentions a series of critical episodes that took place locally: for example when the Army took over the premises of a primary school in Lurgan and then raided the Kilwilkie estate, which triggered rioting 16, or, when local unionist councillor John Taylor was shot six times in Armagh by the Official IRA 17. McCleery’s work rightly gives a central position to the local reality of the conflict. This raises the question of the impact of that vio-lence on people which, in turn, highlights the importance of “slowing the pace” of the historical analysis by paying attention to such micro-events and their impact.

Secondly, McCleery’s work also highlights the fact that the early 1970s were extraordinary times as regards the variety and dynamism of protest movements. For example, in July 1972 in Dungannon people were involved in local civil rights movements, local rent and rates strikes, anti-internment groups, and so

Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 4, Recollections by Jackie Redpath and Eilish Reilly, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 5, Recollections by Louis West and Anne Gallagher, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 6, Recollections by June Campion and Billy Hutchinson, Michael Hall (ed.), Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2005; Farset Community Think Tanks Project, Grassroots Leadership. 7, Recollections by Michael Hall, Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2006. More generally, on the nascent field of oral history in Ireland in the 1990s, see: G. Beiner, A. Bryson, “Listening to the Past and Talking to Each Other: Problems and Possibilities Facing Oral History in Ireland”, Irish Economic and Social History, no. 30, 2003, p. 71-78.

12. Martin J. McCleery, Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath…13. Ibid., p. 56-57.14. Ibid., p. 78-79.15. Ibid., p. 59-60.16. Ibid., p. 155.17. Ibid., p. 137.


on. Others were joining local brigades of paramilitary groups. Concomitantly, unionists organised rallies in support of internment and to demand more security measures 18. People were “getting involved” in many different types of responses. Interviews, and more generally interviews conducted as part of oral history projects, are an interesting source of information to better understand how people have interpreted their “involvement” in one form of activism or another.

As I reflected upon this, I came to realise that the interviews I had conducted for my previous research work could help me investigate these two aspects. I listened to them afresh, paying particular attention to the notion of one’s involvement and how it was constructed by the interviewee: what is the underlying logical construction that is built by the interviewee in order to explain how and when they “got involved”? What events marked him / her? And how is the link established between oneself and the historical event?

For instance, in the following extract taken from Maurice Hayes’ interview, he testified to the fact that the impact of internment had been far-reaching:

Maurice Hayes: The first [CR] Minister was actually quite a nice man called Dr. Simpson. It was his first Ministry. Then, next thing, they had an interesting guy just before McIvor, David Bleakley. And Bleakley you see was a trade unionist, he was a Labour Party member and he was brought in by Faulkner to run this. Faulkner was opening up things in Cabinet and he made the man Minister of Community Relations. This guy on a Friday he was applying to me for grants and on a Monday he was the Minister. And he was very centralising. He was also sort of an evangelical. He was a really nice man, good man. But he put it all on a very preachy side, like preaching people. If we all pray together and if we all learn to be together.

Whereas we were much more inclined to recognise the reality on the ground and how difficult it was to work with people where they were, you know. So he did six months there and of course the big disaster in the middle of that which I think virtually subverted the whole thing was internment because how can you talk about community relations when the government is putting its citizens in jail without trial? I was under a lot of pressure at that time to resign 19.

Joana Etchart: Why?

Maurice Hayes: From nationalist politicians. They wanted everybody to withdraw from public life. But we [members of the NICRC] turned ourselves almost overnight into an emergency relief organisation, you know: help people to find their relatives, help to deal with people who are in the middle of, you know, mass movements. And that changed the nature of our work I think for a while now.

18. Ibid., p. 129.19. Many testimonies from the period highlight the chaos that reigned following the introduction

of internment in August 1971. See for instance those collected by Michael Hall in the series of pamphlets entitled Grassroots Leadership.

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Hayes described internment as a turning point: “the big disaster in the middle of that” which “virtually subverted the whole thing”. Internment radically changed the work that they were doing in the Commission. This is corroborated by the description he gave in his autobiography:

The Commission staff struggled into work, each with his or her own horror story. It was clear that the city was in turmoil. Two meetings were rapidly convened, one of the field workers under Hywel Griffiths and one of the Commission, or such members as could get there. The field workers reported confusion, distress and fear on all sides. Local people were erecting improvised barricades to seal off entry to Catholic areas, which were becoming increasingly isolated and cut off. Public transport had broken down, and there was increasingly a breakdown in services. Catholic anger was directed towards the police and the army, who had swooped in fairly heavy-handed snatch squads in the early hours. There was the ominous rattling of hundreds of bin-lids as communities sent out a call to arms and for defenders to man the ramparts. Buses were being hijacked on all sides, cars were dragged from burned-out showrooms, builders’ skips, rubble, anything was being used to make barriers. Milk vans were being commandeered and the bottles used to make petrol bombs, pavements were being ripped up for missiles and to build barricades. Smoke, fire, disorder, noise and impending disaster were everywhere. In many Protestant districts too, similar if smaller barricades were being thrown up, out of fear of attack – unnecessary and unfounded, but none the less real for that – and at the ends of streets and at the entrance to housing estates groups of men with sticks who might be concerned citizens, or vigilantes, or worse, were standing an uneasy guard 20.

This description conveys the feelings of fear and anger in the community. In the interview, Hayes’ testimony sheds light on the deep antagonism that existed between “the government”, that is to say the Stormont administration, and “the citizens”. In reality, Hayes refers to nationalist citizens, as the majority of people arrested were alleged republicans 21. This feeling of ostracism was prevalent up until the abolition of Stormont in 1972. Besides, Hayes intentionally referred to nationalists as “citizens” in order to attribute a universal feature to them and to assert their full citizenship.

In his ground-breaking 1981 work on the importance of considering oral testimonies in historical research, Alessandro Portelli 22 insisted on the notion of “meaning”: how does the interviewee give meaning to the facts or to his experience? He argued that the personal interpretation may be indicative of a wider, collective construction of meaning. In the case of Maurice Hayes, he described the chaos induced by the implementation of internment and linked it with Stormont’s preju-dice against nationalists. But, in theory, the NICRC was also acting on behalf of the

20. Maurice Hayes, Minority Verdict…, p. 133-134.21. According to McCleery, between 1971 and 1975, following the introduction of internment,

2,060 suspected republicans were arrested and 109 suspected loyalists (Martin J. McCleery, Operation Demetrius and Its Aftermath…, p. 87).

22. Alessandro Portelli, “The Peculiarities of Oral History”, History Workshop, vol. 12, no. 1, Autumn 1981, p. 96-107.


same government who, under the pressure of Harold Wilson’s Labour government, had created the novel CR institutions in 1969. Hayes’ position was awkward as the body he was chairing – the Commission – was under the authority of Stormont. This was criticised by “nationalist politicians”, who wanted “everybody to withdraw from public life” and to boycott the Stormont administration.

But, as shown in this extract, he refused to do so. Interestingly, at that precise moment of the interview, Maurice Hayes’ voice paced down and he paused. Then he explained he had a firm belief that their role was to be “on the ground” and that they had “to work with people where they were”. He clarified his decision to remain in the Commission. It is, in itself, indicative of the intensity of the context induced by the introduction of internment.

When Maurice Hayes established a connection between the events and his position (“I was under a lot of pressure at that time to resign”), he was sharing what Albie Sachs – in the context of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission – has described as the “experiential truth” 23, as opposed to what is considered as the historical or logical truth. Sachs has sought to enhance the importance and features of experiential truth, which allows the person to talk about the historical events but also about how they link the event to themselves 24. Specialists in oral history have highlighted the value of such testimonies, which should not be merely discarded as subjective statements. It is precisely because they are personal, and sometimes emotional, that they are interesting.

Interviews and historical knowledge

Besides, interviews may also contribute to developing historical knowledge by bringing to the fore some elements that had not been recorded in any written document. When interviewing Hayes, I was interested in learning about the choices that were made by the leaders of the Commission, of which only traces could be found in historical documents. Why did the NICRC develop a commu-nity development (CD) approach? Why did they employ officers (community development officers – CDOs) who worked with “the community” in some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in Northern Ireland? More intriguingly, how did they work in places like Sandy Row, Lower Shankill and Lower Falls in Belfast, at a time when social tensions were at their height and when state institutions were radically repudiated in some of these places? Hayes’ and Griffiths’ recollections on

23. Albie Sachs, “The South African Truth Commission”, Montana Law Review, vol. 63, no. 2, 2002, p. 35.

24. Dany Rondeau, “Vérité et narration dans les processus de justice post-conflit: le cas de la Com-mission de vérité et réconciliation du Canada sur les pensionnats indiens”, in Les pratiques de vérité et de réconciliation dans les sociétés émergeant de situations violentes et conflictuelles, Joana Etchart, Franck Miroux (eds.), Bayonne, Institut francophone pour la justice et la démocratie, 2020, p. 32-54.

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the choices they made proved crucial to understanding the type of reconciliation work they developed.

One of the most audacious choices made by the Commission was to employ CDOs who worked in and with the communities. Simple as this idea may sound, it nonetheless seemed to be one of the most complicated aspects to implement. As Hayes said in the interview, the “social” dimension of their work, such as dealing with housing issues for example, provided “a reason for being on the ground”. Ultimately, the objective was to promote non-violent means of action or, as he put it: “a civic culture of discussion and of organisation”. The means, however, were quite bold given that the missions of the CDOs remained extremely flexible. Hayes specifically said that it meant “going into the community and not with any particular specification” (my emphasis). Hence, in a true bottom-up fashion, the policy was defined by / from the needs of the community. When asked how they worked with the communities, Hayes replied: “You just went out and talked to them”. This was emblematic not only of his personality, but also of his global approach of dealing with conflicts by networking and liaising.

His testimony also sheds light on the various forms of resistance to the type of work they promoted. Elected representatives and civil servants in Northern Ireland Office departments were rather suspicious of their work. Eventually, Hayes resigned as chairman of the Commission in 1972 as he believed that his position was no longer tenable following the violent episode of Bloody Sunday. Yet, the approach he developed together with Griffiths and the CDOs remains extraordinarily modern, notably regarding their insistence on liaison work and the acknowledgment of the risks involved.

There are more lessons to be learnt from the experiences and reflections of people like Maurice Hayes 25. As he passed away in December 2017, it seemed even more relevant to bring his testimony to the fore.

Interview with Maurice Hayes

Joana Etchart: How did you get involved in the NICRC?

Maurice Hayes: I was just asked to chair the Commission, being a town clerk in local government [in Downpatrick, Co. Down]. I was the secretary of the town council. I think I wasn’t intended to be the chairman, I think they asked somebody else to be the chairman, but he turned it down. Anyway, we started off with virtually no staff, with just an empty office and a desk and the question of how to make it up. I think the people who drafted the legislation 26 were very influenced by what was

25. Historians, practitioners and anyone interested in Maurice Hayes’ work and reflections can now visit the Maurice Hayes Archive held at the James Hardiman Library, National University of Ireland (Galway). The archive was launched in March 2019.

26. The 1968 Race Relations Act served as a model for the Northern Ireland legislation, as shown by the similarities between the two pieces of legislation. Also, two high-ranking members of


happening in the civil rights movement in America in the late 1960s: you would have a riot and then the mayor would call a meeting with the churches and the businessmen and the really moderate exponents of different constituencies. And I think that’s what we were expected to do. We were expected to bring people together, the assumption being that if they got to know each other better all these misconceptions would fall away and misconceptions falling away then they would all be at peace with each other. They quite ignored actually the deep structural faults in the society and the way in which unfairness was there. It also, and this was a difficulty for us as a state-sponsored body, it rather defined the state out of the problem. They said “Well here are these Catholics, these Protestants and they’re fighting with each other, if they would only behave themselves. And we are up here the government. Everything will be all right”. And what they didn’t realise was the extent to which the government was itself, and certainly from the point of view of Catholics, seen to be a main driver of the problem in that the people who were not employing Catholics were public bodies, people who weren’t giving houses to Catholics were agents of the state and the police who were generally anti-Catholic as well were agents of the state. So that was part of the thing.

So I think we had to find a focus for ourselves, we had to find some ground to stand on, which would enable us actually yes to bring people together, but to do something, and which would enable us to have a credibility particularly to these people here, the Catholics. To tell them that we weren’t simply another public relations sort of exercise or window-dressing sort of thing. So, we decided the best thing to do was to concentrate on community development and again you get a challenge, you see, or a dilemma, because what community are you talking about? Are you talking about this utopian community in which there are both Catholics and Protestants who will do things together?

And you say “We’ll have community development and community work but only when it involves both sides”. Or do you say: “Well here are communities who feel very hurt, they are finding it hard to organise themselves, there are failures of leadership, there is an inarticulacy and the rest of it”? So what we got to do is to build them up as communities on their own there and there in the hope that after a while they could begin to approach each other with a degree of self-confidence and that they would then together find that they had problems with these people up here in relation to poverty, in relation to housing, in relation to employment and the rest of it. One of the difficulties, and the later CR Council [1990-] I think fell into this trap, if you’re insisting on togetherness, if you’re insisting that you are interested in people doing things together, it becomes an exercise at head counting,

CR bodies from Great Britain came to assist Stormont civil servants, notably C. J. Bateman, who led the Joint Working Party on Community Relations in 1969: “We had the assistance also of Mr John Lyttle, Chief Conciliation Officer of the Race Relations Board and Miss Nadine Peppard, General Secretary of the Community Relations Commission in Great Britain, at several meetings” (C. J. Bateman, Joint Working Party on Community Relations, Final Report, p. 1).

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you know we have forty Catholics and we have forty Protestants. So we decided, as a strategy, on community development 27.

J.E.: The name of the institution (Northern Ireland Community Relations Commis-sion – NICRC) echoed the legislation on Race Relations in Britain. Any comments on that?

M.H.: It was a complete transplant. The UK borrowed it from America. It was based on the assumption that the problem was the immigrant community. And it wasn’t actually to a great extent the problem; it was the host community. The idea was that if these immigrant communities could only come along and tell the host community about their dances and this and that, they would learn about each other. So that was imported into the UK and then when they had these talks going on under Callaghan particularly and people were being sent over, the people who were sent over to write the legislation and to write the prescriptions for the NICRC were people from the Home Office who had been doing the Race Relations stuff over there.

J.E.: But you didn’t follow exactly what the Race Relations Committees and Com-mission were doing in Britain.

M.H.: No, no, because we didn’t see any sense in it.

J.E.: You went into CD. Did you intend to focus on social issues?

M.H.: It was partly to get people a reason for being on the ground. Secondly to give people a focus around which to organise and cohere. Here you are talking about 1969, you had riots in the street, you had people being beaten up, even though they didn’t really have the sustained real warfare that you had afterwards. And what we were saying to people was: “You don’t actually have to burn down the City Hall in order to get your houses repaired, you know, there are other ways of doing it”. So CD was just a useful tool and we took it and I think we introduced CD into Northern Ireland.

J.E.: How did you get to know about it yourself?

M.H.: There is a couple of things. There was a movement in the South in the 1930s. Do you know who Muintir na Tíre are? It was run by a priest called John Hayes – he was no relation of mine but we happen to have the same name. There is a book actually out at the moment 28. They were built on the rural organisation. They were

27. When Maurice Hayes says that the leaders of the Commission “decided, as a strategy, on community development”, it shows that the Commission was put in place with no clear strategy – in reality there had been little reflection on how the British policy would be adapted to the Northern Irish situation. But it also means that the leaders of the Commission were able to choose the sort of policy that they wished to implement. The notion of the “empty office” is interesting. When Hayes declares that they “started off with virtually no staff, with just an empty office and a desk and the question of how to make it up”, it shows that the leaders of the Commission had the possibility of “making up” a reconciliation policy with a certain level of autonomy. It was possible to devise and implement a new and audacious approach. In contrast, this was to be impossible in later years and especially after 1972.

28. Mark Tierney, The Story of Muintir na Tíre, 1931-2001: The First Seventy Years, Tipperary, Muintir na Tíre, 2004.


based essentially on the Catholic parish. The same sorts of things were going on in different parts of France before the war. But anyway that was one germ, I had seen their work you know and I was interested in it. And then I remember going to a conference about 1965 organised by the Castle Social Services, the local authorities, in which there was a Dutch man, the name I forget now, who came over and talked about how they were developing communities in the reclaimed polder lands, where they were putting villages, etc. So their emphasis was on CD too.

So there was stuff I had been reading about and knew a bit about. And then we deliberately employed Hywel Griffiths because he had a background in CD 29. Now the interesting thing is that CD in Britain very largely came from people who had worked in former British colonies. They were nearly all ex-colonial officers 30. And so you have that back entry really into the thing and Hywel himself had been out in Nigeria I think 31.

J.E.: Your idea was to strengthen one’s sense of community. Could you explain what that meant?

M.H.: What we did actually was very interesting. You see, John Malone, who was a very gifted man, had been employed (he was a teacher) to develop programmes for schools, you see, and then having got him to do it they gave him no resources or anything to do it, so we gave him the resources and he developed a sort of a teaching pack which was far-ahead of its time in terms of cross-cultural work 32. It was an attempt to create a syllabus and it ultimately emerged in a thing called

29. The approach focused on the notions of self-help and empowerment. It was influenced by the theories and practices of CD (Joana Etchart, “Community Development…”). The leaders of the NICRC were also influenced by the Burtonian method of conflict resolution, based on the analysis of needs (John W. Burton, Deviance, Terrorism & War: The Process of Solving Unsolved Social and Political Problems, New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1979). This was taken over in Northern Ireland by people like Joe Camplisson, who was a CDO at the Commission at the time (Michael Hall, Joe Camplisson, From Conflict Containment to Resolution: The Experiences of a Moldovan-Northern Ireland Self-Help Initiative, Newtownabbey, Island Publications, 2002).

30. Indeed, CD was mainly developed in Britain by people who had worked as colonial officers in Africa in the 1930s and 1940s. For example, T. R. Batten worked in education and development in Africa between 1927 and 1949 (Nigeria and Uganda). When he went back to the United Kingdom, he established the Community Development Bulletin in 1951 and then, in 1966, its successor the Community Development Journal. An International Forum (Oxford University Press). He introduced the non-directive approach in social work in Britain in the 1960s, also known as community development (T. R. Batten, Madge Batten, The Non-Directive Approach in Group and Community Work, London, Oxford University Press, 1967, p. 11-12). On the colonial origins of CD, see: Steven J. G. Clarke, Community Organization and Development: From Its History towards a Model for the Future, Cardiff, University of Wales Press, 2017.

31. The director of the NICRC Hywel Griffiths had joined the Colonial Service in Central Africa, then Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and eventually in Nigeria. He was also involved with adult education (interview with Hywel Griffiths, Cardiff, 8 April 2005).

32. John Malone initiated the “Schools Project” within the Commission as mentioned in: NICRC, Community Development and Community Relations in Northern Ireland – Some Proposals, Belfast, NICRC, 1974. See also Paul Burrows, “Schools Community Relations Project”, Community Forum (Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission), no. 1, 1971, p. 25-26.

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Education for Mutual Understanding [in 1983]: how people might look at history together and how they might look at different things. Now he came at it from the point of view of moral education, the ethics of citizenship and the ethics of respect for other human beings and human rights. And the interesting thing was that when he reported back to the Department of Education they didn’t want to know about it at all 33.

J.E.: I have the impression that some of the things that came out in the 1980s regarding community relations work had already been mentioned or done in the period 1969-1975.

M.H.: That’s right. In a sense the 1980s was an attempt to recapture what had been lost. You see it’s very interesting what happened, there were the SDLP [Social Democratic and Labour Party] who were the main nationalist party, they were the people who stood down the NICRC [in 1974]. There were always tensions between elected politicians and activists on the ground. By and large the elected people didn’t want any other people on the ground because they were creating rivals to them. They were people who may run for elections themselves. The result was that when you had what they called the power-sharing executive [in 1974], there was an SDLP minister [Ivan Cooper] who said “Well we are here now. What do you want the Commission for?”. That was a mistake.

One of the difficulties in the whole thing was that you had a Commission and a Ministry, which had different notions of what community relations were about and community development. So the executive was an opportunity for this group actually to make their take over.

J.E.: Still I have the impression that it worked fairly well under Mr. Simpson’s Ministry, until 1972.

M.H.: The first Minister was actually quite a nice man called Dr. Simpson. It was his first Ministry. Then, next thing, they had an interesting guy just before McIvor, David Bleakley. And Bleakley you see was a trade unionist, he was a Labour Party member and he was brought in by Faulkner to run this. Faulkner was opening up things in Cabinet and he made the man Minister of Community Relations. This guy on a Friday he was applying to me for grants and on a Monday he was the Minister. And he was very centralising. He was also sort of an evangelical. He was a really nice man, good man. But he put it all on a very preachy side, like preaching people. If we all pray together and if we all learn to be together.

Whereas we were much more inclined to recognise the reality on the ground and how difficult it was to work with people where they were, you know. So he did six months there and of course the big disaster in the middle of that which I

33. According to members of the Commission, civil servants were rather suspicious of their work. See for instance: John Darby, Geoffrey Morris, “Community Groups and Research in Northern Ireland”, Community Development Journal. An International Forum, vol. 10, no. 2, April 1975, p. 113-119.


think virtually subverted the whole thing was internment because how can you talk about community relations when the government is putting its citizens in jail without trial? I was under a lot of pressure at that time to resign 34.

J.E.: Why?

M.H.: From nationalist politicians. They wanted everybody to withdraw from public life. But we [members of the NICRC] turned ourselves almost overnight into an emergency relief organisation, you know: help people to find their relatives, help to deal with people who are in the middle of, you know, mass movements. And that changed the nature of our work I think for a while now. The members of the Commission were actually quite non representative, you know they were a middle-class group of people, fairly elder I think I was the youngest on it, which was nonsense. They were not all of them all that happy about CD, you know.

J.E.: Why not?

M.H.: It was a wee bit too radical. They were even less happy about the notion of this acting as a relief agency you know because some of them saw it as getting support and relief to people who were in revolt against the state really but anyway we got through that period and then Bleakley went at that time. In writing his own memoirs he said he went as a protest against internment, he didn’t, he went because his six months were up. I think you can hold the job, under the law, you can only hold the job for six months. So then he was succeeded by McIvor, who was a nice man. He died about two weeks ago. A very good man, a very gentle sort of person. But it was very much in the hands of his civil servants in the Ministry.

J.E.: Is that when you resigned?

M.H.: Actually I resigned after Bloody Sunday [January 1972]. You see again, on the grounds that here the government that we were working for were shooting at citizens, they were having them locked them up first, and now they were shooting them in the street. The second reason was that in a sense I had workers who had gone off and worked in Republican areas and that sort of things 35, and if we were seen to be too closely associated with the state, we could have been shot. So it was necessary I thought for me to do that. And then Brian Rankin became chairman and then Brian went back to the original sort of doctrinaire community relations, and in the main, Brian was fine, he was a good man but you know his notion was to work with the moderates. They didn’t like community development at all.

J.E.: Could you describe what community development (work) meant?

34. Many testimonies from the period highlight the chaos that reigned following the introduction of internment in August 1971. See for instance the ones collected by Michael Hall in the series of pamphlets entitled Grassroots Leadership.

35. There is an elliptic reference here to the facilitation work that was conducted by some CDOs with paramilitary leaders. See Joana Etchart, “Community Development…”.

68 Joa na Etc ha rt

M.H.: It meant going into the community and not with any particular specification but finding out what were the things that they wanted to organise themselves around, and it might be housing, it might be schooling, it might be jobs, it might be whatever.

It was mainly social rather than political. But most of these things are political anyway too and of course this was one of the things that created the tension. I mean, as the war became too more intense, increasingly they were organising themselves against the police, so that was it actually, you found out who they were and what they wanted. And so you were creating a civic culture of discussion and of organisation which would enable them to deal with the problems without having recourse to violence and then hopefully they would see under new circumstances that violence was counterproductive and then hopefully they would see after a bit that they did actually have common interests with Protestant groups on the other side of the wall and that they would tackle those common interests together. It was all right up to that point, but once they got together and all that, the only people they were endangering or opposing were the government 36.

And other forms of community might not have been special at all. Women were a community, young people were a community, who hadn’t generally mobilised in a way before that and in the main you were trying to do it in a way that would break down the actual starkness of the Catholic / Protestant rift and say: “Look there is all sorts of cross cutting things, there are all sorts of other ways in which people segregate themselves out or are segregated out, maybe as women, maybe as unemployed, maybe as young people, maybe as travellers, which had nothing to do with the religious thing”.

So anyway, Hywel Griffiths left shortly after that and they got then a guy, his name I don’t remember. And the community workers who had been very enthused by what they were doing, a lot of them lost a lot of their morale and I think at the time the executive closed them down [in 1975], I think they were ready for it.

J.E.: If you look at the way things have evolved since then, what would be the various meanings of “community relations” in the 1969-1998 period?

M.H.: The trouble is it’s used to mean anything. I think one of the reasons the CR Council was set up then [in 1990] was to put emphasis on working with Catholics and Protestants and a lot of these bodies got their grants on the basis that they were actually cross-community, so that people would say well we had this thing and we had thirty Catholics in and thirty Protestants in, without having done a damn thing there.

Plus you might have had something where you had a group of extremely difficult people on either side and you were working with them to bring them up to the point where they could actually deal with people on the other side.

36. This reflection is emblematic of Maurice Hayes’ pioneering strategy of conflict resolution, which, together with Hywel Griffiths, he tried to develop in the 1969-1972 period. It sought to empower local communities and to develop “a civic culture of discussion and of organisation”, as he says, between antagonistic groups locally. This required a lot of networking and liaising skills.


The other thing is that I see the CR Council as having as well a sort of a fire brigade role that when communities are meeting like that somebody should be there trying to keep the lines of communication open. When the big lines of communication break down there are still small ones that operate. It’s much easier now with the mobile phones.

J.E.: Why’s that?

M.H.: It gives people the opportunity to communicate across the lines, you know, when they couldn’t have done in the past, if you have to go from here to there and cross barricades to talk to someone.

You see, unless you have some sort of a relationship built up with people before the trouble comes, there is very little point in building it up in the middle of the troubles. So part of the idea of this sort of strategy that we had was that you would have people there, some of them working for the Commission, some others trained by the Commission, you would have people over there on the other side who were at least able to communicate with each other. And the more you had of those around the place, the greater the possibility you had for diffusing tension and getting rid of it. I am looking at things like the Ardoyne situation over the last couple of years, about the school, the riots that you get around Orange marches and that. And you ask yourself “Where is the CR Council?”. The CR Council aren’t there, they are conducting some sort of esoteric training somewhere else.

J.E.: Do you think they should be more on the ground?

M.H.: I think they should be in cases like that, on the ground, they should be the mediating people, and they should be the people who can do it. That is in a sense the longer term purpose of the CD projects. CD projects enabled you to get entry into the communities and credibility in the communities, to have identified people in the communities who could be kind of spokesmen and leaders, and to get them some training.

J.E.: Were there tensions between CDOs and local political leaders?

M.H.: Yes, there were. The same is true too as regards the IRA. The whole purpose they set themselves up was to control populations, and they didn’t want anybody else to come in trying to diminish that control or trying to provide things for the people.

J.E.: There was a lot of control by Orange lodges and the IRA. How could CDOs fit into that?

M.H.: That was a great difficulty, they were taking a lot of risks, they had to cope with their own doubts too, you know. There was a guy called Burton who wrote a book, I think it’s The Politics of Legitimacy 37. He was up in Ardoyne actually

37. Frank Burton, The Politics of Legitimacy: Struggles in a Belfast Community, London – Boston, Routledge – K. Paul, 1978.

70 Joa na Etc ha rt

where he spent six or eight months, you know, doing observations. There is also a book called Bandit Country 38, it’s about South Armagh, it’s about how the IRA can terrorise and dominate a whole community. But Burton was good.

That may be the reason why the CR Council now does not dare go and work with those very organised close-knit communities. I still think that they should be in there. There was actually another interesting thing: that CD was a much easier concept to sell to Catholic communities than to Protestant communities and a bit of it was theological, you know where the Catholic stress was on togetherness and community whereas the Protestant stress was on the responsibility of the individual and they weren’t into it. They were also used to the situation in which you know the government was Protestant and Unionist so the government would look after them. The government did only look after them up to a point. I mean what the government did for working-class Protestant areas was nearly nothing. I mean they were just as badly off as people in the Catholic areas.

The Catholic people at that time had decided that there was no point in relying on the government, and in that sense they did things for themselves. And the state of education in inner city Protestant areas was poorly. So it was only you know in the late 1970s, 1980s that Protestant groups began to learn about CD.

J.E.: Did CD continue after the demise of the Commission in 1974-1975?

M.H.: A lot of things continue under one guise or another. A lot of it has been done now through the European Peace and Reconciliation Funds that came along and there is another group which has been very influential actually I think in CD it is the Community Foundation for Northern Ireland (CFNI) 39. And a woman called Avila Kilmurray runs that. They’re going to have their 25th birthday next year in January. It was set up as a voluntary trust which would give money to community groups and that sort of things. They’ve done a lot actually and they’re now one of the intermediary bodies for European funds as well. They’re the nearest people to doing what I thought we were doing.

J.E.: Has the idea of CD evolved in terms of theory?

M.H.: It has yes, it’s now a respectable thing. You see, one of the difficulties when they stood down the Commission, they gave the role of CD to the Health Boards, you see where people were social workers and not community workers and they didn’t really have a concept or whatever about. For them CD meant setting up support programmes in the community for their own services like the mental

38. Toby Harnden, “Bandit Country”: The IRA and South Armagh, revised and updated edition, London, Coronet, 2000.

39. CFNI used to be called the Northern Ireland Voluntary Trust (NIVT). This had been set up in 1979 by the then Labour minister Peter Melchett. According to its first director Hugh Frazer, Maurice Hayes had been involved in the creation of that Trust in 1979 (interview with Hugh Frazer, Kenilworth Road, Dublin, 4 September 2006).


health, which has its own value I mean it’s an important thing but it is but not exactly CD. And of course they saw it as a completely non-political thing 40. […]

J.E.: To come back to what you said earlier on the importance of working with local groups, I was wondering how you got in touch with the organisations on the ground?

M.H.: You just went out and talked to them.

J.E.: But how did you choose them?

M.H.: Well you looked for who was there. We just went to different places. I had a sort of background in sports through which a lot of people knew me. At least you had a face that people recognised. And I think it has to be personalised in a little way.

Interview carried out in Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin, 7 December 2004.

Joana Etchart

Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour

40. Various types of CD work developed from the mid-1970s on, some of which became more conventional and bureaucratic than the original, radical version. See the analysis provided by Hywel Griffiths, “The Aims and Objectives of Community Development”, Community Development Journal. An International Forum, vol. 9, no. 2, April 1974, p. 89-92.


The Jazz Seen:

An Ethnographic View

of Contemporary Jazz in Northern Ireland

Abstract: This article analyses the development and the characteristics of the contemporary jazz scene in Northern Ireland with a special focus on Belfast. Jazz was introduced in Ireland in the early 20th century when the country fought for its independence, leading to its partition in 1921. In the Irish Free State, the music was originally seen as subversive within a morally conservative state, while in Northern Ireland, its traditional form was firmly rooted until the 1970s. While the Dublin scene became a hub for musicians by the late 1960s, the Belfast scene picked up from the 1990s on. In order to better understand the development of the music in Northern Ireland, an ethnographic approach that involves the researcher with the object of his study is necessary, thus allowing to penetrate a small but vibrant community that created its own subculture.

Keywords: Northern Ireland, jazz, subculture, ethnography, modernity.

Résumé : Cet article analyse l’évolution et les caractéristiques de la scène jazz contemporaine en Irlande du Nord, avec un accent particulier sur Belfast. Le jazz a été introduit en Irlande au début du XXe siècle lorsque le pays luttait pour son indépendance, conduisant à sa partition en 1921. Dans l’État libre d’Irlande, la musique était à l’origine considérée comme subversive au sein d’un État moralement conservateur, tandis qu’en Irlande du Nord, sa forme traditionnelle s’est affirmée jusque dans les années 1970. Alors que Dublin est devenue une plaque tournante pour les musiciens à la fin des années 1960, Belfast s’est davantage imposée comme scène musicale à partir des années 1990. Afin de mieux comprendre l’évolution de la musique en Irlande du Nord, une approche ethnographique impliquant le chercheur dans l’objet de son étude est nécessaire, permettant ainsi d’accéder à une petite communauté dynamique qui a créé sa propre sous-culture.

Mots clés : Irlande du Nord, jazz, sous-culture, ethnographie, modernité.

In one of the central scenes of Ken Loach’s film Jimmy’s Hall (2014), Father Sheridan solemnly addresses a fearful, humbled and static congregation from his overlooking pulpit: “Jazz music: rhythms from the darkest Africa that inflame the passions. Pelvic thrust, salacious body-grabbing, instead of the elegance and beauty of our own Irish dances”.

For him, this alien music has a morally and sexually subversive nature that characterises new aspirations, “this craze for pleasure, this fascination for the materialist and most recently, the pagan and the Anglo-Saxon”. This music, played at Jimmy Gralton’s Dance Hall, comes along equally subversive political ideas: “But there is even more evil hatching in that Hall, Gralton and his crew are communists. They are atheists, they deny the existence of God”.

74 Fa b r i c e Mou rl o n

Father Sheridan makes it clear that jazz and communism jeopardise the true nature of Irishness in the nascent Irish Free State. “What is wrong with being true to ourselves, to our deepest roots, to our own true Irish values?”, he goes on. His views contrast with scenes of the dance hall that alternatively punctuate his speech. The dancers are equally at ease with traditional Irish dances and jazz, the transition between one dance and the other being shown as natural and smooth. Both types of music share a common instrument: the banjo. Jazz is also adopted by the old generation, with Jimmy Gralton’s mother naturally tapping the second and fourth beats that characterise the swing of the music. Earlier in the film, people who attend alternative activities at Jimmy’s Hall are introduced to the new music through the gramophone, an odd feature of modernity to them. After their initial giggles, uneasiness and the non-offensive banter about black people in the United States, the participants joyfully learn the steps to the new dance.

The way jazz music is represented in the film goes beyond the historical period in which the story unfolds, i.e. the Irish Free State in the 1930s. It reveals the subversive, rebellious and avant-garde nature of jazz and the tensions between tradition and modernity that underpins the music itself. This is supported by two major works in the field. Howard S. Becker, a sociologist and jazz musician, devoted two chapters of his 1960s study on deviance in the music along with his analysis of marijuana consumption 1. Similarly, historian Eric Hobsbawm underlined these aspects of the music in his collection of articles in The Jazz Scene and Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, published respectively in 1959 and 1999 2. In the introduction to the former he states:

[Jazz] has made its way as a music which people made and participated in actively and socially, and not one for passive acceptance; as a hard and realistic art and not sentimental maundering; as a noncommercial music, and above all as a music of protest (including the protest against the exclusiveness of minority culture) 3.

Later in a chapter entitled “Jazz as a Protest” he further expands, thus echoing the views expressed in the film Jimmy’s Hall:

In this chapter I wish to suggest […] jazz is not simply an ordinary music, light or heavy, but also a music of protest and rebellion. It is not necessarily or always a music of conscious and overt political protest, let alone any particular brand of political protest; though in the West, in so far as it has had political links, they have been pretty invariably with the left. […] But its very nature and origins jazz therefore expresses some kinds of protest and heterodoxy and lends itself to the expression of others. The mere fact that it originates among oppressed and unconsidered people, and is looked down upon by orthodox society, can make the simple listening to jazz records into a gesture of social dissent 4.

1. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance [1963], New York, Free Press, 2018.2. Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene [1959], London, Faber & Faber, 2014; Eric Hobsbawm, Uncommon

People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, London, Abacus, 1999.3. Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene, p. liii (introduction to the original edition).4. Ibid., p. 230 and 239.

75Th e Ja z z Se e n : A n Et h n o g r a ph i c Vi ew o f C o n t e m p o r a ry Ja z z …

This last sentence resonates in Ireland, often described as a land of the oppressed and yet where conservative and orthodox forces are at play. How far has jazz music penetrated Irish culture which, to the candid observer, seems more defined by its traditional music or since the 1990s by famous pop and rock bands like U2, The Corrs and The Cranberries? The author of the article, both an academic and a jazz musician, has experienced the lack of “obvious” visibility of jazz in the country.

As a regular visitor to Belfast for the last thirty years, I only became aware of Northern Ireland’s thriving jazz scene in 2015, when I played my first gig with local musicians. This gig was organised through the owner of an alternative bookshop called No Alibis, located on Botanic Avenue near Queen’s University. Over the years, David Torrans has extended his activities to organising book launches by local novelists, public lectures and poetry readings, and putting together jazz concerts with both local and international musicians, thus making his bookshop a cultural hub where artists meet.

After this initial gig, I played with various other jazzmen and in other venues, gradually discovering a whole community and network organised around this music and spreading across the whole of the island.

I then realised that, like Howard S. Becker or Eric Hobsbawm, one had to be somehow related to the music itself (either a player or an aficionado) to be able to have access to a minority cultural form that is not, at first sight, visible. The lack of research in this music in Ireland supports the idea that the jazz scene is best approached by an insider.

That is why the study of jazz in Ireland, and for the present article in Northern Ireland, requires both an ethnological and a historical approach with an insider-outsider perspective. This allows a closer understanding of the place and of the development of jazz on a seemingly unfertile soil.

Researching jazz: an insider-outsider perspective

Researching the jazz scene in Northern Ireland came out of my own interest and participation in it since 2015. It also came with the realisation that the place and the history of jazz had received scarce attention from academia while a vibrant and active community of musicians and a series of venues existed especially in Belfast and, to a lesser degree, in Derry. My initial instinct was to use my relationships with those musicians and my experience as a performer there to bring this subculture to the fore. Adopting a participant observer’s approach for this study was later confirmed in the books and research that will be the backbone of this article. Their authors have all used their involvement in the music – either as a performer or a fan – to analyse various aspects of the jazz scene.

In 2016, Damian Evans completed the first PhD on the Dublin jazz scene for which he carried out an ethnographic study 5. In his introduction, he states,

5. Damian Evans, The Creation of Meaning and Identity in the Dublin Jazz Scene, Past and Present, PhD thesis, Technical University Dublin, 2016, on line: https://arrow.dit.ie/appadoc/71.

https://arrow.dit.ie/appadoc/71


I do not approach the Dublin jazz scene as a passive, unbiased observer. […] I am both an insider on the Dublin jazz scene and an outsider. This is not an entirely unusual position to be in as a researcher or as a musician, and I do not point it out as a negative factor, merely to be clear as to my own pathway through and position in the Dublin jazz scene 6.

The justification of his method, which follows in the tradition of the Chicago School studies in sociology, also clearly underlines the relations between the object and the subject of research in the Humanities. Norbert Elias analysed these relations in Involvement and Detachment, in which he concluded that in the social sciences, unlike natural science, the boundary between the object and the subject was blurred, and the researcher was more or less detached, or more or less involved:

C’est la tâche des chercheurs en sciences sociales que de trouver les moyens de comprendre les configurations mouvantes que les hommes tissent entre eux, la nature de ces liaisons ainsi que la structure de cette évolution. Les chercheurs sont eux-mêmes inscrits dans la trame de ces motifs. Ils ne peuvent s’empêcher – car ils sont immédiatement concernés – de les vivre de l’intérieur ou par identification 7.

Cornelius Castoriadis also supported this view concerning historians whom he considered as part of the history they were writing,

Lorsqu’on parle de l’histoire, qui parle? […] c’est un être historique. Or cela même, qui fonde la possibilité d’une connaissance historique (car seul un être historique peut avoir une expérience de l’histoire et en parler), interdit que cette connaissance puisse jamais acquérir le statut d’un savoir achevé et transparent […]. Avoir une expérience de l’histoire en tant qu’être historique c’est être dans et de l’histoire, comme aussi être dans et de la société 8.

Research objects and subjects being intertwined in various respects discards the figure of the ideal “unbiased observer” that Damian Evans evokes. Sociologist Edgar Morin goes even further in explaining the vulnerable position of the researcher:

Le sujet ici réintégré n’est pas l’Ego métaphysique, fondement et juge suprême de toutes choses. C’est le sujet vivant, aléatoire, insuffisant, vacillant, modeste, qui introduit sa propre finitude 9.

This interplay at work in the knowledge process strikes a chord with the essence of jazz music that Damian Evans hints at in the introduction to his PhD thesis. He draws parallels between “developing new methods of interaction within a jazz trio” and studying “jazz performance as experienced by its practitioners” 10. Indeed,

6. Damian Evans, The Creation of Meaning and Identity…, p. xi and xiv.7. Norbert Elias, Engagement et distanciation, Michèle Hulin (trans.), Paris, Fayard, 1993, p. 24.8. Cornelius Castoriadis, L’institution imaginaire de la société, Paris, Seuil, 1975, p. 48-50.9. Edgar Morin, La méthode, t. III, La connaissance de la connaissance, Paris, Seuil, 1986, p. 22.

10. Damian Evans, The Creation of Meaning and Identity…, p. xiv.


jazz puts a particular emphasis on the interplay between musicians and values the performance itself as a creative moment when listening to each other and using instinct is important. One could object that this is true of any music genre, but it is even more specific to jazz as the music relies on improvisation within the framework of a partially-written music. Most music scores, and especially jazz standards, only display a melody written on a stave with chords transcribed in letters (A, B, C…) on the stave below. This leaves the musicians freedom to harmonically arrange those chords according to the melody. During the performance of a tune, musicians are able to subtly respond to each other’s harmonies and rhythms with a view that each performance will be different and new.

Damian Evans’ methodology based on the insider-outsider approach is sup-ported by previous research. In his literature review, he explains how researchers in jazz studies have gradually adopted an ethnomusicological stance coupled with anthropological and sociological methods. The focus on the insider’s experience allows us to move away from musicological analytical frameworks that tend to consider music from a neutral and universal perspective, to take into account the performance and the non-visible musicians – as opposed to the “great men” of jazz. Evans’ approach to the Dublin jazz scene is informed by various authors who alternatively studied musicians’ introduction to jazz, the practice of their instru-ment, the way they compose and improvise and the interaction that occurs during a performance both within the band and with the audience. The practice of jazz can also be viewed as a way of life or as belonging to “a jazz community”, which means people who share an interest in jazz and in its culture. The concept of “jazz scene” that includes the network of musicians, venues, the record industry and the media is paramount to understanding the music globally. Studying the jazz scene allows us to investigate “cultural events that are of great importance to people yet go in many ways unnoticed and unstudied” 11. Finally, being a musician himself, the academic is better equipped to have access to and to understand his research object.

This is the case of Howard S. Becker who published a major sociological inves-tigation in the workings of what he defined as deviant people in the 1960s in the United States. Part of his study is concerned with jazz musicians that he calls “dance musicians” 12. As a professional pianist, he observed the musicians’ behaviours and attitudes “in a variety of situations that made up their work and leisure lives” 13. To him, studying their way of life is essential to understand their subculture as a somehow “deviant” group, as “their culture and their way of life are sufficiently bizarre and unconventional for them to be labelled as outsiders by more conventional members of the community” 14. This brings us back to the attitudes expressed in the film Jimmy’s Hall and is of interest for this study on the Northern Ireland jazz scene that operates as a subculture and is less visible within the other mainstream cultures.

11. Ibid., p. 13.12. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders…, p. 77.13. Ibid., p. 81.14. Ibid., p. 77.


Howard S. Becker studies the relationship between musicians and their audience, relying on the presumption that musicians are members of a service occupation that “plays popular music for money” 15. Interestingly, the tensions arising from this relationship explain aspects of their beliefs and attitudes which is summed up in the word “square” that musicians use to speak of people who do not share their values. In a mirror effect, outsiders consider those who do not agree with their way of life as outsiders.

Jazz musicians see themselves as a subgroup endowed with a “mysterious artistic gift” 16 inaccessible to people outside their group, and as leading unconventional lives according to unconventional values. In short,

The musician thus sees himself as a creative artist who should be free from outside control, a person different from and better than those outsiders he calls squares who understand neither his music nor his way of life and yet because of whom he must perform in a manner contrary to his professional ideals 17.

To solve this conflict, the musician can give in to his audience and “go commer-cial” or socially isolate himself further from the rest of the population. His career is also dependent on the tension between artistic freedom and commercial music. He gets hired through various networks that operate at different levels – from weddings to more prestigious and steady jobs in bands playing in renowned clubs. In each network or “clique”, members secure jobs for each other and are bound by “mutual obligation” 18. Networks that provide job security and success tend to be more commercial and the jazz musician is once again faced with the dilemma of safeguarding his artistic integrity or going commercial.

This tension and other features of jazz music are described in historian Eric Hobsbawm’s The Jazz Scene, a collection of articles 19 and essays he wrote on the subject and first published in 1959. Like the previous authors, his interest in jazz as an academic also comes from his passion for it. He opened the introduction to the 1993 edition of his book with the following words:

Discovering jazz, as the Czech writer and jazz-buff Josef Skvorecky has said, is, for most people, rather like first love – on the whole it is more lasting – and it usually happens at very much the same time. In the case of the writer it happened at the age of sixteen […] 20.

This introduction, written in the tradition of ego histoire 21, explains how the author developed his taste for jazz and how, from being an aficionado, he started to

15. Howard S. Becker, Outsiders…, p. 79.16. Ibid., p. 83.17. Ibid., p. 89.18. Ibid., p. 102.19. Columns for the New Statesman.20. Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene, p. xiii.21. Historical approach developed by French historian Pierre Nora. The historian analyses his own

history and methods in a reflexive way (Essais d’ego-histoire, Pierre Nora (ed.), Paris, Gallimard, 1987).


be commissioned by the New Statesman, as an academic, to write articles about it, which seemed an “odd combination” at the time. It “struck both jazz and non-jazz people as […] bizarre. […] A historian who also writes about jazz is still considered in many quarters as freaky, in some way, though attractively so” 22.

He sketches out the evolution of jazz as a tension and oscillation between tradi-tion, mainstream and avant-garde music and ponders over its future development.

[…] [as] a central concern for anyone concerned with twentieth-century society and the twentieth-century arts […] jazz has shown extraordinary powers of survival and self-renewal inside a society not designed for it and which does not deserve it 23.

This reminds us of the isolated place of jazz in society. Hobsbawm insists that “jazz is unofficial, unestablished and unpredictable, or it is nothing” 24. This uncompromising remark also supports Becker’s argument that the jazz musician is an outsider. Hobsbawm joins Becker when he indicates that “a rejection of success […] is characteristic of avant-gardes, and jazz, which has always lived by the paying customer, concessions to the box office seemed particularly dangerous to the player who wanted the status of ‘artist’” 25 and “the very essence of jazz is that it is not standardized or mass-produced” 26.

This explains why it is seen as a minority music with its players and the com-munity around them forming a subculture that is uneasy to penetrate.

Jazz in Ireland: from hostility to adhesion

To understand the current jazz scene in Northern Ireland, it is necessary to highlight the salient periods in which jazz developed on the island as a whole. It originally developed in a hostile environment, notably in the Irish Free State. Before the 1920s, Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and like other European countries, came into contact with early forms of the music through minstrel shows. These shows originated in the United States in the 19th century and consisted of music and dance performance by mostly white people made up in blackface that portrayed black people in a derogatory way. Blackface minstrel shows can be traced back to 1936 in Ireland and various bands including those with Irish players performed in the major cities 27. Despite the campaign of the Irish abolitionist movement, the blackface minstrel shows strongly influenced the construction of a racist stereotype of black Americans in Ireland. In the early

22. Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz Scene, p. xviii.23. Ibid., p. xix and xxii.24. Ibid., p. xxxviii.25. Ibid., p. xxxii.26. Ibid., p. xlv.27. Damian Evans, The Creation of Meaning and Identity…, p. 35. See also Eric Hobsbawm, The Jazz

Scene.


20th century, a few jazz bands played in Ireland, notably in Dublin, but the political and social construction of the music was determined by the creation of the new state after the War of Independence and the ensuing Civil War, and later by the focus of researchers:

Academic writing about pre-1960s Irish jazz has been more concerned with the efforts made by the Irish state and the Catholic Church to contain the perceived threat posed by this foreign music, and to maintain cultural control over the new state coming into more contact with outside forces. Ireland, like many other countries dealing with an emerging nationalism tended toward economic and cultural insularity in the decades following independence 28.

These writings insist on the perceived racial and sexual aspects of the music that were thought to arouse primitive instincts both in the listener and the dancer, as jazz was mostly associated with dancing 29.

An anti-jazz movement was launched by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in 1933 supported by the Catholic Church, members of the Dáil and other prominent figures such as the president Éamon de Valera and Douglas Hyde as the music threatened the moral values that the new state wanted to establish. “Down with Jazz” and “Out with Paganism” could be read on banners during a march organised on 1 January 1934 that gathered 3,000 people 30. The hostility to jazz continued with an anti-jazz campaign during debates at the Dáil and culminated with the Dance Halls Act of 1935 which restrained the activity of dance halls and applied to jazz dances among others. In the 1940s, jazz music was banned or discouraged from being broadcast on radios – a debate still exists on the extent of the prohibition among historians. However, this anti-jazz sentiment started to dwindle during the same period and jazz, through recordings and a few venues, gradually made its way into Irish society and began to be enjoyed by a larger audience in the post-war era.

In Northern Ireland in the 1920s, jazz did not seem to have been met with the same institutional hostility as in the Irish Free State, although no research has been devoted to the attitude of the Catholic Church, the Protestant denominations or the government institutions in the newly formed statelet in 1921. What stands out from the only book 31 written about jazz in Northern Ireland to date, Tracking Jazz: The Ulster Way by Brian Dempster 32, is the development of a traditional form of the music, “Dixieland” and “New Orleans” or “Trad”, whose influence is still somehow felt nowadays. Also, the connection with the rest of the United Kingdom is highlighted, the statelet being a backwater of the wider jazz scene in Britain.

28. Damian Evans, The Creation of Meaning and Identity…, p. 41-42.29. Ibid., p. 42-44.30. Ibid., p. 47.31. The book is biased towards the traditional jazz scene. Only a few pages are devoted to the new

jazz scene. 32. Brian Dempster, Tracking Jazz: The Ulster Way, Belfast, Shanway Press, 2012. The following

paragraphs rely on information from the book.


The first reported mention of the word jazz is when the Glenarm Jazz Band played at a dance in the Glenarm Orange Hall on 25 April 1925 33. However, the style of music performed then did not correspond to any form of jazz music. During the Second World War, the stationing of US troops in Northern Ireland spurred the development of the music, especially in Belfast and Derry. Various bands had been touring the province until a jazz boom occurred in the 1950s. Local musicians were influenced by recordings from the United States or concerts by American musicians such as Nat King Cole at the Royal Hippodrome in Great Victoria Street in Belfast in April 1954, or Sidney Bechet at the Ulster Hall in September 1956. At the same time the Dixieland tradition continued 34.

Most of the well-known musicians of that period, at least from Belfast, had been educated in Grammar schools such as Campbell College, Royal Academy, Annadale, Royal Belfast Academic Institution, Methodist College and Grosvenor High School. As suggested by Brian Dempster, this lends to the belief that jazz was “an elitist activity, created by and served up to a mostly middle-class society” 35, contrary to the British jazz scene.

In the 1960s 36, the emergence of pop and rock music together with the phenome-non of the Irish showbands that developed on an all-island basis, kept traditional jazz in the background. The showbands were dance bands that played a wide repertoire ranging from pop and rock to traditional music, including country music and some-times Irish Céilí dance. They were also famous for playing covers of contemporary artists. The phenomenon lasted until the 1970s, partly due to the opening of discos and the development of new musical tastes. In 1975, the Miami Showband killings, when three members of the band were killed in Banbridge by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a loyalist paramilitary group, put a halt to the touring of such groups.

The visit of Louis Armstrong at the King’s Hall in Belfast in 1962 37, together with the Whitla 38 concerts, “Jazz at the Whitla”, starting in December 1961 39, and BBC shows on TV revitalised the jazz scene in Northern Ireland. In 1964, The Jazzmakers was the first local BBC programme dedicated to jazz. Other pro-grammes later followed on the BBC (Jazz Club) and on UTV (The White Line) featuring local musicians. Belfast also had a jazz record shop on High Street called Atlantic Records founded by Solly Lipsitz 40, a prominent figure of the jazz scene in Northern Ireland, that provided “a wonderful atmospheric assembly point for the jazz enthusiast and serious record collector” 41. Local musicians also organised in societies, e.g. the Belfast Jazz Society.

33. Ibid., p. 15.34. Ibid., p. 19-51.35. Ibid., p. 53.36. Ibid., p. 75-82.37. Ibid., p. 95.38. The Whitla Hall is a building at Queen’s University Belfast.39. Brian Dempster, Tracking Jazz…, p. 117-136.40. Ibid., p. 139.41. Ibid.


The Whitla concerts introduced a more modern style in the prevailing tra-ditional jazz scene in Belfast by booking international stars like Oscar Peterson and the Modern Jazz Quartet. Alongside these concerts, another venue called the Guinness Spot introduced more experimental jazz styles.

With the start of the Troubles in the late 1960s, jazz continued to be played in hotels and golf clubs in Belfast and outside the city with famous venues like the Glenmachan Tower Hotel, the Europa (in the 1980s) or the Groomsport Inn in County Down 42.

Training courses were instrumental in educating a new wave of young jazz musicians. This was initiated by the Music Centre set up by the Down County Edu-cation Committee in the mid-1970s 43. In 1980, the centre offered classes in jazz performance notably through the establishment of the South Eastern Youth Jazz Orchestra, modelled on the National Youth Jazz Orchestra set up in Britain. In 1985, the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra was formed by Arthur Acheson who had developed courses in big band swing and jazz at the City of Belfast College of Music since 1979 (he was also a member of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and president of the Northern Ireland Musicians Association) 44. One year later the Ulster Youth Orchestra was born and became a catalyst for the education of a young generation of artists, leading to the transformation of the jazz scene in the 1990s with musicians more prone to the influences of modern and contemporary jazz. Project Jazz, initiated by Clifford Henry and Brian Carson in 1987, aimed at providing local musicians with new venues where they could play a variety of jazz styles. Carson was appointed as the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s Jazz Administrator. His aim was to develop jazz further than the long-standing traditional jazz stream rooted in Northern Ireland:

[…] I feel jazz, which has had its up-and-downs locally, has come to the end of its current revival phase. In any event the emphasis has always been on the traditional and mainstream jazz. Very few people are into modern jazz which I prefer. I see my job as pulling all the branches together and this is a major task 45.

Carson later set up the organisation Moving On Music 46 to promote, among other music genres, alternative and contemporary jazz with the Brilliant Corners 47 festival as a showcase.

Portraits in jazz

The title of this part clearly alludes to Bill Evans trio’s album Portrait in Jazz released in 1960 that gave a new dimension to the way jazz would be played by future

42. Brian Dempster, Tracking Jazz…, p. 142-164.43. Ibid., p. 165.44. Ibid., p. 182.45. Ibid., p. 191.46. See http://www.movingonmusic.com.47. See http://www.movingonmusic.com/about-us-2 and http://www.brilliantcornersbelfast.com.

http://www.movingonmusic.com

http://www.movingonmusic.com/about-us-2

http://www.brilliantcornersbelfast.com


musicians. Until then, the rhythm section composed of the double-bass and the drums was mainly used as an accompaniment to the soloist instrument. In this album Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums interacted with the pianist Bill Evans by responding harmonically or rhythmically to his playing, a musical practice that was called “interplay”.

To describe the current jazz scene, I choose to present the portraits of five well-known musicians in Northern Ireland. The selection of these musicians was dictated by their position of influence in the jazz community, their intimate knowledge of the Northern Ireland scene, and my close association with them as a musician who has played with them over the last five years. This interplay of portraits gives an overview of the nature and place of the music today and resonates with the analyses and remarks of the previous parts of this article. Each musician sheds a light on the development and the tenets of the current jazz scene in Northern Ireland. Through these portraits, we will analyse consecutively the recent history; a player and mentor’s team approach; the importance of experimental jazz; the self-taught development of both Irish musicians and audiences; and finally, how Belfast free jazz aims to break the boundaries of “inplaying”.

Tommy Thomas and the early development from the 1960s to the 1990s

Tommy Thomas 48 is a drummer and vibes player from North Wales who has been active for the past five decades. He was interviewed for his rich experience of the jazz scene in Belfast from the 1960s to the 1980s. He originally came to Northern Ireland as a soldier in 1961-1962 and then settled permanently in Belfast in 1965. To him, Belfast was “a jazz desert with very little in it at all”, the music scene being dominated by the showbands. There were six hundred of those bands in Ireland playing covers of pop music together with a special Dixieland set. Some of the musicians “were quite good” and “jazz orientated”. However there was something “ludicrous” about them, some of the bands having “names like the Indians dressed in Indians gear, Cadets that looked like flying officers” and “jumped about the stage”. The jazz scene itself was organised mainly around Trad or Dixieland or New Orleans jazz, with “a few good trios playing in hotels doing swing music and a bit of jazz when they could, but mostly dinner music”. Tommy Tomas also remembers the influence of the record shop, Altantic Records on High Street, “run by a guy [Solly Lipsitz] who ran his own fiefdom and dominated the scene with Trad and New Orleans […] it was a kind of restricted menu until the mid-1980s”.

The scene started to develop around 1978-1979 and it “began to get an infu-sion through the Belfast Festival” which allotted some of its programme to jazz. It provided a place for interaction with major names from the international scene mentioned before. Michael Emerson was in charge of the Belfast Festival. He was an agent, “a hyper-efficient guy, futuristicly [sic] looking” that “put the Festival on the map”. At the same period, the Cork Jazz Festival had kicked off. Emerson put

48. Interviewed on 28 October 2020 on Zoom.


Tommy Thomas trio – composed of himself, Billy White, and Billy McAlpine – in the festival for fourteen nights in the Guinness Spot which ran gigs at the same time as the Whitla Hall concerts. This made it easier for international and local musicians to mix. “We were exposed to good people there as we played on stage for a warm-up to the groups at Whitla”, which included Stan Getz, Astrud Gilberto (who eventually cancelled their gig because of an argument as they were heading to the gig), Steve Swallow, Roy Haynes, Dave Brubeck Quartet, Buddy Rich. Tommy Thomas remembers that Dave Brubeck appreciated some of the local musicians. “He said to Billy White [a local pianist] if you ever come to the US I will fix you a gig” and to Gay MacIntyre, a saxophone player from Derry, “if Paul Desmond leaves me I will give you a job”. Prior to that, Tommy Thomas “used to go down to Dublin once a month for an infusion as there was nothing here to listen to. The standard was much higher. […] On a Sunday in Dublin I could go round five places. It was much more enhanced than the Belfast scene”.

In the early 1980s, Tommy’s trio was given the opportunity of being featured on the UTV show The White Line that ended in 1985. This show was unprecedented and consisted of regular programmes with special international guests and some musicians from Dublin like Louis Stewart. The show gained popularity and success over the world and was sold to New Zealand and Australian TV, East Anglia and Scottish TV. Tommy Thomas recalls that he “bought [his] house thanks to this programme”. It was initiated by the “very visionary producer Andrew Crockard” who “tried all sorts of scenic experiments in order to create an atmosphere”. The exposure that the trio got from the show had a trickle-down effect on the number of gigs it would get, especially “jazz gig suitably diluted for weddings”.

In 1983 Tommy Thomas opened a jazz club called the Linen Hall Bar located at the back of the BBC headquarters. A gig was organised every Saturday afternoon for eleven years with a special session once a fortnight. To guarantee a good fee to musicians who would fly over from England, he would secure seven gigs altogether, including two at the Linen Hall Bar. Local musicians who had an experience outside Northern Ireland, like Louis Stewart who played in London at Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, then came back with “[their] talent and ability that upped the game for eve-ryone”. But “it never went to the same standard or diversity as the jazz in Dublin”. With his trio, Tommy Thomas played mostly standards and during the special gigs on Tuesdays they “were able to indulge [themselves] in more esoteric stuff while on Saturday the concert catered for people who came round for a pint, so it was more commercial”. The Northern Ireland modern jazz scene, away from Trad or Dixieland, really started to develop in the 1980s to eventually boom in the 1990s.

Linley Hamilton, a team approach

Linley Hamilton 49 is a trumpet player and a key figure of the jazz scene in Northern Ireland. His early experience with the music occurred when he joined a swing



band when he was 13. He was the youngest player among a group of 50-year-old musicians who were good music readers but did not improvise. On the contrary, he enjoyed that element of the music: “I did it, I had no fear. I wasn’t very good but the more I did it the better I became”. This remark is shared by most musicians who consider that you learn jazz and improvisation by playing it on stage. The performance is paramount in the learning process.

Linley Hamilton then joined an orchestra in Dublin conducted by Bobby Lamb. Most of the new musicians of this period came out of this orchestra. At the age of 29, Linley was asked to take part in the team for the movie The Commitments and he then realised he wanted to be a full-time musician after having worked as a civil engineer. As a self-employed performer, he had to start “learning how to promote gigs, to do music business, advertising and marketing”. In his early career he took part in over a hundred albums as a session player, i.e. not as the leader of the album. He released his first album in 2001 and then moved on to a parallel academic career completing a Masters in 2008 and later a PhD on “tension devices during solos”. He finally found a lecturing job at the Ulster University, Magee College in Derry. He also runs a BBC radio show (ongoing since 2007), called Jazz World, every Saturday night at 9 pm. This reveals the extent of his connections within the jazz scene and his position as a focal point.

He has now moved to the countryside and opened a new forty-seat venue called Maggie’s Farm booking different kinds of music. He is interested in the development of young groups, mostly singers and folk musicians. “We sponsor them to make sure that they don’t fall through the cracks and get a job in the supermarket when they might have had a career”. The organisation provides a free space to rehearse and pays tuitions for recordings. This place has been developed “to do jazz and not only watch to get better”, once again the emphasis being placed on practice.

Linley insists on passing on his experience to the younger generation and the current context is favourable to the development of jazz in Northern Ireland. This was not the case during the Troubles, although, contrary to what one might suspect, the conflict did not put an end to the jazz scene, and people continued to play. However, to him “no local players could be considered world class”. The music played “was mostly mainstream jazz, i.e. commercial jazz and none of them had records. People were more interested in getting four gigs a week” to be able to live which meant playing at weddings. They seemed “not to want to build a career, and those who did, didn’t stay in Northern Ireland but went to England”.

The situation is different today as there are “a lot of opportunities through Moving On Music and the Arts Council to get funding”. It is also much cheaper to record and to be broadcast. You can record good quality music with only “one digital mike and iPhone”. To build a career, musicians need to “draw a fan base so the fan base is supporting to them”. In turn the musicians “look after the fans, not only for business purposes but also [because they] like their audience. We know them by their names”. This is made easier by the use of social media.

For Linley,


Beyond talent, artists are good communicators who are prepared to finance their career at their own cost. They take gigs that cost them money to create their visibility [which has] a long-term implication for their career. Funding is an issue. Funding tends to go to the similar set of people who are in the know. The drawback is [this system] keeps funding the same people, and it doesn’t encourage them to take a risk. They don’t value audience-building. Most artists are relying on building an audience. You have to invest in your audience as they invest in you. You can offer free tickets or make them your friend. The audience becomes your friend. In Northern Ireland we can take that to the extreme because the country is so small.

The bond between the musicians and their audience materialises through the existence of long-standing venues. Linley has a residency at Bert’s on Sunday nights with Kyron Bourke (pianist and singer) and Steven Davis (drummer). Bert’s is a restaurant and a pub attached to the Merchant’s Hotel in Belfast and has live music seven days a week. People do not pay for the concerts themselves, but it is a steady place where musicians can play, “practice and get better”. Linley points out that “paying to see local musicians is a new phenomenon in Northern Ireland. I have been a driver of that with my radio show. On the show [I play] a mix of international musicians and local ones”. Listeners of the show then realise they can go to high-standard concerts to see the local musicians. This also helps building a network that allows local musicians to stay rather than migrate to other countries.

Linley is instrumental in booking bands in various venues, where the jazz scene can develop. To him, “the way forward is to be collaborative and supportive. It’s all about being part of a community and the audience likes being part of that community. You need a team-approach to make a scene work”. Linley concludes by emphasising that “the jazz scene is now a global scene which everybody can access. Jazz is a global music” especially thanks to the social media and digital streaming platforms.

Stephen Davis and experimental jazz

Stephen Davis 50 is a drummer from Belfast. His father played Irish traditional music and Doo Wap, a sort of Italian rock and roll. He remembers his family had only one jazz record by The Glenn Miller Orchestra, which he thought “was alright, but didn’t really get” him. His parents were running a guest house and he was once again exposed to jazz thanks to one of the guests who gave him a tape with Dave Brubeck on one side and the Woody Allen jazz band on the other. “I remember putting it on in the 1980s. I didn’t know what the hell it was. I didn’t understand it. I kind of liked the mood of the music, something got me”. Stephen then hung around other musicians and formed a rock and roll band in which he sang and played the harmonica. He thought he was “really bad at it” and started to play the drums as the drummer of the band was “pretty bad” too. After trying the drums



during breaks in a gig, the other musicians decided he was better than the current drummer. Stephen also remembers that at the age of 13, he had had a dream in which he was playing the drums. His parents bought him a second-hand drum kit, which he set up with “the cymbals upside down”. He then left it in the spare room until he was 17 and took a real interest in them.

In 1995, he joined a music course at the Bangor Tech run by Brian Irvine, a world-renowned composer with a jazz background, who had studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston.

This was a typical moment for a lot of musicians in Northern Ireland. It influenced a lot of people. His whole vision was to get rock, country and jazz musicians in a room [every Friday] and make music instantly with graphic notations, symbols and rhythmic ideas. It just blew my mind. My whole music ideas just expanded more than I have ever had in the rest of my life.

He took seriously to his practice and explains: “I wanted to be the best drummer. Everyone I asked said the best drummers are jazz drummers”. He joined a course at Jordanstown University run by Brian Carson from the organisation Moving On Music. Brian Carson brought musicians from around the world for a one-week residential. This is where Stephen met Keith Copeland from New York “who changed his life”. He pursued his music training at Leeds University as there were no opportunities to study jazz either at Queen’s University or Ulster University that only proposed classical music courses. After graduating he “seeped into the English jazz scene in London. [He] was told you have to go to London or New York to make it”. During the same period, he played in the European Jazz Orchestra (2003). After spending three years in London, he “moved back to Northern Ireland [as] [he] couldn’t afford to buy a house in London. And now [he] ha[s] no money. So that was a bad idea”.

He underlines the influence of Brian Carson on the Northern Irish jazz scene.

Brian set up a production company back in the 1970s early 1980s. His idea was to produce music that would be on the fringe. He had a big sway on free jazz or experimental jazz. He didn’t want to put on the mainstream stuff unless it was very good quality. Brian put on gigs that exposed local musicians [and the public] to this sort of music. It was a mind-blowing experience.

He used a room at Queen’s University where students took their exams and turned it into the Guinness Spot, heavily subsidised by the company. Stephen also mentions the importance of the Belfast Festival at Queen’s, Brilliant Corners, and other occasional venues such as the Black Box or the Mac 51, where more experimental jazz is played. To him, another catalyst for the development of the jazz scene is Linley Hamilton.

51. The Mac is a cultural centre in the Cathedral Quarter in Belfast.


He considers jazz a subversive music and “true jazz has always been an art music. It will always be a minority music. I cannot see it as coming into the mainstream”. He thinks that, contrary to the European audience,

[The public in] Northern Ireland and the UK is more conservative in their taste. This might be a hangover from the showbands. They want to hear something that is rehearsed, together. They don’t want to see musicians fall down on stage and mess up. And with jazz you have to take chances and make mistakes. That’s where the magic is. European audiences understand that.

He fears that jazz might be standardised through university. He recalls that he had been invited to give a paper at Manchester University for a conference entitled “Where is jazz today?”. “Jazz could become an academic music. A lot of musicians are getting work in academia because they don’t find work otherwise.” With a hundred students getting their degree every year, the danger is that jazz musicians will only play within a university framework as they cannot find gigs. “It is going to standardise the music. It is a worry.”

Scott Flanigan, a self-taught musician and the relationship with his audience

Scott Flanigan 52 is a well-known young pianist from Belfast. His experience with jazz is similar to the previous musicians as he thinks “you get into jazz by accident”.

He started classical piano lessons on and off from age 6 to 9. “[He] hated it, could not stand it.” When he was 12, he took lessons again with his school music teacher who enrolled him in the school orchestra, took him on to accompany the choir and asked him to join the jazz band. “[He] hated it. [He] could not understand what this jazz thing was like. It didn’t make sense.” This did not prevent him from also joining the Ulster Youth Orchestra. But he remembers that he was not very good at it. So, his first experience with jazz was not convincing.

What really hooked him to the music was listening to Chick Corea’s album Spain. He started to practice by listening to more music. He notes: “I played [the music] before I listened to it, which is not what most people do”, which explains his original aversion or indifference. “I was hooked up after that.” He is entirely self-taught in jazz. Since 2001, he has learnt the music by transcribing solos, and reading books about jazz. When he was able to “get through a tune” he was asked for gigs by Dave Howell, a saxophonist, whom he grew up with. “Gigs went up from there. Playing on the gig was my practice. You learn [the music] by practicing on stage because it’s different every time, especially through the solos that you take to improvise.” It is a case of “learning by doing, learning by recreating stuff that I had listened to on a record”. This is a specific feature of jazz. He recalls going to workshops but “most people had the theory but couldn’t play”.

He likes jazz because it is a combination of three aspects of the music.



First, it requires a lot of instrumental technique. Jazz piano will push you to your absolute limits in terms of your technique. Second it is the nuts and bolts, the harmony, the theory. Jazz theory is fairly widely accepted as very advanced theory. I like this fairly extreme approach to theory, melody and harmony. The third is creativity. I love classical piano and working on a phrase, trying to get it right. With jazz it is totally different. You can play it differently each time. You have the freedom to express yourself through the music, much more than you would if you were playing a Chopin Prelude. It is to be able to play a piece with “how I feel” at that particular time. It could be through improvisation, through a standard. Jazz is a reflection of yourself. There’s no other music that requires the three of those aspects.

When asked about how jazz developed in Ireland, Scott posits that it may stem from the love of American culture. “One of the biggest forms of music in Northern Ireland now is country music, called Country & Irish.” The influence of the London scene is crucial as bands who were booked in Britain went across to Ireland for more gigs. The influence of the British and local TV shows from the 1950s up to the 1970s also played a role in exposing the public to the music.

Scott himself toured both the United Kingdom and Ireland. He explains that to build an audience and reputation he had to raise his profile on the interna-tional scene. He came to Paris to record and play with the author and also toured Germany with Markus Strothmann, a drummer he had met in Belfast. This had a snowball effect as “people take notice when you do things abroad. It influences bookers and agents”. In 2017 he was nominated for the Take Five scheme devel-oped by promoters of the company called Serious based in London. “It is a talent development scheme that gathers eight musicians in a farmhouse in Kent for a week.” He met two guitarists, Rob Luft and Ant Law, whom he toured with later. “It helped to push the career further, [although he feels he is] not much of a better player.” During the workshop musicians learn about the business of music. They meet people who run a jazz club, who own a jazz label, a jazz touring agency, and learn about the legal side of the music business. Scott remembers that the British musicians “had no engagement with the Irish jazz scene”. The next step for them after London is other European capitals like Paris, Berlin, Zurich, but not Ireland. It would never occur to them to play at the Cork Jazz Festival. This might be due to the historical relationship between the United Kingdom and Ireland. “Ireland is a bit of a backwater”. Ireland can be seen “as a step down from London jazz scene”.

Scott notes the self-deprecating visions that Northern Irish musicians have about themselves. They tend to look up to people who have studied abroad, especially the United States.

Somebody has come back to Belfast from New York where he studied jazz there so they must therefore be incredible 53. There’s an element of: he went away and he came back, therefore, he must be incredible because all of us people in the Northern Irish

53. For instance, musicians like Mark McKnight and Darren Beckett.


jazz scene haven’t studied. We’re all self-taught, there’s no jazz education here. These learned people come back to Belfast and they are going to show us how it is done.

It is true that there is no dedicated jazz degree in Northern Ireland while Dublin thrives by having developed its education in the field with the Newpark Centre amalgamated into Dublin City University where they run a full-time jazz degree.

In the last fifteen years Scott has built an audience by “trying to do as many gigs as he can. They don’t necessarily pay”. For a gig in Dublin at The International Bar, he would get a phone call in the morning. He would make €20, while driving to Dublin cost £25 in petrol and he would have spent €10 to eat. This reveals the dedication of jazz musicians who usually would lose money to get a gig. Scott spends his time on the roads but “dedication to the music, to the performance and the scene pays off”. “The audience will reward you.” “You are acknowledged on the scene and by the community.”

Jazz requires a high barrier of entry for the musician and sometimes for the audience.

People are scared of the J word, but there is always a point of entry. The first time you might not like the music and usually after a gig some people from the audience will note “I didn’t know I liked it”.

But they are most of the time “enthralled by the spectacle of it”.

Kyron Bourke: breaking boundaries

Kyron Bourke 54 is a singer and pianist from Dublin who joined the Belfast jazz scene in 1992. He explains that “there are very good musicians in Dublin but very few gigs. [He] realised that the jazz scene in Belfast was much better than Dublin”.

He was born into a theatrical family, as his mother was a singer, and his father was an actor. He became acquainted with jazz music through the songs from musi-cals that his parents put on stage. He also remembers they had a gramophone on which they would play music by Maurice Chevalier or Édith Piaf. “I didn’t know the songs were jazz standards.” Later, as a teenager, he went into rock music “as everybody does”. At the age of 20, he became aware of the particular sound of jazz chords, listening to Gershwin. “I was never seeking jazz but I liked the sensibility.” So, he started to incorporate these chords into his rock band called Les Fruits that gradually became synonymous with fringe jazz. He also got a recording contract with Polygram that pull him out of jazz, making a hit in the radio charts with a rock song. However, “fame lasted for three months and then nothing”.

With no money in his pocket, he began to play in piano bars such as Georgie’s Bistro, a little basement in Dublin. He notes that he was not a good pianist, but he had a personality. Subsequently, more jazz musicians came in to play and gravitated



around that venue. After playing the bass, he realised that his voice would propel him on. He made a living playing in bars and recording commercial music.

In 1991 he saw an ad looking for a piano player in Belfast. He got the job at Larry’s piano bar in Bedford Street and the venue became famous in the end. “People were standing on the tables. It was more being a ring master than a piano player”, he recalls. He suggested to Larry to set up a proper jazz venue 1993-1994, and he was given a very small budget. His idea was to have a bass player and a trumpet player playing as a duet without the rhythmic section, which would be an unusual lineup for a jazz gig. But that was too adventurous, and it eventually did not work. A jazz session was set up between 6 and 9 pm – “jazz has always been shoved in the corners” – with most musicians being in their sixties, and previously evolving in showbands and dance halls.

In the last ten years Kyron has been booking the jazz gigs at Bert’s bar. Some musicians would not consider the venue a proper jazz club, which Kyron explains: “There is an element of snobbery from certain jazz musicians in Belfast. We’re jazz, he’s only pop”. However, he insists that the audience at Bert’s can be exposed to different kinds of jazz by finding a compromise between mainstream and modern tunes during the same gig. There is a need to bring in some show to capture the audience. With the Covid pandemic, Kyron is thinking of new ways to expose people to jazz by streaming live music from Bert’s and at the same time linking up with other venues around Europe. This would bring in more interaction with international players and would break with the “inplay” of the Belfast jazz scene.

Conclusion

Jazz may have met with defiance and hostility from institutions in Ireland, at least in the Irish Free State at the beginning of the 20th century, yet it is remarkable that the music, as a minority music, has continued to evolve and survive, with the Dublin and the Belfast scenes expanding or shrinking according to time. In Northern Ireland, traditional jazz was a major stream until the 1990s when a contemporary style started to emerge thanks to the opening up of the province to international influences.

Despite partition, musicians do not seem to have confined to the south or the north of Ireland. On the contrary they have used all venues across the border. While musicians have all used both the Dublin and Belfast scenes, they seem today to have more opportunities to play in Belfast rather than Dublin where the number of venues is small. Besides, other cities have jazz venues: Kilkenny (The Sofa Sessions), Cork, Limerick, Sligo (Festival), Castlerock, Derry (Bennigans Bar). In another interview 55, I have presented the work of David Lytle, a prominent drummer, who

55. Fabrice Mourlon, “Performing Jazz and Sharing Creative Spaces”, in New Cartographies, Nomadic Methodologies, Contemporary Arts, Culture and Politics in Ireland, Anne Goarzin, Maria Parsons (eds.), Oxford, P. Lang, 2020, p. 157-171.


plays on the Derry scene. Like the other interviewees of this article, he insists on the role of the performance and on developing alternative venues to reach out to new audiences (on small islands for example). The Murray Brothers and Joseph Leighton (guitar) are regular players at Bennigans Bar, a pub and jazz venue owned by pianist John Leighton. This is a special community venue that gathers regular local residents and local artists (musicians and painters). The Derry and the Belfast musicians do not really mix, and the Derry players have links with neighbouring county Donegal, notably with the Falcarrah Jazz Festival.

So the scenes, both north and south, are scattered amongst sporadic and sometimes ephemeral venues. Although there has always been a tension between traditional and contemporary jazz in Northern Ireland, musicians there seem to have similar habits and values as any jazz musician in Europe. They have a very slow career, trying to build up audiences, very often losing money on their gigs, and moving on to the next “clique”, as Becker would say, to get more popularity and visibility. The jazz community is small but is composed of solidary members gathered around a minority music, not easily accessed either by the musicians or by

the audience, but a music that hooks them up at one point, and usually durably so.

Fabrice Mourlon

Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3


L’urbex : déchiffrage / défrichage critique

Résumé : L’exploration urbaine (urbex) est un phénomène culturel mondial consistant à explorer des lieux abandonnés sans y laisser de traces et à prendre des photographies des sites ensuite postées sur les réseaux sociaux. En Irlande, l’intérêt pour les lieux délabrés et les ruines est antérieur à l’urbex notamment en raison de l’importance de la propriété et de l’émigration. L’urbex a été décriée et dépeinte comme une forme de ruinophilie, de tourisme macabre ou de soif adolescente d’aventures illégales. Mais elle a été encouragée par ceux qui y voient une résistance politique aux stratégies de surveillance ou bien une opportunité de se réapproprier le passé pour construire des archives populaires et collaboratives. Étant donné l’absence d’articles portant sur l’urbex en Irlande, il semble nécessaire de présenter les différentes pistes critiques permettant de comprendre cette pratique très débattue.

Mots clés : exploration urbaine, photographie de ruines, délabrement, archives numériques, cross-curating, tourisme sombre, nostalgie.

Abstract: Urban exploration (urbex) is a world-wide cultural phenomenon which consists in exploring abandoned places without leaving any trace and taking photographs of the sites that are then posted on social networks. In Ireland the interest in ruins and derelict buildings predates the development of urbex; it stems from the importance of home owner-ship and emigration. Urbex has been dismissed as a shallow form of ruinophilia, a branch of dark tourism or a juvenile quest for illegal adventure. It has conversely been promoted as a political act, challenging surveillance strategies and as a tool for a reappropriation of the past leading to the elaboration of collaborative popular archives. Given the dearth of articles on Irish urban exploration, it seems useful to sketch the critical landscape surrounding this much-debated practice.

Keywords: urban exploration, ruin photography, dereliction, digital archives, cross-curating, dark tourism, nostalgia.

Introduction

Quel regard porter sur l’exploration urbaine, phénomène contemporain extraordi-nairement populaire en Irlande comme ailleurs ? Doit-on voir l’urbex – néologisme désignant l’exploration urbaine – comme une version dégradée de l’esthétique romantique de la ruine (parfois désignée comme ruin-porn 1), une forme de tourisme macabre (dark tourism), ou bien une manière de se réapproprier un passé trop peu

1. Voir Ruin-Porn and the Obsession with Decay, Siobhan Lyons (dir.), Cham, Springer International, 2018.

94 Va l é ri e Mo ri s s o n

connu, voire dérangeant ? Pour mieux comprendre ce mouvement protéiforme sans se fourvoyer dans des jugements esthétiques ou moraux, il convient de déployer plusieurs pistes d’analyse parallèles.

L’exploration urbaine s’est développée à partir des années 1970 aux États-Unis 2, à Berlin 3 et en Russie puis, plus largement, dans les années 1990. Pratique récréative, elle s’appuie très largement sur la photographie et les réseaux sociaux. Elle consiste à pénétrer, parfois de manière illégale, dans des lieux fermés, oubliés et abandonnés, souvent délabrés, pour les photographier et les documenter sans laisser de traces 4. Les images de lieux ou d’objets découverts sur les sites sont diffusées au sein de communautés virtuelles, accompagnées ou non de commentaires. Marginale à ses débuts, l’urbex représente aujourd’hui un vaste pan culturel : magazines, ouvrages et sites spécialisés réunissent des explorateurs préférant la plupart du temps rester anonymes et utiliser un pseudonyme. L’éthique de l’urbex incite à un respect des lieux : il convient de ne pas intervenir sur les sites, ne rien modifier et ne pas divulguer les localisations précises pour prévenir le vandalisme. L’urbex permet de découvrir des sites cachés et inaccessibles, les coulisses des espaces urbains rationnels et ordonnés, des lieux authentiques qui échappent à toute mise en scène. Elle apparaît à une époque de déclin et de crise. Le philosophe Dylan Trigg situe l’urbex dans un contexte de décadence et la comprend comme un symptôme de la crise de l’ordre rationnel 5.

L’urbex s’appuie largement sur la photographie qui apporte la preuve non seulement de l’existence de lieux cachés mais également de l’exploration elle-même, vécue comme une aventure potentiellement dangereuse, toujours excitante. Dans ce contexte, la photographie instaure des superpositions temporelles multiples : les lieux autrefois habités, délabrés au fil des ans, sont parcourus dans un présent enregistré par l’acte photographique. Qui plus est, l’image chronologiquement plurielle devient le support d’échanges entre les membres d’une communauté, auteurs anonymes d’archives collaboratives. Si l’urbex peut engager une quête esthétique assouvie par la photographie, elle est également à la fois une pratique d’historien valorisant une culture matérielle négligée mais signifiante, une forme de contestation politique dans laquelle l’infiltration devient une affirmation de la liberté d’occuper tout espace et une action sociale générant des pratiques curatoriales horizontales. Photographes, historiens, aventuriers contestataires, co-curateurs, les urbexers créent indéniablement des formes culturelles nouvelles.

2. Les ruines industrielles de villes comme Détroit, devenue capitale du ruin-porn, ont attiré des photographes qui se sont avérés pionniers (Yves Marchand, Romain Meffre, The Ruins of Detroit, Göttingen, Steidl, 2010).

3. Le projet de musée virtuel des lieux abandonnés, VIMUDEAP, a été lancé en 1996 à Berlin.4. Bradley L. Garrett, « Undertaking Recreational Trespass : Urban Exploration and Infiltration »,

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, vol. 39, nº 1, 2014, p. 1.5. Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay : Nothingness, Nostalgia and the Absence of Reason, Oxford,

P. Lang, 2006, p. 182-183 et 185-186.

95L’ u rb e x : d é c h i f f r ag e / d é f ri c hag e c ri t i qu e

Le statut incertain de la photographie de ruines

Le statut de la photographie est, dans le cadre de l’exploration urbaine, multiple et incertain. L’image peut être documentaire ou artistique, symptôme d’un voyeurisme décrié ou illustration d’histoires que les textes et les commentaires précisent. La photographie de ruines, genre établi, explique en grande partie le succès de l’urbex. Les photographies de somptueux bâtiments en ruine réalisées par Christian Richter, originaire d’Allemagne de l’Est, réunies en une série intitulée Abandoned, ont marqué l’apogée du genre. Les deux ouvrages de l’historien britannique Michael Kerrigan, Lost Interiors : Beauty in Desolation 6 et Abandoned Palaces 7 ont confirmé l’attrait exercé par l’esthétique du délabrement. En Irlande, l’archéologue Tarquin Blake a publié plusieurs livres sur le patrimoine archéologique et les maisons abandonnées (Abandoned Mansions of Ireland I et II) ainsi que Haunted Ireland 8 où l’architecture est associée au surnaturel et au gothique, comme c’est le cas dans certaines productions d’urbexers.

La photographie de ruines – maisons, bâtiments industriels, hôpitaux ou écoles – ravive la fascination pour les lieux abandonnés ou délabrés qui transpa-raît dans la peinture romantique et la littérature dès le XVIIIe siècle. Pionnier de l’urbex, Jeff Chapman avouait le plaisir qu’il trouvait dans la contemplation de beaux bâtiments en ruine et la fascination engendrée par leur lente décomposition 9.

L’attrait des ruines provient de leur capacité à faire fusionner espace et temps, lieu et histoire, et à troubler les cadres temporels habituels. Comme l’observe Walter Benjamin, la ruine, dans son incomplétude et sa fragmentarité, est une allégorie de l’impermanence du monde capitaliste et du progrès 10. Le phénoménologue Dylan Trigg insiste sur l’expérience émotionnelle ou affective des lieux qu’il considère comme des interfaces entre l’espace réel et le sujet. Les lieux, profondément liés à la mémoire, opèrent comme des médiateurs entre le monde extérieur et l’intériorité de la conscience. La ruine, interface entre objet et sujet, introduit une anomalie dans notre rapport quotidien à l’espace et au temps ; elle matérialise un désordre ontologique qui ébranle notre sentiment d’habiter l’espace 11. Trigg propose que les ruines de l’époque post-industrielle et post-moderne que recherchent les urbexers déclenchent un sentiment de sublime associé à l’échec de la raison 12. Autre héritière de Benjamin, Svetlana Boym associe la ruinophilie à la révélation des paradoxes

6. Michael Kerrigan, Lost Interiors : Beauty in Desolation, Londres, Flame Tree Publishing, 2017.7. Michael Kerrigan, Abandoned Palaces, Londres, Amber Books, 2019.8. Tarquin Blake, Abandoned Mansions of Ireland I, Cork, Collins, 2010 ; Tarquin Blake, Abandoned

Mansions of Ireland II, Cork, Collins, 2017 ; Tarquin Blake, Haunted Ireland, Cork, Collins, 2015.9. Quoted in Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay…, p. 182.

10. Walter Benjamin, Origine du drame baroque allemand, Sibylle Muller (trad.), Paris, Flammarion, 2000.

11. Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay…, p. xxv.12. Ibid.


de la modernité et à la fin des grands récits téléologiques 13. Siobhan Lyons voit, quant à elle, dans le ruin-porn une forme de nouveau sublime qui nous séduit car il nous laisse imaginer le spectacle de notre propre disparition et joue sur la puissance de l’instinct de mort 14. Pour Boym comme pour Lyons, le ruin-porn et la ruinophilie nous proposent un voyage dans le temps qui nous mène vers notre futur, un futur sombre qui ne peut suivre la ligne ascendante du progrès 15. De la contemplation de l’inévitable disparition de chacun à celle de la fin de nos cultures et la condamnation de l’espèce humaine après l’Anthropocène il n’y a qu’un pas 16.

Si la ruine moderne, dans sa proximité et sa matérialité, rend l’idée de mort réelle, la photographie en accentue l’impression de vérité. En raison de sa spectralité 17 cette dernière fait écho au dérèglement temporel induit par la ruine. Elle permet de rendre sensible, voire palpable, la dégradation de lieux abandonnés en faisant appel aux qualités haptiques de la matière révélée par la lumière et des expositions longues. Dans le cadre de l’urbex, les photographies publiées en ligne peuvent être reconnues comme artistiques et légitimées par une publication papier ou des copy-rights ou bien demeurer amateures. Bien que le statut des images ne soit donc pas le même, leurs fonctions allégoriques et documentaires se superposent très souvent.

Les photographies de maisons en ruine prises par David Creedon (qui ne se considère pas comme un explorateur urbain) et réunies dans un ouvrage inti-tulé Ghosts of the Faithful Departed 18 et celles de Pete Irvine, alias Irishmanlost (photographe et urbexer vivant à Ballycastle), diffusées sur son site et son compte Instagram 19, ont beaucoup en commun. Les deux photographes ont choisi d’explorer systématiquement des lieux non répertoriés et peu accessibles pour mettre au jour un passé invisible. Ils sont attirés par les histoires que semblent pouvoir raconter les demeures abandonnées. David Creedon souligne qu’en Irlande, contraire-ment à d’autres pays dans lesquels il a voyagé, les nombreuses maisons inhabitées contiennent encore des objets domestiques qui laissent imaginer la vie de leurs habitants 20. Ses photographies sont des portraits in absentia à partir desquels des histoires se tissent. Elles sont indissociables des textes qui les accompagnent et qui explicitent les émotions du photographe ou fournissent des informations sur les objets découverts. Pete Irvine accompagne également ses images de brèves informations sur les objets photographiés même s’il s’intéresse pareillement aux

13. Sveltana Boym, « Ruinophilia : Appreciation of Ruins », Atlas of Transformation, en ligne : http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/r/ruinophilia/ruinophilia-appreciation-of-ruins-svetlana-boym.html.

14. Siobhan Lyons, « Introduction : Ruin Porn, Capitalism, and the Anthropocene », in Ruin Porn and the Obsession with Decay, p. 3.

15. Voir Sveltana Boym, « Ruinophilia… ».16. Ibid. 17. Voir Roland Barthes, La chambre claire. Note sur la photographie, Paris, Gallimard (Cahiers du

cinéma), 1980.18. David Creedon, Ghosts of the Faithful Departed, Cork, Collins, 2011.19. Son compte Instagram (irishmanlost) réunit environ 450 photographies et 2 500 abonnés. Voir

son site : https://www.irishmanlost.com et sa page Facebook : facebook.com/irishmanlostcom.20. David Creedon, interview non publiée menée en octobre 2020.

http://monumenttotransformation.org/atlas-of-transformation/html/r/ruinophilia/ruinophilia-appreciation-of-ruins-svetlana-boym.html



https://www.irishmanlost.com


lieux dont l’histoire reste inconnue. L’exploration jette un pont entre passé et présent et instaure une étrange proximité émotionnelle que Creedon décrit ainsi :

En regardant les scènes autour de moi j’avais l’impression de réveiller les fantômes de mon enfance et parfois j’avais la chair de poule en découvrant des journaux poussiéreux et humides, des images dans des cadres vermoulus qui déclenchaient des vagues de souvenirs 21.

Le titre choisi par Pete Irvine pour une série de photographies qu’il commer-cialise, See the Past, tout comme le titre de son site Web, Capturing the Lives We've Left Behind and the World We Live In Now 22, soulignent l’interférence entre le passé et le présent que l’exploration permet et la photographie prolonge. C’est à l’âge de 10 ans qu’il a photographié pour la première fois une maison abandonnée située près de chez lui pour préserver la trace de ce qui menaçait de disparaître.

Les photographies de Creedon et Irvine (Caltex Farm par exemple 23), prises à la lumière naturelle avec des temps d’exposition longs, montrent des intérieurs délabrés où des objets vus en gros plan témoignent de vies mystérieusement interrompues ainsi que des véhicules rouillés dans des jardins où la nature a repris ses droits. Des objets domestiques évoquant un quotidien familier – bouilloires en fer-blanc sur de vieilles gazinières, théières et boîtes à thé, linge séchant ou pendant dans des armoires entre-ouvertes, chaussures au pied de fauteuils, objets de dévotion témoignant de l’importance du catholicisme en Irlande, etc. – sont recouverts d’une poussière rappelant le passage du temps et la menace de la disparition. La poussière, écrit Georges Didi-Huberman, « demande à être pesée par-delà toute métaphysique, toute absolutisation de l’absence. Elle nous oblige à penser la des-truction avec son reste, à renoncer aux puretés du néant » 24. La poussière, les débris, la patine ou l’écaillement des peintures aux couleurs surannées, rendus palpables par la photographie, résistent à l’oubli ou à l’effacement. Ces surfaces qui captent la lumière filtrée par des vitres poussiéreuses deviennent des matières affectives laissant affleurer l’impermanence du bonheur domestique et imaginer la violence des départs ou exils. Se rencontrent dans ces scènes paradoxales la familiarité du foyer (home) évoquée par des objets archétypaux encore bien ordonnés et l’inquiétante étrangeté du chaos naissant de la désagrégation (fig. 1).

Souvent dépourvues de la puissance allégorique des photographies artistiques, les images amateures publiées sur les comptes et pages des urbexers, tantôt collec-tifs tantôt individuels, réveillent également la mémoire d’un confort domestique archétypal et perdu. Elles leur permettent de garder le passé à portée de main pour entretenir une proximité affective avec la vie jusque-là oubliée des gens ordinaires.

21. David Creedon, Ghosts of the Faithful Departed, non paginé (traduction de l’auteure ; ci-après « TdA »).

22. https://www.irishmanlost.com/about23. https://www.irishmanlost.com/blog-1/caltex-farm24. Georges Didi-Huberman, Génie du non-lieu : air, poussière, empreinte, hantise, Paris, Minuit,

2001, p. 55.

https://www.irishmanlost.com/about-1

https://www.irishmanlost.com/blog-1/caltex-farm


Elles donnent lieu à des commentaires liés non pas à la qualité des images mais à l’architecture ou aux objets découverts. La photographie et les échanges qui ont lieu à propos des trouvailles permettent une mise en relation du singulier et du collectif que pointe brièvement Dylan Trigg : « Dans l’exploration, le déséquilibre entre l’individuel et le collectif disparaît lorsqu’un espace limité est reconquis » 25. L’objet oublié s’avère faire partie d’une culture matérielle commune propre à susciter des souvenirs personnels. Le commun s’inscrit dans le singulier, seul déclencheur possible de la mémoire. L’accumulation de photographies sur les sites et réseaux sociaux, qui peut être vue comme la manifestation d’un voyeurisme compulsif, permet la construction d’un patrimoine vernaculaire générant, comme on le verra plus bas, des pratiques curatoriales nouvelles où la fonction documentaire de la photographie se double d’une dimension affective.

L’esthétisation des ruines et l’abondance de photographies circulant sur les

sites d’urbex ont déclenché de vives critiques. L’historien Steven High invite à

compléter l’interprétation esthétique des ruines industrielles proposée par Tim

Edensor 26 par une lecture sociale et politique : les ruines ne sont pas uniquement

découvertes mais provoquées, rappelle-t-il, et leur interprétation exige la prise en

compte des rapports de pouvoir entre classes sociales. High dépeint les urbexers

comme de jeunes enthousiastes blancs issus des classes moyennes tentant de faire

25. Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay…, p. 186.26. Tim Edensor, Industrial Ruins : Spaces, Aesthetics and Materiality, Oxford, Berg, 2005.

Fig. 1 – Pete Irvine, The Heart of the Home.

© Irishmanlost


l’expérience d’une mélancolie profonde et d’une clandestinité excitante dans des lieux sublimes et interdits 27.

L’exploration et le dark tourism

L’urbex, en tant que pratique physique impliquant l’intrusion dans des lieux interdits ou privés, a été analysée en rapport avec le tourisme macabre soit sous l’angle du voyeurisme soit sous celui de la transgression. Si l’image fixe a une valeur allé-gorique, les vidéos qui sont parfois publiées rendent compte du parcours parfois chaotique et angoissant à l’intérieur des bâtiments non éclairés, parfois éventrés et jonchés de débris.

Comme le tourisme sombre, l’urbex procure une excitation liée à la clandesti-nité des explorations et aux trouvailles inattendues 28. Sa dimension transgressive est en apparence incompatible avec les pratiques touristiques. Néanmoins, Emma Fraser voit l’urbex comme une consommation d’expériences de lieux abandonnés qui se rapproche du tourisme noir mais qui est entreprise par les participants eux-mêmes 29. Certaines images rendent compte d’une atmosphère inquiétante. Des photos de poupées délaissées, cassées ou démembrées sur le compte Instagram de forgottenplacesni 30 s’inspirent d’une esthétique macabre. Certaines photographies d’églises abandonnées (comme celles postées sur la page Facebook d’Urbex Ireland le 11 octobre 2018) évoquent, aux yeux des commentateurs, les actes pédophiles perpétrés par des prêtres qui ont été révélés en Irlande. L’urbexer Donal Moloney a publié un film de son exploration d’un hôpital psychiatrique dans lequel la bande-son inquiétante crée une atmosphère de film d’horreur. Le commentaire insiste sur l’invisibilité de ceux qui ont occupé ces lieux ignorés :

En 2006 le gouvernement irlandais a adopté une politique conduisant à la fermeture de certains hôpitaux psychiatriques. Parmi eux de magnifiques bâtiments du XIXe siècle ayant accueilli des sans-domicile, des drogués, des malades mentaux, des marginaux ou autres indésirables pendant près de 150 ans 31.

La recherche d’atmosphères mystérieuses, sinistres et effrayantes est l’une des motivations de l’urbex mais non la seule. Faut-il y voir un goût injustifiable pour le macabre et un voyeurisme déplacé ?

27. Steven High, « Beyond Aesthetics : Visibility and Invisibility in the Aftermath of Deindustrialization », International Labor and Working-Class History, vol. 84, 2013, p. 140-153 ; Steven High, David W. Lewis, Corporate Wasteland : The Landscape and Memory of Deindustrialization, Toronto, Between the Lines, 2007.

28. Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay…, p. 188.29. Emma Fraser, « Urban Exploration as Adventure Tourism. Journeying beyond the Everyday »,

in Liminal Landscapes. Travel, Experience and Spaces In-Between, Hazel Andrews, Les Roberts (dir.), Abingdon, Routledge, 2012, p. 136-161.

30. Le compte Instagram forgottenplacesni rassemble 1 530 abonnés environ.31. Donal Moloney, « Asylum Exploration », en ligne : https://www.broadsheet.ie/tag/urbex (TdA).

https://www.broadsheet.ie/tag/urbex


L’analyse que le psychologue Tony Walter propose du tourisme noir éclaire sans doute une dimension peu soulignée de l’urbex 32. Walter avance que le dark tourism est l’un des moyens à notre portée d’appréhender la mort de manière indirecte, donc supportable. Comme le tourisme macabre, l’urbex instaure un lien entre les vivants et les morts qui compense le refoulement de la mort, taboue dans nos sociétés contemporaines. L’exploration de lieux abandonnés, comparable à la visite de lieux saints contenant des reliques ou à la visite de lieux historiques qui ont été le théâtre de tragédies, permet de ressentir la douleur de ceux qui sont identifiés non pas comme personnages historiques mais comme ancêtres 33. L’urbex, comme le tourisme noir, opère comme médiateur de la mort (mediates death). Il s’agit, pour les visiteurs et les explorateurs confrontés à la trace concrète de disparitions, de se ressouvenir et non pas de commémorer. Ceci transparaît dans de nombreux propos d’urbexers. Walter propose par ailleurs que les formes les plus sombres du tourisme noir ne s’intéressent pas à des morts qui heurtent les riches touristes des classes moyennes mais aux morts qui remettent en cause les récits collectifs construisant la nation et célébrant la modernité 34. On perçoit ici une affinité avec les analyses de l’urbex que propose Dylan Trigg.

Comme le dark tourism, qui investit les lieux paradoxaux, dépréciés et limi-naux, l’urbex explore des lieux à la marge des villes 35. Elle rend visibles les « angles morts » 36 des villes ou des campagnes. Fervent défenseur de l’urbex, l’ethnologue et explorateur Bradley L. Garrett voit dans l’exploration une affirmation du droit à la ville dans nos sociétés sécurisées et la possibilité d’un accès à une culture vernaculaire 37. Dans Explore Everything : Place-Hacking the City, il situe l’urbex dans le sillage des explorations littéraires de la ville et du situationisme largement inspiré de la notion de dérive chez Debord 38. Jeff Chapman (1973-2005), alias Ninjalicious, a pareillement souligné que l’infiltration et la transgression des interdictions d’accès sont des moyens de contester le pouvoir et les mécanismes de contrôle des espaces urbains 39. Néanmoins la surfréquentation de certains lieux par les urbexers suggère que l’exploration peut devenir une consommation

32. Tony Walter, « Dark Tourism : Mediating between the Dead and the Living », in The Darker Side of Travel : The Theory and Practice of Dark Tourism, Richard Sharpley, Philip R. Stone (dir.), Bristol, Channel View Publications (Aspects of Tourism), 2009, p. 39-55.

33. Ibid., p. 45.34. Ibid., p. 49.35. Voir Maria Gravari-Barbas, Marie Delaplace, « Le tourisme urbain “hors des sentiers battus” »,

Téoros, vol. 34, nº 1-2, 2015, en ligne : http://teoros.revues.org/2790 ; Aude Le Gallou, « From Urban Exploration to Ruin Tourism : A Geographical Analysis of Contemporary Ruins as New Frontiers for Urban Tourism », International Journal of Tourism Cities, vol. 4, nº 2, 2018, p. 245-260.

36. Aude Le Gallou, « Espaces marginaux et fronts pionniers du tourisme urbain : approcher les ruines urbaines au prisme de la notion d’(extra)ordinaire », Bulletin de l’association de géographes français, vol. 95, nº 4, 2018, p. 595-612, en ligne : http://journals.openedition.org/bagf/4241.

37. Bradley L. Garrett, « Undertaking Recreational Trespass… », p. 4.38. Bradley L. Garrett, Explore Everything : Place-Hacking the City, Londres, Verso, 2013.39. Ninjalicious (Jeff Chapman), Access All Areas : A User’s Guide to the Art of Urban Exploration,

Toronto, Infilpress, 2005.

http://teoros.revues.org/2790

http://journals.openedition.org/bagf/4241


d’expériences ou répondre au besoin compulsif d’accumuler de belles images d’abandon.

Si la nature transgressive, anarchique et contestataire de l’urbex défendue par Chapman et Garrett n’est pas un caractère saillant de la pratique en Irlande, qui explore davantage l’environnement rural, la volonté d’exhumer une histoire authentique et non officielle est réelle. Comme le souligne Chapman, alors que les citadins sont généralement passifs dans leur perception de l’espace, les urbexers sont, eux, en quête d’expériences de lieux authentiques portant des traces intactes du passé 40. Dylan Trigg rappelle que les ruines qui attirent les urbexers ne sont pas des monuments, ces objets de consommation serviles, ces lieux clos et réglementés qui font du passé une abstraction rationnelle 41. Au discours historique construit que matérialise le monument s’oppose le désordre et le dérèglement phénoméno-logique de la ruine post-industrielle. D’ailleurs, si le monument cadre le discours historique, l’urbex génère, elle, des récits multiples et hybrides.

L’épreuve de l’histoire

Le plaisir esthétique ou les émotions fortes puisés dans la contemplation des ruines et l’exploration clandestine ne peuvent que rarement être dissociés de l’effort de documentation historique. Les urbexers utilisent des moteurs de recherche facilitant l’identification de lieux abandonnés (easyurbex.com par exemple) et passent le territoire au peigne fin. Les lieux sont fouillés même si rien n’est déplacé ou emporté et l’enquête se poursuit souvent après la publication des images. Les explorations permettent de trouver des objets qui appartiennent à une culture matérielle encore en partie enfouie : journaux anciens, lettres ou documents administratifs sont souvent mis au jour, lus et photographiés. La communauté compte de nombreux archéologues et historiens, certains faisant figure de pionniers.

Archéologue, historien et explorateur, Tarquin Blake a voyagé en Italie, en Grèce et en Égypte avant de se tourner, en 2008, vers l’architecture irlandaise et ses ruines domestiques méconnues et presque oubliées. Parcourant l’île de manière systématique et glanant des informations dans les archives, notamment le recense-ment de 1911, ou sur des cartes, il a mis au jour des lieux oubliés pourtant essentiels à l’élaboration de l’histoire sociale et politique. Conscient de l’importance de ses découvertes et de l’attrait exercé par les lieux décatis, il a créé le site Abandoned Ireland 42 qui archive ses photographies de bâtiments abandonnés. Les images montrant des façades enfouies sous la végétation ou des intérieurs délabrés rendent compte du style architectural et de la taille des lieux sans déployer une esthétique du délabrement ni puiser dans les ressorts du memento mori. Répertoriées par comté, ces images, couplées à des textes explicatifs, ont une fonction documentaire.

40. Ibid., p. 3.41. Dylan Trigg, The Aesthetics of Decay…, p. xxv.42. www.AbandonedIreland.com

www.AbandonedIreland.com


L’histoire des grandes demeures que Blake visite et celle des maisons plus modestes que Creedon a découvertes est liée à des moments clés de l’histoire irlandaise : la colonisation, la Grande Famine et les Troubles 43. Comme le souligne Creedon,

Les Irlandais ont un rapport particulier aux maisons et à la propriété ; cela semble être dans notre ADN et la privation de propriété nous renvoie aux presque deux siècles durant lesquels nous étions sous l’autorité britannique, une époque où la plupart des Irlandais travaillaient comme paysans ou métayers sur de vastes domaines. Après l’indépendance, l’accès à la propriété permit aux Irlandais de reprendre leurs terres 44.

La Famine a poussé à l’exil les Irlandais chassés de leurs maisons par les grands propriétaires terriens ou par la misère comme en témoignent les valises et les docu-ments primaires (billets de troisième classe, étiquette de la compagnie maritime, relevés de la banque de New York) que Creedon a retrouvés dans une maison ayant appartenu à Mary Sullivan, partie aux États-Unis et revenue en Irlande. Le travail d’enquête qu’a mené le photographe dans le cadre de Ghosts of the Faithful Departed s’est appuyé sur des témoignages oraux récoltés dans les années 1950 par Breda Gray de l’université de Cork. Pour Creedon, accompagner les photographies de texte est indispensable :

Je pense que les images peuvent être considérées comme des lieux de mémoire dans lesquels les objets déclenchent une réaction liée à la signification de la maison comme foyer. Je pense que les photographies ont besoin d’être étayées par le texte car les gens ne connaissent pas bien leur propre histoire 45.

Robert O’Byrne fait également figure de précurseur de l’exploration urbaine en Irlande. Écrivain et universitaire, auteur de plusieurs ouvrages sur le patrimoine architectural irlandais, il a créé The Irish Aesthete 46, site dédié à l’art et l’architecture, qui inclut une section sur les demeures en ruine. La manière dont il évoque ses recherches de terrain et le parcours à l’intérieur des lieux découverts montre une convergence nette avec l’urbex : « Personne ne devrait se délecter d’un spectacle de délabrement et pourtant on ressent une tristesse agréable lorsque l’on pénètre dans un bâtiment abandonné où toutes sortes d’histoires inventées peuvent naître » 47. Les photographies sont accompagnées de textes retraçant l’histoire des lieux.

43. La guerre civile et les Troubles ont forcé les Anglo-Irlandais à quitter leurs demeures (Lost Mansions : Essays on the Destruction of the Country House, James Raven (dir.), Londres, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

44. David Creedon, interview non publiée menée en octobre 2020 (TdA).45. Ibid.46. https://theirishaesthete.com47. Robert O’Byrne, « “Ireland is the Country for Ruins” : Why I Seek Out Our Abandoned Homes »,

The Irish Times, 2 February 2019, en ligne : https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/ireland-is-the-country-for-ruins-why-i-seek-out-our-abandoned-homes-1.3773429 (TdA).

https://theirishaesthete.com

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/ireland-is-the-country-for-ruins-why-i-seek-out-our-abandoned-homes-1.3773429

https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/ireland-is-the-country-for-ruins-why-i-seek-out-our-abandoned-homes-1.3773429


Tout comme certains sites industriels ou institutionnels abandonnés investis par l’urbex, les ruines domestiques qui parsèment le paysage irlandais sont des objets historiquement non clos dans la mesure où leur interprétation n’est pas guidée ou limitée par une mise en valeur patrimoniale ou muséale. Comme dans d’autres pays, l’urbex invite à explorer des lieux publics tels que d’anciens hôpitaux psychiatriques ou d’anciennes écoles et entend rendre compte de la pluralité des usages d’un site. Elle souligne l’instabilité et le dynamisme de l’histoire. Les images de Cahercon House (comté de Clare), propriété privée non accessible au public, publiées sur le site Behind Close Doors 48 illustrent les différents usages de cette grande demeure détaillés dans l’histoire des lieux de 1790 à nos jours. Aux propriétaires écossais de cette vaste bâtisse ont succédé des membres de l’aristocratie locale, les White puis les Vandeleurs qui, dans les années 1840, exproprièrent près de 1 000 familles. Racheté par des missionnaires (The Missionary Society of St. Columban) dans les années 1920, l’édifice deviendra un séminaire, un couvent, puis une école confes-sionnelle mixte. Au début des années 2000, une controverse oppose l’entreprise Whelan, qui souhaite acheter les lieux pour y installer une fabrique d’explosifs, les sœurs et la municipalité souhaitant bloquer de tels projets. La faillite financière du groupe a finalement remis la demeure sur le marché de l’immobilier 49. La diffusion des photographies de l’intérieur décrépi du bâtiment permet de revenir sur cette histoire tout en présentant les lieux comme habités et l’histoire comme une expérience vécue, incarnée. Elle invite aussi à ne pas dissocier l’histoire sociale, économique et politique des lieux. Considérée sous cet angle, l’urbex présente des affinités avec certaines pratiques muséales qui remplacent des narrations abstraites de l’histoire par des récits personnels, qui mettent en scène des personnages ayant habité les lieux ou élaborent des reconstitutions historiques. La mise en récit des sites permet une appropriation de l’histoire.

Dans les échanges auxquels la diffusion des photographies donne lieu, l’histoire documentée et les récits reconstruits à partir de bribes ou imaginés s’entrelacent. Sur la page Facebook d’Urbex : Forgotten Ulster on trouve des photos de l’intérieur d’une usine abandonnée très proches de l’esthétique de la ruine industrielle. Elles ont généré des commentaires évoquant le possible désespoir des ouvriers licenciés et des familles touchées par la désindustrialisation. Le photographe explique :

Très souvent lorsqu’on photographie ces bâtiments abandonnés on se demande qui les a occupés, quand, pourquoi ils ont été abandonnés. On essaie de prendre des images qui suscitent des émotions et évoquent des souvenirs de l’histoire sociale. Il est rare que l’on puisse reconstituer la totalité de l’histoire 50.

Commentant les clichés diffusés sur le compte Instagram d’urbex.ireland dans une maison du Donegal un abonné écrit : « Je pense souvent à ces images : c’était

48. https://www.bcd-urbex.com/cahercon-house-kildysart49. Eithne Tynan, « Tales of a House : An 18th Century Georgian Mansion », The Independent,

29 May 2014.50. https://www.facebook.com/UrbexForgottenUlster (TdA).

https://www.bcd-urbex.com/cahercon-house-kildysart

https://www.facebook.com/UrbexForgottenUlster


la maison de quelqu’un. Des enfants ont peut-être grandi là. Qui vivait ici ? Où sont ces gens maintenant ? » 51. La publication des images sur les réseaux sociaux permet alors de recueillir des témoignages.

Des archives participatives ou collaboratives

Dans sa défense de l’urbex, Garrett insiste sur la construction d’une histoire faite de superpositions de récits. L’urbex fait en effet partie des nouvelles pratiques

d’archivage et de conservation permises par le numérique et les réseaux sociaux.

Les publications d’Enda O’Flaherty, archéologue du paysage, sont un exemple

représentatif 52. O’Flaherty a créé un blog et un compte Instagram hébergeant

ses photographies d’écoles abandonnées aujourd’hui réunies dans un livre. Si

de nombreux bâtiments figuraient dans le National Inventory of Architectural Heritage of Ireland, d’autres, dont l’architecture était plus banale, n’étaient pas inventoriés alors qu’ils font aussi partie de l’histoire sociale 53. Sur les réseaux sociaux, l’historien a invité toute personne ayant des souvenirs de ces lieux à témoigner ou apporter des images complémentaires. Les photographies soignées d’écoles et de salles de classe encore meublées et presque animées ont déclenché des souvenirs d’enfance chez de nombreux Irlandais ou expatriés 54 et ont permis de collecter des informations précieuses : « Pour des milliers d’Irlandais, la forme et la disposition des écoles sont familières, c’est un environnement que nous avons tous partagé mais auquel sont attachés des souvenirs et expériences personnels » 55. L’exploration et l’enquête participative témoignent du déclin démographique de certaines régions ainsi que de l’évolution de l’architecture et des enseignements. Enda O’Flaherty revendique une pratique d’exploration rurale, « rurex », qu’il analyse dans le contexte de changements rapides du paysage irlandais 56. Son travail naît de la volonté de préserver la mémoire d’un environnement rural et d’expériences sociales qui disparaissent. En effet, la suburbanisation rampante de l’époque du Tigre celtique dans les années 1990 puis durant le rebond économique est un phénomène marquant de l’histoire du paysage irlandais 57. La transforma-tion des campagnes, autrefois lieux d’activités agricoles, en espaces de loisirs ou de villégiature ainsi que les débats entourant la patrimonialisation des espaces naturels a également modifié l’imaginaire de la ruralité. La suburbanisation a

51. Publication du 2 décembre 2019 (TdA).52. Voir https://endaoflaherty.com et https://www.ouririshheritage.org/content/archive/topics/

miscellaneous/nostalgia_memory_and_debris.53. https://endaoflaherty.com/gallery54. Plusieurs Américains d’origine irlandaise ont réagi aux publications.55. Enda O’Flaherty, interview non publiée menée le 20 octobre 2020 (TdA).56. Ibid.57. Voir Imagining Irish Suburbia in Literature and Culture, Eoghan Smith, Simon Workman (dir.),

Cham, Palgrave Macmillan (New Directions in Irish and Irish American Literature), 2018.

https://endaoflaherty.com

https://www.ouririshheritage.org/content/archive/topics/miscellaneous/nostalgia_memory_and_debris

https://www.ouririshheritage.org/content/archive/topics/miscellaneous/nostalgia_memory_and_debris

https://endaoflaherty.com/gallery


engendré un recul de l’implication des individus dans la vie et l’espace public 58 si bien que le monde rural, associé à la notion idéale de communauté et à des pratiques sociales traditionnelles, revêt une aura nostalgique dont l’urbex, ou rurex, témoigne. Cette nostalgie d’une campagne idéalisée se mêle à celle, plus personnelle quoique partagée, de l’enfance et l’innocence. Par ailleurs, les crises économiques ont fragilisé la foi en la modernité et la présence des lotissements fantômes, ghosts estates, traces de la faillite économique et politique du pays, a ravivé le souvenir douloureux de l’exil économique lié à la Famine 59.

L’urbex, en tant que pratique sociale, repose sur l’idée que chacun est déposi-taire d’une histoire collective dont le paysage porte la trace. Dans son étude sur les pratiques de conservation collaboratives (cross-curating), Arjun Sabharwal analyse les apports de pratiques curatoriales en réseau et décrit des écosystèmes sociaux liés à la conservation où les objets et l’information circulent. Suivant une logique d’agrégation, ces systèmes mêlent sélectivité, créativité et intelligence ; ils génèrent des relations sociales et des initiatives communes. La manière dont l’urbex s’appuie sur les réseaux sociaux pour constituer des espaces curatoriaux participatifs ou collaboratifs est prise en exemple 60.

L’urbex peut également être rapprochée des archivages numériques alternatifs décrits par Arjun Appadurai 61. Les archives traditionnelles, nées du désir de pré-server des fragments, ont un caractère sacré ; leur valeur collective est renforcée par un dispositif institutionnel qui en établit la légitimité. Michel Foucault a situé l’archive dans la sphère du discours et du contrôle de la mémoire 62. Les archives populaires, témoignages, objets de famille et fragments de la vie domestique réunis sur des sites participatifs ou collaboratifs sont différentes mais également alimen-

tées par une aspiration à préserver les traces du passé. Apparudai observe que les

archives numériques rétablissent un lien entre l’archive et la mémoire populaire et

rendent les participants actifs dans leur sélection et indépendants des institutions

officielles. Il regrette néanmoins que ces formes culturelles génèrent des sociabilités artificielles et inversent le processus « naturel » de l’archive : c’est l’archivage qui crée la communauté et non la communauté qui produit spontanément ce qui est archivé. Néanmoins, dans le cas de l’urbex telle qu’elle est pratiquée en Irlande, les réseaux virtuels rendent parfois possibles des collaborations et des rencontres réelles et une analyse précise des interactions sociales liées à l’urbex reste à mener.

58. Henrike Rau, « Introduction : Contested Landscapes – Space, Place, and Identity in Contemporary Ireland », Nature and Culture, vol. 4, nº 1, printemps 2009, p. 17.

59. Voir Valérie Morisson, « A People’s Sense of Belonging : Dislocation in Post Celtic Tiger Art », Canadian Journal of Irish Studies, vol. 37, nº 1-2, 2011, Culture and “Out of Placeness” in Post Celtic Tiger Ireland, 2008-2013, p. 178-207.

60. Arjun Sabharwal, Digital Curation in the Digital Humanities : Preserving and Promoting Archival and Special Collections, Oxford, Chandos Publishing, 2015, p. 135-136.

61. Arjun Appadurai, « Archive and Aspiration », Archive Public, en ligne : https://archivepublic.wordpress.com/texts/arjun-appadurai.

62. Michel Foucault, L’archéologie du savoir, Paris, Gallimard, 1969.

https://archivepublic.wordpress.com/texts/arjun-appadurai

https://archivepublic.wordpress.com/texts/arjun-appadurai


Conclusion

Si l’exploration urbaine ravive la fascination ancienne pour les ruines et leur dimen-sion tant allégorique qu’augurale, si elle jette un pont entre les vivants et les morts, elle doit s’envisager également comme pratique sociale donnant lieu à un travail de ressouvenir – et non de commémoration – puis à un archivage participatif ou collaboratif. La mémoire collective qui s’y élabore de manière fragmentaire et hybride est incarnée. Les objets et lieux photographiés ont une dimension esthétique, affective, anthropologique et documentaire. Leur dimension métonymique les place à l’intersection du particulier et du collectif tandis que leur matérialité nous force à considérer le résidu du passé, ce qui perdure ou s’obstine. Si la nostalgie qui teinte les photographies est le symptôme d’une impossibilité d’habiter les lieux, la preuve d’un attachement à l’enfance et du désir inassouvi d’appartenir à un lieu et une communauté, elle naît dans un contexte de transformations profondes du paysage géographique et social. Protéiforme, l’exploration urbaine doit donc être appréhendée sous des angles pluriels même si l’opportunité d’une réappropriation – de l’espace, de l’histoire, des affects, du souvenir – en constitue le point nodal.

Valérie Morisson

Université de Bourgogne Franche-Comté


Waking (for) the Nation:

Immaterial Materialism and the Feminine Body

in Tom Murphy’s The Wake (1998)

Abstract: The paper examines Tom Murphy’s play The Wake and the significance of its

staging as part of the Abbey Theatre’s 1916 centenary “Waking the Nation” programme.

The play critiques the process by which various elements of capitalism – in particular

materialistic culture, bourgeois morality and hypocrisy – combine to commodify, repress

and eliminate the human body. Murphy suggests that the pitfalls of materialism point to

the ironic truth that it denies the substantive materiality to our bodily existence. The female

body in particular is continually subjected to violence and exploitation. By dramatising the

emotional consequences of this immaterial materialism through the lens of a marginalised

female émigré and sex worker, the play contests and subverts the woman / nation figurations

in the context of Irish literary, theatrical and cultural imagination. The meaning of the wake

ritual is revisited and experienced as a temporary celebration of theatre as community.

Keywords: Tom Murphy, materialism, commemoration, gender, body, wake, Irish theatre.

Résumé : Cet article examine la pièce de théâtre de Tom Murphy, The Wake, et l’importance de sa mise en scène dans le cadre du programme du centenaire de 1916 de l’Abbey Theatre « Waking the Nation ». La pièce critique les effets du capitalisme – de la culture matérialiste, de la morale bourgeoise et de l’hypocrisie – qui réifie, réprime et élimine le corps humain. Murphy

suggère que les écueils du capitalisme soulignent une vérité ironique où la matérialité substan-

tielle de notre existence corporelle est niée. Le corps féminin en particulier est continuellement

soumis à la violence et à l’exploitation. En mettant en scène les conséquences émotionnelles

de ce matérialisme immatériel à travers le prisme d’une travailleuse du sexe immigrée et

marginalisée, la pièce conteste et subvertit les figurations femme / nation dans le contexte de

l’imaginaire littéraire, théâtral et culturel irlandais. Le sens du rituel de la veillée funèbre

est revisité et vécu comme une célébration temporaire du théâtre en tant que communauté.

Mots clés : Tom Murphy, matérialisme, commémoration, sexe, corps, veillée funèbre, théâtre

irlandais.

Tom Murphy’s play The Wake (1998) is a dramatic reworking of his own novel

The Seduction of Morality (1994) which deals with a female émigré’s return from

the United States to her hometown 1. After decades of economic and cultural self-

isolation, Ireland began to change its policies from the late 1950s: T. K. Whitaker

1. Tom Murphy, The Wake, in Plays. 5, London, Methuen Drama, 2006. All subsequent references

are included parenthetically in the text.

108 Mo o n you n g Ho n g

launched Ireland’s first programme for economic expansion in 1958, and in 1973,

Ireland successfully joined the European Economic Community (EEC). Ireland’s

economic development would reach its peak in the 1990s during the Celtic Tiger era

of an unprecedented, new-found wealth 2. In both the novel and the play, Murphy

critiques the rampant materialism and bourgeois morality that lies at the heart of

modern Irish society. In an interview with Alice Freeman, Murphy explained the

novel’s title and what “Irish morality” entails:

If you take anyone and ask them what the first thing is that they associate with seduction,

it’s sex. […] In Ireland if you mention the word morality, it means sex. […] There is

more to life and behaviour than just sex. I am playing on the two words […]. You have

people who will be seduced by the idea of respectability, the type of so-called moral

values which allow them to say they never tell a lie in their life, though in fact their

lives may be complete lies 3.

Murphy reverses the connotation behind the terms, “seduction” and “morality”;

“morality”, as its own idea, seduces and deceives, while “sex” speaks its own truth.

The Wake follows the tale of a sex worker named Vera, who – after working

as a prostitute in New York – returns to her home in the West of Ireland for what

she thinks is to be a funeral, to pay respects to her grandmother Mom. Upon her

arrival, Vera finds out that Mom died many months ago and that her family kept

the news from her. Added to Vera’s anguish is the fact that Mom has not been

given a proper wake. A series of examples of her family’s brutality and deliberate

neglect of Mom is revealed: not only did the family pressure Mom into signing

over the farm, withdrawing young Vera from her care when she refused to do so

many years ago, but they also forbade her neighbours from visiting Mom which

caused Mom’s premature death. The O’Tooles are only interested in acquiring

the hotel that Vera has inherited. They justify their greed in moral terms as Vera’s

unchaste behaviour offends and threatens their “respectability”. Vera becomes

finally unbearable to them when she performs a public drunken orgy at the hotel

with Finbar, her former boyfriend, and Henry, her brother-in-law. Vera is then

kidnapped and taken to a mental hospital. Released from the hospital, she makes

a deal with her family and gathers them at the hotel for a wake. At the end, she

2. See Diarmaid Ferriter, The Transformation of Ireland, New York, Overlook, 2005, p. 623-759.

During the Celtic Tiger, the creation of new jobs averaged more than 1,000 a week between 1994

and 2000. There were 1.71 million people employed by 2000 up from 1.08 million in 1986, and

Irish non-agricultural growth at 26 per cent exceeded that of the 12 European Union countries

(only 7 per cent growth). The productivity record consistently outperformed its partners in the

European Union. Nevertheless, “The overwhelmingly positive media reporting of the economy,

both at home and abroad, […] encouraged a lack of critical thought as to how the money should

be spent, or what constituted sustainable or holistic development. […] the increase in inequality

in Ireland could not be denied. […] the top 10 per cent of households held one half of the total

wealth, and the top 5 per cent about 20 to 25 per cent” (ibid., p. 675).

3. Alice Freeman, “Murphy’s Laws About Women: The Seduction of Morality”, Daily Express,

29 August 1994, in “Tom Murphy Collection: Reviews & Correspondence”, Trinity College,

Dublin, Ireland, IE TCD MS11115/6/2/19/2.

109Waking (for) the Nation: Immaterial Materialism and the Feminine Body…

generously hands over the hotel to the family and leaves her home place for good, accepting her loneliness as inexorable. In the play, materialism disrupts familial values; economic greed replaces human intimacy to the point where Vera becomes part of a business deal.

When Murphy was redrafting the novel into a play, he originally intended to keep

the 1970s setting; however, he realised that the play was still relevant to the 1990s

and used that later era as the locus of the play 4. Re-situating the play speaks strongly

to contemporary audiences and contributes greatly to the politics of performance.

Interestingly enough, not only do the twenty years roughly parallel the time span

between the play’s premiere and its revival in 2016, but the period also covers the

spectacular rise, fall and aftermath of the Celtic Tiger era. The 2016 Abbey production

directed by Annabelle Comyn called attention to the history of Ireland and the current

state of affairs as part of the 1916 centenary and “Waking the Nation” programme. In

the programme note, Gary Keegan comments that “this Abbey Theatre production

of The Wake is timely as we continue to pick up the pieces of the economic crash”,

offering an opportunity to “redefine our values” 5. These values reflect feminist

concerns; the line-up of the centenary programme itself was controversial and the

#WakingTheFeminists campaign followed, opposing the Abbey’s choice of staging

plays predominantly by male playwrights and male directors 6. In Irish theatre, the

prominence of literary texts resulted in the relative neglect of bodies in general and

female bodies in particular. Shonagh Hill posits that “the elision of female experience

and of female bodies have been perpetuated by Irish theatre, and the study of it, as

a predominantly literary theatre tradition” 7. Murphy, whose works stand within

the Irish literary theatre tradition, is thus an important case study; although a male

playwright himself, Murphy (and the Abbey production of his play) explores the

same issues – of the feminine body and materialism – that expose and condemn

the mechanisms by which women are alienated and marginalised. If Hill’s way of

“fine-combing the past” is to retrieve a (non-essentialist) genealogy of women’s

voices and experiences in Irish theatre history by focusing solely on female writers,

theatre-makers and performers, this paper further interrogates the possibility of

taking into account female bodies strongly rooted in language, giving the neglected

bodies their due both in literary and performative practice. In The Wake, Murphy

exposes the irony that materialism and material culture – which is comprised of

objects and object-fetishism – erases the materiality of the body. More than anything

else, the staged performances revealed the culture of repression and the institutions

arising from such erasure of the body – a thing regarded as lustful and in need of

discipline. This paper analyses the 2016 Abbey production of The Wake examining

4. For more details about the evolution of the text, see Nicholas Grene, The Theatre of Tom Murphy: Playwright Adventurer, London, Bloomsbury, 2017, p. 91-93.

5. Gary Keegan, programme note, “If These Walls Could Talk”, The Wake, Abbey Theatre Dublin,

22 June-30 July 2016, p. 9.

6. See http://www.wakingthefeminists.org/about-wtf/how-it-started.

7. Shonagh Hill, Women and Embodied Mythmaking in Irish Theatre, Cambridge, Cambridge

University Press, 2019, p. 7.

http://www.wakingthefeminists.org/about-wtf/how-it-started


the ways in which Murphy’s drama of material(istic) emotion was staged, and how it was realised by Comyn’s directorial intervention.

Materialism(s) and bodies

The Wake reflects Ireland as a materialistic society driven by the cultural logic of

capitalism and neoliberalism. According to Terry Eagleton, the problematic logic

of capitalism lies in the Cartesian dichotomy embedded in the common usage of

the term “materialism”. In Materialism (2016), Eagleton addresses the mind-body

problem. He writes that bodies are

[…] chunks of matter of a highly specific kind – a specificity which mind-language or

soul-language seeks rather misleadingly to pin down. They are not lumps of natural

stuff with some ghostly appendage attached to them, but mounds of material which

are inherently active, creative, communicative, relational, self-expressive, self-realising,

world-transforming and self-transcendent (which is to say, historical) 8.

The logic of capitalism relies on the mind-body dualism, which enables the

process of abstraction and the erasure of the sensuousness of the body. In Eagleton’s

view, bodies are expressive subjects and humans are “historical beings” in a “pecu-

liarly animal way”; in other words, history, culture and society are “specific modes

of creatureliness” 9. Similarly, Maurice Merleau-Ponty asserts that the body is not

an entity to which meaning is ascribed, but a “body-subject”. As he puts it, “the

union of body and soul is not an amalgamation between two mutually external

terms, subject and object, brought about by arbitrary decree”; rather, “it is enacted at

every instant in the movement of existence” 10. Such lived experience and corporeal

knowledge are critical in feminist studies. Elizabeth Grosz and Iris Marion Young

note how female bodies are limited by being made mere objects; at the same time,

as free subjects, they challenge cultural norms 11.

Judith Butler regards bodies as a process that stabilises and materialises over

time 12, and stresses the importance of considering the body in relation to gender,

challenging all dualisms: not only of the mind-body, but also of inner / outer and

subject / object regarding the body. In Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Butler writes: “Just as bodily surfaces are enacted as the natural,

8. Terry Eagleton, Materialism, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2016, p. 39.

9. Ibid., p. 44-45.

10. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, Colin Smith (trans.), London, Routledge,

1962, p. 102.

11. Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, Bloomington, Indiana University

Press, 1994; Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005.

12. Judith Butler, Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex”, New York, Routledge, 1993.

Butler claims that “to be material means to materialize, where the principle of that materialization

is precisely what ‘matters’ about that body, its very intelligibility” (ibid., p. 7).


so these surfaces can become the site of dissonant and denaturalized performance that reveals the performative status of the natural itself” 13. While Butler’s example pertains to the performance of drag as a way to create dissonance of gender binaries, Murphy’s appropriation and dramatisation of female characters raises questions over their “feminine” bodies – in their immobility, oppression, abuse, mistreatment,

commodification and dissociation – and their identities. By representing their

voices and bodies in the fictional and theatrical world, Murphy himself performs

sex / gender by adopting “feminine” constructs – words, act, gesture and desire – and

in effect reveals the performativity of gender and the “profound unnaturalness” of

bodies embedded in the materialisation process. Butler elaborates:

As the effects of a subtle and politically enforced performativity, gender is an “act,”

as it were, that is open to splittings, self-parody, self-criticism, and those hyperbolic

exhibitions of “the natural” that, in their very exaggeration, reveal its fundamentally

phantasmatic status 14.

The Wake presents the phantasmatic status of the body in its theatricality

and in its staged performance. The theatre provides the space for the characters’

complex relation to their bodies and sense of self to materialise in the process (and

presence) of the actors-as-characters act(ing) on stage. Theatre as a commercial

institution can be both complicit in and resistant to the commodification of bodies.

By exhibiting the abject, grotesque and carnivalesque female body, whereby the

main actor-as-character performs her sexuality in public, The Wake resists and

critiques the capitalist drive for abstraction and commodification, alerting the

audience to the realities of bodily consciousness.

Staging the hotel, performing the body

From this “materialist(ic)” perspective, it is most pertinent that the contestation

between the commodification of bodies and their resistance to it takes place in the

space of the hotel, which is the main setting of The Wake. The name of the hotel – The

Imperial Hotel 15 – is itself deeply suggestive. Henry regards The Imperial Hotel as

“this jewel in the crown of the family fortunes” (p. 109). A Georgian building and

once a family residence, the hotel can easily be linked to the Big Houses in Ireland.

From the early 1920s up to the 1980s, Big Houses were sold off or destroyed, leading

to the decline of the “Big House era” which had marked the political dominance of

13. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York, Routledge,

1990, p. 146.

14. Ibid., p. 147.

15. The Imperial Hotel was in fact the name of the hotel in Murphy’s hometown of Tuam, the basis

for the play’s setting. It is situated in the Square, in the town centre of Tuam. In the Irish Historic Towns Atlas (IHTA) – Tuam, it is listed as Daly’s hotel (1832-1856), Daly’s Royal Mail Hotel

(1878), and Daly’s Royal Hotel (1881), becoming Guy’s Imperial Hotel in 1892 through 1894,

and Corralea Court Hotel in 2009.


the Anglo-Irish class since the late 16th century. In the present day, Big Houses have

undergone such profound changes not only in ownership but in social function

that their lineage and history no longer matter 16. The O’Tooles are Catholic and

none of them are interested in the history of the house; Tom, for instance, only

wants to resell the hotel for profit. Henry – whose last name Locke-Brown is an

indicator of his “mixed-blood” heritage – is a Catholic but also a Protestant with

“protesting genes: my mother’s side, the Lockes” (p. 131). As the last decadent

heir, he is the only figure who connects with the past. Despite his partial alliance

with Vera, however, he is unable to sever his tribal ties: “Culture has defeated him”

(p. 97) and he is trapped in his role as husband to Marcia and father to Norman.

Neither “imperial” nor “crown” resonates with the O’Tooles. Their language is the

language of capitalism whose grammar is structured around commodity and profit.

In an “independent” Ireland, capitalism has become another form of imperialism.

The hotel as an embodied form of capital can be traced back to its earliest

origins; it is a space of commercial hospitality, where privacy is guarded and

disguised in public. Compared to other lodgings that accommodated travellers,

hotels reflect the changing milieu of greater commercialisation and modernisation.

Hotels proliferated in the early 19th century in Western Europe to accommodate

richer customers 17. Modern day hotels attest to the further shift towards what

Marc Augé coins as “non-place”, where anonymity and transience are its defining

features. The word “non-place” designates

[…] two complementary but distinct realities: spaces formed in relation to certain ends

(transport, transit, commerce, leisure), and the relations that individuals have with

these spaces. […] anthropological places create the organically social, so non-places

create solitary contractuality 18.

Non-places are effects of “supermodernity” and The Wake reflects the rapid

process of modernisation in Ireland 19. The consequences of “supermodernity”

– uneven and incoherent development in society – contribute to the sense of

confusion and contradiction for people living through those rapid changes.

The tide of modernisation clashes with the moralities and sensibilities of Vera’s

small town. The meaning of the small-town mentality is detailed in the novel

16. Terence Dooley, “Irish Big Houses: Introduction to the Historiography of the Irish Big House”,

in The Big Houses and Landed Estates of Ireland: A Research Guide, Dublin, Four Courts Press,

2007, p. 137.

17. See Elaine Denby, Grand Hotels: Reality and Illusion. An Architectural and Social History, London,

Reaktion, 1998; and Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types, Princeton, Princeton University

Press, 1976.

18. Marc Augé, Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, John Howe (trans.),

London, Verso, 1995, p. 94.

19. Ibid., p. 103. Augé defines supermodernity as having “three figures of excess: overabundance of

events, spatial overabundance and the individualization of references” (ibid., p. 109) and making

“the old (history) into a specific spectacle, as it does with all exoticism and all local particularity”

(ibid., p. 110).


and the manuscript drafts of the play. When Vera is still living in New York, not

having replied to her family’s request to deal with the hotel matter, her brother

Tom sends her a passive-aggressive letter. He takes “the opportunity of her absence

to wax moral”:

I do not know what you think you are playing at over there, but your sisters and I would

also like to ask have you forgotten what it is like to live in a small town? – And the pride

we take in it. New York indeed and I am sure is New York, but a name means something

here. We have a sense of place. We have a sense of responsibility – we aspire to become

moral agents without apologies to anyone, because that is our greatest desire, Vera 20.

The family’s outmoded “sense of place”, evident in their insistence on repu-

tation and traditional morality, clashes with the ideas of modernity, progress and

anonymity associated with “supermodernity”. Murphy finds both the outmodedness

of tradition and dehumanising traits of “non-place” absurd.

This mismatch of sensibility and economic condition can be considered distinctly

“Irish”, in the context of the Celtic Tiger: a collective but contradictory representation

of Ireland in the booming economy of the 1990s. Kieran Keohane and Carmen

Kuhling discuss how the use of “Celtic” as opposed to “Irish” connotes a “remote,

primordial history, a pre-national history […] a romantic, spiritual, unified sense

of history […] a desire to transcend history” 21. In contrast, the term “Tiger” invokes

“the rhetoric of competitive individualism and its attendant ideology of survival

of the fittest”, signifying the economic prowess of neoliberalism 22. As opposed to

the ideologically informed economic projects in Britain (led by Thatcher) and the

United States (led by Reagan),

[…] the Irish political landscape [has] produced a certain species of neoliberalism

in Ireland which is perhaps best characterised as ideologically concealed, piecemeal,

serendipitous, pragmatic, and commonsensical. Indeed, successive Irish governments

have never had an explicit neoliberal ideology (apart from a small number of influen-

tial ministers) […]. And yet Ireland was characterised […] by a range of practices

which bear important similarities discursively and materially with key processes

of neoliberalisation […]. Irish neoliberalism was produced through a set of short-

term (intermittently reformed) deals brokered by the state with various companies,

individuals, and representative bodies, which cumulatively restructured Ireland in

unsustainable and geographically “uneven” ways 23.

20. Manuscript draft of The Wake / “Whoresplay”, in “Tom Murphy Collection: Produced Plays”,

Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, IE TCD MS11115/1/23/2a-b.

21. Kieran Keohane, Carmen Kuhling, “What Was the ‘Celtic Tiger’?”, in Collision Culture: Trans-formations in Everyday Life in Ireland, Dublin, Liffey, 2004, p. 146.

22. Ibid., p. 149-150. The tiger is also a direct reference to the Asian economies that had produced a

rapid modernisation and massive rates of growth in economies that had long been under-developed.

23. Rob Kitchin, Cian O’Callaghan, Mark Boyle, Justin Gleeson, Karen Keaveney, “Placing Neoliberalism:

The Rise and Fall of Ireland’s Celtic Tiger”, Environment and Planning A, vol. 44, 2012, p. 1306.


The ideologically concealed but nonetheless forceful neoliberal changes in Irish

socio-cultural history as well as its “uneven” geographical development can be linked

to the ambivalent aspects in the performance of the play. Values collided in the

space presented on stage and suggested the anxiety and fear of being caught between

the binaries of past / future, collectivism / individualism and spiritual / material. The

2016 production of The Wake presented a “semi-abstract” and “mythic” stage to

evoke a ghostly and liminal landscape 24. Set designer Paul O’Mahony kept the hotel

setting minimal, with only the red carpet, vintage chairs and long candlesticks to

occupy the dark empty space. The hotel did not exude glamour or splendour; instead,

its space was filled with vast darkness. The symbolic gestures created a sense of

hollowness, changing the temperature of the plain realism that often (mistakenly)

defines Murphy’s naturalism. The overall effect of this ghostliness underscored

the nature of materialism and the ways in which it de-materialises human bodies.

The hotel encapsulates the effects of capitalism on the family and serves as a

metaphor for their hypocrisy. Vera is “the” prostitute who worked as a call-girl

in New York; however, it is not so much Vera’s disreputable past as the O’Toole

family’s rapaciousness that transforms the hotel into a whorehouse. As Alexandra

Poulain explains, “for all its display of quaint traditionalism, the Ireland of the

1990s is really just a whorehouse, moved only by the spirit of acquisitiveness” 25.

When Finbar hits Vera, calling her a “cunt”, she responds:

Fuck me, screw me, rook me – if-you-are-able! – but don’t anyone of you insult me

like this! Okay? … I’m someone, amn’t I? … Who-what am I? A hole between my legs?

… I’m not a cunt … (I’m) Someone. […] on my own then – […] Who is the whore? –

Quem, cunt, ghee, box, slash, gash, cock-sucking, grandmother-fucking piece of shit,

daff, crap, excrement? […] All dirt and lies. (p. 119)

Vera threatens Finbar with the rhetorical question “Who is the whore?” multiple

times over. Her rage subverts their respective positions: Vera’s dress and appearance

identify her as the “whore”, but it is ironically Finbar who becomes the “whore”.

Prostitution is a form of objectification of the body, which regards bodies as soulless

“lumps of natural stuff”, to borrow Eagleton’s words. The danger of viewing the

self as a disembodied soul is that the “spiritless” body is exposed to maltreatment

and exploitation. Social objectification (“hole between my legs”) dehumanises Vera

and deprives her of an identity. Her existence, her body, is reduced to the “abstract

status of commodities” 26. Vera questions this process of social objectification,

one that she has internalised in the form of self-objectification. Vera’s regard for

her body shows a type of schizophrenia, where she feels that her body is an alien

appendage to her identity, dissociated from her soul.

24. Helen Meany, “The Wake Review – Response to Hidden Irish Histories is Fuelled by Fury”,

The Guardian, 1 July 2016.

25. Alexandra Poulain, “‘My Heart Untravelled’: Tom Murphy’s Plays of Homecoming”, Études anglaises, vol. 56, nº 2, 2003, p. 191.

26. Terry Eagleton, Materialism, p. 59.


As an act of defiance, Vera has not washed or brushed her hair for four days, and

her slip is dirty. Finbar complains, “Wouldn’t you think she’d get up! Wouldn’t you

think she’d! Get dressed! Wash herself!” (p. 112). Vera bluntly replies that since Finbar

had sex with her twenty minutes ago, there is nothing for Finbar to complain about.

Various social institutions including family, school and church (or the ideological

state apparatuses, as Louis Althusser calls them) use discipline and labour as key

tools to tame the body for subjugation. Vera’s unwillingness to groom herself goes

against disciplining the body and upholding “respectability”. According to Finbar,

“nice clean people” are the ones “at one another’s throats after […] the hotel over

all their heads” (p. 113), referring to Vera’s family. The characters’ daily routine and

rituals – of getting up, washing, dressing up – are disciplinary measures, bourgeois

manners unconsciously accepted as life’s necessities. Vera’s refusal to manage her

appearance liberates her from such oppressive norms. Moreover, signs of dirty crea-

tures – woodlice, rats, cockroaches – overlap with the greedy deeds of the O’Tooles.

Vera shouts, “Woodlice! The place is infested with them! […] waddling their lives

in the dark in the damp!” (p. 114). When Finbar tells Vera that her brother Tom

will be bidding for the hotel at the auction, Vera retorts that “there’s a rat about the

place” (p. 115). The rat is “tawny, yellow, almost see-through, fast-moving strings

of evil-looking fucking things that move in and out precisely” (p. 115). Finbar, who

is described as “a frightened scavenger” (p. 85), steals money from Vera’s wallet just

as she is talking of cockroaches in New York. Descriptions of the insidious woodlice,

rats, and cockroaches work as metaphors for these dirty, materialistic deeds.

It is helpful to see Vera as an embodiment of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the

“abject”. Vera’s presence disturbs the family (and by extension disturbed the

audience) as their own sense of identity is confronted by the abject, which defies

bodily boundaries, order and system 27. Vera shares her experience as a call-girl:

I’ve been in situations you cannot even imagine. […] Did anyone ever tell you to eat

shit? Human excrement, shit. No? But I survived […]. My Xanadus I call them. These

can ease things. Human excrement, shit, shits, become more palatable with these.

Working girls, friends of mine, use them on themselves. I don’t use them on myself.

I prefer to use them more for the purpose of taming a difficult client, anaesthetizing

an animal. (p. 118)

Her experience of consuming human excrement upsets bodily boundaries

– between the pure inside and the filth outside – and identity, which is formed by

distinguishing oneself (the subject) from the excremental object. At another level,

using drugs to tame an “animal” client destabilises the notion of what makes one

human. It is also a reminder of Alasdair MacIntyre’s point that “our whole initial

bodily comportment to the world is originally an animal comportment” 28. Moreover,

27. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, Leon S. Roudiez (trans.), New York,

Columbia University Press, 1982.

28. Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues, London,

Duckworth, 1999, p. 49.


Vera does not use the drugs on herself to anaesthetise the ghastly experience as a purely passive suffering but to turn her clients into objects. Her presence becomes

more harrowing and proves that she has agency despite the limited circumstances.

The hotel space functions as a platform for Vera to make a spectacle out of

her body, one that resists being made palatable or consumable for the viewers. In

addition to the minimal setting, the 2016 performance did not frame the hotel

space with high walls but left it open 29. Its openness accentuated the liminal qual-

ity of the hotel, putting the audience in the position of the townspeople looking

in at the shocking spectacle. The distinction between the interior and exterior

– between private and public – was blurred. In the play, Vera’s orgy at the hotel

flabbergasts her family, the police and the priest. By foregrounding the hotel as an

open performative space, the production encouraged the audience to engage with

the characters’ private matters and what they convey. The openness throughout

the play was enhanced by the use of the scrim 30. With the scrim, the orgy scene

remained dimly visible throughout the family colloquy scene that followed. The

audience became complicit voyeurs to the scene that was so scandalously burning

itself into the consciousness of the O’Tooles. Anthony Roche argues that Murphy’s

female characters are socially marginalised and can assert themselves only in closed

spaces. In a bigger normative world, they are physically and psychologically offered

as a “sexual commodity to that masculine milieu” 31. By deciding not to demarcate

the interior space with walls throughout the whole play and having it exposed to

the public, the production broke down the “normative space” of the “masculine

milieu”: the “marginal” women became the centre, asserting themselves openly.

According to Mariam Fraser and Monica Greco, the body serves as a powerful

revolutionary tool in occasions where social hierarchies are transgressed and

inverted. In these social occasions such as the carnival, fair, festival, masquerades

and spectacles where customary rules of social conduct are suspended, “the body

invaded the social scene as its most conspicuous actor, unrivalled in performing

distortion and exaggeration – in other words, in the task of turning the world

upside-down” 32. Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the grotesque body is that which is

29. This is in contrast with the 1998 set design by Francis O’Connor. After its premiere in the Abbey

the play toured abroad in 1999. In a review of the 1999 Edinburgh Festival production directed by

Patrick Mason, Paul Taylor wrote that the stage exhibited a “stark ghostly dreamscape, framed by

high walls”. See his article “Edinburgh Festival ‘99: Theatre Review ‘The Wake’”, The Independent, 19 August 1999.

30. A scrim is a net-type fabric commonly used in theatre alongside other types of theatre drapes and

stage curtains. The direction and intensity of lighting can create variations in opacity of the scrim.

When a person behind a scrim is lit from the back, the scrim becomes transparent (a process

known as “bleed-through”); when lit from the front the scrim becomes opaque. For more details,

see John Holloway, Zachary Stribling, Illustrated Theatre Production Guide, 4th ed., New York,

Routledge, 2020.

31. Anthony Roche, “Murphy’s Drama: Tragedy and After”, in Contemporary Irish Drama, 2nd ed.,

London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, p. 124.

32. Mariam Fraser, Monica Greco, “Bodies and Social (Dis)Order”, in The Body: A Reader, Mariam

Fraser, Monica Greco (eds.), London, Routledge, 2005, p. 69-70.


uncertain and fluid, “open, protruding, bulging, extending and secreting; wet,

bloody, sweaty and odorous” 33. Despite the celebratory, empowering and sensual

aspect of the orgy scene (more evident in the novel), the performance retained

the play’s dark and grim tone. Vera’s public display of her sexual body is anti-

erotic; rather than being consumed by the audience in the form of spectacle,

Vera’s self-spectacularisation is abject and grotesque. The audience, therefore,

experiences the felt presence of decay, corruption and terror exposed and voiced

by Vera. As Emer O’Kelly puts it, “Aisling O’Sullivan is devastating in the role of

Vera, a termagant railing against the destruction of everything she had clung to:

the performance tears your heart out” 34. The visceral experience of discomfort in

theatre is a way to alert and awaken audience’s bodily senses.

“Waking” (for) the self and nation

Compared to her prostitution in New York, Vera’s sexual orgy in her hometown

in which no monetary exchange is required is, to a certain extent, a hedonistic and

purifying act to reclaim her body’s materiality. Differing from the scene where

she refused to wash or groom, Vera “has changed and done herself up. The dress

is makeshift, but it creates the effect she wants: The marks of a whore and sexy”

(p. 141). Wearing her mother’s dress, Vera participates in the orgy not only to flaunt

her sexuality and upset her family, but also to mark the occasion as celebratory.

Vera wants to celebrate her birthday. Finbar wishes Vera a happy birthday, to

which she declares: “Let’s start the party” (p. 141-142). That it is her birthday (or

so she claims) shows her need for human recognition, to be acknowledged and

congratulated for being born and alive. This bodily affirmation is elaborated in

the novel, in the chapter “There Is Nothing so Futile as Planning for Pleasure”:

It was her thirty-eighth birthday and she was enjoying it. […] She was celebrating her

sexuality, nourishing it. But it was not only a matter of her sexuality. […] She felt different.

She felt loose. She was not wearing any make-up. In the day that had passed she had shed

some illusions, slipped out of folds of the past and, at home, she was tasting the lightness

and freedom of becoming herself. She had moved out to a new place. […] She was on

her own. […] she was exhilarated. In a way, she felt naked. She was laughing again: at

what, she was not sure; but she could hear the ring of truth in the sound of her voice 35.

Vera finds her identity and freedom in the state of nakedness. From the state of

depressed confusion to wild celebration, Vera goes through a subtle but progressive

change. Although she cannot erase her sense of self-degradation and shame totally

33. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, Hélène Iswolsky (trans.), Bloomington, Indiana

University Press, 1984, p. 319-320; quoted in Mariam Fraser, Monica Greco, “Bodies and Social

(Dis)Order”, p. 70.

34. Emer O’Kelly, “Theatre: Wreaking Havoc on Small-Town Rituals”, Irish Independent, 4 July 2016.

35. Tom Murphy, The Seduction of Morality, London, Little Brown, 1994, p. 142-143.


through this single occasion, it marks a change in the way she regards herself and her body: an individual self to celebrate and not a thing to sell.

The changes in setting complemented Vera’s own search for her identity. In

a review of the 2016 production, Peter Crawley summarised: “As Vera tries to

find her place in this world, we begin with a vast backdrop of the cosmos, slowly

stiffening into a monochrome map of Tuam, resolving, finally, with a hole in the

ground” 36. A screen monochrome (ordnance survey) map of Tuam featured in

the background was initially difficult to discern, but when it was illuminated in

the play’s climax, place names of the townland were revealed. The narrative of the

play is rooted in a specific time and place, and the map highlighted the fact that the

characters are a “product of a culture” (p. 85). The history of the ordnance survey

(whose function was to assist armies with the movement of heavy artillery as well

as land valuations for taxation purposes) stretches back to the early 19th century,

from the establishment of the Ordnance Survey office in 1824. From imperial

history to a post-colonial Ireland, land has been appropriated and expropriated as

commodity in the process of capitalism. The map pointed to the ways people use

various tools and instruments to measure and justify their avarice.

As revealed in the characters’ story, the map also spoke to the “hidden histories”

of Ireland: confinement culture, institutionalisation, corrupted clerical power, abuse

of children in industrial schools and the hypocrisy of the wealthy. The choice of

Tuam in particular resonated with Irish audiences and the diaspora because of the

recent discovery of an unmarked mass grave – allegedly of up to 800 babies and

children – in Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home 37. An interviewee and survivor

from Bon Secours described her experience there in these words: “Like chickens in

a coop” 38. This is yet another example of bodies being dehumanised and maltreated.

Finbar shares his traumatic experience of being abused by the Christian Brothers:

Sex! […] And fuckin’ incest! Driving round the country, screwing young ones in their

Volkswagens, then going home (“and”) doing their housekeepers – Sex! Christian

Brothers in the schools – (Intensely, to himself:) Faaack! Beating the children, Henry,

then buggering them: I was “in care”, Henry, them establishments, […] And young

ones and aul’ ones getting pregnant and praying to fuckin’ statues about it. Country

is rotten with it. […] But what else was the country taught to think about? (p. 140)

36. Peter Crawley, “The Wake: Performance and Design as Pure Poetry”, The Irish Times, 29 June 2016.

37. Jamie Grierson, “Mass Grave of Babies and Children Found at Tuam Care Home in Ireland”,

The Guardian, 3 March 2017. Following the work of local historian Catherine Corless, the issue

received much public attention with a judicial commission of investigation into Mother and Baby

Homes established in 2015. The Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation’s final

report was published on 12 January 2021 by the Department of Children, Equality, Disability,

Integration and Youth. An estimated 56,000 women and 57,000 children in Ireland were placed

or born in the homes between 1922 and 1998. Approximately 9,000 children died. The full report

is available here: http://www.mbhcoi.ie/mbh.nsf/page/index-en.

38. Dan Barry, “The Lost Children of Tuam”, The New York Times, 27 October 2017. See also Mike

Milotte, Banished Babies: The Secret History of Ireland’s Baby Export Business, Dublin, New Island,

1997; updated and revised in 2012.

http://www.mbhcoi.ie/mbh.nsf/page/index-en


Vera’s incarceration in a mental asylum equally fits into the larger picture of

the “culture of confinement” history in Ireland 39.

The hidden horrors of Irish history were brought to light by the set design, yet

a set device was deployed to suggest that the specificity of the Irish experience does

not exclude its universal significance. The vastness of the screen with its surreal blue

texture expanded to the mythic world. Even though the place names appeared on

the screen, the enlarged size of the map made the lines form geometrical shapes. The

lines and shapes, which are not confined to Irish history, appeared to be a side of

earth seen from outer space. The magnification of the map to the extent of sur-reality

had the effect of subverting the human practice that subjects land to instrumental

rationality, with mapping being a quintessential example of such practice. When

the audience were faced with a familiar map in an unfamiliar fashion, they were

transported into a strange and ghostly landscape that drew on Freud’s idea of the

uncanny or unheimlich, which in its German roots means both “un-homely” and

“un-secret” 40. Freud builds on Schelling’s definition that “Uncanny is what one

calls everything that was meant to remain secret and hidden and has come into

the open” 41. Vera’s “home”-coming is met with family secrets, scandalous events

and stories repressed in history being unveiled in the open theatre space. By using

a large surreal ordnance map, the set managed to point to a specific history as well

as a universal aspect of humankind.

The wake takes place in the hotel as a belated family reunion and celebration; as

the play reaches its climax, the eponymous wake for Mom completes the imagery of

the O’Toole family as “whores”, “playing up to Vera for the property they crave” 42.

The deceased is, significantly, neither present nor mentioned throughout the whole

wake. The wake assumes its importance not in remembering or paying respects

to Mom, but in bringing together hate-filled family members in one place. Each

family member performed their own party piece in their preferred genre, from

jazz, operetta, to Irish poetry. As Grene notes, the 2016 production made the wake

seem like a “grotesque parody”, especially when Lorcan Cranitch as Tom and Pat

Nolan as Father Billy sang “The Moon Hath Raised Her Lamp” in duet, “milk[ing

it] for every possible laugh” 43. Grene argues that this misses the ambiguity of the

scene’s tone, in which the family “redeem their innocence” (p. 167) through their

39. Henry McDonald, “‘Endemic’ Rape and Abuse of Irish Children in Catholic Care, Inquiry Finds”,

The Guardian, 20 May 2009. For more information, see Coercive Confinement in Ireland: Patients,

Prisoners and Penitents, Eoin O’Sullivan, Ian O’Donnell (eds.), Manchester, Manchester University

Press, 2012 and James Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Con-

tainment, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Smith argues that the “architecture

of containment” has been constructed in both concrete and abstract ways: in addition to an

array of different but interdependent institutions such as the industrial schools and reformatory

institutions, which had an executive function, a series of legislative acts and official discourse

functioned to render these embodied “culprits” invisible.

40. Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, David McLintock (trans.), London, Penguin, 2003, p. 124-125.

41. Ibid., p. 132.

42. Nicholas Grene, The Theatre of Tom Murphy…, p. 95.

43. Ibid.


own songs 44. Indeed, at one of the performances, when the climactic action of the wake took place, the audience began to clap along with the other characters on stage after each individual party piece 45. While the audience’s laughter and applause

testified to the parodic and ironic element of the wake scene, it equally showed

how the audience were made complicit in the whole performance, not necessarily

laughing “at” but “with” the members on stage. It could be argued, therefore, that

the multiple performances within the wake scene made the audience engage with

and acknowledge the wake ritual as a temporary bonding experience that brought

together the actors-as-characters and the audience. It is this theatrical moment

that transforms Augé’s “non-place” into the anthropological “place”, whereby

an organic theatrical community is formed. It is not traditional family values but

theatrical temporality that offers the possibility, however flickering, of communal

bonding: only in these shared temporal moments (as in the ephemeral moments

of theatre) can meaningful interaction take place.

The climactic wake scene in the 2016 production stressed the theatricality and

performativity of the communal ritual, one that did not affirm but deconstructed the

myth of family and community. The wake is a form of collective mourning but in

Murphy’s play it is only in isolation that one can achieve any kind of understanding

of the self. In the last scene, Vera is able to truly grieve:

[…] now she is crying. Tears that she cannot stop, that she has been suppressing

throughout. She begins to sob. Her sobbing continues, becoming dry and rhythmical:

Grief for her grandmother, for the family that she perhaps never had, and for herself

and her fear at this, her first acceptance of her isolation. (p. 180)

This cry is resonant of the traditional practice of keening, an intrinsic part

of the wake ritual: from the Irish word caoine or caoineadh, meaning “vocalised

cry”, keening is “a sacred improvised chant that evolved over many centuries […]

traditionally sung over a corpse” and is “a descriptor for the instinctive raw cry

that is often the first reaction of the bereaved to death” 46. In the actual production,

the sobbing continued for an extended period and marked a stark contrast to the

hullaballoo of the wake scene. Transcending the limits of lyrics and language, the

rhythmical sobbing became pure sound and the crying became a grieving song for

the wake: a one-person wake truer to its meaning of grief for her grandmother, her

family, herself and for the impossibility of a communal wake.

The play has a frame structure: it begins with the scene of Vera’s meeting with

Mrs. Conneeley in an open space and ends with their meeting at the graveyard. Scene


45. Date of performance attended: 27 June 2016.

46. Mary McLaughlin, “Keening the Dead: Ancient History or a Ritual for Today?”, Religions, vol. 10,

no. 4, 2019, p. 235. More recently, the tradition of keening has been given renewed prominence by

Doireann Ní Ghríofa’s A Ghost in the Throat (2020) which draws on Eibhlín Dubh Ní Chonaill’s

“Caoineadh Airt Uí Laoighaire” (“The Lament for Art O’Leary”), a well-known 18th century Irish

poem.


One begins in “an open space: the country. Night” (p. 77). On stage, a small array

of lights denoting stars dotted the dark background. The opening mise-en-scène

was indicative of the peaceful and natural countryside as there were no city lights

to prevent the protagonist (from where she stands) from seeing the stars. It played

on Vera’s projection of home / home-coming both as “dream” and “nightmare”

(p. 82). Furthermore, the set created a surreal atmosphere of “the cosmos”, a uni-

verse on its own. Vera with her urban outfit seemed in contrast with the country

background. The discrepancy between the background and the figure immediately

set her as an outsider, even an alien. As her lines indicate, Vera’s desire to belong

has always eluded her: she feels “Out there in the space like a fucking astronaut

with his tube cut. […] Lifelong fear of just going to sleep, afraid to let go” (p. 117).

In the end, however, Vera embraces loneliness and feels liberated, having cut her

ties with the family.

While Vera’s emigrant status highlights how alien she is, Mrs. Conneeley

represents the grounded nature figure. In the stage directions, Murphy describes her

as “an unassuming woman; she has a lot of integrity, a lot of what used to be called

‘nature’” (p. 77), which also means, in Irish usage, good nature. Mrs. Conneeley

is thus a good-natured woman as well as a nature-bound one. By contrast, as

Murphy put it in the draft of the play, the O’Tooles are “people starved of ‘nature’

being withered by greed and materialism” 47. Mrs. Conneeley differs from the other

characters. At the end of the journey, Vera meets Mrs. Conneeley at the graveyard.

Her presence in the graveyard seems fitting as she is closest to nature and death.

Played by Ruth McCabe, she was presented as the classic country woman: short

white hair, wearing a brown cotton dress with floral patterns and a brown cardigan

over it with a dark green anorak on top. Rid of all the furniture and with minimum

lighting, Mrs. Conneeley, Vera and the hole in the ground only occupied a small

portion of the dark stage set. They were engrossed in the environment yet seemed

comfortable in the space. The 2016 performance tellingly showed that graveyards not

only signify death but also human “nature” and its desire to become part of earth.

Despite the graveyard’s association with nature, its meaning is ambivalent.

Funeral rituals for the burial, tombs and headstones to mark and commemorate a

person are all part of a human-made culture and not nature. Graves are another way

of marking and displaying territory and wealth. Materialism is inescapable even with

death. Mrs. Conneeley points out that the graveyard where her husband is buried

is getting crowded. She remarks: “I never bothered to mark it. (Dismissive:) Ah,

headstones! What is it but an aul’ hole in the ground!” (p. 180). She also mentions:

“Oh and there’s many’s the widow-woman knocking about, waiting to get in here.

And what at all in the next world would I do if they put another woman down on

top of him before me?” (p. 180). Mrs. Conneeley says she is not interested in the

territorial demarcation. She even jokes about her husband’s posthumous extramarital

affair underground with another dead woman (the thought of which immediately



arouses jealousy in her). Those are only human projections of their own thoughts

onto the dead. Mrs. Conneeley’s act of weeding and minding the grave “like some-

one preparing a bed” (p. 180) shows her poised acceptance of death as part of life.

Conclusion

In an interview with Michael Ross in 1998 regarding The Wake, Murphy commented:

We all deny our isolation. We prop ourselves up with ideas of family, marriage and

so on. The other characters in the play try to deny their sense of isolation in the same

way that people deny their sense of mortality by a mania for accumulating things 48.

Denial of one’s isolation results in the indulgent dependency on various illusory

myths and ideologies, and denial of one’s mortality manifests itself as material

acquisition to fill the void. With its themes at once existential and social, abstract

and real, the 2016 production served as a timely mirror of what had or had not

changed in Ireland since Murphy first wrote the play. The Wake is a portrayal of

materialism and how it has affected Irish society – an obvious and even clichéd

topic, yet surprisingly not so often dealt with in modern Irish theatre. Murphy

focuses on the woman’s body as the site of contestation and identification. The

female body once again becomes a metaphor for the state of the nation, and fig-

urations of woman / nation function as a scathing commentary on contemporary

Irish society. Materialism represses and erases the materiality of the body. Vera’s

homecoming becomes a journey of self-realisation and self-transcendence. Reject-

ing society’s mind-body dualism, Vera sees herself as an active body, a source of

expressive vitality, meaning and autonomy. Her homecoming clashes with social

norms and she exploits the confrontation as an opportunity to reclaim her body

and re-establish her identity. The ritual of the traditional Irish wake finds a new

meaning in theatre as a celebratory and temporary communal experience: the 2016

Abbey production of The Wake was not only a timely reflection of contemporary

Ireland but also a glorious send-off and grieving for the bodies brutally exploited,

buried and forgotten in people’s lives.

Moonyoung Hong

Trinity College Dublin

48. Michael Ross, “Prozac? No Thanks: Depression is Tom Murphy’s Propelling Force”, The Sunday Times, 25 January 1998.


Représenter l’expérience vécue

dans les Magdalen Laundries en passant

par la « voie longue » de l’herméneutique

et l’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur

Résumé : Dans le but de saisir l’incessante circulation du sens dans l’activité du « faire mémoire » propre aux mécanismes de la justice réparatrice, cet article expose les résultats obtenus à partir de l’application d’une méthodologie expérimentale unique, la greffe de l’herméneutique ricœurienne sur des procédés d’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur, précédemment développée dans le cadre de ma thèse doctorale au sujet du parcours de reconnaissance des Magdalen Laundries en Irlande (1993-2014). Dans le but de répondre aux lacunes documentaires observées (les archives gouvernementales et privées étant sous scellés), cette étude a fait le pari de valoriser la parole des personnes directement affectées par ces violences institutionnelles pour mieux saisir les trajectoires d’oppression, les enjeux de responsabilité, mais surtout comprendre l’impact durable de cette mise à l’écart sur la vie des survivantes. En s’appuyant sur la notion de « conflit des interprétations » (Paul Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations, 1969) qui implique de prendre en compte les tensions inhérentes à la production et la circulation du sens entre les individus et les groupes, cette étude a misé sur l’élaboration d’une proposition qualitative afin de modéliser les actions interprétatives qui s’opèrent à l’échelle de l’intime et à l’échelle de la nation.

Mots clés : expérience, mémoire, discours, blanchisseries Madeleine, Irlande, méthodologie qualitative.

Abstract: With the aim of grasping the incessant circulation of meaning in the activity of

“remembering” specific to the mechanisms of restorative justice, this article presents the results

obtained from the application of a unique experimental methodology, the graft of Ricoeurian

hermeneutics on computer-assisted text analysis procedures, previously developed as part of

my doctoral thesis on the Magdalen Laundries recognition journey in Ireland (1993-2014). In

order to respond to the documentary gaps observed (government and private archives being

sealed), this study ventured to promote the voice of people directly affected by this institutional

violence to better understand the trajectories of oppression, the challenges of responsibility

and, above all, to understand the lasting impact of exclusion on the lives of survivors. Based

on the notion of “conflict of interpretations” (Paul Ricoeur, Le conflit des interprétations,

1969) which implies considering the tensions inherent in the production and circulation of

meaning between individuals and groups, this study relied on the elaboration of a qualitative

proposal in order to model the interpretative actions that take place at the level of the intimate

and at the level of the nation.

Keywords: experience, memory, discourse, Magdalen Laundries, Ireland, qualitative methodology.

124 Au d rey R ou s se au

Introduction

Dans le champ des études de mémoire (memory studies) 1, plusieurs recherches ont tenté d’interpréter les silences de l’histoire 2. Malgré la pertinence de certaines contributions théoriques afin de représenter la continuité de l’expérience vécue 3

ou encore les marques de l’absence 4, il apparaît que les méthodologies qualitatives

employées forcent souvent à choisir entre l’étude de la dimension narrative et

personnelle de ce qui est arrivé (pour le « sujet de justice » 5) ou bien la dimension

politique et historique de ce passé difficile, voire litigieux, qui appelle des formes de réparation. Dans le cadre de cet article, je souhaite démontrer qu’en employant une méthodologie hybride, issue de ma thèse doctorale 6, il est possible de rendre compte de la multiplicité des voix participant au dialogue social sur le passé d’abus institutionnels dans les Magdalen Laundries (ML 7) en République d’Irlande.

Plutôt que de limiter l’analyse des discours aux souvenirs et savoirs détenus par les survivantes des ML – que j’estime essentiels dans la saisie de l’expérience

1. Sarah Gensburger, « Réflexion sur l’institutionnalisation récente des Memory Studies », Revue de synthèse, vol. 132, nº 3, 2011, p. 411-423 ; Marek Tamm, « Beyond History and Memory : New Perspectives in Memory Studies », History Compass, vol. 11, nº 6, 2013, p. 458-473.

2. Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi, Chana Teeger, « Unpacking the Unspoken : Silence in Collective Memory and Forgetting », Social Forces, vol. 88, nº 3, 2010, p. 1103-1122 ; Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Silencing the Past : Power and the Production of History, Boston, Bacon Press, 1995.

3. Pour les besoins de cet article, l’« expérience vécue » fera référence à la dialectique entre l’expé-rience passée, qu’un sujet peut se remémorer, et le travail d’association (sens) par rapport à l’événement. Comme François Dosse l’explique, cela implique une « déprise / reprise » dans la transmission du sens qui passe par une construction herméneutique du rapport au temps passé par la narration (François Dosse, « Le moment Ricœur », Vingtième siècle. Revue d’histoire, nº 69, 2001, p. 144). Pour plus de détail sur la tension koselleckienne entre expérience et attente par rapport à la dimension discursive des événements historiques, voir Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration face à l’horizon de promesses : parcours de reconnaissance des buanderies Madeleine en Irlande (1993-2014), thèse de doctorat en sociologie, université d’Ottawa, 2017, p. 29-30.

4. C’est le cas du travail d’Avery F. Gordon (Ghostly Matters : Haunting and the Sociological Imagination [1997], Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008) qui étudie la relation entre le savoir, le pouvoir et l’expérience à travers le concept de « haunting » qui signifie une manière de « connaître ce qui est arrivé et ce qui est en train d’arriver » (ibid., p. 63, traduction libre). En prenant l’exemple de la terreur post-dictature en Argentine, elle décrit la présence fantomatique (« ghostly presence ») des disparitions à partir de la reconnaissance de l’expérience vécue (et de l’absence) par les personnes ayant perdu des êtres chers.

5. Nancy Fraser, Qu’est-ce que la justice sociale ?, Paris, La Découverte, 2005.6. Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…7. Tout d’abord, en langue anglaise, il existe deux graphies en usage pour décrire ces institutions :

« Magdalen(s) » et « Magdalene(s) ». Pour les besoins de cet article, j’ai presque exclusivement fait usage de la première (comme dans mes publications antérieures), à l’exception de noms d’asso-ciations, de titres de documents de travail ou de citations employant l’autre graphie. Quant aux « Laundries », afin d’éviter un glissement sémantique en langue française, où plusieurs traductions sont en usage (« blanchisseries de la Madeleine », « blanchisseries Madeleine » ou « buanderies Madeleine »), je maintiendrai l’expression d’origine en langue anglaise. Pour des raisons de concision et de cohérence linguistique, dans le reste de ces pages, je référerai à ces institutions en utilisant le sigle ML.

125R e pré se n t e r l ’ e x pé ri e n c e v é c u e da n s l e s M ag da l e n L au n dri e s …

personnelle et collective d’exclusion et de marginalisation sociales de ces femmes et de ces filles –, c’est en croisant ces analyses avec d’autres types d’interprétations

(produites par des responsables politiques et des journalistes) qu’il sera possible

d’examiner le mouvement incessant (resignifié et renégocié) entre l’expérience

vécue et l’horizon de réparation eu égard à ce « passé qui ne passe pas » 8.

Dans un premier temps, avant de présenter l’application de cette méthodologie,

que je nomme la greffe de l’herméneutique ricœurienne sur des procédés d’analyse de discours assistée par ordinateur, j’introduirai certains enjeux de documentation et de réparation relatifs aux ML en Irlande. Dans un deuxième temps, après être revenue sur la problématique de recherche de ma thèse doctorale (dont est issue la contribution méthodologique présentée ici), j’expliquerai comment l’approche herméneutique permet de rendre compte des dynamiques interprétatives incessantes qui engagent les sujets (qu’il s’agisse de survivantes ou d’autres acteurs sociaux) dans un « travail de remémoration » 9 qui n’est jamais clos. Dans un troisième temps, je décrirai le corpus étudié et expliquerai l’opérationnalisation des deux approches combinées de cette méthodologie expérimentale. Enfin, j’exposerai succinctement les résultats obtenus à la suite d’une première application, à savoir qu’il existe des discours de victimisation et d’imputabilité au sujet des abus institutionnels en Irlande ; puis, avant de conclure, je discuterai de certaines potentialités et limites de cette proposition de la greffe de l’herméneutique sur des procédés d’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur.

L’objectif principal de cet article est de rendre accessibles les fondements de cette méthodologie à d’autres chercheuses 10 en sciences sociales, plus précisément à celles qui s’inscrivent dans les approches compréhensives de la mémoire. Parce que j’estime que cette contribution a la capacité de valoriser la voix des témoins de l’histoire, tout en ne laissant pas de côté d’autres échelles de production, de circulation et de transformation du sens de ce qui est arrivé, ainsi que les formes de rétablissement pour le présent et l’avenir.

8. « the / a past that will not pass away » (Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001, p. xiv ; traduction libre).

9. Cette expression est une adaptation de l’expression « travail de mémoire » chez Paul Ricœur (La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, Paris, Seuil, 2000) et « travail de représentation » chez Stuart Hall (Representation : Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices [1997], Londres, Open University, 2003) afin de décrire l’espace discursif du « faire mémoire » constitué d’« efforts interprétatifs continus où, par l’enchevêtrement des histoires personnelles et collectives, les sujets réactivent des souvenirs concurrents qui transmettent des connaissances, des émotions, des pratiques, etc. » (Audrey Rousseau, « Expérimenter des formes de “mieux-être” : reconnaître le sens de l’expérience en considérant le pouvoir de dire et de faire des Anicinabekwek (femmes algonquines) », Les ateliers de l’éthique / The Ethics Forum, vol. 14, nº 2, 2019, p. 228).

10. D’une part, puisque j’écris ce texte à la première personne du singulier, d’autre part, puisque la réalité des abus perpétrés dans les ML traite d’un sujet lié aux femmes, j’ai décidé de féminiser certains mots (par exemple « chercheuse »). Veuillez noter que ce choix inclut toutefois le masculin.


La lente reconnaissance des violences dans les Magdalen Laundries

Maintenant reconnues au nombre de douze 11, ces institutions, dirigées par quatre congrégations religieuses catholiques 12, étaient des asiles 13 destinés aux femmes et aux filles « tombées en disgrâce » 14. Avant le XXe siècle, les ML étaient destinées à

réformer les âmes des femmes accusées de prostitution 15. Après l’indépendance,

les femmes internées étaient surtout des femmes pauvres ayant eu des enfants

hors mariage, d’autres jugées « trop jolies » (et donc en danger de « perdition »), ou

encore ayant vécu un viol ou dénoncé une agression sexuelle 16 ; plus rarement, des

femmes y étaient placées par le système de justice comme alternative à la prison.

Les détenues, qui avaient quelquefois à peine 12 ans, travaillaient dans ces blan-

chisseries privées (administrées par les sœurs) sans rémunération. Le dispositif, de

type carcéral, constitué de murs de plus de 2,44 mètres de haut, de barreaux aux

fenêtres et de loquets aux portes, empêchait quasiment toute tentative de fuite.

L’opprobre social et l’exploitation économique reflétaient alors le tabou entourant la sexualité féminine et le spectre d’une possible « contamination » morale et sociale

11. En plus des dix ML investiguées par l’Interdepartmental Government Committee (2011-2013), deux autres institutions, le Mary’s Training Centre Stanhope Street et le House of Mercy Domestic Training School Summerhill, Wexford, ont été ajoutées à la liste du Magdalen Restorative Justice Ex-Gratia Scheme (2013) aussi appelé le rapport Quirke, qui a établi le montant des allocations de réparation destinées aux survivantes des ML (John Quirke, On the Establishment of an Ex Gratia Scheme and Related Matters for the Benefit of Those Women Who Were Admitted to and Worked in the Magdalen Laundries, Dublin, Department of Justice, mai 2013, en ligne : http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/WP15000111).

12. Good Shepherd Sisters, Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of Refuge, Sisters of Mercy et Sisters of Charity.

13. Plusieurs terminologies ont existé depuis l’apparition des ML en Irlande, notamment « refuge », « asylum », « penitentiary », « home », « hospital » (Martin McAleese, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalen Laundries, Dublin, Department of Justice, 2013, chap. I, p. 2). En faisant usage du terme « asile », privilégié par Frances Finnegan (Do Penance or Perish : A Study of Magdalen Asylums in Ireland, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001), je souhaite mettre l’emphase sur la réclusion de type asilaire dont étaient victimes ces femmes et ces filles, qui rappelle d’ailleurs l’« institution totale » décrite par Erving Goffman, c’est-à-dire « un lieu de résidence et de travail, où un grand nombre d’individus, placés dans la même situation, coupés du monde extérieur pour une période relativement longue, mènent ensemble une vie recluse dont les modalités sont explicitement et minutieusement réglées » (Erving Goffman, Asiles. Études sur la condition sociale des malades mentaux et autres reclus, Paris, Minuit, 1968, p. 41).

14. Afin d’approfondir l’histoire et la fonction de ces institutions en République d’Irlande, voir Rebecca Lea McCarthy, Origins of the Magdalene Laundries : An Analytical History, Jefferson, McFarland, 2010 ; James M. Smith, Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2007 ; Frances Finnegan, Do Penance or Perish…

15. Maria Luddy, Prostitution and Irish Society, 1800-1940, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007 ; Linda Mahood, The Magdalenes : Prostitution in the Nineteenth Century, Londres – New York, Routledge, 1990.

16. Cet élément est encore peu discuté dans la littérature sur les ML, mais la dénonciation d’abus sexuel ou de cas d’inceste ressort de manière significative comme motif de placement dans les récits des survivantes rencontrées pour le projet Magdalene Institutions : Recording an Archival and Oral History (MIRAOH) (voir en ligne : http://jfmresearch.com/home/oralhistoryproject).

http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/WP15000111

http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/Pages/WP15000111

http://jfmresearch.com/home/oralhistoryproject


justifiant de faire « disparaître » ces femmes et ces filles, voire de les condamner à

perpétuité, derrière des portes closes 17.

Toute spécialiste de l’histoire contemporaine irlandaise sera familière avec la

série de scandales qui a fait les gros titres de la presse depuis les années 1990, à la

suite des dénonciations d’abus sexuels, physiques et psychologiques perpétrés par

les représentants (masculins et féminins) des ordres religieux sur les individus,

souvent des enfants, dont ils avaient la responsabilité. En ce qui concerne les

milliers de femmes et de filles enfermées et forcées au travail dans des ML entre

le XVIIIe et le XXe siècles, non seulement les autorités étatiques ont mis près de

vingt ans 18 afin de répondre de leurs responsabilités (et ce, à la suite de pressions

répétées de la part des survivantes et des organisations de défense des droits) mais

– contrairement aux Industrial Schools ou aux Mother and Baby Homes 19 – les

ML n’ont jamais obtenu de commission d’enquête indépendante. En effet, seul le comité interdépartemental présidé par le sénateur Martin McAleese, entre 2011 et 2013 20, a eu droit à un plein accès aux archives détenues par les ordres reli-gieux ayant dirigé les ML en République d’Irlande, ainsi qu’à celles des différents ministères concernés. Dès lors, personne n’a encore été en mesure de valider les conclusions du rapport McAleese, et ce, tant sur la durée des séjours, les motifs de placement, le nombre de décès, etc. En plus de ce manque de transparence, certains

17. Clara Fischer, « Gender, Nation, and the Politics of Shame : Magdalen Laundries and the Institu-tionalization of Feminine Transgression in Modern Ireland », Signs, vol. 41, nº 4, 2016, p. 821-843 ; Erin Costello Wecker, « Reclaiming Magdalenism or Washing Away Sin : Magdalen Laundries and the Rhetorics of Feminine Silence », Women’s Studies, vol. 44, nº 2, 2015, p. 264-279.

18. C’est près de dix ans après l’excavation d’une fosse commune de « Magdalen women » à High Park (Drumcondra, Dublin, 1993) que l’enquête journalistique de Mary Raftery révéla les irrégularités entourant les certificats de décès des femmes à High Park et les conditions de l’exhumation et la crémation des dépouilles. Quant aux associations de défense des droits, la pression faite par le Magdalene Memorial Committee auprès des autorités municipales a mené à quelques activités de commémoration durant la décennie 1990. À partir du début des années 2000, c’est plutôt par le biais d’organisations, dont Justice for Magdalenes, que les représentants du gouvernement irlandais ont été forcés (à la suite des pressions de l’UNCAT – United Nations Convention against Torture en 2011 / Convention contre la torture et autres peines ou traitements cruels, inhumains ou dégradants) à mettre sur pied une enquête interdépartementale investiguant les allégations d’abus dans les ML entre 1922 à 1996. En 2013, quelques semaines après le dépôt du rapport de cette enquête, le Premier ministre Enda Kenny a prononcé des excuses publiques aux survivantes et annoncé la création d’un schème de compensation qui leur était destiné.

19. Durant le XXe siècle, les Mother and Baby Homes étaient des institutions dirigées par des religieuses qui accueillaient les mères célibataires et leurs enfants (considérés « illégitimes »). En octobre 2020, après cinq ans d’enquête, la Mother and Baby Homes Commission of Investigation a soumis son rapport final aux représentants du gouvernement irlandais ; ceux-ci ont attendu jusqu’en janvier 2021 afin de rendre public les conclusions au sujet des violations perpétrées dans les Mother and Baby Homes. Quant aux Industrials Schools, elles étaient des institutions religieuses qui, entre le XIXe et le XXe siècles, avaient pour mission d’accueillir des enfants négligés, abandonnés ou orphelins. La Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse a conclu que de nombreux enfants dans les Industrial Schools avaient subi des abus physiques, sexuels et émotionnels aux mains des autorités religieuses responsables de la gestion de ces institutions (Seán Ryan, The Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse, Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, 2009).

20. Martin McAleese, Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee…


analystes 21 affirment que le rapport McAleese est incomplet (il n’a notamment pas réussi à faire la lumière sur les situations d’abus allégués par les survivantes) rendant ainsi ses observations insuffisantes pour empêcher la récurrence de pareilles situations.

Comme j’en ai déjà traité dans une autre publication 22, en l’absence d’accès aux archives étatiques et privées, les supports d’expression artistique deviennent des moyens de rendre visibles ces silences de l’histoire (passée et présente). Outre les artistes, cette démarche d’élucidation du passé repose sur les épaules des témoins de l’histoire (au premier titre les survivantes elles-mêmes). À cet égard, en plus des témoignages de type journalistique 23, à partir de 2011 24 le milieu de la recherche universitaire commence à solliciter ces femmes dans le but de documenter les exactions commises dans les ML et les conséquences de ces expériences sur la vie des survivantes et de leurs proches. C’est d’ailleurs à partir des sources d’histoire orale, compilées par des chercheuses féministes, que j’ai décidé d’entrer en relation (d’écoute et d’analyse) avec les voix et les interprétations des survivantes des ML pour ma thèse doctorale réalisée entre 2011 et 2017.

En me fondant sur l’approche de la phénoménologie de la mémoire chez Ricœur 25, je souhaitais faire dialoguer ces mémoires (récits expérientiels) avec l’histoire officielle (qui était en train de s’écrire), soit les discours sociaux au sujet de ces femmes, de ces institutions et des moyens de réparer les injustices subies. C’est à cette tâche documentaire, opérationnalisée sous la forme de « deux rondes interprétatives », que convie cette contribution méthodologique qui entend reconnaître la crédibilité des survivantes et la responsabilité sociale de la société irlandaise eu égard à la dette (symbolique et matérielle) envers toutes les personnes affectées par les ML.

21. Irish Human Rights Commission (IHRC), Follow-Up Report on State Involvement with Magdalen Laundries, Dublin, IHRC, juin 2013 ; Justice for Magdalenes Research (JFMR), Death, Institution-alisation & Duration of Stay : A Critique of Chapter 16 of the “Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee to Establish the Facts of State Involvement with the Magdalen Laundries and Related Issue”, compilé par Claire McGettrick, Bailieborough, JFMR, 19 février 2015.

22. Audrey Rousseau, « Representations of Forced Labor in the Irish Magdalen Laundries : Contemporary Visual Art as Site of Memory », in Excavating Memory : Sites of Remembering and Forgetting, Maria Theresia Starzmann, John R. Roby (dir.), Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 2016, p. 293-315.

23. Steve Humphries, Sex in a Cold Climate, Bristol, Testimony Films for Channel 4, 1998.24. Les archives de Magdalene Institutions : Recording an Archival and Oral History (MIRAOH) ont

été créées sous la direction de la professeure Katherine O’Donnell (University College Dublin, UCD) en vue d’être anonymisées et annexées au rapport soumis par l’association Justice for Magdalenes à l’UNCAT en 2011. Notons qu’il existe d’autres archives d’histoire orale, dont les travaux d’Evelyn Glynn et de Jennifer Yeager O’Mahoney.

25. « L’esquisse phénoménologique de Ricœur réussit à distinguer la relation entre “la mémoire comme visée et le souvenir comme chose visée”, départageant la mémoire comme une capacité et le souvenir comme des thèmes, des séquences, des circonstances entourant la mise en récit (Paul Ricœur, La mémoire, l’histoire, l’oubli, p. 27). Par son ancrage du phénomène mnésique dans et par le sujet parlant et agissant, Ricœur considère la polysémie des souvenirs comme une ressource plutôt que comme un obstacle à la représentation, évitant ainsi les critiques touchant les “dysfonctions” ou l’imprévisibilité entourant l’acte du rappel » (Audrey Rousseau, « La volonté politique de commémoration des morts appartient aux vivants. Examen de trois “anti-monuments” réalisés par Jochen Gerz », Conserveries mémorielles, nº 21, 2016, note 5, en ligne : https://journals.openedition.org/cm/2771).

https://journals.openedition.org/cm/2771


Concevoir et étudier les dynamiques interprétatives incessantes

qui engagent les sujets dans le « faire mémoire »

La problématique de recherche

Au cœur de ma thèse – documentant le parcours de reconnaissance des ML en Irlande

(1993-2014) – se situait une problématique générale (en deux volets) qui forçait à

réfléchir à la prise en compte du « qui » de la justice afin de révéler comment la société irlandaise répondait à ces voix du passé demandant des formes de réparation. Le pre-mier volet de la problématique concernait les dangers de déqualification des savoirs des témoins de l’histoire (entre autres en raison de la tendance à enfermer les survivants – et leurs récits – dans des identités victimaires 26). Le second volet de la problématique touchait aux risques de dépolitisation (souvent observés dans la littérature sur la répa-ration d’injustice historique 27) qui favorisent notamment la recherche d’un consensus qui permettrait alors la fermeture d’un « chapitre sombre » de l’histoire nationale.

L’intuition [thèse] poursuivie était qu’en étudiant la prise de parole comme lieu de luttes pour la production de savoirs légitimes, il serait possible de formuler un parcours de reconnaissance des injustices historiques dans les [ML] qui : éviterait l’écueil de la fermeture des récits expérientiels (en les considérant vivants puisque constamment sujets à être interprétés) et visibiliserait les effets de la poursuite obstinée de fins harmonieuses par rapport à la perte et à ce que compenser peut vouloir dire 28.

Cette volonté de rendre compte de l’activité interprétative incessante par laquelle les sujets réactivent les traces du passé et agissent par rapport aux litiges débattus a justifié l’ancrage herméneutique de ma question de recherche 29. Par souci de concision, j’ai choisi d’expliciter ci-après la « voie longue » de l’herméneutique 30, telle

26. Didier Fassin, Richard Rechtman, L’empire du traumatisme : enquête sur la condition de victime [2007], Paris, Flammarion, 2011 ; Sandrine Lefranc, Lilian Mathieu, Johanna Siméant, « Les victimes écrivent leur Histoire », Raisons politiques, nº 30, 2008, p. 5-19.

27. Sandrine Lefranc, « Du droit à la paix : la circulation des techniques internationales de pacification par le bas », Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, nº 174, 2008, p. 48-67 ; Sandrine Lefranc, « Convertir le grand nombre à la paix… Une ingénierie internationale de pacification », Politix, nº 80, 2007, p. 7-29.

28. Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 5.29. La question était celle-ci : « Quels sont les points de tensions qui révèlent le conflit des interprétations

dans l’articulation des discours de remémoration des ML entre 1993 et 2014 ? ». Je mentionnerai que derrière cette question, prenant la prise de parole comme un lieu de luttes pour la production des savoirs légitimes, se situait aussi la promesse que l’étude de ces tensions discursives rende visibles des contentieux entre les groupes sociaux qui, autrement, seraient restés non formalisés.

30. « Les “médiations” du soi, qui chez Ricœur tiennent lieu de texte à interpréter, forcent l’individu à s’interpréter par un apprentissage continu. Dans ces essais d’herméneutique ([Paul Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations : essais d’herméneutique [1969], Paris, Points, 2013]), Ricœur tente de saisir ces interprétations incessantes (qui ne sont pas appréhendables immédiatement de soi par soi) en employant “la médiation des sciences sociales comme modes scientifiques d’objectivation et d’explication de la vie signifiante” ([Johann Michel, Sociologie du soi : essai d’herméneutique

appliquée, Rennes, Presses universitaires de Rennes, 2012, note 20, p. 17]) » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 7).


qu’abordée chez Paul Ricœur, qui encourage à développer des voies de médiation dans les sciences sociales afin de penser la continuité du sujet et de ses actions.

L’herméneutique comme clé de voûte du sens

Parmi les acceptions propres à la démarche herméneutique en recherche 31, il est

fréquent de l’associer à l’interprétation de textes sacrés ou canoniques, ou encore

de désigner l’analyse méthodique de la valeur véritative ou de scientificité de la

recherche en sciences humaines. Pour cette étude sur les ML, c’est plutôt sous l’angle

du double mouvement herméneutique chez l’être humain, inspiré de la philosophie

existentialiste, comme chez Gadamer, que j’ai tenté d’expliciter deux actes relatifs

à l’interprétation : expliquer et comprendre. Comme le dit Ricœur, en décrivant

l’interprétation en tant que le fer de lance du double mouvement herméneutique,

l’explication permet de mieux comprendre et, inversement, comprendre permet de

mieux expliquer 32. En suivant cette logique, il est possible de dire que la chercheuse

en sciences sociales, tout comme les sujets de justice, est engagée dans ce mouvement

itératif où elle actualise ses savoirs de référence à partir d’une grammaire sociale de

significations (selon des « cadres sociaux » de la mémoire, dira Halbwachs 33) qui

permet à la fois de saisir son histoire personnelle et son rapport à l’histoire élargie.

Chez Ricœur, la cohérence de l’être (forme d’ontologie du sujet) prend sa

source dans la dialectique des interprétations 34 qui implique, dans notre étude,

de conceptualiser le rapport entre narration et mémoire. En suivant cette logique,

c’est à partir et à travers le « conflit des interprétations » que la compréhension de soi est possible, puisqu’en faisant un détour par autrui, je me découvre et apprends à me connaître 35.

[…] c’est seulement dans un conflit des herméneutiques rivales que nous apercevons quelque chose de l’être interprété : une ontologie unifiée est aussi inaccessible à notre méthode qu’une ontologie séparée 36.

En acceptant le postulat voulant que le conflit soit inhérent à la vie, j’ai étendu cette compréhension à l’espace du « faire mémoire » à l’expérience vécue et aux manières d’en rendre compte afin que les interprétations divergentes et convergentes

31. Ces trois acceptions sont tirées de l’ouvrage de Jean Grondin, L’herméneutique, Paris, Presses universitaires de France (Que sais-je ?), 2006, p. 5-8.

32. Paul Ricœur, Du texte à l’action : essais d’herméneutique II [1986], Paris, Seuil, 1998, p. 184-185.33. La proposition halbwachienne des « cadres sociaux » de la mémoire « met l’accent sur l’existence

de normes extérieures à l’individu (p. ex. des institutions sociales telles que la famille, la religion, la classe) en tant que conditions permettant le partage des histoires personnelles » (Maurice Halbwachs, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire [1925], Paris, A. Michel, 1994 ; cité dans Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 18).

34. Paul Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations…, p. 27.35. « L’individu est toujours appelé à évoluer entre deux “mondes” de représentations : le monde pré-

donné (phénoménologique) et un monde de symboles et de règles (culture) qui, par des allers-retours perpétuels, lui permettent d’interpréter » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 96).

36. Paul Ricœur, Le conflit des interprétations…, p. 23.


(ses tensions comme je les ai nommées dans ma question de recherche) deviennent révélatrices de la volonté d’expliquer et de comprendre (de créer du sens, de le partager et de le transformer) par l’implication des sujets dans le dialogue social visant à réparer les injustices passées ; énoncées au présent et pour l’avenir. Comme je le décrirai incessamment, parce qu’il n’existe pas de méthode particulière afin

d’entreprendre une étude herméneutique 37, et puisque la recherche qualitative

s’intéresse aux significations de phénomènes et de processus, j’ai choisi d’adopter

une logique de découverte de style inductive afin d’étudier les discours de remé-

moration des ML entre 1993 et 2014 38.

La greffe de l’herméneutique

sur l’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur

L’opérationnalisation de la greffe de l’herméneutique

sur l’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur

L’objectif de cette section est de décrire la démarche expérimentale développée dans

ma thèse doctorale afin de penser la continuité expérientielle et narrative entre le

sujet autoréflexif et son environnement social. En raison de la limite d’accès aux histoires orales (exclusivement sous leur forme orale et non écrite) et de l’existence du corpus textuel (articles de presse, débats parlementaires), la greffe de l’herméneu-tique sur l’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur s’est opérationnalisée en deux étapes distinctes que j’ai nommées les « rondes interprétatives » successives (l’une non assistée par ordinateur, l’autre assistée par ordinateur). La première « ronde » a été réalisée à partir de mes notes d’écoute de vingt-sept histoires orales compilées par le MIRAOH 39, en développant une approche que j’ai nommée l’« écoute au second degré ». Tandis que pour la seconde « ronde », j’ai eu recours au logiciel libre AntConc 40 afin de traiter le contenu des 1 583 textes des données médiatiques et parlementaires à l’étude. L’ensemble de ces observations thématiques et lexicales s’est retrouvé croisé sous la forme d’une synthèse des résultats.

Avant de retourner en détail sur le fonctionnement de ces deux approches combinées, je souhaite insister sur le fait que, bien que les exactions commises

37. Jean Grondin, L’herméneutique, p. 50.38. Cette période était délimitée par la découverte d’une fosse commune à Dublin en 1993, où

155 dépouilles avaient été exhumées sur le site d’une ancienne ML, et s’achève en 2014, soit un an après une série d’actions gouvernementales mises en œuvre dans le but de reconnaître et réparer les torts passés.

39. Magdalene Institutions : Recording an Archival and Oral History.40. AntConc est un outil d’analyse textuelle développé par le professeur Laurence Anthony (Faculty of

Science and Engineering, Waseda University, Japon) lors de son doctorat en linguistique appliquée. Le logiciel vise principalement l’identification automatique de cooccurrences, soit la proximité d’association entre deux mots (Laurence Anthony, AntConc, version 3.4.3, Linux OS [Computer Software], Tokyo, Waseda University, 2014, en ligne : http://www.laurenceanthony.net).

http://www.laurenceanthony.net


dans les ML fassent désormais partie d’une mémoire collective nationale élargie au sujet des violences institutionnelles, la capacité de représenter et d’expliquer cette histoire de domination et d’oppression est à dimensions variables. Non seulement les informations publiques sont parcellaires (par exemple les archives gouvernementales et privées n’ont été consultées que par quelques individus et il est difficile de confirmer les interprétations du rapport McAleese), mais, comme je l’ai expliqué en abordant la problématique générale de recherche, les souvenirs racontés par les survivantes courent le risque d’être déqualifiés, voire d’être ins-trumentalisés (notamment par les autorités religieuses ou étatiques) à des fins de cohésion sociale harmonieuse. C’est pourquoi j’ai insisté pour fonder mes premières catégories d’analyse thématique sur les récits des femmes directement affectées. D’une part, cela me permettait de valoriser leurs savoirs situés et de comprendre les conséquences de cette expérience sur leur trajectoire de vie ; d’autre part, j’espérais approfondir le sens de ces représentations intimes et personnelles des ML sur la production de formes d’intelligibilité à l’échelle nationale.

La première ronde interprétative : l’« écoute au second degré »

Alors que j’envisageais de procéder à une analyse qualitative des verbatims des vingt-sept récits de survivantes des ML dès que ceux-ci seraient rendus publics, j’ai eu accès, entre 2014 et 2015, aux archives inédites (audio, MP3) d’histoires orales du MIRAOH. Toutefois, à la suite d’un retard dans la sortie du matériel textuel, j’ai dû me contenter d’écouter les MP3 sans support écrit (puisque je n’avais pas les ressources financières pour assurer la transcription). C’est ce changement au niveau de l’accès aux matériaux qui m’a forcée à développer cette stratégie d’écoute au second degré (que j’explique incessamment). Cela s’est fait à partir de mes notes d’écoute 41 qui étaient très sommaires, certaines annotations comprenant des citations mot pour mot, d’autres étant des catégories de préanalyse. En somme, ces notes témoignent de la manière dont je suis entrée en relation affective, sensorielle et cognitive avec ces données autobiographiques, c’est pourquoi je les considère comme des notes d’observation plutôt que des notes d’entrevue.

D’ailleurs, cette corporéité de l’expérience d’écoute (d’être à l’écoute) révélait une nouvelle dimension herméneutique de la recherche, à savoir l’activité interpréta-tive derrière mon travail d’objectivation du sens de ces mémoires vivantes. L’action d’éprouver devenait un gain réflexif puisque l’écoutante s’emploie à développer une méthode pour aller à la rencontre de ces expériences difficiles – marquées par des souvenirs vivides d’abus sexuels avant l’internement dans les ML, de privations et

41. La nature non reproductible et non récurrente de cette expérience d’observation (générant près de 257 pages de notes à simple interligne) pourra sembler problématique pour certains, mais « je considère ce matériau de recherche valide dans la mesure où, eu égard à la continuité de l’esprit de mes préoccupations de chercheuse, il m’a permis de retracer le sens du contenu de ces histoires d’oppression entre passé, présent et futur » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 143).


de punitions qui y étaient infligées, ainsi que de séquelles liées au stigma social après la sortie de ces institutions – et produire de nouvelles intelligibilités sur le passé. Comme le qualifie Jean Grondin, l’approche herméneutique relève d’un art, d’une « sensibilité herméneutique » 42, qui admet l’existence de plusieurs interprétations, qui guide une démarche qui vise à déchiffrer le sens. Je considère donc que mon approche de l’écoute au second degré était empreinte de cette capacité de sentir et de ressentir en restant ouverte au sens des énoncés des survivantes.

Malgré la richesse explicative de mes notes d’écoute, je me retrouvais par-fois dans une situation où je n’étais pas en mesure de restituer le contexte d’un énoncé. D’où l’importance de situer ma méthodologie inductive dans ce rapport aux « références de second degré » 43, c’est-à-dire à la fois en relation avec le langage utilisé par ces femmes, produisant des interprétations de leur monde vécu, mais aussi en fonction des cadres interprétatifs préalables de la chercheuse. Il en ressort donc cette proposition de l’« écoute au second degré », qui reconnaît cette fragile dialectique, où ma position informée courait toujours le risque de dénaturer les dires de ces femmes. En résumé :

J’ai donc essayé de mettre en œuvre une stratégie de récollection du sens de l’expérience vécue fondée sur ma capacité à créer une distance entre ce qui est souvenu (mémoire) et raconté (narration) dans le but de générer des explications / compréhensions renou-velées de ce-qui-est-arrivé. Par la prise de notes, je n’avais pas accès à la compréhension immédiate du sens pour la personne qui raconte son histoire, mais j’avais des conditions de possibilité qui me permettaient d’espérer être en mesure de penser et d’interroger des interprétations tierces d’un domaine d’objets et de discours s’y rapportant 44.

En ciblant l’expérience de l’injustice comme génératrice de sens dans l’articula-tion des énoncés, j’ai porté une attention particulière à la manière dont les femmes approchaient les motifs de leur placement dans les ML, imputaient la faute à des acteurs sociaux spécifiques, ou encore parlaient du chemin parcouru par rapport à ce qui leur est arrivé, ainsi que de leurs visions pour l’avenir. Durant cette première « ronde interprétative », j’ai cherché à faire ressortir des « thèmes » 45 des histoires orales du MIRAOH. Cette première opération classificatoire avait pour assise conceptuelle les « catégories d’oppression » d’Iris Marion Young 46 – l’exploitation, la marginalisation, l’impuissance, l’impérialisme culturel et la violence. Toutefois, dans le cadre d’une deuxième vague de codification de mes notes d’écoute, je me

42. Jean Grondin, « La sensibilité herméneutique », Critique, nº 817-818, 2015, p. 458-459.43. Johann Michel, Quand le social vient au sens. Philosophie des sciences historiques et sociales,

Bruxelles, P. Lang, 2015, p. 496.44. Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 171.45. Je préciserai que le sens des thèmes n’est pas « déjà là » dans le texte ou le récit, il est construit par

l’analyste à la suite des locutrices qui l’ont elles aussi articulé, à travers un parcours interprétatif complexe qui se traduit par l’élaboration de thèmes, dans ce cas-ci relatifs à l’expérience d’oppression dans les ML durant le XXe siècle.

46. Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference [1990], Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2011, p. 42.


suis éloignée de ces catégories, afin de créer des thèmes transversaux, ceux de la

souffrance, de la honte et de l’estime (incluant la mésestime). À mon avis, ces thèmes transversaux permettaient à la fois de prendre en compte l’expérience commune de ces femmes et d’y déceler des divergences.

Tout d’abord, les modalités d’expression de la « souffrance » (ici comprise au sens large du fait de souffrir, d’éprouver une douleur physique ou morale) étaient très présentes dans les archives orales, notamment en raison de l’offense subie par ces femmes, mais aussi en relation avec la « cause » défendue par ces dernières (travailler à faire reconnaître les traitements abusifs dans les ML). Chez plusieurs survivantes, l’expression d’une honte intériorisée exprimait l’im/puissance liée à l’enfermement dans ces institutions, tout autant que l’humiliation liée au travail forcé et à l’imposition du stigmate de l’immoralité qui leur assignait une place assujettie au sein de la société irlandaise. C’est là, à mon avis, que cette honte sociale (deuxième thème transversal), tantôt attachée à l’oppression ressentie dans sa chair, tantôt liée à l’ignorance ou au mensonge, en venait à manifester une connexion puissante entre les souffrances endurées par les survivantes et la perception de leur estime personnelle. Là, survenait le troisième thème transversal, celui de l’estime et de la mésestime, qui exprime cette tension dans les capacités de dire et de faire des survivantes dans les ML et après leur passage dans ces institutions. Comme j’en fais la démonstration dans ma thèse, la dévaluation de la vie de ces femmes a commencé par le fait d’avoir séjourné dans une ML (tout autant que les privations endurées, les coups reçus, les insultes encaissées), mais aussi par les préjugés négatifs auxquels elles ont dû faire face après leur sortie des ML. Je préciserai toutefois que les conséquences de cette expérience de mépris ne sont pas uniformes pour ces femmes, et ce, bien qu’elles aient en commun d’avoir souffert (de souffrir), et souvent, d’avoir vu souffrir 47.

La seconde ronde interprétative : assistée par ordinateur

Pour cette deuxième ronde interprétative, j’ai choisi d’utiliser le logiciel de cooccurrences AntConc 48 afin de regrouper et d’analyser un échantillon de 1 583 textes, soit 887 articles 49 de presse écrite quotidienne 50 et 696 transcriptions 51 des débats

47. Ce paragraphe est très près des pages 196 et 197 de ma thèse (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…).

48. Le choix d’informatiser cette procédure a été fait en raison de l’efficacité de ce type d’outils pour traiter le big data et parce qu’il s’agissait d’un logiciel gratuit, facile à manœuvrer, qui me permettait d’observer les unités d’analyse textuelle dont j’avais besoin (par exemple l’affichage des segments contextuels des énoncés sous la forme de concordanciers).

49. La recherche par mots clés “magdalen* laundr*” a été principalement réalisée sur la plateforme Factiva.

50. Trois critères ont guidé la sélection des quotidiens Irish Independent et The Irish Times : le support de presse « écrite quotidienne », l’ancrage géographique « national », ainsi que la période temporelle étudiée « 1993-2014 ».

51. La recherche par mots clés “magdalen* laundr*” a été privilégiée afin d’extraire les résultats obtenus dans la fonction search debates - full text (all documents) sur le site Web des Houses of Oireachtas.


parlementaires issus des deux chambres législatives (« basse » – Dáil ou Assemblée

nationale –, et « haute » – Seanad ou Sénat) 52. J’épargne aux lectrices les règles de

constitution du corpus, ainsi que la série de « tests » opérés sur ces données afin

de repérer les occurrences, les cooccurrences (notamment en utilisant la fonction

concordance tool 53), mais j’insisterai toutefois sur le fait que, malgré l’efficacité des outils informatisés (par exemple afin de répondre en quelques secondes à des requêtes), c’est la chercheuse qui identifie les mots observés, qui repère et interprète leur contexte d’apparition dans le texte, les acteurs impliqués, les débats associés, etc., bref, qui donne une orientation à la recherche. C’est pourquoi les connais-sances préalables de la chercheuse sont primordiales afin d’entrer en relation avec le corpus de textes rassemblés.

C’est donc en m’inspirant de la catégorisation par thèmes des histoires orales (thèmes transversaux de la souffrance, de la honte et de l’estime – incluant son contraire : la mésestime) que j’ai construit des « champs lexicaux thématiques » 54 ensuite appliqués aux données médiatiques et parlementaires dans l’optique d’opérer un premier portrait lexicographique. En m’appuyant sur des concepts propres à l’analyse du discours 55, j’ai aiguillé ma recherche des cooccurrences vers la découverte de « formules » 56 présentes dans les articles de presse et les débats parlementaires.

Ce travail était itératif et intuitif (et, bien sûr, limité par l’outil informatique 57). Les allers et retours associant les concepts, les mots clés et les expressions ont fini

52. « Pour des raisons de simplification du traitement des données parlementaires […] j’ai choisi de ne pas faire de distinction entre les textes produits au Seanad et au Dáil. Cette décision diluera les particularités de l’une ou l’autre de ces chambres, comme en témoigne la partisanerie moins visible des sénateurs-trices, en comparaison aux TD [Teachtaí Dála (députés)], mais les répercussions sur l’observation des formules employées dans les matériaux parlementaires recueillis ne seront pas aussi grandes qu’entre les données médiatiques et parlementaires » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 156).

53. L’outil de concordance n’est qu’une des fonctions du logiciel AntConc, parmi les autres se trouvent : word list, keyword list, collocates et file view tool. Consulter l’annexe K de ma thèse pour plus de détail (ibid., p. 412).

54. Ces champs thématiques étaient ceux de l’« identité des [Magdalen Women] », de la « réparation et justice » et des « acteurs-trices politiques ». Ceux-ci me permettaient d’explorer la présence (continuité) ou l’« absence relative » (discontinuité) entre les mots et les expressions utilisée par les survivantes des ML et ceux qui, je le suspectais, seraient employés par d’autres acteurs sociaux dans le corpus médiatique et parlementaire (ibid., p. 175).

55. Ibid., p. 115-124.56. Chez Alice Krieg-Planque, une « formule » est l’« ensemble de formulations [apparentées] qui,

du fait de leurs emplois à un moment donné et dans un espace donné, cristallisent les enjeux politiques et sociaux que ces expressions contribuent dans le même temps à construire » (Alice Krieg-Planque, La notion de “formule” en analyse du discours : cadre théorique et méthodologique, Besançon, Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2009, p. 7 ; cité dans Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 129). « Pour ma part, les “formules” (dont je préfère la forme plurielle) consistent en de courts segments phrastiques ou à [sic] des slogans qui, par leur reprise, guident notamment l’organisation d’opinions dominantes, de jugements de valeur, d’identités, ainsi que d’explications alternatives du passé en fonction d’une vision anticipée de l’avenir » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 129-130).

57. Pour plus de détail, voir Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 185 et p. 189-191.


par éliminer des hypothèses de recherche tout en en formulant de nouvelles. C’est à la suite d’une série d’ajustements, de recoupements, d’essais et erreurs, que je suis parvenue à identifier trois formules (« illegitimate », « Church and State »,

« [shameful / dark] chapter ») et un « mot-événement » 58 (« high park » 59) qui, bien

que représentant des unités lexicales, se rapportent aussi à un réseau de récurrences

sémantiques, rendues interprétables en retournant vers les contextes d’apparition de

ces formules et de leur défigement dans les textes. La première formule fait écho à la

marginalisation sociale des survivantes en raison la lecture sociale de l’« illégitimité »

(illegitimacy) imposée sur les mères célibataires et leur descendance. La deuxième

formule, « Church and State », est assortie de deux autres expressions courantes,

soit « culture of secrecy » et « culture of silence », qui symbolisent l’influence soutenue de l’Église catholique au sein de l’administration des affaires d’État et l’immunité des religieux dans le dossier des réparations destinées aux survivantes. Quant à la troisième formule, « chapter », elle était composée d’expressions comme « dark chapter » et « shameful chapter », qui révélaient un récit national où dominait une honte passée avec laquelle plusieurs interlocuteurs, à commencer par le Premier ministre, souhaitaient marquer une rupture. Le cas échéant, la fermeture du « cha-pitre » des ML risquerait de laisser de côté les voix qui réclament d’autres dispositions légales et sociales afin de prévenir que des violences semblables ne se reproduisent.

Je mentionnerai que cette seconde « ronde interprétative » se distingue d’autres recherches prenant pour objet les discours au sujet des ML 60, entre autres en raison de la constitution d’un corpus textuel contemporain volumineux et varié, mais aussi parce que je ne m’en tenais pas seulement à l’exploration d’une controverse unique. En voulant saisir le sens produit par l’activité interprétative (« conflit des interprétations »), pris dans l’enchevêtrement des voix du « faire mémoire » au sujet de ce passé de violences envers les femmes et les filles en Irlande, j’ai développé une méthodologie hybride croisant unités thématiques et lexicales dans le but d’identifier et d’analyser les dires des témoins de l’histoire (ceux ayant vécu l’événement et ceux en parlant au second degré).

58. « [Les mots-événements] fonctionnent comme des dénominations partagées, ils renvoient à des connaissances emmagasinées et ils servent, pour paraphraser Le Petit Robert, à “éveiller l’idée d’un événement” » (Sophie Moirand, Les discours de la presse quotidienne : observer, analyser, comprendre, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 2007, p. 147 ; cité dans Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, note 129, p. 175).

59. Ce syntagme (« high park ») jouait le rôle de « mot-événement » : « […] il permettait à la fois de désigner le lieu de la découverte de la fosse commune sur le terrain de même nom à Dublin en 1993, tout en devenant (au fil des discussions médiatiques et parlementaires) une expression consacrée, sous la forme de l’allusion, afin de rattacher l’excavation de High Park à une histoire sociale élargie de violences envers les femmes dans les [ML] » (Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 374).

60. Sheila Killian, « “For Lack of Accountability” : The Logic of the Price in Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries », Accounting, Organizations and Society, vol. 43, 2015, p. 17-32 ; Ace Volkmann Simpson, Steward Clegg, Miguel Lopes, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Arménio Rego, Tyrone Pitsis, « Doing Compassion or Doing Discipline ? Power Relations and the Magdalene Laundries », Journal of Political Power, vol. 7, nº 2, 2014, p. 253-274.


La prochaine section démontrera comment l’opérationnalisation inductive et rigoureuse de cette démarche combinatoire (incluant une phase ou « ronde » non assistée et une autre assistée par ordinateur) a autorisé l’identification et l’explication

de chaînes d’inférences (énoncés) qui, par effet de raisonnements circulaires et autoréférentiels, m’ont permis de dégager des discours entourant les ML.

Aperçu des résultats à la suite de l’application

de cette méthodologie expérimentale

En guise de synthèse, je présente ici une partie des résultats obtenus grâce au croisement des observations thématiques et lexicales tirées des histoires orales, des articles de presse et des débats parlementaires, à savoir : les discours de victimisation et d’imputabilité 61.

Le discours de victimisation

Il a d’abord été question de revenir sur l’analyse thématique issue de mes notes d’écoute des histoires orales, puis de retracer les formules et le mot-événement repé-rés lors de l’analyse lexicale assistée par ordinateur. Bien que les thèmes transversaux de la souffrance, de la honte et de l’estime (mésestime) aient aussi été repérés dans les autres textes du corpus (médiatiques et parlementaires), les entretiens d’histoires orales permettaient de tisser des liens plus intimes et personnels aux événements et aux personnes qui avaient pour résultat de présenter une pluralité d’interprétations, non seulement au sujet du passé, mais aussi de percevoir l’actualisation de ce qui est arrivé au présent et, surtout, d’évoquer l’avenir (un horizon de promesses qui était moins mentionné dans les articles de presse et les débats parlementaires). L’un des principaux points de tensions entre les énoncés des survivantes et des autres acteurs sociaux se situe donc en lien avec la relationnalité et la temporalité de l’offense (et de ses conséquences) commise envers les femmes enfermées dans les ML : dans le cas des données médiatiques et parlementaires, l’offense est surtout mobilisée dans un cadre national et passéiste, tandis qu’elle est ancrée dans un cadre multiple et actualisé chez les survivantes. Dans le corpus à l’étude, au-delà de nouvelles possi-bilités d’expression publique, les survivantes font face à des processus de réduction qui tendent à les représenter comme des « êtres souffrants », ce qui mine la prise en compte de la pluralité des voix de ces femmes. Ce faisant, les obstacles rencontrés par les survivantes des ML pour faire reconnaître leurs savoirs (leurs paroles) comme mode de représentation légitime du passé d’injustices historiques sont peut-être moins importants qu’avant le tournant des années 2011-2013. Cependant, il demeure qu’elles parlent de la persistance d’un stigmate dévaluant leur vie. Ce constat devrait à lui seul convaincre les responsables politiques qui souhaitent clore

61. Je tiens à préciser que cette portion de texte est tirée des pages 356 à 358 de ma thèse doctorale.


le dialogue de justice et de réparation sur les violences dans les ML de continuer de prendre part aux débats quant à leurs conséquences au présent. À cet égard, bien qu’une nouvelle recherche soit nécessaire afin d’explorer l’hypothèse qui suit,

je crois que ce que j’ai nommé le discours de victimisation concourt à reproduire

des visions rétrogrades et limitatives de ces femmes qui nuisent à la poursuite de

l’équité dans la société irlandaise.

Le discours d’imputabilité

En ce qui concerne les limites des actions de réparation découlant du sens qu’a pris

cette « dette » (face aux préjudices causés aux femmes dans ces institutions et aux

dispositions sociales encourageant la justice) au sein de la société irlandaise, j’ai

identifié un discours d’imputabilité où dominaient des tensions entre la représen-

tation de la transgression et celle de la responsabilité. Bien que les survivantes aient

eu la possibilité d’énoncer leur expérience vécue et de se faire entendre (visibilité

et audibilité) – c’est du moins ce que la teneur des articles de presse et des débats

parlementaires laisse croire –, il persiste un risque d’effacement de la parole de ces femmes si les acteurs sociaux soutiennent que cet épisode de l’histoire est clos et que « toute la société irlandaise » (cette désignation semble toutefois exclure les ordres religieux et l’Église catholique) s’est rendu compte de l’ignominie des gestes posés et de l’urgence de répondre aux revendications de ces femmes. En l’occurrence, en dépit des intentions des acteurs de réparer ce qui est arrivé (ce qui n’était pas ma cible d’analyse), il est possible d’avancer qu’en mettant l’emphase sur un récit national où domine l’idée qu’il s’est produit une rupture radicale entre l’avant- et l’après-ML (le cas d’exemple étant les excuses publiques d’Enda Kenny et son usage équivoque de l’expression « tourner la page »), il apparaît alors que la recherche de fins harmonieuses risque de laisser de côté les voix qui réclament d’autres dispositions légales et sociales afin de prévenir que des violences semblables se reproduisent.

Potentiels et limites

Bien entendu, cette présentation sommaire des résultats ne rend pas compte d’autres éléments discutés dans ma thèse, parmi lesquels la « culture de remémoration entre honte et silences » 62, mais témoigne néanmoins du potentiel explicatif et compréhensif de cette approche. Je préciserai d’ailleurs que, bien que celle-ci ait été développée afin de comprendre le « travail de remémoration » au sujet d’injustices

62. Cette analyse essaie de rendre compte de l’espace d’intercompréhension entre les sujets impliqués dans le « faire mémoire » au sujet des ML entre 1993 et 2014, et ce, en s’appuyant sur deux notions (la honte – personnelle, sociale, nationale ; et les silences – au cœur du « secret » et des stratégies de dissimulation) qui me permettaient alors d’explorer différentes facettes discutées lors des deux rondes interprétatives. Pour plus de détail, voir Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 318-249.


historiques en Irlande, ce type de démarche visant la saisie du sens pourrait très bien être employée afin d’étudier d’autres contextes et enjeux au sein des sociétés

contemporaines. Pour la section qui suit, j’ai sélectionné quelques éléments réflexifs sur lesquels j’aimerais revenir en vue d’offrir un survol des potentialités et des limites de la greffe de l’herméneutique ricœurienne sur des procédés d’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur.

Parmi les potentialités sociales de cette méthodologie, je mentionnerai sa capa-cité à valoriser la voix des survivantes en les plaçant au cœur du premier mouvement interprétatif orientant la suite des étapes de la recherche. De plus, comme j’ai tenté de l’illustrer, cette proposition permet aux chercheuses de concevoir la pluralité (simultanée) des mémoires concurrentes, acceptant non seulement d’appréhender la continuité de l’expérience telle que racontée par les témoins, mais de concevoir les conséquences de ce vécu au-delà de la temporalité de l’événement ; luttant ainsi contre les risques de fermeture de l’histoire souvent observés lors du déploiement d’actions visant la réparation et la justice. J’insisterai enfin sur la contribution scientifique de cette approche méthodologique, plus particulièrement par rapport à la sociologie compréhensive de la mémoire, qui, par la combinaison de ces deux traditions (l’herméneutique en sciences sociales et l’analyse du discours), permet de prendre en compte l’échelle intime et personnelle des événements, tout en ne négligeant pas la rencontre de ces mémoires (histoires orales des survivantes) par rapport à l’espace élargi du « faire mémoire » au sein des sociétés (articles de presse et débats parlementaires mettant en scène les interprétations d’autres acteurs sociaux).

Malgré ces potentialités, il est important de marquer certaines limitations par rapport à la première application de cette méthodologie dans le cadre de ma thèse doctorale. D’une part, je rappellerai qu’en raison de l’impossibilité de consulter librement les archives du MIRAOH (histoire orale), j’ai fait œuvre de créativité en proposant cette posture d’écoutante au « second degré », qui à tout moment risquait, malgré mes bonnes intentions et mes connaissances préalables, de surin-terpréter la parole de ces femmes qui pendant tant d’années ont été réduites au silence, ou encore ont vu des tiers raconter leurs versions de l’histoire. Or, tout travail scientifique engage la chercheuse dans un processus d’objectivation de la réalité vécue. Cette fois-ci, la différence était de voir cet enjeu épistémologique comme un outil plutôt qu’une faille, afin de rendre visible le double mouvement herméneutique (discuté précédemment) qui se produit à la fois dans les témoins témoignant de leurs expériences, mais aussi dans la chercheuse qui vise à recon-naître et transmettre des interprétations de ces récits historiquement marginalisés. D’autre part, malgré le potentiel d’une analyse lexicale afin de traiter un grand nombre de textes avec une relative précision, la partie assistée par ordinateur ne permettait pas de différencier systématiquement les énoncés d’une journaliste et ceux provenant du courrier des lectrices, ni plus que d’identifier le sexe / genre des énonciatrices / énonciateurs. J’ajouterai que, bien que l’outil informatique (AntConc) permît un repérage rapide des associations entre les mots (occurrences et cooccurrences), c’était moi qui devais entrer chacun des mots (m1), puis aller valider quelles associations statistiques (m2) s’avéraient signifiantes, par exemple


pour confirmer des termes relevés ou des enjeux soulevés à partir du matériau

des notes d’écoute, ou encore générer de nouvelles hypothèses en faisant passer

l’observation d’une cooccurrence vers un sens contextuel dérivé (c’est ce que j’ai

nommé les « allers-retours » ou « essais-erreurs ») 63. Bref, il est possible d’imaginer

qu’un autre logiciel libre puisse fournir une plus grande variabilité d’opérations

sur le corpus de textes et permette d’enregistrer les résultats (ce qui n’était pas

possible avec AntConc, sauf en exportant les données une à une dans des tableaux

csv – comma-separated value).

Conclusion

Dans le cadre de cet article, après avoir soulevé les enjeux documentaires liés à la

réparation d’abus perpétrés dans les ML et proposé la prise de parole comme un

lieu de luttes pour la production de savoirs légitimes, j’ai introduit la problématique

générale autour de laquelle s’est développée la proposition méthodologique de la

greffe de l’herméneutique ricœurienne sur des procédés d’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur ; soit le risque de déqualification de la parole des témoins (déficit de crédibilité) et de fermeture des livres de l’histoire (par exemple à travers la recherche d’un consensus harmonieux). Par la suite, j’ai présenté l’opérationnalisation de cette méthodologie expérimentale, tout d’abord en discutant de l’herméneutique comme clé de voûte du sens. Cela a été le moment d’insister sur l’action interprétative en reconnaissant, d’un côté, le pouvoir de la narration chez les survivantes des ML et, de l’autre côté, en s’intéressant à la manière dont les autres acteurs sociaux expliquent et comprennent ces abus institutionnels et les modalités du rétablis-sement personnel et collectif. Ce faisant, il était indispensable de situer mon rôle en tant que chercheuse. En effet, par l’écoute, l’annotation et l’analyse attentive du contenu des histoires orales (MIRAOH), j’essayais de restituer l’épaisseur des descriptions de l’expérience vécue avant, pendant et après l’enfermement dans les ML, mais, ce faisant, je révélais ma propre position par rapport au double mouvement herméneutique : un sujet interprétant l’interprété.

Lors d’une première « ronde interprétative », prenant appui sur la capacité des témoins de l’histoire de produire et de transmettre leurs savoirs et visions par rapport aux événements passés, j’ai construit des thèmes transversaux qui ont par la suite contribué à orienter les opérations sur les corpus textuels assistées par ordinateur. Durant cette deuxième « ronde interprétative », j’en suis venue à proposer trois formules et un mot-événement qui condensaient des points de tensions révélant le « conflit des interprétations » dans les discours sur les ML (1993-2014). Enfin, j’en suis venue à exposer deux types de discours, de victimisation et d’imputabilité, qui ont été reconstruits à la suite de la synthèse entre les « rondes interprétatives » (l’une non assistée par ordinateur et l’autre assistée par ordinateur). Bien que présentant

63. Audrey Rousseau, Expériences de remémoration…, p. 183.


une vision incomplète de la démarche – avec ses potentialités et ses limites – afin

d’étudier les ruptures et les enchaînements imprévisibles dans la prise de parole des

sujets impliqués dans le « faire mémoire », j’espère que ce survol intéressera d’autres

chercheuses en sciences sociales qui envisageront d’emprunter certains aspects de

cette proposition méthodologique, ou encore développeront de nouvelles avenues

connexes. J’estime humblement que la greffe de l’herméneutique ricœurienne sur des procédés d’analyse de textes assistée par ordinateur est tournée vers un horizon d’intercompréhension (c’est-à-dire la faculté de compréhension réciproque où le conflit peut être moteur de nouvelles significations sur le passé), qui peut contribuer à poursuivre le dialogue de réparation d’injustices historiques en essayant d’éviter de nouveaux écueils (dont la création de nouveaux silences).

Enfin, je signalerai à toute personne qui désire entreprendre une recherche mobilisant l’approche de la « voie longue » de l’herméneutique de ne pas perdre de vue que vous partirez sans carte ni boussole et que cette voie demandera du temps et des ajustements constants puisque c’est souvent par à-coups (c’est-à-dire par des bonds intuitifs et répétés) qu’il est possible de pénétrer l’épaisseur de l’univers discursif, surtout lorsqu’on n’appartient pas à la société étudiée (ce qui était mon cas). Enfin, je terminerai en réitérant que, bien que complexe 64, cette méthodologie qualitative hybride invite à penser la production, la circulation et la transformation du sens dans l’espace du dialogue social sur le passé d’injustices historiques avec une sensibilité éthique et une finesse d’analyse qui m’a convaincue qu’elle pourrait faire école afin d’étudier les discours en sociologie compréhensive de la mémoire et, pourquoi pas, dans d’autres domaines disciplinaires.

Audrey Rousseau

Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO), Gatineau, Canada

64. Comme j’en ai fait mention dans ma thèse, il s’avérerait intéressant de regrouper des étudiantes, des professeures en sciences sociales et des spécialistes des outils logiciels (informatique et linguistique) afin d’imaginer qu’une équipe interdisciplinaire puisse joindre ses forces pour approfondir la proposition de la greffe d’approches herméneutiques sur des procédés d’analyse du discours (ibid., p. 376).


The War That Never Came:

Creating, Transmitting and Maintaining Handed-

Down Memories of the Emergency in Ireland.

Acknowledging Family Recollections of WWII 1

Abstract: Within the context of WWII, this essay explores the notion of national and personal conflict within individuals and communities in Ireland, part of which had undergone the severing of imperial connections and the attainment of national independence less than a full generation before. In Ireland, the conflict of war on a wider stage impinged upon an inner conflict closer to the heart. To go or not to go… to war. The question was raised to remain behind and serve a / the cause by maintaining a “home guard” alertness. This essay attempts to examine the fuzziness of transmitted handed-down memory which is far from being as clear and precise as “official” history. War memorials suggest an alternative conclusion and an alternative sense of historical order – intellectual and ideological. At the core of this paper are the memories of Martin Jarlath Gormally, the author’s father. His grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in Ireland, France, the United Kingdom, and Austria. For compar-ison / contrast, brief reference is made to WWII in France and to de-Nazification in Austria.

Keywords: conflict and neutrality in Ireland, World War II, Emergency 1939-1946, transmission of memory, border (the), “official” history, war memorials, France, Austria.

Résumé : Cet article propose d’explorer, dans le contexte de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale en Irlande, l’idée du conflit national et personnel chez des personnes et dans des communautés

locales. Une partie du pays avait subi la rupture des liens impériaux et la réalisation de l’indé-

pendance nationale moins d’une génération auparavant. En Irlande, la guerre à une échelle

plus grande empiétait sur un autre conflit, plus près du cœur. Faire ou ne pas faire… la guerre.

La question s’est posée de rester et de servir une / la cause en maintenant la vigilance dans

un home guard territorial. Cet article propose d’analyser le flou du souvenir transmis entre

générations et qui est loin d’être aussi clair et précis que l’histoire « officielle ». Les monuments aux morts suggèrent une conclusion alternative ainsi qu’un sens alternatif de l’ordre de l’histoire – intellectuel et idéologique. Cet article est fondé sur les souvenirs de Martin Jarlath Gormally, le père de l’auteur. Ses petits-enfants et arrière-petits-enfants vivent en Irlande, en France,au Royaume-Uni et en Autriche. À des fins de comparaison et de contraste, il sera fait unebrève référence à la Deuxième Guerre mondiale en France et à la dénazification en Autriche.

Mots clés : conflit et neutralité en Irlande, Deuxième Guerre mondiale, état d’urgence 1939-1946, transmission des souvenirs, frontière (la), histoire « officielle », monuments aux morts, France, Autriche.

1. The author expresses his gratitude to his father, Martin Jarlath Gormally, born in Brownesgrove, Tuam, Co. Galway, on 10 November 1922 whose memories and experiences are the core of this paper. The article is dedicated to Professor W. J. Smyth, President Emeritus, Maynooth University, for his unstinting enlightenment and unflinching encouragement.

144 Pat r i c k G o r m a l ly

The idea for this essay originated in the oral accounts of WWII by Martin Jarlath Gormally (born in County Galway on 10 November 1922, and in his 99th year at the time of writing), based on his recollections of the Emergency (1939-1946) as that period in then neutral Ireland is generally referred to. Constantly repeated stories about “the war” are among the strongest childhood memories which the author, his son (b. 1952), possesses, although they are not his own memories. The father’s stories influenced the son’s perception and his memories of life on the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland (1955-1970). In keeping with the Irish tradition of emigration, members of Martin and his wife Grace’s families left for Argentina, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and the United States. Members of the second generation emigrated to Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Malaysia and the United States. His son chose to go to France in 1971 and became a French citizen, his daughter chose the United Kingdom where her Irish-English family lives; he has several Irish grandchildren, one of whom is of Chinese extraction, his grandson made the choice to move to France and his granddaughter opted for Austria; his grandchildren and great-grandchildren live in four countries, his great-grandson was born in Austria, and his UK great-grandchildren have English and Scottish ancestry and an Iranian parent, respectively. Over a period of thirty years (1984-2014) he travelled regularly in France in the company of his son. WWI and WWII memories, on both sides of his French daughter-in-law’s family, highlighted his own memories of the Emergency. The comparisons made with Ireland illustrate how family and personal memory is created, and lead to an examination of how connections are established with public institutions such as history museums and war monuments, which the essay addresses in relation to selected examples from Ireland, France and Austria.

Methodology

The methodology adopted in this essay is based on the oral tales told by Martin Gormally over a period of seventy years. The stories originally centred on the centuries-old fractious relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom as perceived by Martin who was born during the Irish Civil War (June 1922-May 1923), whose family witnessed Black and Tan brutality, and who experienced the Economic War 2 (1932-1938) during his own childhood. On the other hand, the author grew up during the 1950s in County Donegal, on the border between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Along that border, shared with counties Derry, Tyrone and Fermanagh, there was first-hand tangible evidence of ancient conflict. From 1973 on, membership and participation in what is now the European Union was contemporaneous with the beginning of profound social and economic changes in Ireland, and violence in Northern Ireland. That process in turn created a renewed sense of Irish identity,

2. Also known as the Anglo-Irish Trade War.

145Th e Wa r That Nev e r C a m e …

a turning towards the continent, a reappraisal of the relationship with the United Kingdom and the discovery that Ireland shared much with other European countries, including pro and anti-British feeling, linguistic and ethnic aspects of identity, and hero worship 3. War monuments, although not always the direct focus of attention, are visible signs of remembrance, and in Ireland, North and South, there are funda-mental differences between the number and nature of WWI and WWII monuments, and they also differ from war memorials in France and in Austria. Given that many eyewitnesses to WWII have disappeared, the time has come to transmit these second generation and handed-down 4 but nonetheless personalised memories to the third generation, who will in turn make their own connections in a changing Europe and in a world marked by more recent wars than one cares to count. It is also important to examine the surviving monuments so that both the tangible and the intangible aspects of that memory are conveyed in as complete a manner as possible, in order that the forthcoming generations can face their future with a strong sense of where they have come from and with no stone left unturned.

During the author’s childhood, the stories were collected at home during family exchanges about Ireland’s relationship with the United Kingdom. Later, from 1970 onwards, when the author was a university student at Maynooth College, the discussions included Irish historical contacts with France and mainland Europe, including the Wild Geese, the continental Irish Colleges and WWII in France. Over a thirty-year period (1984-2014), father and son spent many weeks in Paris and on the roads of Normandy (D-Day landings), the Massif central, Nouvelle Aquitaine (Oradour-sur-Glane, Bordeaux), Burgundy and Grand Est (Verdun, Strasbourg), visiting battle sites, war museums and military artefacts from WWI and WWII. Following retirement from the Department of Agriculture in 1987, Martin was involved in a writers’ group 5 in County Sligo where he was a regular contributor of published and unpublished material inspired by personal memories from the 1930s and the Emergency. He published a novel 6 in 2008, then 86 years of age, and continues to write regularly in English and Irish for personal satisfaction.

Irish neutrality 1939-1946

Ireland remained neutral in WWII and the period from 1939 to 1946 is generally referred to as “The Emergency”; Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom was at war. The Taoiseach Éamon de Valera had fought against the British in the

3. The existence of a common language shared by Ireland and Austria with England and Germany respectively does not equate to a recognised common identity.

4. See interview with Marianne Hirsch, on line: https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/hirsch-generation-postmemory.

5. Sligo Active Retirement Association.6. Martin Gormally, A Son of Aran, Dublin, Original Writing – Sligo Active Retirement Association,

2008.

https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/hirsch-generation-postmemory

https://cup.columbia.edu/author-interviews/hirsch-generation-postmemory


1916 Easter Rising and in the War of Independence (1919-1921), and he backed the Anti-Treaty IRA during the Civil War (1922-1923) which opposed partition. On coming into power in 1932, he weakened the constitutional link between the Irish Free State and the British Crown, introduced a new Constitution in December 1937 and, as war threatened in 1938, he obtained the end of British use of the Treaty Ports 7, while negotiating simultaneously an agreement to end the Anglo-Irish Trade War (1932-1938), which had caused severe social suffering and financial hardship in Ireland. One year later, in September 1939, with war imminent, he decided that Ireland would remain neutral. To retrieve the Treaty Ports and to tempt Ireland to join the Allies, Winston Churchill used the unity card in 1940 8. However, doubting British bona fide and London’s ability to convince Northern unionists over unification, de Valera turned down the offer, a refusal not revealed until 1970 9 and which Churchill, anxious to avoid another Irish crisis, had not communicated at the time to His Majesty’s government in Northern Ireland.

Irish neutrality suited Germany more than it did the United Kingdom but neither side ever seriously considered invasion. The Germans refrained because of local British air and sea superiority, because of the land border between Ireland and Northern Ireland, and because their efforts to collaborate with the pro-Nazi IRA 10 were counteracted by de Valera’s severe political repression and equally stringent censorship. The latter was central to maintaining the apparent impeccability of Irish neutrality, essentially a “moral neutrality” heavily influenced by the centuries-old colonisation of Ireland by the United Kingdom, and which in the absence of actual warfare turned censorship into a weapon of war by keeping the Irish public in ignorance of atrocities committed by all the belligerent sides 11. In addition, Germany was unimpressed 12 by the apparent unpreparedness and amateurism of the IRA.

Northern Ireland remained part of the United Kingdom, and the British were reluctant to invade the independent political entity on the partitioned island. Churchill’s detestation for Irish neutrality meant that the British merchant navy, despite counting high numbers of Irish mariners in its ranks, was reluctant to carry goods necessary for Ireland’s economy when, in his opinion 13, Irish ports could

7. On the establishment of the Irish Free State in 1921, the United Kingdom retained three deep water ports, at Berehaven and Cóbh (Co. Cork) and in Lough Swilly (defended by Fort Dunree and Lenan Fort, Co. Donegal). In 1937 de Valera negotiated the return of the ports which were handed over in 1938.

8. Tony Sharp, review of Joseph T. Carroll, Ireland in the War Years, 1939-1945, International Affairs, vol. 51, no. 4, October 1975, p. 577-578.

9. “The Emergency (Ireland)”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(Ireland).10. J. C. Beckett, review of Joseph T. Carroll, Ireland in the War Years, 1939-1945, The English Historical

Review, vol. 91, no. 360, July 1976, p. 689.11. Donal Ó Drisceoil, “‘Moral Neutrality’. Censorship in Emergency Ireland”, History Ireland, vol. 4,

no. 2, Summer 1996, p. 46-50.12. “Irish Republican Army – Abwehr Collaboration”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Irish_Republican_Army%E2%80%93Abwehr_collaboration.13. Daire Brunicardi, “Ireland and the Second World War – The Price of Neutrality”, History Ireland,

vol. 23, no. 3, May-June 2015, p. 40-42.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emergency_(Ireland)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army%E2%80%93Abwehr_collaboration

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army%E2%80%93Abwehr_collaboration


have helped the United Kingdom and its allies navigate the dangerous zone of the North Atlantic. Irish neutrality was of immense symbolic importance but in practice it did not preclude close cooperation with the British and later the US forces. It was unthinkable at the time that Ireland could be anything other than neutral, but the Irish army was nonetheless authorised, under a shroud of complete secrecy, to collaborate with the British regarding the possibility of a German invasion, and the secret was maintained until the mid-1970s 14. Internment was introduced for foreign military personnel and at the end of the conflict 256 German military airmen and seamen were detained 15 in the Curragh Military Camp, where IRA members were also imprisoned. British internees, on the other hand, were discretely repatriated during 1943 and 1944. US personnel were repatriated 16, generally via Northern Ireland, under a bilateral government agreement 17. Nevertheless, the policy of neutrality and the reality of war did create hardship for the Irish population. There was a dearth of essential raw materials which were generally imported via the United Kingdom: tea, tobacco, fertilisers, wheat, coal, timber, animal feedstuffs and manufactured goods. The government introduced a compulsory tillage 18 scheme to provide supplies of Irish-grown wheat but high residual humidity levels led to the production of inferior quality bread. The state also introduced obligatory turf harvesting to guarantee fuel for domestic heating and the maintenance of transport services 19.

Military conflict did not take place in Ireland, but it was anticipated, and preventive military preparations were made in the unlikely event of an invasion. On 28 May 1940, an auxiliary police service was established, the Local Security Force (LSF). It was divided into two groups on 22 June 1940 which led to the establishment of the military Local Defence Force (LDF) on 1 January 1941. The ranks of the LDF rose to 106,000 members by 1943; the combined ranks of the LDF and the LSF totalled 150,000. The LSF did considerable regular police work and the LDF devoted much time to military training with rifle, live ammunition, bayonet, and grenade, as a combat organisation under the full military command of

14. Joseph T. Carroll, Ireland in the War Years, 1939-1945 [1975], San Francisco, International Scholars Publications, 1998, revised edition.

15. Luke Diver, “German internees at the Curragh Camp”, History Ireland, vol. 25, no. 2, March-April 2017, on line: https://www.historyireland.com/volume-25/german-internees-curragh-camp.

16. “Curragh Camp”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curragh_Camp.17. T. Ryle Dwyer, Guests of the State: The Story of the Allied and Axis Servicemen Interned in Ireland

during World War II, Dingle, Brandon, 1994.18. Bryce Evans, “Coercion in the Irish Countryside: The Irish Smallholder, the State and Compulsory

Tillage 1939-45”, Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 38, 2011, p. 1-17.19. Peter Rigney, Trains, Coal and Turf: Transport in Emergency Ireland, Dublin – Portland, Irish

Academic Press, 2010. Turf lorries were fitted with gas producer equipment made from coal and charcoal; trains were powered by coal. Turf-burning trains existed from the mid-19th century and the fuel was associated for a time with other coal substitutes during the Emergency (Ciarán Bryan, Rationing in Emergency Ireland, 1939-48, PhD thesis in history, Maynooth University, 2014, on line: http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/9130/1/CBryan_66665772_PhD_Thesis.pdf).

https://www.historyireland.com/volume-25/german-internees-curragh-camp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curragh_Camp

http://mural.maynoothuniversity.ie/9130/1/CBryan_66665772_PhD_Thesis.pdf


the Irish army which numbered 41,000 full-time soldiers in 1941 20. It is estimated that 100,000 Irish citizens travelled to the United Kingdom between 1939 and 1945 21 and it is further estimated that in total 60-70,000 volunteers from Ireland also joined the combined British armed forces of which 50,644 joined the British army; a fact that de Valera chose to ignore. In comparison, it is estimated that 49,302 army recruits joined from Northern Ireland 22 where Sir Basil Brooke, the Unionist Prime Minister, rejected conscription because of its likely negative impact on internal peace and community stability.

Censorship ensured that the general population was not aware of the number of German military personnel interned during the war in Ireland but there were public sightings of US planes crash-landing in counties Galway, Clare, and Limerick. German bombs were dropped in Wicklow (1940), in several other eastern counties (1941) including Belfast (April-May 1941) and the North Strand, Dublin (January and May 1941). Irish families were made aware of the wartime situation in the United Kingdom by family members on return visits home, whereas communication with relatives in other parts of the world was severely restrained by censorship. Irish families listened on Hamburg radio to Germany Calling, the anti-British propaganda broadcasts by “Lord Haw-Haw” (William Joyce, a US born Briton) 23, and they took note following the death of Hitler when de Valera signed the register of condolence at the German delegation in Dublin, and similarly when the Dáil adjourned a week later following the death of Roosevelt.

The comparisons made by Martin, on discovering the memories of occupation, collaboration, exodus, penury, atrocities, resistance and deportation in WWII France, led to comparisons and connections with the centuries-old occupation and colonisation of Ireland by the United Kingdom. Subsequently, he discovered the “postmemories” of war and the Nazi Occupation in his French daughter-in-law’s family, and in the experience of his granddaughter’s Austrian in-laws during the Anschluss, which led to further comparisons and family connections between war and memory in France, Austria and Ireland.

20. The Irish Defence Forces Handbook, Dublin, Military Archives, 1983, p. 94-96; “Army Reserve (Ireland)”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Reserve_(Ireland); “Irish Army – The Emergency”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Army#The_Emergency.

21. Enda Delaney, “Irish Migration to Britain, 1939-1945”, Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 28, 2001, p. 47-71.

22. Steven O’Connor, “Irish Identity and Integration within the British Armed Forces, 1939-45”, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 39, no. 155, 2015, p. 418; Brian Girvin, The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-45, London, Macmillan, 2006, p. 274-275; Yvonne McEwen, “Deaths in Irish Regiments 1939-1945 and the Extent of Irish Volunteering for the British Army”, The Irish Sword, vol. 24, 2004-2005, p. 81-98.

23. The Deutsche Rundfunk also broadcast propaganda in Irish, Irland-Redaktion, from 1939-1945, at the same time every week immediately after Lord Haw-Haw’s broadcast. Professor Ludwig Mühlhausen signed off: “Go mbeannaí Dia dhaoibh, a chairde, agus go saora Dia Éire” (“May God bless you my friends, and may God free Ireland”); his successor Professor Hans Hartmann exorted listeners: “Coinnigí bhur neodracht!” (“Keep your neutrality!”). See David O’Donoghue, Hitler’s Irish Voices. The Story of German Radio’s Wartime Irish Service, Bantry, Somerville Press, 2014, reviewed by John Swift, Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 104, no. 414, Summer 2015, p. 207-216; “Mühlhausen, Ludwig (1888-1956)”, https://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1132.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_Reserve_(Ireland)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Army#The_Emergency

https://www.ainm.ie/Bio.aspx?ID=1132


A rural Galway family’s memories of war

Memories are created by the experiences and perceptions of eyewitnesses 24 and are transformed and recreated as time evolves and contexts alter. Individuals, families, and social groups relive and integrate that which was experienced originally 25 by others. War and memory are linked through recollection by eyewitnesses who (re)construct, (re)present and recall the past, rendering it alive for subsequent gen-erations. Much of social history is memory-based, influenced by what is selected for remembrance and it sets aside what is forgotten; memory is inevitably selective. Irish memories of the Emergency are linked to and frequently conflate the events, many recent, of the War of Independence, partition, the Civil War, and the Economic War which took place over a span of less than twenty years and which invoked the fractious on-going Irish-British relationship. Arguably, the border counties, and especially the geographically isolated Donegal, were more exposed than the rest of independent Ireland to the symbols and the reality of the “unfinished” political business between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Vibrant family recollections of the Emergency caused younger people living in the border area in the years after the war to blend their parents’ collective memories with their own perspective on continuing political and paramilitary activity, forming an inter-generational co-narration and re-imagining of the centuries-old relationship between the two countries. The experiences and recalled memories of the Gormallys, while obviously personal, are far from unique because they reveal in several ways the construction and transmission of wider community perceptions and generational change as manifested in evolving historical and altered geographical circumstances.

Martin Jarlath Gormally 26, the youngest of six sons and one daughter, was born in Brownesgrove, Co. Galway, a few minutes before midnight on 10 November 1922.

24. For the issue of the witness in WWI, see Jean Norton Cru, Du témoignage, Paris, Gallimard, 1930, on line: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k11702995; and Emile Dulong, Journal de guerre d’un honnête homme (1939-1940), Nérac, Albret, 2015.

25. Andrew Frayn, Terry Phillips, “Introduction: War and Memory”, Journal of War and Culture Studies, vol. 11, no. 3, 2018, p. 182.

26. The family name was spelled as Gormley (from “gorm-gal”, blue stranger), which is also the more common spelling used in Ulster, except for the two youngest children, Frank and Martin who were registered as Gormally, the more common spelling in Connaught and the Midlands. The name originated in what is now County Donegal, more precisely in the barony of Raphoe; chiefs of Cenel Moen they descended from Moen son of Muireadach and belonged to the Uí Néill (O’Neill) dynasty. A second sept is found in the Partry Mountains of West Mayo. Middle and Early Modern Irish literary material indicates three queens named Gormlaith who died respectively in 861, 948 and 1030 (Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, “Tales of Three Gormlaiths in Medieval Literature”, Éiriu, vol. 52, 2002, p. 1-24). Gormlaith (870-948), the poetess, was successively Queen of Tara, Munster and Leinster and left a body of poems which recount her personal distress in her final years. Her son Muirchertach Mac Néill was the ancestor of the O’Neill kingdom in Ulster to whom Gormleys were suppliers of horses in the Middle Ages; Gormleys continue today to be equine dealers, jockeys and veterinary surgeons in County Longford and the Midlands. The Annals of Lough Key record that members of the Gormghaile clan were abbots and hermits on Lough Key in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries; Cinaeth Ó Gormghaile was erenagh of Elphin in the 14th century. In the 16th and 17th centuries, O’Gormleys were Priors of the Carmelite monastery at Baile na Smólach,

https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k11702995


He has recorded his first-hand recollections of the Economic War (1932-1938) and the Emergency (1939-1946) 27, including rationing of food, clothing, fuel, fertiliser, and raw materials. The son of a smallholder, he remembers the compulsory tillage and turf production schemes. But there was also a lighter side when his family laughed nightly at Lord Haw-Haw’s affected upper-class British accent referring to “the stuttery [sic] King!” and “the bandy-legged Queen!” 28.

The presence abroad of his three brothers was painful, especially for their mother. Fr. Patrick Gormley was chaplain to the Irish-Argentinean Hispanic com-munity in Buenos Aires (1937-1947); letters were censored and took three months to arrive. Fr. Michael Gormley was a student in Rome during the war years. Despite the help of the Irish ambassador’s wife, the County Mayo-born singer and collector of Irish ballads, Delia Murphy, Mussolini’s regime made satisfactory communication with home nigh-well impossible. Travel was perilous and family members could not attend his ordination. A man of few words, he recounted to his nephews how he left Rome after ordination in 1943 and, wearing a leather helmet, a wool-lined leather jacket and leather gloves, he rode a motorcycle northward through Tuscany and along the Apennines before crossing by boat to Spain and travelling overland to Lisbon, the principal departure point for travel to the United Kingdom and across the Atlantic. In neutral Portugal, after a wait of several months, he obtained a seat on the regular K.L.M. / B.O.A.C. flight from Lisbon to Bristol. However, he was bumped off the flight at the last minute on 1 June 1943 to make room for the British actor Leslie Howard (Ashley in Gone with the Wind); the plane was shot down by the German Luftwaffe over the Bay of Biscay killing all seventeen people on board. The flight path was not normally a war zone but by 1943 the Germans were becoming increasingly nervous. Spies were common in Lisbon and Winston Churchill, returning from a conference in North Africa, was due to take the same flight, but acting on a premonition he changed his departure to the following day. The Germans considered Howard to be a serious anti-German propagandist, but it may also have been a random attack on an enemy plane. Failing to secure a seat on Flight 777 saved Fr. Michael Gormley’s life. A graduate of the Gregorian University, Rome, he spoke fluent Italian and on reaching the United Kingdom, emaciated, clothes threadbare and with holes in the soles of his shoes, he became chaplain to an Italian prisoner of war camp in West Sussex. The prisoners of war presented him with a cigarette lighter which they made from a bronze shell casing. The brown-yellow metal lighter is a treasured family possession.

A third brother, Frank, a qualified carpenter-joiner by trade had emigrated to England in 1938 and was working in Coventry during the blitz bombing of

Co. Mayo (Stephen Josten, O. Carm., Ballinasmale Carmelite Abbey 1288-1870, Ballinasmale Abbey Conservation Committee, 16 July 1984, on line: http://www.carmelites.ie/Ballinasmale.pdf). The original Gorm (b. before 900-d. 958) became the first recognised King of Denmark in 936.

27. Martin Gormally, “The Emergency – World War Two”; “World War Two – A Call to Arms”; “Landing of a Flying Fortress near Athenry in 1943”, unpublished, n.d., n.p.

28. “Your stammering King and your bandy-legged Queen” (“The King’s Speech: The Real Story”, The Telegraph, 5 January 2011).

http://www.carmelites.ie/Ballinasmale.pdf


14-15 November 1940. Almost 600 people were killed, the exact number has never been established, and 1,250 were injured in what was the most severe of the Coventry bombings. Many bodies were discovered in the rubble and he recalled the mass burials which followed. During the second bombing on 8-9 April 1941, weary of going to the air-raid shelter, he remained in bed. A shell nosecone fuse pierced the roof and landed in bed beside him. A second National Service Act was passed by the UK government in December 1941 and Frank returned to County Galway early in 1942 bringing with him the 1kg nosecone. On 31 May 1941, Martin Gormally was on his first visit to Dublin for an interview and he recalls the extensive bomb damage in the North Strand area and the tactile fear among Dubliners that the Germans would return. The final bomb killed 28 people, injured 90, damaged 300 houses and left 400 people homeless. He was 18 years old and it left an indelible memory, which intensified as the years passed.

Martin’s abiding wartime memory about which he has written 29 concerns his family’s exposure to pre-WWII military conflict which occurred during the War of Independence and the Civil War, before his birth. Between 1919 and 1921 his father James (Jim) Gormley sold Dáil loans 30 on behalf of Michael Collins, Minister of Finance in the 1918 Provisional Government. On 19 July 1920 31, at Gallagh Wood 400 metres from the family home in Brownesgrove, the IRA ambushed a Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) convoy, returning from the Galway Assize Court, killing two constables in the process. In retaliation the police went on an all-night rampage that evening in the town of Tuam nearby, where, on 20 July, the Black and Tans burned the Town Hall 32. The same day Jim destroyed the official Provisional Government receipts for the funds which he had collected and forwarded to Dublin, for fear of discovery by the Tans 33. The receipts were hidden in the thatch of the roof and he first showed them to a neighbour as testimony to their existence, asking him to confirm he had seen them if necessary. The neighbour later reneged on his promise 34. Jim

29. Martin Gormally, “World War 2”, in Hearths and Homesteads: Memories and Recollections, Bernie Doyle (ed.), Sligo, Sligo Active Retirement Writers, 2003, p. 36-40.

30. “Dáil Loans”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_loans.31. “Timeline of the Irish War of Independence”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_

of_the_Irish_War_of_Independence; The Tuam Herald, 24 July 1920, on line: http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/history/chapter377.html.

32. Later that evening and the next day, 20 July 1920, the RIC sacked the town of Tuam, burning the Town Hall in the process, and threatened to burn the two thatched houses near Gallagh Wood including the Gormley family home. They desisted following the intervention of a neighbour, Major Leonard, Roscommon Militia; the perpetrators of the ambush were later discovered to have come mainly from the nearby village of Lavally.

33. Bonds for Dáil loans, issued by the self-proclaimed Irish Republic to fund the apparatus of government, were sold locally; the funds were transferred to Dublin and the bonds, signed by Michael Collins, were then issued directly to the purchasers. A lapse of time necessarily occurred between the cash transaction and the receipt of the actual bonds.

34. Jim Gormley, a herdsman on the O’Connor estate, Brownesgrove, had recently bought a plot of land with the help of an interest-free loan from his brother-in-law Andy Coen, Kilconly. For whatever reason, political or personal, his neighbour reneged on his promise, thereby silently insinuating misuse of the collected funds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A1il_loans

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Irish_War_of_Independence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Irish_War_of_Independence

http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/history/chapter377.html

http://places.galwaylibrary.ie/history/chapter377.html


was subsequently arrested by the Black and Tans and interrogated for a full day at an isolated premises in Tullynadaly, Tuam, before being released without charge. He never spoke willingly about the experience. At the time of the ambush his eldest son, Joe Gormley, then 7 years old, was driving the cows in the adjoining Cuan Ard field overlooking the ambush scene when he came close to being caught in the crossfire. At his death in 2011 Joe, then in his 98th year, was the last living witness of the Gallagh ambush 35.

During the War of Independence in 1920, following a meeting of the Cortoon Coop, of which he was a member, Jim Gormley stopped at the public house on his way home. During the discussion, he objected publicly that IRA members had taken Cooperative goods without payment, and who, when challenged had replied: “We’re fighting for your freedom. What is yours, is ours!”. Later that night on the way home, he was left for dead by a group of men who beat him with their rifle butts. As he lay prone, the last assailant turned back, removed a large stone from the roadside wall, and dropped it above Jim’s head. He moved his skull a fraction and the rock grazed his temple and cheek 36. When a new auxiliary police service, the Local Security Force, was created in May 1940, Jim promptly joined, and Martin followed his example by joining the new Local Defence Force in June 1940, which transferred to the army in January 1941. Martin’s platoon was based at Cortoon, they trained with Lee Enfield rifles, bayonet and grenade and he proved to be a prizewinning sharpshooter. He was appointed adjutant to the platoon commander, the local primary school teacher. Reports were filed on a weekly basis; training took place in the evenings and on Sunday morning after mass; travel was by bicycle. Training was provided by an Irish army non-commissioned officer, Kevin Costello. The latter’s brother Lieutenant General M. J. Costello was the godson of Thomas MacDonagh, signatory of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic; he later became director of training and later still commandant at the Irish Military College. In 1940 he was officer commanding Southern Command 37.

On 15 January 1943, Martin Gormally witnessed the American B-17 Flying Fortress which crash-landed among the spiked fields of the Agricultural College, Athenry where he was experiments officer. He recalls Tom, a College employee, greeting the first US soldier to emerge and climb down the steps, his hand on his holster pistol: “We’ll not do anything to ye!” – “Where are we?” came the reply – “You’re about a mile from Athenry, Sir!” – “What country?” – “Ireland!” – “North or South?” – “You’re in the South, Sir! Sure, the North is up there in Belfast!”. Fifteen US military personnel and one Royal Air Force (RAF) pilot then emerged, including two future US generals, Jakob Loucks Devers, later commander-in-chief

35. “Obituary – Mr Joe Gormley Beaugh, Brownsgrove, Tuam”, The Tuam Herald, 23 March 2011, on line: https://www.tuamherald.ie/2011/03/23/obituary-mr-joe-gormley-beaugh-brownsgrove-tuam; “Death of Last Witness of Gallagh Ambush”, The Tuam Herald, 16 March 2011, on line: https://www.tuamherald.ie/2011/03/16/death-of-last-witness-of-gallagh-ambush.

36. For many decades Martin was not told the identity of the would-be-assassin: “Ná bac a mhaicín, that man died roaring in America!” (“Leave it, son […]”).

37. LSF and LDF volunteers took an oath of allegiance to the Irish state in 1942.

https://www.tuamherald.ie/2011/03/23/obituary-mr-joe-gormley-beaugh-brownsgrove-tuam

https://www.tuamherald.ie/2011/03/23/obituary-mr-joe-gormley-beaugh-brownsgrove-tuam

https://www.tuamherald.ie/2011/03/16/death-of-last-witness-of-gallagh-ambush


of all US ground army forces, and Edward Hales Brooks who later led the Second Armoured Division through Saint-Lô, France and accepted the surrender of the German forces in Innsbruck, Austria. A puff of smoke indicated that “Sparks” had destroyed the plane’s radio and the airmen passed around white-bread sandwiches, a delicacy compared to the black-brown bread made from inferior Irish wartime flour, and cigarettes. The Athenry LDF members promptly arrived by bicycle, their rifles slung over their shoulders, and surrounded the plane until the Irish Army secured the site; the dismantled bomber was later taken by road to Northern Ireland.

Post-WWII memories from Donegal and Sligo (1950s and 1960s)

Ireland in the immediate post-war period did not experience the rebuilding of cities and infrastructure due to wartime damage, as happened on the continent and in the United Kingdom, nor was repatriation a feature of life or the return of inmates from deportation and concentration camps. War veterans who had joined the British forces returned discretely to Ireland in some numbers, but the country did not experience the investment in facilities and infrastructure which was the case elsewhere. Ireland did not experience the Trente Glorieuses, which would come later with accession to the Common Market in 1973. In the 1950s there was relatively little mobility or resettlement throughout the country, secondary education was fee-paying, the Catholic Church exercised strong social control and the universities remained the reserve of a privileged elite. Foreign travel was generally unknown apart from pilgrimages to Lourdes and family visits to and from the United Kingdom; apart from border country residents, few ventured from the south into Northern Ireland. The birth rate was high, but the population continued to fall. Fianna Fáil dominated national politics, and the failure of the Mother and Child Scheme was detrimental to the emergence of a new political force. Agriculture dominated the economy, employing 40% of the population, and was in a dire state; industrial development and foreign direct investment would only come after the Tánaiste and Minister for Industry and Commerce, later Taoiseach, Seán Lemass launched the first Programme for Economic Development in 1958; there was a copy of the blue-covered book, Economic Development, in Martin Gormally’s house. Free secondary education came in 1965.

In 1955 Martin and his wife Grace moved with their three children under three years of age from Ballyhaunis, Co. Mayo, to the Lagan in East Donegal. It was a considerable distance to travel at the time, and they discovered an aspect of living in Ireland which they had not experienced since their all-Ireland honeymoon tour in August 1951. Donegal was then an exotic destination for people from Connaught, and Northern Ireland was alien territory. Following an initial failed dash to obtain a temporary entry pass into Northern Ireland, they had arrived in Portstewart, Co. Derry, on a Sunday evening to find every establishment closed in the seaside town; their honeymoon photograph, taken in a Belfast studio, is testimony to the elegance worthy of a regional capital city. Beltany Hill near Raphoe, where they


first settled, 10 km from the border with County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, and coincidentally the place of origin of the medieval Gormley clan, was an area redolent with social and religious symbols of empire harking back to pre-Partition Ireland. Martin’s memories of the Anglo-Irish Trade War and the Emergency meshed with his new experience of the post-war political, economic, and cultural reality of living on the border with three Northern counties. The children listened to their father’s account of the economic depression of the 1930s and the tensions associated with the Emergency, but they were aware also of a new layer of experiences and memories which were being forged in their re-located Donegal border experience.

On moving to Newtowncunningham in the Lagan, at the foot of the Inishowen peninsula, 11 km from the Derry border crossing at Bridge End, the children played among the remnants of empire in the Treaty Port defences at Fort Dunree and at Lenan Head Fort overlooking Lough Swilly. The rusting canons of the Breech Loading, Quick Firing and 24 Pounder guns, which were operational during WWI, appeared in the eyes of children as the trophies of a military conflict in which Ireland had been victorious. They contemplated reminders of partition during regular family journeys across the border: the presence of Irish and British customs officers, vehicle searches for contraband goods and spiked roads which were impassable to vehicular traffic. The youngsters’ understanding of the War of Independence and the relationship between Ireland and the United Kingdom was reinforced by the physical reality of the border and the changes visible on the Northern side where red letterboxes and telephone kiosks, smooth road surfaces and clear road markings, and neatly trimmed roadside hedges were material signs that they had entered a foreign country. Armed Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) policemen differed from the unarmed Garda Síochána, and war memorials such as those in Enniskillen and Omagh, the Diamond in Derry and in Sion Mills, were almost totally absent on the other side of the border. Non-residents and regular travellers had to bond their car with the Northern authorities via a personal local contact on the other side; a triangular yellow Triptych was displayed on the car windscreen. In a child’s eyes there was something exotic about Strabane and Derry compared to the quiet villages of Raphoe and Newtowncunningham, where non-locals and cars from adjoining Connaught were rarely seen.

The strangeness was tangible in the attractive consumer products not then available in Donegal – Opal Fruits, Spangles, Mars Bars and Milky Ways – but was even more visible in the fact that on Sundays all shops, cafés, parks, playgrounds and public conveniences were closed and locked; the children’s swings were chained. The children had a pre-Covid-19 experience of physical distancing on visits to Strabane during the Northern Ireland polio epidemic of 1957 when they were instructed not to touch the glittering offerings on display in Woolworths and Wellworths. They passed regularly by the US naval vessels and sailors which were stationed in Derry port from 1943 until 1977. The ships were a stark reminder of the 300,000 US troops stationed in Northern Ireland at any one time between 1942 and 1944, when the cumulative total number of US servicemen passing through the six counties of Ulster surpassed the total local population. There were RAF bases in County


Derry at Eglinton (closed in 1958), while St. Angelo’s, Enniskillen (demolished in 1996) included a base for flying boats on Lough Erne. RAF bases had existed at Killadeas and Castle Archdale (closed in 1945) also in County Fermanagh; while at Ballykelly, Co. Derry (closed in 1971), they saw RAF aircraft on the tarmac and in the air, the distinctive circular markings clearly visible from a distance. Ireland and Northern Ireland shared a common intra-Irish pseudo-neutrality during WWII, the finer points of which puzzled but did not escape the understanding of those crossing regularly into the North in the post-war years. A secret agreement between Dublin and London allowed British flying boats to access the Atlantic via the Donegal Corridor and de Valera promptly sent fire brigades from Dublin to Belfast following the German blitz bombings in 1941. Over 1,000 people died, 1,500 were injured and thousands of houses damaged 38 in the greatest loss of life during any night-time blitz air raid outside London.

British culture featured in Donegal border country households during the 1950s by virtue of BBC and ITV signals from masts in Northern Ireland, long before the creation of Irish TV (Teilifís Éireann, 31 December 1961) which was not initially available in County Donegal. Unbeknownst to their parents, the Gormally children watched the trial of Adolf Eichmann (1961) on the BBC. The stark black and white pictures of the apparently indifferent and ordinary-looking defendant sitting in a bulletproof glass cage, were confirmation that something terrible had happened in neighbouring European countries less than a generation previously. Social relations in the mixed religious community of the Lagan (Roman Catholics, Church of Ireland, Presbyterians, Non-Conformists) were good and frequently excellent, despite an unspoken awareness of historical, social, and political differences. The historical memory of cultural difference was heightened by the existence of Orange Lodges and parades in County Donegal, while respected neighbours joined the RUC and yet others were rumoured to cross the border by night to serve with the infamous Northern B-Specials.

Several Orange Order lodges existed in County Donegal and an Orange parade still takes place annually at Rossnowlagh. In Newtowncunningham the Orange Hall stands next door to the Catholic parish priest’s house and was the venue for Irish dancing classes in the late 1950s, which the older children attended. On 12 July each year, bowler-hatted Donegal Orangemen crossed the border into Derry to carry the Loyal Orange Lodge banners at the parade. The impressive banners depicted King William riding into battle at the Boyne in 1690 and woe betide anyone who dared question that sacred memory or the annual celebration of “No surrender!”. Patrick Gormally recalls that on 12 July 1967 his attempts to cross Shipquay Street during the parade, to get a better view, were considered an offence, and brought immediate attention from the RUC men on duty. The parade was subtly religious; it was in fact an open meeting of the Orange Lodge, which usually met in church on the morning of the Twelfth for a Bible reading. In St. Augustine’s, “the wee church

38. “Belfast Blitz”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Blitz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belfast_Blitz


on the walls” of Derry, marble plaques recall British servicemen killed in action, as do Anglican and Presbyterian churches all over Ireland, unlike their Roman Catholic counterparts where statues and stained-glass windows recall the lives of saints. The aisle in St. Augustine’s is still covered in the same blue carpet that graced many Donegal sitting rooms of the 1960s, but the comfortable similarity merely papered over a rift which reflected different feelings and attitudes heightened on every 12 July. The Orange street parade recalls in fact a medieval pre-Reformation theological origin and is ironically comparable to the extant Roman Catholic practice, exemplified in the Corpus Christi parade, in which the Blessed Sacrament, the sacred memory, is paraded in public for the edification of the community 39.

In May 1968, the Gormally family moved to Sligo, then the principal town in the North West of Ireland and once known as “Little Belfast” 40, where the British Legion Celtic cross on Pearse Road is the venue for the annual 11 November Armistice Remembrance Day ceremony. It was not however an ecumenical event in the 1960s and in Ireland the wearing of the Poppy remains a sensitive subject to this day.

When the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland in August 1969, the British army was called in for what would become the longest continuous deployment in British military history 41. In the Autumn of 1969, Patrick Gormally, a boarder at the Irish-language Holy Cross College (Coláiste na Croise Naofa), Falcarragh, Co. Donegal, travelled by bus with a group of school football supporters to Monaghan for a MacRory Cup Gaelic football match which entailed two border crossings in each direction. On the return journey and late at night the bus was stopped at the British military checkpoint at Aughnacloy on the Monaghan-Tyrone border. The schoolboys were ordered to disembark and stand facing the roadside hedge with their arms outstretched while the bus was searched. In the darkness, lit only by two checkpoint lamps, camouflaged British paratroopers, their faces blackened, lay prone in the undergrowth, their Bren machine guns trained on the schoolboys. The soldiers’ eyes, visible in the darkness, made the schoolboys wonder about their marksmanship; they were little older than themselves. Patrick’s experience caused Martin to recount once again his own time in the LDF. To which he added the account of his subsequently making a wrong turn late at night on the A5 near Enniskillen on the way back from a conference in Dublin in February 1957. He found himself lost outside an RUC barracks in Omagh, driving a Mayo-registered car, one month after the deaths in January of that year of Sean South and a second IRA man during a dramatic armed attack led by Sean Garland on the RUC barracks at Brookeborough some 40 km distant. His Western colleagues travelling with him were not impressed.

39. The author thanks Professor William J. Smyth, co-author with Cecil J. Houston of The Sash Canada Wore: A Historical Geography of the Orange Order in Canada, Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1980.

40. Edward Larrissy, W. B. Yeats [1998], Tavistock, Northcote House, 2015, p. 10; W. J. McCormack, Blood Kindred. W. B. Yeats. The Life, the Death, the Politics [2005], Random House eBook, 2011, n.p.

41. “Operation Banner”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Banner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Banner


Martin’s oft-repeated account of the Emergency during the IRA Border Campaign (December 1956-February 1962), framed against the background of the Civil War, shaped his son’s representation of living on the border and his own brief encounter with British military force, one memory blending uneasily into the other.

Later memories from the 1970s and 1980s

The Gormally family memories illustrate the temporal model of multiperspectivity in the transmission of memories and in history education. A Dutch research project 42 on the teaching of history shows that however scientific the teachers’ focus may be, it is counterbalanced by normativity. The research identifies three temporal layers in how multiperspectivity is taught in the history classroom. The first layer is “in the past” and refers to subjects who were contemporaries of historical events. The second layer is “between past and present” and concerns individuals who were not contemporaries of the events and who lived later, but who have become involved in the transmission and historical interpretation. An example is Martin Gormally’s Civil War family anecdotes from the year of his birth and his later perception of contemporary events during the Emergency based on his own experience in the LDF, both of which were marked by his own personal emotions. His rendition of the earlier events was not experiential but received lore. This layer absorbs the past, be it as history or the reception of recounted tales, and the individuals concerned reconcile the historicity of the accounts and the methods used to record and transmit them: “[…] the idiosyncratic function of this temporal layer can be labeled [sic] ‘historiographical perspective taking’” 43. Examples are the perception by Martin Gormally of the War of Independence as recounted by his father, and his children’s received lore of the evolution of British-Irish relations. The third temporal layer is “in the present” and concerns those who develop a contemporary understanding of a historical event. The difference with the previous layer is that it concerns teachers and pupils who are aware that some perspectives are personal and that they themselves are also consumers of history, with the teacher acting as the interpreter of what past events “really” mean. In the classroom, events are studied in an informed manner and pupils are encouraged to construct their own critical understanding. Martin Gormally’s longevity (he is in his 99th year) and the clarity of his memories, make the model of temporality pertinent here. By covering a century of historical events, the transmission of his memories illustrates how inter-generational memory evolves to form the basis of what each age cohort perceived, understood and retained:

42. Bjorn Wansink, Sanne Akkerman, Itzél Zuiker, Theo Wubbels, “Where Does Teaching Multi-perspectivity in History Education Begin and End? An Analysis of the Uses of Temporality”, Theory and Research in Social Education, vol. 36, no. 4, 2018, p. 495-527, on line: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00933104.2018.1480439.

43. Ibid., p. 498.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00933104.2018.1480439

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00933104.2018.1480439


“[…] not all perspectives were perceived as equally valid or politically desirable, showing where multiperspectivity ends” 44.

Family memories of the War of Independence, the Civil War, the Anglo-Irish Trade War, and the Emergency influenced in several ways the perception of the Troubles by the second generation 45. In August 1970 Patrick was working as a temporary barman in a Sligo public house when the proprietor failed to return from a day trip to Derry, the site of the two-day Battle of the Bogside in 1969. A Republican sympathiser, he was arrested for disorderly behaviour outside a public house and as a result spent six months in Crumlin Road jail, Belfast. His incarceration caused considerable disruption to the running of the family business but did not affect trade. On Bloody Sunday 30 January 1972, British soldiers killed 26 unarmed civilians in Derry during a protest march against internment without trial. A general strike was declared in Ireland and services were held in places of worship of all major religions. Patrick participated in several days of heated public meetings at Maynooth College. Interpretation and analysis of the horrific events in Derry were informed by inherited perceptions of the centuries-long, fraught relationship of Ireland and the United Kingdom and in commemoration of the lives lost it was initially suggested that all University members should travel to Derry on 2 February as the funerals of the victims began to take place. Instead, the quasi-entire College population of 1,000 students walked with academic and other staff members the 25 km to central Dublin in protest; it took seven hours. Dublin city centre came to a standstill and a crowd of 20,000-30,000 people 46 converged on a packed Merrion Square where they witnessed the petrol-bombing of the British Embassy by a small group of individuals who entered from the building next door in defiance of a Garda presence. They watched in the pouring rain as the crowd prevented fire-engines from getting through, cut the firemen’s water hoses, and chanted “Burn, burn, burn”. The building imploded at 6 p.m. and was destroyed.

Two years later Martin Gormally’s memories of war and community conflict were reinforced on 17 May 1974 when he experienced at first hand the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) bombs on Talbot Street, Dublin which killed 33 civilians and left 300 injured. Traffic chaos hindered his attempts to collect his daughter before leaving the city and the telephone system did not permit contacting his family. Like the burning of the British Embassy, the arson and car bombs brought home what was happening north of the border.

The narrative of contemporary events was inserted into and distilled within Martin’s and Patrick’s memorised and existential experiences which were confirmed and enriched during their annual travels in France between 1984 and 2014. They

44. Bjorn Wansink, Sanne Akkerman, Itzél Zuiker, Theo Wubbels, “Where Does Teaching Multi-perspectivity in History Education Begin and End?…”, “Abstract”.

45. For the concept of postmemory see Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory. Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust, New York, Columbia University Press, 2012.

46. Simon Hoggart, “From the Archive, 3 February 1972: British Embassy Petrol Bombed in Dublin”, The Guardian, 3 February 2015.


visited military cemeteries in Normandy, including Utah Beach in 2004, and they travelled through Saint-Lô which was liberated by General Edward Hales Brooks, who had been a passenger on the Flying Fortress at Athenry in January 1943. At Pegasus Bridge, on the canal between Caen and the sea, Martin admired the restored British Centaur IV tank emblazoned with the US star insignia to assist identification on D-Day, and the US star awoke the image of the Athenry crash-landing. Then, 82 years of age, he climbed up on the tank tread and, wearing a Canadian Tilley hat, gave an American-style military salute in memory of his comrades and their service in the LDF. It would be erroneous to confuse his gesture with that of an excited tourist; it combined all the solemnity of a military commemoration and the earnestness of a pilgrim in a sacred place. On visiting Bayeux and the Overlord Museum at Omaha Beach, Colleville, directly overlooking the sea, he suddenly stopped, straightened up and struck off alone to the ticket desk, stood to attention, saluted, and introduced himself as an ancien combattant. The cashier promptly issued a free entrance ticket, reserved for veterans and war widows. Martin visited the Jean Moulin 47 museums in Bordeaux and in Paris, was shaken by the burned village of Oradour-sur-Glane in Haute-Vienne and was impressed by the military artefacts at the demarcation museum in Tercé, reminiscent of the Irish border. He listened to the WWI and WWII stories of his French daughter-in-law’s family, admiring her paternal grandfather’s 48 decorations, including the Légion d’honneur; and he attended the annual commemoration of the 1944 skirmish between a retreating German column and local resistance fighters, when their village narrowly escaped becoming a second Oradour-sur-Glane 49.

The French military medals proved serendipitous when he mentioned them later during a visit to his own family home in Brownesgrove, and his brother Joe produced an Irish military medal, a Bonn Seirbhíse Éigeandála 50 inscribed Na Caomhnóirí Áitiúla 51, which had been awarded to their father by the Irish

47. Martin invariably compares the story of Jean Moulin to Michael Collins in Ireland.48. Pierre Baranger, an infantry captain in WWI, later general, was military instructor at Saint-Maixent

and a member of President Paul Doumer’s maison militaire. His family briefly fled Paris in 1940 and were visited regularly in Montparnasse by the Gestapo during WWII. His son Guy, a fluent German-speaker and an experienced traveller in pre-war Germany, participated in the drôle de guerre in Moselle in 1939, was at the Battle of Dunkerque and later became a militant pacifist. Martin Gormally’s French daughter-in-law, Marie-Cécile Baranger’s maternal granduncles fought in the French Air Force and Navy in WWI and WWII and Admiral Octave Montrelay scuttled his cruiser La Marseillaise on orders in Toulon harbour in November 1942. His brother-in-law Joseph Brisset, Croix de guerre WWI, was killed in Auray by a stray bullet during the German retreat from Lorient in 1944 where a street bears his name. Martin was impressed by the French family’s wartime stories.

49. On 25 August 1944 Lieutenant Fontaine of the maquis was killed in Anché during a skirmish with a German column retreating northwards. An annual commemoration takes place at the cross marking the spot. On 10 June 1944 , at Oradour-sur-Glane, 100 km from Anché, the village population of 642 people was burned alive in the church by a retreating German column.

50. Emergency Service Medal.51. Local Security Force. It is mounted on red ribbon, like British war medals, with one vertical white

stripe and a service bar indicating four years’ service.


Department of Defence for his LSF service, and which had been discovered “in the back of a drawer”. Martin wrote to the Department of Defence in Dublin outlining his own service in the LDF citing names, places, dates, and details of his Cortoon platoon activity. A small green box was delivered within the week containing a similar but different medal inscribed An Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil 52. Decorations in post-independent Ireland are relatively rare and are reserved for the defence and security forces. None of the Gormally family from Galway and very few of their neighbouring Protestant farmers in Donegal had any active engagement in WWII and British army medals are in any case a rare sight in Ireland. The Gormally medals are now in safekeeping 53.

Contested memory: the example of Austria

Ireland participated in WWII without military conflict reaching Irish shores. The experience reawakened centuries-old strife-ridden memories of the relationship with the United Kingdom. An interesting comparison may be made with how Austria managed its fraught relationship with Nazi Germany. Martin’s grand-daughter, continuing the Irish tradition of emigration, settled in Vienna in 2006. Her Austrian in-laws and Martin’s great-grandson, Killian Gormally’s Austrian great-grandmother, who lives in Lower Austria, had first-hand experience of WWII 54. The example of Franz Jägerstätter 55, the Austrian conscientious objec-tor who refused to serve Nazism, could not but impress Irish Catholics; he was executed in 1943 and later beatified by the Catholic Church. The Irish-British relationship, all things being equal, has arguably some commonality with the Austrian Victim Theory 56 developed in 1949 57 by historians and politicians 58

52. Local Defence Force. It is the later issue with two vertical white stripes on a shorter red ribbon.53. Those from southern Ireland who enlisted in the British Merchant Navy and the Armed Forces

availed of military and professional career paths greater than what was on offer in the Irish Army in 1940, including training, travel, adventure, and up-to-date equipment. By enlisting Irish people did not express any decreased sense of national identity and young Irish professionals served in the British forces before rising to the higher echelons of British society. It was likewise the case for an earlier generation. A private source confirms the existence of a contemporary of Kevin Barry at the University College Dublin Faculty of Medicine who later became a consultant to members of the British Royal family and who treasured a letter Barry had written him the night before his execution.

54. On 14 March 1938 Frau Franziska Birgmayr-Lechner, then 7 years old, the Austrian great-grand-mother of Martin Gormally’s great-grandson Killian Gormally (Vienna), watched in Sankt Pölten, Lower Austria as Hitler’s motorcade was greeted on the way to Vienna.

55. See Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life, Studios de Babelsberg, December 2019; Aurélie Le Née, “Jägerstätter de Felix Mitterer. Universalité d’un destin individuel”, Études germaniques, vol. 4, no. 296, 2019, p. 677-691. To an Irish reader the story is a reminder of Saint Oliver Plunkett (1625-1681), the last Catholic martyr to die in England, who was hanged, drawn and quartered because of the so-called Popish Plot concocted by Titus Oates.

56. “Austria Victim Theory”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_victim_theory.57. “Austrian Resistance”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_resistance.58. “Austria Victim Theory”, Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria_victim_theory

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_resistance


according to which neither Austria, an invaded country and the first victim of the 1938 Anschluss, nor Austrians, were responsible for German Nazi war crimes. The Austrian view was that both countries were diametrically opposed regarding ethnic origin, religion, and language. Many Austrians participated unwillingly in the Wehrmacht, and up to 100,000 resisted. Kurt Schuschnigg, the Chancellor in 1938, accepted that Austria was a German state, but he opposed Hitler, yet he failed in preserving Austrian independence 59. In an initiative not unlike the ideological position in Ireland North and South, Austrian historians began rewriting history as early as 1940, to emphasise the distinct ancient origins of Ostarrichi (996) 60 and the differences between Austria and Germany. In a Nazi initiative which recalls aspects of the English colonisation of Ireland, the name by which Austria was previously known was changed on two occasions during the Occupation. It became Ostmark (Eastern March) in 1938, and this was replaced by Alpen-und Donau-Reichsgaue (Alpine and Danube Region) in 1942. This effectively reinforced the integration of Austria 61 in the Reich but replaced the name of the country with a new non-Austrian territory 62. The Victim Theory claimed 63 that Austrians were not genetically German, that the population was mainly Catholic and not Protestant like northern and central Germany, and that a common language did not determine a common culture; similar claims regarding Ireland and Britain are not unknown. After the war, the original German term Vergangenheitsbewältigung, which specifically regarded the debate in Germany about collective culpability, meant de-Nazification in Austria. In reaction, Thomas Bernhard’s controversial play Heldenplatz (1988) 64 illustrates Austrian complicity in Nazi war crimes and was taught in Austrian schools in the 1990s 65. While restitution has since gone some way to putting things right, memories of WWII remain problematic; memory

59. “Kurt Schuschnigg”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schuschnigg. He resigned, was arrested, and interned until 1945.

60. “Name of Austria”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Austria.61. “Austria – 20th Century”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria#20th_century.62. Contempt for the designation of Ireland, following the 1937 Constitution, is seen in British

insistence on public use of “Eire”, without the acute accent, and not “Éire” as clearly stated in the official Irish-language version. The use of “Eire” in French without the acute accent and rhyming with “air” e.g., “Quelque chose dans l’Eire” [sic], is anachronistically representative of an insensitive linguistic if not also a pejorative political practice. The practice was abandoned by the British government only in 1998 following the Good Friday Agreement and when Ireland dropped the territorial claim to Northern Ireland (“Éire”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ire).

63. “Austria Victim Theory”, Wikipedia.64. “Heldenplatz (play)”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heldenplatz_(play). Frank

McGuinness’ play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985), while dealing with several topics, draws attention to the fact that Irishmen North and South fought in the British Army in WWI.

65. Austrian Embassy in Washington, “Austria Extends Citizenship to Descendants of Victims of Nazi Persecution”, on line: https://www.austria.org/the-latest/2019/10/7/austrian-citizenship-descendants-victims-nazi-persecution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Schuschnigg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Austria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austria#20th_century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89ire

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heldenplatz_(play)

https://www.austria.org/the-latest/2019/10/7/austrian-citizenship-descendants-victims-nazi-persecution

https://www.austria.org/the-latest/2019/10/7/austrian-citizenship-descendants-victims-nazi-persecution


politics are “such a contested field” 66 in Austria, and such could be said to be also the case in Ireland, North and South.

The study of war and memory is “based on the concepts of representation, memory and identity” 67. Those who have not known war at first hand come to know the horror and the inhumanity, the abhorrent and the unknown by means of the imagination, through the memories, stories and evocations of witnesses and creative artists alike 68. It can be argued that Austrian novelists and short-story writers played a role in legitimising or at least trivialising WWII in the immediate post-war period by creating a “collectively exonerating and distorting” impression of the war as “a certain image of history began to take shape against the background of the Cold War” 69. The complexity and the embarrassing silence concerning WWII is evident in the Red Army monument in Vienna, built by the Soviets, and which commemorates the 17,000 Soviet soldiers who died at the Battle of Vienna in February 1945 70. Robert Musil, the Austrian author, believed that monuments like this become invisible and immune to public notice 71. The Schwarzenbergplatz memorial, maintained by the Austrian authorities and refurbished by the city 72, is a stark reminder that war memorials can be perceived as “immutable statements” 73. On the other hand, not all monuments are fixed points: “[…] their meanings and interpretations can and do change over time in response to political and cultural shifts” 74. The more recent memorial against war and fascism (Mahnmal gegen Krieg und Faschismus, 1988) on Albertinaplatz, is a discrete and relatively invisible sculpture of a Jewish man on his knees washing the street and which, although “out of tune with an established cultural memory, […] continues to occupy public space” 75. A profound

66. Werner Wintersteiner, “Angel of Oblivion. Literature and Memory Politics in Austria”, Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, vol. 32, no. 3, 2019, p. 385.

67. Debra Kelly, “War! What Is It Good For?”, Journal of War and Culture Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, August 2007, p. 4.

68. Ibid., p. 6.69. Karl Müller, “Images of the Second World War in Austrian Literature after 1945”, Studies in 20th

and 21st Century Literature, vol. 31, no. 1, 2007, p. 51. See analysis of works by Erich Landgrebe, Erich Kern, Hans Gustl Kernmayr, Kurt Ziesel and the contrasting work of Herbert Zand, Gerhard Fritsch and Ingeborg Bachmann.

70. The Heldendenkmal der Roten Armee (“heroes’ monument of the Red Army”), located at Vienna’s Schwarzenbergplatz, was planned before the battle had started and it was inaugurated the same year (http://www.tourmycountry.com/austria/soviet-memorial-vienna.htm).

71. Werner Fenz, “The Monument Is Invisible, the Sign Visible”, Maria-Regina Kecht (trans.), October, vol. 48, Spring 1989, p. 75-78.

72. “Soviet War Memorial (Vienna)”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_Memorial_(Vienna).

73. Bill Niven, “War Memorials at the Intersection of Politics, Culture and Memory”, Journal of War and Culture Studies, vol. 1, no. 1, 2007, p. 39.

74. Samantha Oliver, “No offence to Robert Musil, But… The Continuing Relevance of Monuments”, Public Seminar, 6 April 2018, on line: https://publicseminar.org/2018/04/no-offense-to-robert-musil-but.

75. Tanja Schult, “The Performative Power of a Problematic Public Work: Art-Interventions at Alfred Hrdlicka’s Memorial Against War and Fascism in Vienna”, Public Art Dialogue, vol. 8, no. 2, 2018, p. 231-257.

http://www.tourmycountry.com/austria/soviet-memorial-vienna.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_Memorial_(Vienna)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_War_Memorial_(Vienna)

https://publicseminar.org/2018/04/no-offense-to-robert-musil-but

https://publicseminar.org/2018/04/no-offense-to-robert-musil-but


and complex if enigmatic sculpture, unnoticed and bypassed by many who do not read the explanatory inscription, it may be “a symptom of the changing Austrian memory culture of the late 1980s” 76. The recent official Vienna Deserters’ Monument, Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz, 2014 (“memorial for the victims of Nazi military justice”) 77, honours Austrians who deserted from the Wehrmacht. It is a substantial sculpture but also a horizontal one, “invisible” because it is easy to miss and hard to find. The perceived discomfort associated with Austria’s role in WWII has not fully disappeared.

War memorials in Ireland

A detailed examination of the past, mionchíoradh an ama atá caite, shakes things up, but Irish historiography has also displayed an ambivalence and uncertainty about inclusive narration of the past by avoiding awkward aspects of WWII or the Emergency, and the underlying relationship with the United Kingdom, which remained troubled and unclear until the late 1980s.

During WWII neither Ireland, officially neutral, nor Northern Ireland, officially at war, suffered the levels of deprivation, displacement and destruction that were experienced on the continent of Europe. While food, fuel and raw materials were scarce, the island of Ireland was spared the numerous concentration camps, the forced labour, the conscription, the bombing, the deportation, and the holocaust of Western and Central European countries. Nor was there a resistance movement during WWII. The previous Irish example of resistant intelligence, communication and military activity belonged to the period between the Home Rule Crisis in 1912 and the end of the Civil War in 1923, and it generated a multiplicity of accounts of conflict depending on which side was involved. Similarly, at the end of WWII there was no political settling of accounts as followed the liberation of France in 1944-1945. In Ireland, such scores had been settled during the Civil War and left a bitter memory which resurfaced when wartime experiences during the Emergency were recounted. Since the Nine Years’ War in the late 16th-early 17th century, followed by the plantation of Ulster 78, the later population displacement under Cromwell, and the Williamite settlements, and discounting the non-military fatalities of the Great Famine, Irish families had experienced nothing like that endured by the

76. Tanja Schult, Diana I. Popescu, “Infelicitous Efficacy: Alfred Hrdlicka’s Memorial Against War and Fascism”, Articulo. Journal of Urban Research, no. 19, 2019, on line: https://journals.openedition.org/articulo/4014.

77. “Denkmal für die Verfolgten der NS-Militärjustiz in Wien”, http://www.deserteursdenkmal.at.78. See Breandán Ó Doibhlin, Sliocht ar Thír na Scáth, Baile Átha Cliath, Coiscéim, 2018, p. 275.

This historical novel explores Gaelic identity during the 17th century campaign of population displacement and replacement by English settlers, led by Sir Arthur Chichester, and the resistance of native families in County Tyrone (Pádraig Ó Gormaile, review of Breandán Ó Doibhlin, Sliocht ar Thír na Scáth, Feasta, May 2018, p. 15).

https://journals.openedition.org/articulo/4014

https://journals.openedition.org/articulo/4014

http://www.deserteursdenkmal.at


populations of Poland and the Ukraine 79. Yet, Irish family wartime memories, while more benign were nonetheless real and the resulting fuzziness makes it difficult to discern their true nature.

The difficult and entangled tensions are illustrated by the number, nature, and location of war memorials in Ireland North and South. In Northern Ireland memorials generally commemorate WWI and WWII on the same monument, as is common in France and in Austria. The diverging history of pre-independence and pre-partition Ireland means that many of the memorials that do exist south of the border tend to commemorate WWII in particular. Many Irish war memo-rials 80 are found in Church of Ireland (Anglican) and Reformed churches or in Protestant confessional schools and associations and, north of the border, they also commemorate the dead of the British armed forces in Ireland. One such monument at Dollingstown 81, Co. Down, commemorates “our men who fell in the Great War” and it also remembers the fallen in WWII and during the Irish War of Independence, all on the British side, in an obviously time specific and selective commemoration. A number of southern memorials are found in dif-ferent neutral venues such as cemeteries 82, harbours 83, parks 84, and streets 85, but few are in or even near Roman Catholic churches or institutions. Memorials to those lost at sea are an exception in that they avoid any ideological identity. The Howth Fishermens’ Association erected a monument in 1994, which pointedly: “[…] commemorates the lives of all persons lost at sea, no matter where or no matter how” 86. The older of two Wexford quayside monuments commemorates British ships lost at sea and also the Irish Shipping boat Irish Pine, torpedoed by a U-boat in 1942 with a loss of 33 crew 87. The more recent monument, erected in 2015, commemorates the Wexford seamen who rescued 168 German sailors in the

79. Between 1941 and 1944 it is estimated that over 2,000,000 of the 3,000,000 Ostarbeiter (Eastern Workers) brought to Germany came from Ukraine (“Ostarbeiter”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter). After the war most were forcibly repatriated to the USSR, where they were persecuted by the Soviet authorities for having “collaborated” with the enemy; only a minority succeeded in re-settling in Belgium and in France (“Ostarbeiter”, Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine, http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CO%5CS%5COstarbeiterIT.htm). See Sylvie Mossay, “Slave Labour and Its Legacies: My Maternal Grandparents’ Journey from Ukraine to Germany to Belgium”, in Family Histories of World War II. Survivors and Descendants, Róisín Healy, Gearóid Barry (eds.), London, Bloomsbury, 2021.

80. “World War II Memorials in Ireland”, Irish War Memorials, http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials?warId=2&button=Go. 60% of the memorials listed on the Island of Ireland commem-orate WWII only. In the South, this figure rises to 70%.

81. “Dollingstown War Memorial”, Irish War Memorials, http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials-Detail?memoId=608.

82. Mount Saint Lawrence, Limerick; Glasnevin.83. Howth; Wexford; Union Hall (Co. Cork); Loughshinney (Co. Dublin).84. Mayo Peace Park, Castlebar; South Mall, Cork City; Islandbridge, Dublin 8.85. North Strand, Dublin 1; City Quay, Dublin 2; Nenagh; Sligo Town.86. “Dublin 13, Howth Harbour”, Irish War Memorial, http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Place-

Detail?siteId=485.87. Another Irish Shipping vessel, the Irish Oak, was also sunk by a U-boat in May 1943.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostarbeiter

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CO%5CS%5COstarbeiterIT.htm

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CO%5CS%5COstarbeiterIT.htm

http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials?warId=2&button=Go

http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials?warId=2&button=Go

http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials-Detail?memoId=608


http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Place-Detail?siteId=485

http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Place-Detail?siteId=485


Bay of Biscay in December 1943. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission monument in Glasnevin cemetery 88 and the Grangegorman British Military Cemetery on Blackhorse Avenue, Dublin 7, commemorate fallen Irish members of the British forces in both world wars.

The history of the Irish National War Memorial Gardens 89 is testimony to the troubled history of Irish war memorials and the difficulty in discerning what attitudes existed behind appearances. The Memorial Gardens were dedicated in memory of the 49,000 Irish soldiers who died in WWI in the British and Allied armies of Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. First proposed in 1919, prior to independence, the project had a troubled history, prominent city centre sites were proposed and rejected between 1924 and 1927, before the final riverside site in Islandbridge was agreed in 1930. Work began in 1932-1933, undertaken in equal parts by Irish and British ex-servicemen. De Valera’s gov-ernment continued to provide financial support despite the economic difficulties of the Anglo-Irish Trade War. Technical problems arose in 1937-1938 relating to botanical matters, and the looming threat of WWII caused the cancellation of the planned inauguration in July 1939. No official opening ever occurred, but an Armistice Day commemoration took place in 1940. Designed by the British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, the magnificent sloping landscaped riverside site contained several outstanding horticultural and architectural features, and the work was carried out in harmony by the ex-servicemen. Despite initial success among the public, use of the Gardens decreased after WWII due to a prevailing national ideology adverse to participation by Irish-born volunteers in WWI and in WWII. The Gardens were never officially inaugurated, they fell into disuse and neglect. In 1956 and again in 1958, during the IRA campaign against British rule, the fifth such campaign in the 20th century, there were two unsuccessful attempts to bomb the stone monuments. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Gardens became dilapidated, they were used as a caravan park for the Traveller community and as a rubbish dump by Dublin Corporation. Irish membership of the European Union in 1973 and economic growth in the 1980s took place simultaneously with a change in cultural perception and a reviewed sense of history and national identity 90. The damage of fifty years was repaired, and the Gardens re-opened to the public in 1988 following a ceremony with the four main Christian Churches. Since then, the 90th and Centenary commemorations of the Battle of the Somme took place there in 2006 and 2016, and Queen Elizabeth II of England laid a wreath during

88. “CWGC WW II Memorial”, Irish War Memorial, http://www.irishwarmemorials.ie/Memorials-Detail?memoId=962.

89. “Irish National War Memorial Gardens”, Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_National_War_Memorial_Gardens.

90. See Frank McGuinness, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching towards the Somme, 1985. The play provoked a debate about the identity, the motivation, and the bravery of Irish soldiers at the Somme and the nature of the identity of Ulster (Jacqueline Hill, “Art Imitating War? Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme and Its Place in History”, Études irlandaises, no. 34-1, 2009, p. 37-52, on line: https://journals.openedition.org/etudesirlandaises/1084.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_National_War_Memorial_Gardens

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_National_War_Memorial_Gardens

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a state visit in 2011. Volumes of the names of the dead illuminated by the artist Harry Clarke are preserved and may be visited by appointment in the bookrooms on site. An ironic twist of fate means that the renovated and splendid Gardens are not oversubscribed by visitors because of the distance from the city centre and limited free parking in the vicinity.

Conclusion

The creation and transmission of memory has touched directly on the debate regarding various monuments in several international locations: WWII monu-ments in Vienna, the Confederate and Christopher Columbus memorials in the United States, John A. McDonald’s statue in Montreal, the Léopold II monument in Brussels, Colbert’s statue in Paris and the Nubian princesses at Dublin’s 91 Shelbourne Hotel; a new approach to memorials and commemorations is taking shape. It remains to be seen to what extent the commemoration of WWII in Ireland has already begun to evolve or will continue to do so. Historical time is as immutable as the weather 92, but memory is selective, and recall tends to reflect the present moment at least as much as the historical commemoration, or the context of the event. In an age of increasing collective amnesia and indif-ference, fake news, rapid change, multiple distractions and social networks, the examination of complex questions is not undertaken easily and leads to what President Macron calls “mixing the battles” 93. National history forms a block, but specialists and academics continue to ask awkward questions. Some unpopular aspects of WWII have been broached because of changing cultural perceptions in Irish society and multiperspectivity in history education, but it remains to be seen if the page has been fully turned and all the issues examined in relation to Ireland and WWII. Historians and creative artists have begun to engage with the complementary perspectives of objective reason and intuitive imagination in the depiction of the past, but it is not yet fully clear to what extent Irish public

91. “Four Statues Removed from Outside The Shelbourne Hotel Due to ‘Slavery Links’”, RTÉ web-site, 29 July 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0728/1156087-statues-shelbourne. The statues, cast by Mathurin Moreau in Paris in 1867, were removed in July 2020 from in front of The Shelbourne Hotel, Dublin because of the erroneous assumption that they represented female slaves. In December 2020 they reinstated on the grounds that in fact they represent Egyptian and Nubian princesses (“Historic Statues to Be Restored to Front of Shelbourne Hotel”, RTÉ website, 24 September 2020, https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2020/0924/1167307-shelbourne-statues).

92. Cheikh Sakho, “Bataille mémorielle: match nul à Reims”, Le Monde, 7 August 2020, on line: https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/08/07/bataille-memorielle-match-nul-a-reims_6048337_3232.html.

93. “Confondre les combats” (“Coronavirus: à Bormes-les-Mimosas, Macron appelle les Français à l’unité et la fraternité”, Le Figaro, 17 August 2020, en ligne: https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/face-aux-crises-macron-appelle-les-francais-a-l-unite-et-la-fraternite-20200817).

https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2020/0728/1156087-statues-shelbourne

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2020/0924/1167307-shelbourne-statues

https://www.rte.ie/news/dublin/2020/0924/1167307-shelbourne-statues

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/08/07/bataille-memorielle-match-nul-a-reims_6048337_3232.html



https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/face-aux-crises-macron-appelle-les-francais-a-l-unite-et-la-fraternite-20200817

https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/face-aux-crises-macron-appelle-les-francais-a-l-unite-et-la-fraternite-20200817


opinion North and South wishes, needs to, or is ready to reassess the invisible and the impossible dimensions of memory regarding an international war with which there was relatively little contemporary military engagement on Irish soil, which reinforced for a time anti-British feeling in parts of Ireland and which, notwithstanding the Good Friday Agreement, has left a profound impression on the national consciousness.

Patrick Gormally

Ollscoil na hÉireann (University of Ireland)


COMPTES RENDUS

BOOK REVIEWS

Eleanor Lybeck, All on Show: The Circus in Irish Literature and Culture,

Cork, Cork University Press, 2019, x + 229 p.

All on Show: The Circus in Irish Literature and Culture is a unique undertaking which brings the ethereal world of the circus, as it is reflected in Irish culture, to scholarly attention. Proceeding from the well-established theoretical background of the carnivalesque, the author delves into the conceptual spaces outlined by the ambivalent nature of the circus and explores their metaphorical potential. The study elucidates the various ways in which this potential is realised within the central notions of Irish literature: national politics, family, gender, and identity.

To explicate the ways the circus sensitivity weaves itself into culture, Eleanor Lybeck traces the history of this kind of entertainment in Ireland and its connection with the theatrical art. The study benefits greatly from the extensive use of archive materials, including rare and exclusive documents, as well as from a large array of texts, such as song lyrics, press publications, essays, travel journals, letters, biographies of famous performers, etc. To demonstrate the interconnectivity of various cultural phenomena pertinent to her field of research, Lybeck resorts to intermediality, analysing art, theatre, cinema, illustrations, posters, bills, postcards, photography, and accounts of actual circus performances. The result is a panoramic view of the circus’ cultural significance.

With its focus on literary manifestations of the above-mentioned significance, the book offers insights into the protean nature of the circus resorting to literary critique. In chapter 1 in particular (“Joyce’s Family Circus”, p. 16-28), the cir-cus comes across as a place of vulnerability where physical control, cruelty, and humiliation are the tools of entertainment, metaphorically transferred onto one’s psyche as the space of personal anxieties. Wider dimensions are involved as these individual insecurities penetrate into social, religious, and political spheres, in which the circus trope helps unearth cruelty, absurdity, and even surrealism of the respective domains. Lybeck shows how the grotesque circus body infuses the texts under scrutiny and directs characters towards minor and major transformations, brought on by the idiosyncratic energy of the circus. Many critical identity questions, within the context of Irishness, are viewed through the prism of performance, drama, and certain roles that are continuously played out in the ring of history, being adopted both by authors and their creations.

The study performed on such a profound level contributes to our understand-ing and indeed demands a rereading of several seminal works, especially Ulysses by James Joyce with its inextricable web of allusions and implications. Thanks to the meticulous analysis offered in the book, the circus trope presented in texts by

170 Ét u d e s i rl a n da i se s , n º 4 6 - 1 – 2 0 2 1

James Joyce, W. B. Yeats, Pádraic Ó Conaire, Brian Friel, Stewart Parker, and others yields its rich harvest of meanings and connections that are still relevant today. It is particularly emphasised in chapter 4 (“Revisioning the Circus”, p. 131-174), where the subversive nature of the circus is highlighted, especially with regard to gender and sexual anxieties. The trope’s significance for creating revisionist narratives is exemplified with the help of texts by John Banville, Paul Muldoon, Seamus Deane, and Seamus Heaney, as well as Neil Jordan’s 1991 film The Miracle. The conclusion puts the topic into perspective for the 21st century’s Ireland and points out that the circus metaphors reveal the same cultural continuities / discontinuities for Irish and worldwide cultural shifts.

Olena Tykhomyrova

Brendan O’Leary, A Treatise on Northern Ireland, vol. III, Consociation

and Confederation: From Antagonism to Accomodation?, Oxford, Oxford

University Press, 2019, xlv + 458 p.

This is the third volume of a remarkable and monumental three-volume Treatise on Northern Ireland written by Professor Brendan O’Leary, the world-reknowned specialist of Northern Ireland. The first volume is subtitled Colonisation, the second, Control. The last volume, reviewed here, is subtitled Consociation and Confederation.

The whole Treatise, and more particularly this third volume, is a masterstroke. Brendan O’Leary, perhaps more than ever before in his prolific writings, demonstrates his outstanding skills and style as an analyst of Northern Ireland’s politics and society. This volume, composed of seven chapters, brings together an incredible amount of primary and secondary sources – the size of the bibliography is impressive – of personal anecdotes, of statistics, of portraits, of notes, making it one of the most comprehensive accounts of the period ranging from Direct Rule to the more recent post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) era. He offers a strong defense of the 1998 Agreement and of its results, in spite of the Brexit question which, as he shows, has considerably destabilised post-GFA Ireland since 2016. His thesis can be summarised as follows. Unlike Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA), the GFA was a comprehensive and balanced solution to the multi-dimensional Northern Irish question, whose success is tangible: a quasi total cessation of political violence since 1997. Thanks to inclusive consociational institutions in Northern Ireland plus the North South Ministerial Council (NSMC) and the British-Irish Intergovernmental Council (B-IIGC), the GFA did not only bring peace. It contains the long-term possibility of the reunification of Ireland whose form, unitary, federal or confederal, is open to debate and negotiation.

O’Leary is very convincing when he demonstrates that the GFA is much more than Sunningdale for slow learners, as many tend to believe. For him, the GFA

171C o m p t e s re n du s | B o ok rev i ews

brought innovations which neither Sunningdale, nor the AIA had provided for. The AIA, although it failed at creating agreed and stable democratic institutions, was however a great step towards a more comprehensive settlement as it forced extremes on both sides to reappraise their approaches and showed the imperative need for any political settlement to include strong Irish and Anglo-Irish dimensions (p. 154-156). For O’Leary, the great achievement of the GFA, notably thanks to its inclusive consociational components and the joint arbitration of the British and Irish governments, is that it has led the conflicting communities to stop violence and to act exclusively through legal and constitutional means. For O’Leary, the creation of a Democratic Unionist Party-Sinn Fein executive in 2007 was the dramatic and logical outcome of this beneficial consociational logic, which globally worked until 2017. In the final chapter, O’Leary stops looking at the past and looks to the future, demonstrating that the NSMC and the B-IIGC, established by the GFA, are the main mechanisms through which a future reunified – unitary, federal or confederal – Ireland within a confederal Europe can eventually emerge from the GFA.

In this volume, Professor O’Leary forcefully re-asserts his profound and long-held consociationalist convictions, starting in the very first pages in which anti-consociationalist arguments are systematically reviewed and attacked and the consociationalist credo is emphatically re-explained. Like Arend Lijphart or Arthur Lewis, O’Leary is one of those consociationalists, who are realists and democrats. He sees national and ethnic identities as durable and difficult to de-construct. He expresses doubts on the value of bottom-up, deliberative approaches as well as on majoritarian democratic mechanisms to solve ethno-national conflitcts, for any democratic arrangement which does not recognise such identities is bound to fail as, in divided societies, it leads to the tyranny of the majority. Recognising the existence of plural majorities, giving autonomy to separate cultural groups, and finding practical institutional mechanisms to give each a proportional share of political power is more likely to lead to stable and truly representative governments. For consociationalists, consociations are the most effective and practical way to build institutions which limit violent conflictuality as it is easier and quicker to accommodate than to transform group identities. This is precisely why, according to him, the GFA has proved to be the historic achievement it was promised to be. Added to the NSMC and B-IIGC, inclusive consociational institutions in Northern Ireland, founded on parity of esteem and communal equality, created a whole new constitutional system in which the two communities’ rights, ethos and aspirations are, for the first time, fully and equally recognised.

However, O’Leary’s defense of the GFA and of its consociational compo-nent, does not really bring definitive answers to the ongoing scientific debates surrounding the GFA. In a way, it could be argued that his own analysis will fuel such debates. If the Northern Irish consociation is to be valued because it allows parity of esteem and “recognition all round” (p. 199-202), why then is a reunified Ireland the only possible future he envisages? If consociation is equally beneficial to all by breaking with majoritarian democracy, why does he simultanously lay so much emphasis on demographic changes taking place, saying that the Agreement


“does not require Unionist consent to a united Ireland but a majority in Northern Ireland and a concurrent majority in the South” (p. 217). If consociation works in Northern Ireland and contains the possibility of normalised politics, why has normalisation not even yet begun after more than twenty years? If each partner in the consociation believes they are net beneficiaries from power-sharing, why did local power-sharing institutions prove so hard to restore after one of the so-called partners made them collapse in early 2017? Further questions are raised from the link between his defense of the GFA and his reflections on the possible forms of a future reunified Ireland (chapter 7). If, as Professor O’Leary claims in the very last words of this book, this Agreement offers the possibility of achieving the United Irishmen’s dream of “unifying people on the island within one political system, self-governing and separate from England but embedded within the confederation of the European Union” (p. 363), his study does not really provide a definitive demonstration that everybody in Ireland today positively subscribes to his ideal, however noble it is. Communal identities have changed a lot since 1798. Many people today, on both sides of the communal divide in Northern Ireland, on both sides of the partition border and on both sides of the Irish Sea would question the very principle of a self-governing Ireland within a European confederation. If a European confederation was perceived as so desirable and necessary, why did so many Northern Irish voters vote to leave the European Union in 2016? Many unionists in the Democratic Unionist Party, in the Ulster Unionist Party and in Great Britain, do not claim they are the sons and daughters of Wolfe Tone. They want more than their Protestant British identity to be recognised in a separate Ireland. They want the constitutional link with Great Britain to be guaranteed, as was promised in 1998: how can they be persuaded that a federal or even confederal Ireland with Dublin as the center, within a European Confederation, is a form of recognition of their rights? Has there been any clear sign so far, even in the midst of the post-Brexit referendum chaos, that the more moderate and pragmatic unionists would consent to a process of reunification? Do not many Alliance Party voters and supporters, whose numbers are growing significantly, want a solution which transcends Northern Irish communal identities and ideologies? On the nationalist side, nationalists and republicans today do not have much in common with Wolfe Tone either. For instance, the aspiration towards a reunified Ireland, whatever its form, is not as strong in the Irish Republic as it is in the nationalist community in Northern Ireland. Without being a “hyper-constructivist” (p. 6), one can see that the new version of Articles 2 and 3 or the 2004 constitutional reform of Irish citizenship law are explicit signs that people and politicians south of the border, are not so attached to the one-separate-island-one-separate-state ideal? What all these questions aim to point out is that, even though the 1998 Agreement was a historic achievement which brought an enduring end to violence, largely because “consociation has helped manage and calm those divisions intensified by bullets and bombs between 1966 and 1997” (p. 289), it must be equally recognised that, so far, the GFA has failed at bringing together all stake-holders around one unifying cultural, political and territorial project. As has been revealed since the Brexit


referendum, the century-old Irish border question has still not been solved and little progress towards a final and comprehensive settlement has been made since 1998.

All in all, although this review is unfortunately too short to give a full analysis of all the merits of this book, the reviewer wanted to stress three essential reasons why anyone engaged in the scholarly study of the Northern Irish question should be greatly thankful to Brendan O’Leary for writing this volume. First, it is by far one of the most comprehensive and detailed analyses of the processes, negotiations, actors and changes which, since Direct Rule was re-imposed in 1972, have led to such a lasting and quasi general cessation of political violence in Ireland. Second, because it is certainly the most complete and synthetic defense of consociationalism that Professor O’Leary has ever produced. Third, because, as any piece of outstanding scientific value, it raises questions as much as it answers them, questions on how the future of Northern Ireland can be definitely agreed without the political, cultural and territorial rights of one community prevailing over the political, cultural and territorial rights of the other.

Philippe Cauvet

Pop Beckett: Intersections with Popular Culture, Paul Stewart, David Pattie

(eds.), Stuttgart, Ibidem-Verlag (Samuel Beckett in Company; 6), 2019,

308 p.

If his name is alien to no one, Samuel Beckett remains in the popular imagination as a somehow hagiography-prone obscure authorial figure, whose texts are difficult to decipher. The sixth volume of the “Samuel Beckett in Company” collection, entitled Pop Beckett: Intersections with Popular Culture is a timely investigation of the author’s presence in our everyday life. Following the publication of P. J. Murphy and Nick Pawliuk’s book Beckett in Popular Culture: Essays on a Postmodern Icon (2015), this new collection gives an insightful reevaluation of the dichotomy between “high” and “low” cultures in the context of Beckettian studies. The intro-duction identifies a series of artistic fields on which the Beckett persona sits: a bridge inaugurated in 2009 in Dublin, an episode in the BBC TV series Urban Myths, his portrait laid on many Trinity College gifts, and so on. The list seems endless and shows to what extent an author and his oeuvre soon become commodities for the sake of popular culture. This collection offers thus a clear overview of how, where and why Beckett’s oeuvre remains present in many forms.

The first part of the book investigates the way in which Beckett interacted with popular culture in his own time and how it manifests itself in his texts. In his essay, John Pilling starts by giving an abundance of allusions to popular culture within Beckett’s earlier texts, with a special emphasis on songs in Dream of Fair to Middling Women. He goes on to demonstrate that Beckett’s texts were never completely


deprived of biographic references, hence already blurring the line between the everyday and the literary. Pim Verhulst and Jonathan Bignell follow on this line with studies of mass culture through Beckett’s BBC radio play All That Fall and Godot’s ITV broadcasting – a network heavily relying on advertisements – placing Beckett in a context of historical British instability. The use of such media allows the emergence of yet another in-betweenness, from the privacy of the audience’s home to the public transmission of broadcasting. Verhulst explores the ways in which Beckett had to adapt and simplify his commonly known tropes in order to make those texts accessible to a wider audience. In an attempt to comprehend Beckett’s paradoxical association with counter-culture and high academic standards, Stephen Dilks and James Baxter both reinvestigate the common idea of Beckett’s relative reluctance to any form of publicity and examine how editors and practitioners alike helped ingrain his iconic image through readings of Barney Rosset’s controversial Evergreen Review and Oxford University’s failed attempt to build a theatre bearing his name.

The second part of the book explores how both Beckett’s oeuvre and persona are nowadays fashioned through interpretation and commodification. Paul Stewart interrogates Beckett’s presence in Art Spielgelman’s graphic novel Maus, both revealing and assessing his influence on many artists. According to Stewart, the use of a quotation taken from an interview rather than a published book allows to see the emergence of a popular authorial figure. Ken Alba, Mark Schreiber and Anna Douglass all offer a proficient evaluation of Beckett’s presence in the digital environment. Online, Alba posits, Beckett’s oeuvre is fragmented into a wide range of (mis)quotations, memes and bots that further highlight how technology gives an easy access to culture while at the same time subverting and multiplying the image commonly associated with Beckett. Schreiber and Douglass both argue that Beckett’s presence in video games – and digital media at large – helps understand his multi-genre oeuvre. By focusing on the idea of “failure”, Douglass outlines the paradox of “an experience worth enduring” (p. 220). Beckett’s presence on screen is further investigated in Hannah Simpson’s thorough analysis of Barry McGovern’s scene in the drama TV series Game of Thrones, allowing for a variety of intertextual references. By soliciting social media to understand the reception of such a nod in a worldwide show, she highlights the impact scholars and Beckett enthusiasts have on the dissemination of Beckett’s work. Selvin Yaltir’s essay explores Blanchot’s thesis on the everyday to draw a parallel between Mercier and Camier and the Coen brothers’ movies and compares their views on obscure sociability through repeti-tion, dull conversation and small talk. David Pattie investigates “the performative rhetoric of faith” (p. 268) and the fragmentation of the self in both Beckett’s texts and Nick Cave’s songs, reinforcing the idea that solitude is built on in a way that renders the creation of a clear sense of identity impossible. The book concludes on an interview with Jo Baker conducted by Stewart in which the author of A Country Road, A Tree is asked about the challenges in writing a novel based on a persona such as Beckett’s, highlighting yet again the literary and popular heritage of Beckett.

This collection of essays offers a wide range of riveting examples of where to find, feel or imagine a Beckettian presence in our everyday encounters with pop


culture. This further highlights the need to accept the emergence of new cultural forms and the interweaving of “high” and “low” cultures – not so much as a way of “dumbing down” (p. 10) but as a need to accept their strong connection. Simpson’s final stance summarises what needs to be taken into account: “[Henry] Jenkins warns: ‘No one group can set the terms. No one group can control access and participation’ [Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York – London, New York University Press, 2006, p. 23]. As this timely volume engages in a closer interrogation of the interrelationship between Beckett’s work and pop culture, we as scholars and academics might do well to heed his words” (p. 242).

Megane Mazé

Niamh Campbell, Sacred Weather. Atmospheric Essentialism in the Work

of John McGahern, Cork, Cork University Press, 2019, 224 p.

The number of books of criticism on the work of John McGahern could now approx-imate twenty, notwithstanding the numerous Master theses and PhD dissertations presented in universities around the world, which tells a lot about the canonical status reached by the novelist in his own country where he started out being considered “parochial”, then somehow outrageous, at the time when his second novel The Dark was censored and he lost his job as a primary school teacher. More recently, the trend in McGahern studies has been to unravel the numerous intertextual references which could be disclosed through his writings, or to retrace the influence of either Irish, English, French or Russian authors on the Leitrim novelist. Proust, Camus, Flaubert, Beckett, Tolstoy or even Jane Austen and Wordsworth have been thus called forth to recreate his imaginary library. Such is not at all what Niamh Campbell set out doing in this thought-provoking, ambitious, challenging, extremely sophisticated essay. Indeed one of her aims in adding up to the voluminous literature seems to have been to distinguish herself from the already well-established “traditions” of McGahern criticism, of which she offers throughout the essay a sort of meta-critical survey, listing the main authors of monographs written on McGahern over the last twenty years, and distributing good and bad points in the process, depending whether these authors do or do not cling to what she calls “the conservative interpretation” (p. 50) of McGahern’s writing, which she also links with a notion defined by Leo Bersani as “the culture of redemption” (p. 51). While engaging in a straightforward, yet honest, dialogue with previous McGahern critics, Campbell means to address, if not to redress, what she sees as a refusal by the state or the academic institutions, to acknowledge McGahern as an “immensely skilled and subtle writer of Irish realism” (p. 44), while taking stand with those who have limited the interpretations of his works to “kitsch”, or to ideology. Her critique of the body of McGahern criticism extends to the whole of Irish studies, in response to Conor Carville’s essay


The Ends of Ireland, questioning after him Irish subjectivity beyond the limits of identity politics (p. 7). If the readings of McGahern as a realist, social chronicler of de Valera’s Ireland which characterised the earlier reception of the novels have in fact long been superseded by more sophisticated interpretations of the Irish writer as a modernist, sometimes putting his writings through the grinds of lacanian psychoanalysis, Campbell has deployed an even more up-to-date, far-reaching and far-reached theoretical arsenal, composed of Antonio Negri, Leo Bersani, Slavoj Žižek, Timothy Morton, among others, introducing new concepts to the range applied by her predecessors, such as sinthome, jouissance, presence-in-absence, crise pléthorique, non-address, notwithstanding the notion which gives its title to the book, “atmospheric essentialism”, taken up later as “place-hood”, “ambient poetics”, or “poetics of peatsmoke”, in imitation of Timothy Morton’s book The Poetics of Spice. Atmospheric essentialism is declared to be a sinthome of Irish identity (p. 28), that is to say, if the present reviewer understands correctly, as what is not analysable, contrary to the symptom, which is a signifier demanding interpretation. But even though atmosphere, environment and landscape are said here to be interchangeable, the rest of the essay is very remote from any sort of ecocritical reading of McGahern, and the title may partly be thought to be deceptive.

Indeed, despite of, or alongside, the definition of McGahern’s kind of writing as “ambient poetics”, Campbell actually lays much emphasis on the image, stressed upon right from the introduction with a reference to Thomas Aquinas, and prolonged all through the essay by ruminations – to use one of Campbell’s terms – on the image of Susan McGahern, or that of Francis McGahern. Mother and father are here taken for “figures for a strand of conflicted psychic and artistic symbolism” (p. 46), while other figures in McGahern’s work – Elizabeth Reegan, Michael Moran – are described as “present-in-absence” (p. 87). The prospect of an ecocritical reception of McGahern is further postponed by the transformation in chapter 2 of the notion of “ambient poetics” into that of “the ambient text” even though the subchapter announcing this change avoids casting light on the difference, while embracing successively the presence of ekphrasis in That They May Face the Rising Sun, the meaning of Memoir’s original title All Shall Be Well, associated with Saint Teresa of Avila, or the role of voice and sounds in the same book, so that in the end Campbell feels the need to admit that “the theme of absorption […] has not been made completely clear” (p. 75). Things become even tighter for the reader in the next subchapter which, leaving once more aside the notion of “ambient poetics”, ventures to examine “otherness-as-such” – a phrase borrowed from Bersani – in Rising Sun, “thrownness” and the traces of Thomist aesthetic thought in McGahern, as well as the conceit of “beholder-denial” in the scene depicting Elizabeth Reegan bending her head over her sewing in The Barracks, or in the figure of Susan McGahern. Campbell’s efforts to turn the evanescence of these images and the mystery that surrounds them into concepts is commendable, but to a certain extent one is left with the feeling that the words she uses only add one more layer of opacity to the subject she is attempting to reveal. The “ambient poetics” morph again to “ambient art” in chapter 3, in which the aim is to apply Campbell’s “visual sensibility” to the opening scene of The Dark;


however, here Campbell deviates again from her main topic in order to take a stand against what she calls the “politics of aftermath”, or “journey of atonement”, namely the process by which critics, and more largely, public authorities, have distorted McGahern’s writings so as to find in them a source of redemption and atonement for the atrocious crimes of sexual abuse. Chapter 3 aligns old Mahoney in The Dark with other ogre-like father figures, based on McGahern’s own father Francis, an interpretation which I had already put forward in my own 1995 PhD dissertation when I discussed characters and their avatars. Chapter 4, entitled “Fascinating Francis: A Preposterous History”, is as good as what the title promises, as Campbell preposterously accumulates remarks on Pearse, Yeats, Stephen Dedalus, Lord Byron, Dracula as the backdrop of what she calls the “revised eikon” of Francis McGahern (p. 133). Her atmospheric creativity is given free rein in this collage, or precipitate of concepts and words thrown at the reader’s face as an injunction to be up to the standards of the epic defenderess:

[…] both the metaphysically dispersed or ambient matter of, variously, national spirit, sacred weather, miasma, bat sails, spectres, indigenous sublimity, symbolic traces and meteorological eroticism enjoin a collective metaphorical charge which underwrites national affinity with an apparent ontological autonomy, a degree of tactility, or of pleasure, only to leave us with quasi-substances afterwards. (p. 137)

So much for the crise pléthorique… There are also some dashing but perhaps perilous rapprochements, such as the one between “Francis the fascist” and Sylvia Plath’s use of “Daddy” as an emblem of National Socialism (p. 122), or between McGahern and Francis Bacon, particularly on account of the raw violence depicted in The Dark.

All along the book Campbell asserts her claim to innovation and singularity, flaunting her ambition to correct the wrongs she sees in Irish studies at large: “I have aimed at deconstructive contemplation, marshalling a number of new figures for rethinking Irish identity” (p. 44), “I propose a radical revision of the socio-historical meaning of The Dark” (p. 91), “I disagree with Garfitt’s suggestion” (p. 121). One of her claims is to propose a study which is not a rational, well-ordered, book-to-book analysis, and Campbell throws in numerous analyses which may seem to fall far from base: a digression on Sean Hillis’ Irelantis, a long one on Yeats, the Rising and the figure of Padraig Pearse, on Alistair McLeod’s novel No Great Mischief, on Kevin Barry’s novel Beatlebone in the conclusion. As regards McLeod’s book, a novel which Campbell notes McGahern did not comment on, she invokes a kaleidoscopic range of references, tending to blur once again the reader’s clarity of vision, in the hope of moving towards “an engagement with what Terence Brown has posited as a ‘critically enabling’, and explicitly Irish, ‘interrogation of the self’ via a ‘Keatsian and Borgesean’ vision of Shakespeare” (p. 147). To sum up, we are supposed to grasp what Campbell means about McGahern through a reading of McLeod which reminds her of Terence Brown advocating the notion of identity such as Keats and Borgès saw it in Shakespeare.

The basis of the book being a PhD dissertation, it sometimes brings academic jargon to the limits of unreadability, a style which Campbell defines herself as


“associative and cumulative” (p. 46), and which is both dazzling and unnerving. Even though the author quotes Roland Barthes, the pleasure of the text is often elusive here, as the reader constantly stumbles upon neologisms and convoluted phrases. For example, speaking about the number of unwanted pregnancies Irish women had to bear with, Campbell contends that this culture “effectively subtended a derogato-rily ethnicised association with overproduction first registered in Malthusianism” (p. 97). Such phrases as “sacred laterality” (p. 21), “extra-proscriptive” (p. 44), “a quantal mode of approach” (p. 51), “effetness” (p. 121), “objectal surfaces” (p. 140), “detrital staticity” (p. 154), “to alchemise” (p. 163) may be read as further evidence of the author’s desire to distinguish herself from the mainstream of Irish studies by an elitism which contradicts the proposed “radicality” of her readings and her anti-humanist stance. This somewhat exclusionary pose belies the affective power she rightfully attributes to McGahern’s writing, characterised by its deceitful and disarming simplicity. True, the ideas that Campbell proposes to discuss are extremely abstract and even evanescent, as misty and gaseous as ambient poetics themselves: there is a mystery in McGahern’s writing, and especially in the effect or affect that his writing calls upon in the reader’s mind – or unconscious – that all critics have tried to unveil and resorb, but so far have failed to capture, whatever the theories, concepts or neologisms they have recourse to, and which may in the end amount to what Campbell describes in her typical style as no more than “the residual materiality of post-ideological quasi-substances” (p. 163). Book upon book of criticism is written and published, leaving whole and non-resorbed the beauty, mystery and integrity of the work of art.

Sylvie Mikowski

Gerald Dawe, The Sound of the Shuttle: Essays on Cultural Belonging and

Protestantism in Northern Ireland, Newbridge, Irish Academic Press,

2020, xi-170 p.

The constitutional challenges brought about by the Brexit referendum and the subsequent focus on Northern Ireland and the Irish border have generated a renewal of interest in this corner of the United Kingdom. In this context, the publication of a collection of essays spanning a period from 1983 to 2019 by poet and Trinity College Dublin professor Gerald Dawe appears particularly timely. Several essays take the reader back to the days when, at the turn of the 1990s, Irish studies emerged as a critical field informed by post-colonial theory but also the revisionist reaction to it. These were the days when Edna Longley (who edited with Gerald Dawe in 1985 a collection of essays on “the Protestant imagination” entitled Across a Roaring Hill) was picking with the likes of Seamus Deane a historical and theoretical bone which, for all the illuminating points that were made at the time, has probably been picked dry by now. This should not be taken to deny Dawe’s


essays’ relevance to the present situation, but the collection of essays does beg the question of what exactly has been gained by historical hindsight. The fact that the original date of publication, as well as the date of last revision, feature only at the end of each piece, tends to obscure its immediate relevance to the present context. There is an interestingly serendipitous aspect to this editing choice as the reader is freer to imagine more echoes and interconnections between then and now, though there are also at times faint but distinct undertones of “told you so” when the original date of publication is discovered.

This is all very much in keeping with Dawe’s staunch refusal of critical dogma and his avowed preference for the human angle and the heuristic power of anecdote, “start[ing] from the human story rather than the theoretical premise” (p. 81), as evidenced by the frankness and openness of his tone throughout. Where this might jar is when he refuses to consider that this attitude can be subsumed within the mainstream binarisms of Northern Irish politics, a criticism that has been levelled at supposedly apolitical accounts of the province in the 1990s. Dawe thus quotes then dismisses Joseph McMinn’s point that:

“Arguing [McMinn writes] for an apolitical analysis of Irish culture which will be sen-sible, moderate, rational, unemotional, dispassionate, is to take up a political position without naming it. It is an extension of unionist political values into the cultural area.”

It is unclear precisely who is arguing for an apolitical analysis of Irish culture but of all the Heinz varieties of unionism, I have not met one that fits the bill here – sensible, moderate, detached and so on. (p. 19)

This reads like a case of moving the goalposts of the words “(a)political” and “unionism” to preserve Dawe’s ideal of artistic integrity, that is, ideological neutrality. Northern Ireland certainly needs its writers to strive for such a stance, maybe even if at this cost, but it is easy to see how this voice and perspective could anger some of those who were more or less closely involved with the more usual definition of “politics” during the Troubles. This makes his account all the more interesting, even necessary, in the current “post-everything” period, but should not preclude a critical examination of how perspectives foregrounding a seemingly axiologically neutral “balm of common sense” (p. 139) are themselves constructs with a (perhaps alternative, but nonetheless existent) ideological filiation.

In the present case Dawe’s challenge is to define Protestant identity while being, justly in the Northern Irish context, very critical of the concept itself, which he accuses of being “based upon national self-consciousness” (p. 109) and promoting a monolithic vision of Irishness (p. 5) which ultimately marginalises the Protestant community. There is an interesting reversal at work here, where Dawe is expressing his political vision of Protestants as a minority within Ireland while voicing his bitterness as what he perceives as the hijacking of the relevant conceptual (i.e. post-colonial) tools by representatives of a Catholic, nationalist brand of Irishness who are in effect a majority in the country. One example is hybridity, as Dawe ironically wonders why, of all the hyphenated identities, British-Irish is the only one that is politically unacceptable (p. 95). This explains his strong rejection of theory, which


interprets texts “in terms of certain pre-emptive categories of post-colonialism, ethnicities, gender, sexuality and race [that] become self-fulfilling predictions, a kind of intellectual wiring for ‘sound bites’” (p. 101), and which was a key element in the organisation of Irish studies as a scientific field of enquiry. This has in effect left the Protestant community voiceless, at the mercy of stereotyping by unionist politicians or the British media, where according to Dawe Northern Protestants are fair game for “gross caricatures”, unless communities who are recognised as minorities such the Irish or West Indians (p. 98).

On what intellectual premises therefore might this sense of “Protestant belong-ing” be built? Tentative answers are given in the last three essays, written in the 21st century. One has to do with an Orwellian attention to the use of words and their role in the formation of collective thought processes. Only then can Ireland access some form of “political reality” (p. 92), as distinct from “messianic strategies” (p. 51). One objection that can be made is that this fidelity to the text by the honest individual mind sometimes resembles less Orwellian common decency than a liberal humanism unconscious of its own privileges and its political standpoint. Dawe himself can use words to conceal rather than reveal political realities, as when he calls “intimate adversity” the relations between the different social classes in industrial Belfast 1, when others would probably have preferred the phrase “systematic oppression”. Finally, while also borrowing from Hewitt-style regionalism (and stressing the relevance of this form of political organisation in a European context), he revives an alternative vision of Northern Protestantism rooted in

[…] the radical traditions of an inherited British working-class socialism of solidarity and its inherited social democratic beliefs in the separation of church and state, educational opportunities for all irrespective of class and creed, and the protection of the welfare state as of right. (p. 154)

This “Northern influence of independent thought” constitutes the common sense that according to Dawe is bound to play a key role in the shaping of attitudes in post-Brexit Ireland. While this counter-tradition within Ireland certainly vivifies the political debate and offers refreshing perspectives, a complete rejection of theory and linguistic constructivism may lead one to forget that one person’s common sense is another’s dogma, something that can be used to prevent the exploration of viable political alternatives. While Dawe uses his reasonable “doubt” to exclude a future for Ireland farther from European institutions, the hardening of national borders imposed by Covid-19 lockdown suggests that the ideological neutral ground of common sense may undergo some seismic shifts in the near future.

Catherine Conan

1. “The industrial, commercial and historical experience that kept the city together, in often intimate adversity, no longer holds sway” (p. 121).


Fabrice Mourlon, L’urgence de dire: l’Irlande du Nord après le conflit,

Oxford, P. Lang, 2018, 197 p.

Before focusing on the compelling content of Fabrice Mourlon’s monograph on post-conflict testimony in Northern Ireland, it is worth dwelling on the qualities of the book-as-object which amplify the positive reading experience and render it more accessible and enjoyable. Even a quick glance reveals that this is a well-designed and thoughtfully produced publication. We find none of the passionless, cramped pages (with text disappearing frustratingly into the gutter margins) that mar many academic books. The cover art – a striking night scene by Belfast-based artist Kevin Collins rather than the guns and gable ends we find almost everywhere – was chosen by the author and announces a willingness (explicit in the text) to eschew conventional modi operandi. On opening the book, we discover a pleasant, bright, airy, modern and functional layout. The spacing is easy on the eye, the margins generous and the typography crisp and readable. Every aspect of the design has been conceived with equal measures of respect for reader, author and the human beings whose life stories we are considering here.

Turning our attention to the introduction (arguably the most innovative and provocative aspect of the monograph as a whole), our first impression is one of warmth. This might seem like a peculiar remark and not a particularly pertinent one at that, but the compassion that runs through the text is, in my view, its greatest strength and what distinguishes it from similar studies of the Northern Ireland conflict. Mourlon’s is nothing like the “cold”, detached, “objective”, formalistic approach (lamented by several commentators in the text itself) we would expect if the author were a doctrinaire historian. But this is Irish studies (explored to its full potential, I would argue) and that implies something altogether more lively, intimate, sensitive and respectful. The author begins (ego-historically) by taking a good look at himself and honestly assessing his own strengths and weaknesses vis-à-vis a particularly difficult subject area, before offering his reader (in)valuable guidance and the benefit of his extensive personal and research experience. This is not an empirical-analytical-historiographical data scraping operation, the sort of by-the-numbers practice which, unhappily, has led some researchers to bemoan the inevitable factual inaccuracies common to all testimony and, in some extreme cases, recommend excluding it altogether from academic studies of the past. Mourlon, instead, demonstrates the value of a Buberian approach, engaging enthusiastically with the human, psychological and emotional context in which the testimony was initially volunteered and encouraging his readers to invest in a self-consciously sub-jective approach, allowing the affective content of the material to fill their horizon.

He is not a psychoanalyst (how many of us are?) but has been psychoanalysed (same question). It is from this enlightened standpoint that he enters into a con-structive and respectful dialogue with his sources. Having put shape and meaning on his own experience, he (as analysand) is empowered to empathise with the trauma of the witness. He has also acquired a certain amount of resilience in the process and is better equipped to deal with the vicarious trauma that often comes with the


territory. Championing a subjective and interdisciplinary approach to post-conflict testimony, then, Mourlon introduces us to the notion (novel for many of us) of meaningfully exploring the act of testifying itself rather than merely attempting to “extract” meaning from the facts and figures contained in the resulting testimony.

After this frankly invigorating start, we are presented with three well-crafted chapters, all of which could function autonomously as stand-alone articles but, taken together, provide a comprehensive theoretical and practical framework in which to engage with the evolution of the status of victims through the 20th century, and a methodology for looking with fresh eyes at the testimony of survivors of the Northern Ireland conflict in particular.

Chapter 1 very efficiently maps the epistemological and historical contexts in which a 21st century study of victim / survivor testimony takes place, guiding us through the historical, psychoanalytical and legal literature which developed out of the slow realisation that post-conflict testimony was worth collecting, archiving and studying. Mourlon takes a close look at the different discourses surrounding testimony after the World Wars and the Holocaust before transitioning into a study of the situation in Northern Ireland in the following chapter.

Chapter 2 tightens the geographical and temporal scope of the study and convincingly shows how testimony could not properly enter the public sphere in Northern Ireland until victims / survivors were identified as a distinct group with specific needs and aspirations, deliberately written into the political, legal and historical narratives of the Troubles and their voices publicly recognised. Before this recognition there was no hope of real dialogue (in the Buberian sense of the word) and the audience necessary (according to Renaud Dulong) for the testimony to come into being in the first place could not exist.

Chapter 3 builds on the knowledge developed in the preceding pages to sensitively consider and analyse the testimony collected and made public by various groups and institutions in Northern Ireland. It is here that Mourlon skilfully demonstrates what his repeated calls for an inter-subjective approach might look like in practice and sets an impressive standard for his peers to meet and, hopefully, surpass.

All in all, this is a provocative (in the most constructive sense of the word), scholarly and compassionate work in which academic rigour is never allowed to do violence to the life stories and dignity of the human beings with whom we are engaging.

Mathew Staunton


NOTES SUR LES AUTEURS

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sean Campbell est professeur en médias et culture à Anglia Ruskin, Cambridge. Il est l’auteur d’“Irish Blood, English Heart” : Second-Generation Irish Musicians in England (Cork, Cork University Press, 2011), et a été conseiller pour la série de documentaires télévisés Guth : Musical Sons of the Irish Diaspora (TG4). Sean Campbell est coanimateur du séminaire d’histoire moderne irlandaise à l’université de Cambridge. Il prépare actuellement un livre sur la musique populaire et le conflit en Irlande du Nord.

Sean Campbell is associate professor of media and culture at Anglia Ruskin in Cambridge. He is the author of “Irish Blood, English Heart”: Second-Generation Irish Musicians in England (Cork, Cork University Press, 2011), and was series adviser on the television documentary series, Guth: Musical Sons of the Irish Dias-pora (TG4). Sean Campbell is co-convenor of the modern Irish history seminar at the University of Cambridge. He is currently writing a book on popular music and the Northern Ireland conflict.

Joana Etchart est maître de conférences en études irlandaises et britanniques à l’université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour depuis 2017. Elle a auparavant enseigné à l’université de la Sorbonne (2011-2017). Elle s’intéresse à la période historique du conflit des Troubles en Irlande du Nord (1969-1998) et, par extension, à l’histoire du Royaume-Uni et de l’Irlande à cette période. Ses projets de recherche portent sur l’étude des politiques publiques dans le domaine de la réconciliation et des community relations, avec un intérêt particulier pour la question de l’adhésion de la population à ces programmes.

Joana Etchart is a senior lecturer in Irish and British studies at the University of Pau. She formerly taught at the Sorbonne (2011-2017). She has specialised in the history of the Troubles from the late 1960s up until 1998 in Northern Ireland and, by extension, in the United Kingdom and in Ireland. Her research focuses on public policy initiatives in the field of reconciliation and community relations. She is also interested in assessing the community’s response and adhesion to them.

Patrick Gormally (Pádraig Ó Gormaile) est diplômé de Maynooth College et de l’université Paris-Sorbonne – Paris 4, et docteur en littérature et histoire sociale de l’université de Toulouse (titre de sa thèse : Jean Sulivan, écrivain chrétien : une conception originale du rôle de l’écrivain). Il a enseigné la langue française et les


littératures française et québécoise pendant quarante ans à Ollscoil na hÉireann (université d’Irlande), où il a occupé la chaire de langues romanes pendant vingt-quatre ans. Ancien correspondant en Irlande du journal La Croix (1984-1990), il a publié « Images et expérience de Dieu chez Jean Sulivan », in Dans l’espérance d’une parole, Jean Lavoué (dir.), Hennebont, L’enfance des arbres, 2020, p. 155-158.

Patrick Gormally (Pádraig Ó Gormaile) is a graduate of Maynooth College and the university Paris-Sorbonne – Paris 4, and has a doctorate in literature and social history from the University of Toulouse (thesis title: Jean Sulivan, écrivain chrétien: une conception originale du rôle de l’écrivain [Jean Sulivan, Christian Writer: An Original Conception of the Role of the Writer]). He taught French and French and Quebec literature for forty years at Ollscoil na hÉireann (University of Ireland), where he held the Chair of Romance languages for twenty-four years. Former correspondent in Ireland for the newspaper La Croix (1984-1990), he published “Images et expérience de Dieu chez Jean Sulivan”, in Dans l’espérance d’une parole, Jean Lavoué (ed.), Hennebont, L’enfance des arbres, 2020, p. 155-158.

Moonyoung Hong est doctorante au département d’anglais à Trinity College,

Dublin. Sa recherche porte sur la notion d’espace quotidien dans le théâtre de

Tom Murphy. Elle est lauréate du Ussher Fellowship et de l’Irish Research Council

Postgraduate Scholarship et titulaire du statut de résidente junior au Trinity Long

Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2019-2021). Elle a publié dans

The Yeats Journal of Korea and Trinity Postgraduate Review.

Moonyoung Hong is a PhD candidate in the School of English at Trinity College, Dublin. Her research explores the works of Tom Murphy from the perspective of everyday space. She is a recipient of the Ussher Fellowship and the Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship, and holds an Early Career Research residency in the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts and Humanities Research Institute (2019-2021). She has published in The Yeats Journal of Korea and Trinity Postgraduate Review.

Valérie Morisson, maître de conférences en anglais à l’université de Bourgogne

Franche-Comté, Dijon, est l’auteure d’une thèse portant sur l’art irlandais contem-

porain et ses rapports à l’identité nationale. Elle a publié plusieurs articles relatifs à la

culture visuelle irlandaise (arts visuels, photographie et illustration, bande dessinée)

mettant en exergue le passage du nationalisme au postnationalisme culturel. Ses

recherches sur la photographie contemporaine irlandaise et sur l’œuvre d’artistes

féministes montrent que l’art et les pratiques artistiques interrogent l’histoire, la

mémoire et les pouvoirs de l’image au sein de sociétés en constante mutation. Ses

recherches actuelles se concentrent sur l’art contemporain, irlandais et britannique,

et accordent une importance particulière au processus créatif.

Valérie Morisson is a lecturer in English at the University of Burgundy, Dijon, France. Her research is on Irish contemporary art and its relationship with post-nationalist culture. She investigates how political, social, and cultural evolutions in the Republic

185Not e s su r l e s au t e u r s | Not e s on c on t ri bu t or s

of Ireland and Northern Ireland are reflected in visual culture (painting, sculpture, installation, performance, video, photography). Her articles focus on a wide array of subjects ranging from feminist art, the issue of memory and the commemoration of history, to post-nationalist revisionism and the Northern-Irish situation as reflected in art. Several of her articles tackle photography and performance art in both an Irish and a European perspective. Her recent research addresses wider artistic issues in both the Irish and the English domains such as the role of archives and field work in the creation process or the use of discarded materials and the re-emergence of materiality in contemporary art.

Fabrice Mourlon est professeur de civilisation britannique et irlandaise à l’uni-versité Sorbonne Nouvelle à Paris. Il a étudié le conflit en Irlande du Nord et ses conséquences en se concentrant sur la manière de gérer le passé après les accords de paix de 1998. Il a publié des ouvrages sur différents sujets tels que les victimes / survivants, les témoignages, la mémoire et le rôle de la société civile. Ces questions sont abordées dans son livre, L’urgence de dire : l’Irlande du Nord après le conflit, publié chez Peter Lang en 2018. Ses recherches portent désormais sur les petits partis politiques et les arts en Irlande du Nord.

Fabrice Mourlon is professor of British and Irish studies at the Sorbonne Nouvelle in Paris. He studied the conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermaths focusing on how to deal with the past. He has published on various issues such as victims / survivors, testimony, memory and the role of civil society. These issues are addressed in his book, L’urgence de dire: l’Irlande du Nord après le conflit, published with Peter Lang in 2018. His research interests now focus on small political parties and the arts in Northern Ireland.

Audrey Rousseau se spécialise dans les études de mémoire, les questions relatives aux peuples autochtones, ainsi que les structures d’inégalités au fondement de l’oppression vécue par les femmes. Depuis près de dix ans, elle s’interroge sur la production, la circulation et l’interprétation des discours sur le passé. Ses recherches l’ont menée à analyser les mécanismes de réparation d’injustices historiques auprès de groupes sociaux marginalisés au Canada et en République d’Irlande, notamment eu égard aux politiques d’assimilation, d’enfermement et de travail forcé dans les pensionnats autochtones, les camps d’internement de la Première Guerre mondiale ainsi que les Magdalen Laundries.

Audrey Rousseau specialises in memory studies, issues relating to Indigenous peoples, and the structures of inequality underlying the oppression experienced by women. For nearly ten years, she has considered the production, circulation, and interpretation of discourses on the past. Her research has led her to analyse the mechanisms for redressing historical injustices with marginalised social groups in Canada and the Republic of Ireland, notably regarding policies of assimilation, confinement, and forced labour in Indian residential schools, WWI internment camps in Canada and Ireland’s Magdalen Laundries.


Maître de conférences en civilisation britannique et études irlandaises à l’université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Nathalie Sebbane s’intéresse à l’histoire des femmes en Irlande, aux questions de genre et de sexualité, aux enjeux d’histoire et de mémoire, aux liens entre l’Église et l’État et à la maltraitance institutionnelle. Sa monographie, intitulée Memorialising the Magdalene Laundries. From Story to History, paraîtra sous peu chez Peter Lang.

Nathalie Sebbane is a senior lecturer at the Sorbonne Nouvelle where she teaches in British politics and Irish studies. Her areas of expertise in Irish studies are: women’s history, gender and sexuality, history and memory, Church and state and institutional abuse. Her monograph, Memorialising the Magdalene Laundries. From Story to History, is due to be published shortly by Peter Lang.

Originaire de Coolock à Dublin, Mathew Staunton est historien, graveur, éditeur et enseignant. Il travaille actuellement à l’École nationale supérieure des arts déco-ratifs (ENSAD) à Paris et à The Onslaught Press à Dundee. Ses recherches portent principalement sur la culture visuelle et l’histoire expérimentale. Ses publications les plus récentes explorent l’esthétique du nationalisme irlandais du XXe siècle, la typographie gaélique et l’historiographie de la maltraitance des enfants.

Originally from Coolock in Dublin, Mathew Staunton is a historian, printmaker, publisher and teacher currently working at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (ENSAD) in Paris and The Onslaught Press in Dundee. His research is primarily focused on visual culture and experimental history. His most recent pub-lications explore the aesthetics of 20th-century Irish nationalism, Gaelic typography and the historiography of child maltreatment.

Précédents numéros

publiés par les Presses universitaires de Rennes

nº 34-1 Varia

nº 34-2 Figures de l’intellectuel en Irlande

Representations of the intellectual in Ireland

nº 35-1 Varia

nº 35-2 Traduction : pratique et poétique

Translation: praxis and poetics

nº 36-1 Trauma et mémoire en Irlande

Perspectives on trauma in Irish history, literature and culture

nº 36-2 Varia

nº 37-1 Varia

nº 37-2 Enjeux féministes et féminins dans la société irlandaise contem poraine

Feminist and women’s issues in contemporary Irish society

nº 38-1 Varia

nº 38-2 L’Ulster-Scots en Irlande du Nord aujourd’hui : langue, culture, communauté

Ulster-Scots in Northern Ireland today: language, culture, community

nº 39-1 Varia

nº 39-2 Les religions en République d’Irlande depuis 1990

Religions in the Republic of Ireland since 1990

nº 40-1 Enjeux contemporains en études irlandaises – In memoriam Paul Brennan

Contemporary issues in Irish studies – In memoriam Paul Brennan

nº 40-2 Crise ? Quelle crise ?

Crisis? What crisis?

nº 41-1 Varia

nº 41-2 L’Irlande et sa république passée, présente et à venir

Ireland’s republic: past, present and future

nº 42-1 Incarner / désincarner l’Irlande

Embodying / disembodying Ireland

nº 42-2 Varia

nº 43-1 Irish self-portraits: the artist in curved mirrors

nº 43-2 Varia

Numéros publiés par les Presses universitaires de Caen

nº 44-1 Nature, environnement et écologie politique en Irlande

Nature, Environment and Environmentalism in Ireland

nº 44-2 Varia

nº 45-1 Irish Arts: New Contexts

nº 45-2 Varia

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Mathew Staunton : Introduction : Notes from a Bunker 7

Sean Campbell : NME’s “Irish Troubles” : Political Conflict, Media Crisis and the British

Music Press 11

Joana Etchart : “You just went out and talked to them.” An Interview with Maurice Hayes

(1927-2017) on the Work of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Commission

(1969-1975) 55

Fabrice Mourlon : The Jazz Seen : An Ethnographic View of Contemporary Jazz in

Northern Ireland 73

Valérie Morisson : L’urbex : déchiffrage / défrichage critique 93

Moonyoung Hong : Waking (for) the Nation : Immaterial Materialism and the Feminine

Body in Tom Murphy’s The Wake (1998) 107

Audrey Rousseau : Représenter l’expérience vécue dans les Magdalen Laundries en

passant par la « voie longue » de l’herméneutique et l’analyse de textes assistée par

ordinateur 123

Patrick Gormally : The War That Never Came : Creating, Transmitting and Maintaining

Handed-Down Memories of the Emergency in Ireland. Acknowledging Family Recol-

lections of WWII 143

Comptes rendus | Book reviews 169

Notes sur les auteurs | Notes on contributors 183

Numéro publié sous la direction de Nathalie Sebbane et Mathew Staunton

ISSN : 0 1 8 3 - 9 7 3 X

ISBN : 9 7 8 - 2 - 3 8 1 8 5 - 0 3 0 - 6

Passer au crible les traces du passé - OpenEdition Journals

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