Irish Studies

 

Hidden Agenda was released in 1990 by Hemdale Film Corporation(UK) and Initial (II) (UK).

Paul Sullivan is an American civil rights lawyer and political activist visiting Northern Ireland with his wife Ingrid Jessner. During his visit, a member of the provisional IRA contacts him about a secret cassette tape and Sullivan is shot in his car. Investigator Peter Kerrigan who is assisted by Ingrid investigates the killing. The investigation reveals that the two men were shot without adequate warning and assumed to be assassinated; Sullivan for his alleged knowledge of the tape. The mysterious recording is found and discovered to have been made by a Captain Harris, an ex-army intelligence officer, now in hiding. The tape consists of senior military leaders and Conservative Party politicians talking about how they were responsible for the rise to power of Margaret Thatcher. After some time, Harris gives a copy of the tape to Ingrid, but British security forces kill Captain Harris, but blame his death on the IRA. Kerrigan is blackmailed into silence about the conspiracy. By the end of the film, Jessner still has the tape, but without Harris to confirm, the recording is virtually of no use in getting justice for her late husband.

The portrayal of the IRA in film tends to depict them as either tragic heroes, victims of British tyranny, or the criminal underbelly of the UK. In Hidden Agenda, members of the IRA and those supporting the organization are seekers of justice and truth with the common goal of exposing the corruption of the Thatcher administration. A specialized section of the English military, the MI5, are the only ones in the film responsible for any death or violence. This depiction, not uncommon in film and television, presents an inaccurate and purposefully distorted account of both the IRA and British paramilitaries in order to manipulate audience perceptions. Hidden Agenda is not so much explicitly responsible for evoking sympathy for the IRA because that is a natural jump to make when a film efficiently works to demonize the British government. Here is a scene where Ingrid and Peter Kerrigan discuss British involvement in the North. The film is worth note because of director Ken Loach’s noted interest in social issues. In Hidden Agenda, Loach, an Englishman himself, challenges British authoritarianism under Margaret Thatcher in response to The Troubles. In this way, it is distinct from other British media responses, which generally tended to demonize the IRA in favor of the British government and Protestant majority.

Ingrid Jessner and Peter Kerrigan discussing the state of the North and the British paramilitary.

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“Up the Rebels”

The tenth season of Hawaii Five-O opened in 1977 with “Up the Rebels,” a premiere which featured Stephen Boyd taking on the role of Costigan, a Northern Irish splinter group terrorist in disguise. Costigan, as a sweet talking priest, manipulates an Irish-American Republican sympathizer in his attempt to procure explosives and evade capture by Hawaii Five-O. Boyd’s character is a prime example of the use of the IRA as stand-in terrorist organization. The organization is not fully defined, or even identified, but they are certainly armed and dangerous.

                                                                            From 37:47 to 38:40 Costigan expresses his beliefs in total devotion to the cause

 

This episode plays on the blind-faith American support for the republican cause. The IRA employ euphemisms to hide their activities from the ignorant Americans by calling murder, “a tactical necessity” and any disgraceful act is simply, “an occupational hazard”. This is another instance where the IRA member is depicted as charming and persuasive; Fogarty quickly falls for Costigan and is blinded to the true nature of his cause. The appearance of Fogarty in the episode brings up Irish-American funding and support of the IRA. This also emphasizes the faith that some Americans have in their republican brethern across the sea.  When referring to the cause Costigan says, “There’s no room for questions – or conscience.” This also typical of the IRA representation across different mediums; they feel that the strength of what it is they’re fighting for justifies any action and moral qualms are not necessary. This episode paints the IRA in a very dark lighting by bringing up the children killed in the bombing and suggesting their Machiavellian tendencies towards apathy and duplicity. The IRA member is also impersonating a priest which is a common American conception because most episodes begin with them spouting some notion of peace in Ireland. The distinction that’s important to make is that they almost always believe they can achieve peace through violence.

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In March 1976, the British government moved to declassify the Republican political prisoners. Republican inmates would thus be required to wear a prison uniform and carry out labor. They were also denied rights of association, internal organization and use of time. In March 1977, male Republican prisoners at Long Kesh refused to wear the inmate uniform and instead covered themselves with blankets. A year later inmates were prohibited use of blankets outside their cells; so they came out naked. This reaction to what they felt was harassment and humiliation escalated into the 1978 Dirty Protest.

 

 

During this time, the women prisoners at Armagh were participating in the same protests fighting against the withdrawal of political status. In 1977 the republican women prisoners refused to do mandatory prison work, and in response to the no-work protest, the women were kept in their cells all day during work hours. They did not see their protest as different from men and sought the same political recognition. Since female prisoners in Britain were not required to wear a prison uniform, attention was focused strictly on the males. The men had rejected the prison uniform to assert their political identity; so the woman improvised IRA uniforms in a similar metonymical movement. These uniforms often consisted of black polo neck shirts, black skirts and tights.

What led the females to fully delve into the protest was an assault by male prison officials, followed by two days of cell confinement while attempts were made to locate the “subversive garments”. The assault that provoked the Dirty Protest was seen as a political act of discipline involving punishment and “as a humiliating assertion of male dominance”. So the female prisoners decided to engage in the dirty protest and spread their feces and their menstrual blood on the walls of their cells. Many Republican men avoided mentioning menstruation but attempted to dissuade the women from this form of protest with the limited arguments that it was not appropriate for women to do this because they were women. But the women did not care, because they viewed their protests as one in the same. They did not believe they were doing anything vastly different from their male counterparts and wanted the same recognition that they received. But unfortunately, the women’s efforts went virtually unnoticed, and they were essentially invisible compared to the men in Long Kesh. During this time of protest strip searches were a key weapon used by the prison authorities in an attempt to intimidate and humiliate the republican women. While the dirty protest was going on there was a question of beginning a hunger strike, but it was firmly opposed by the leadership on the outside. But for the women in Armagh they felt their situation was intolerable and they felt they needed to try to force a change in their conditions. The leadership in the men’s prison opposed to the women participating in the hunger strikes, but the women were determined to participate as they felt they had an equal stake in achieving the demands.

While seven men began a hunger strike on October 27^th, 3 women from Armagh began the hunger strike on December 1, 1980. The three women who participated in the hunger strike were Mairead Farrell, Mairead Nugent, and Mary Doyle. The three girls were moved into a double cell together, and instead of the usual inedible cold prison food they were receiving before; they were fed with plates overflowing with piping hot food. After a couple of weeks on the hunger strike, the women heard rumors that the hunger strike was over, and that the men had ended the hunger strike. On December 19^th they ended the hunger strike, and a sense of relief and happiness and satisfaction washed over the women believing that their demands would be met. But shortly after Christmas it became clear that the British had reneged on the agreement and had no intention of addressing the five demands. In January the women began discussing a second hunger strike, but with only 30 prisoners in their wing at the jail, they made the assessment that they would not be able to sustain a second hunger strike. But the women kept up with the no-work protest and supported their male comrades from their cells in Armagh. It is women who have been the backbone of the republican struggle. The women of Armagh were brave and sacrificed for their Irish freedom. For them, even though they received little attention, they still fought and struggled to ensure that their message was being heard.

                                        

Thanks for viewing our website. Links to the programs we examined can be found under specific sections of Organizations heading.

Other Resources Consulted:

Burton, John W. “Resolution of Conflict.” International Studies Quarterly 16.1 (1972): 5-29. JSTOR. Wiley. Web. 16 Oct. 2014.

“The Ireland Funds : Supporting a Shared Future in Northern Ireland.” The Ireland Funds. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Dec. 2014.

Lederach, John P., Reina Neufeldt, and Hal Culbertson. Reflective Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit. Notre Dame, IN: Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, 2007. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. University of Notre Dame. Web. 5 Nov. 2014.

Toros, Harmonie, and Ioannis Tellidis. “Terrorism and Peace and Conflict Studies: Investigating the Crossroad.” Introduction. Critical Studies on Terrorism. 1st ed. Vol. 6. London: Routledge Taylor & Francis, 2013. 1-12. Taylor & Francis Online. Taylor & Francis, 28 Mar. 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2014.

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Ahmed, Insanul. “The Making of Kendrick Lamar’s “good kid, m.A.A.d. city.” Complex Magazine. 23 Oct. 2012. Web

Bederman, Gail. Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Connolly, Paul and Michaela Kennan. “Harassment in the White Hinterlands: Minority Ethnic Children and Parents’ Experiences of Schooling in Northern Ireland”. British Journal of Sociology of Education 23.3 (2002), P.341-355.

Conroy, John. Belfast Diary: War as a Way of Life. Boston: Beacon, 1987. Print.

Doherty, Paul and Michael A.  Poole. “Ethnic Residential Segregation in Belfast, Northern Ireland”. Geographical Review 87.4 (1997), pp. 520-536.

Ghansah, Rachel Kaadzi. “When the Lights Shut Off: Kendrick Lamar and the Decline of the Black Blues Narrative.”Accessed 11 Dec. 2014.  http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/when-the-lights-shut-off-kendrick-lamar-and-the-decline-of-the-black-blues-narrative

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Gender & Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Gormally, Brian, et al. “Criminal Justice in a Divided Society: Northern Ireland Prisons”. Crime and Justice 17.1 (1993), pp. 51-135.

“Jake Burns From Stiff Little Fingers Interview.” Interview by Dave Jennings. Http://louderthanwar.com. N.p., 03 Mar. 2013. Web.

Kaplan, Jonathan, and Andrew Valls. “Housing Discrimination As A Basis For Black Reparations.”In Public Affairs Quarterly 21, no. 3 (July 2007): 255-273.

Katz, Michael B., Mark J. Stern, and Jamie J. Fader. “The New African American Inequality.” In TheJournal of American History 92, no. 1 (June 2005): 75-108.

Kitwana, Bakari. The Hip Hop Generation: Young Blacks and the Crisis in African AmericanCulture. New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2002.

Link, Roland. Kicking Up a Racket: The Story of Stiff Little Fingers 1977-1983. Belfast: Apple Tree, 2009. Print.

MacLaverty, Bernard. Cal. New York: W.W Norton & Company, Inc., 1983. Print.

McKittrick, David & McVea, David. Making Sense of the Troubles. London: Viking. 2012.

Moore, Ryan. “Postmodernism and Punk Subculture: Cultures of Authenticity and Deconstruction.”In The Communication Review 7 (2004): 305-327.

Straus, Emily E. Death of a Suburban Dream: Race and Schools in Compton, California. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014.

 

• The Plain Truth

  • Northern Ireland: The Plain Truth. Second Edition. Castlefields, Dungannon: The Campaign for Social Justice in Northern Ireland, 1969. Print.
  • Fionnuala McKenna. “Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland), 1922.” Conflict Archie on the Internet. CAIN Web Service. Web. 1 December 2014 (XX)
  • Painting Source 

• The Ministry of Fear

  • Heaney, Seamus. “Singing School.” Poetry Foundation. Web. 1 December 2014. (XX)

• A Constable Calls

  • Heaney, Seamus. “Singing School.” Poetry Foundation. Web. 1 December 2014. (XX)

• Bloody Sunday

  • Mullan, Don. Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. Dublin: Wolfhound, 1997. 83-84, 117-119, 121-122, 127-129, 130-131, 133-135. Print.
  • “The Victims of Bloody Sunday.” BBC News. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.bbc.com/news/10138851#story-heading-3>. (XX)

• Ferguson

  • Mullan, Don. Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. Dublin: Wolfhound, 1997. 73. Print.
  • Mullan, Don. Eyewitness Bloody Sunday. Dublin: Wolfhound, 1997. 118-119. Print.
  • Fantz, Ashley, Holly Yan, Catherine Shoichet, Ryan Sloane, Wayne Sterling, and Dave Alsup. “Police Angry at ‘hands Up’ Gesture by St. Louis Rams Players.” CNN. Cable News Network, 1 Dec. 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/01/us/ferguson-nfl-st-louis-rams/>. (XX)
  • “Ferguson Officers Not All Wearing ID After Two Justice Deparment Orders.” Slate Magazine. 29 Sept. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2014. <http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/09/29/ferguson_nametags_department_of_justice_mandate_not_completely_effective.html>. (XX)
  • “2010 Census Interactive Population Search.” 2010 Census Interactive Population Search. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.census.gov/2010census/popmap/ipmtext.php?fl=29:2923986>. (XX)
  • Network, Paulina. “5 Things to Know about Ferguson Police Department.” USA Today. Gannett, 19 Aug. 2014. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/08/14/ferguson-police-department-details/14064451/>. (XX)
  • “Ferguson Case: Racial and Gender Makeup of Grand Jury Revealed.” CBSNews. CBS Interactive. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ferguson-case-racial-and-gender-makeup-of-grand-jury-revealed/>. (XX)
  • Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/14/ferguson-militarized-police/14064675/>. (XX)
  • “Police Are Using Military Weapons to Occupy Ferguson, Missouri.” Slate Magazine. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/08/police_in_ferguson_military_weapons_threaten_protesters.html>. (XX)
  • “Missouri Has Spent $11.7 Million Policing the Ferguson Protests (So Far).” Www.nationaljournal.com. Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/missouri-has-spent-11-7-million-policing-the-ferguson-protests-so-far-20141205>. (XX)
  • Web. 11 Dec. 2014. <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/15/ferguson-police-darren-wilson-michael-brown-shooting>. (XX)

 

PREVIOUSLY: Ferguson

Roadmap

• Introduction
• The Plain Truth
• The Ministry of Fear
• The Constable Calls
• Bloody Sunday
• Ferguson

 

The 19th century experiences of African-Americans in the United States’ deep south brought about the introduction of blues music. Slaves formulated their own identity with work songs and ballads that led to rhythm and blues and became infused with jazz and rock and roll. 20th century artists such as Muddy Waters, B.B. King, and Robert Johnson defined the blues movement and made it so influential.

This musical style played a significant role in the novel by Bernard MacLavery. When Cal visited the library, he had access to “black soul” blues music that paralleled his Irish existence with that of the African-American struggle. Blues music is characterized by displacement, which relates to Cal as he struggles to find his identity within Irish society. A tape by Muddy Waters opened Cal’s eyes to his universal struggle. We discussed how identity defines the actions and life goals of individuals to provide a sense of purpose, and Cal needed this kind of definition to make sense of his own situation as a young Catholic victimized by his government.

The blues helped to define Cal’s difficult position and gave him a course of action similar to the enslaved blacks by helping him to work through the challenging times. Cal finds refuge in his ability to identify with African-American culture and views this commonality as a beacon of hope. An article by Reid Makowsky deeply analyzes this blues influence in Cal. 

Two Ways of Responding to ‘Troubles’: Bernard MacLaverty’s Use of the Blues and the Western in Cal

 

The Commitments, a novel by Roddy Doyle, features a group of unemployed young men from Dublin who want to start a blues band and seek help from a friend to manage them. The story focuses on the group as they overcome adverse economic conditions and find their place in society. Just as American blues artists were united in their struggle for equality through exploring rhythm and blues, the Dubliners bound together using colloquial language and their love of the blues to create a collective identity for themselves.

Blues Intro Page (previous)

Blues Influences (next)

Community Centers: 

The Correymeela Community is a community center in Ballycastle along the northern coast of County Antrim. Correymeela provides a residential space where a wide variety of groups are encouraged to stay for a period of time to embrace differences and experience open communication. Youth groups from areas of Northern Ireland, especially where violence is commonplace, and school groups of Catholic and Protestant children dealing with sectarian divides are two examples of the many groups Correymeela hosts. You can access their website here, and their page on the Ireland Funds site here.

The Tara Centre was founded in 1996 and is located in Omagh, Northern Ireland. This community center provides professional services, such as counselling and psychotherapy, along with alternative medicinal approaches. In addition to offering these services, the Tara Centre provides an environment for healing and education. You can access their website here, and their page on the Ireland Funds site here.

Like the other kinds of organizations we examined, community centers provide alternate spaces to the outside world. They also involve far more diverse approaches towards peace and reconciliation. One interesting aspect of these programs is that they tend to cater to adults far more than the other areas we focused on. While sports, schools, and arts projects seemed to often target children as their audience of interest, community centers tended to express interest in working with adults too. Further, the community centers seemed far more interested in addressing or confronting memories of the conflict, rather than rendering the conflict more peripheral like the other approaches we examined. Perhaps this strategy is chosen because adults are more likely to have direct memories of conflict which they may desire to confront, whereas arts, sports, and school programs attempt to make their changes through less direct, more subliminal means.

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Arts:

The Derry Playhouse Theatre involves young people in theatrical and educational productions. The Playhouse describes itself as “a self-help, grass roots, bottom-up community development project which is people center with charitable status”. We think The Playhouse provides a vehicle by which to explore relationships without an emphasis on background. Many integrated schools involve art in their curriculum as do community centers, but The Playhouse primarily focuses on art. To learn more about the Derry Playhouse Theatre, you can visit their website here or look at their page on the Ireland Funds website here.

Springboard, established in 1992, is an organization which strives for cross-community unity. One of their projects we focused on was their Art in Diversity Project, and initiative funded by the Ireland Funds.  The Art in Diversity Project involved over 100 children, who attended workshops for the debate and reflection over the subject of peace. The children’s ideas were incorporated into almost 700 images representing peace, conflict and images of parts of Northern Ireland. Then, these images were used in the construction of a 10ft x 50ft peace mural. To learn more about Springboard, you can access their website here or go to their page on the Ireland Funds site here.

Many of the projects we examined utilized art as a primary focus. Though programs such as The Derry Playhouse were centered around theater, dance, and other performance arts, many other programs, including schools and community centers, discuss the presence and importance of art-based activities. Similar to the way in which sports reassign identity in the form of teams and provide artificial goals and rules to focus on, we believe the art projects may make an analogous move. Particularly when they are centered around group activity, these programs require participants to work towards arbitrary goals of design and construction.

In the case of the theater or dance, the idea of playing a part, or being someone else functions in the same manner as becoming part of a ‘team’. ‘Playing’ someone else asks individuals to imagine they are not who they are – in order to do so, individuals may need to encounter the personal biases and viewpoints the characters they play hold, and, in turn, imagine how that person might believe those things. In other words, by playing parts, individuals are asked to confront subjectivity.

 

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School: Traditionally in Northern Ireland, children were educated according to religious denomination, which reinforces boundaries between groups of people. The Integrated Education and Cranmore Integrated Primary School integrate Catholic and Protestant children who would otherwise not experience any interaction with one another.

Integrated Education, known officially as the Northern Ireland Council for Integration Education or NICIE, is an organization comprising of 62 integrated schools attended by over 16,000 students. Integrated Education defines the integration of education in Ireland: ‘Education together in a school of children and young people drawn mainly from the Protestant and Catholic traditions, with the aim of providing for them an excellent education that gives recognition to and promotes the expression of these two main traditions. The integrated school, while essentially Christian in character, welcomes those of all faiths and none, and seeks to promote the worth and self-esteem of pupils, parents, staff, governors and all who are affected by the presence of the school in the community. The core aim is to provide children and young people with a caring and enhanced educational experience thus empowering them as individuals to affect positive change in a shared society.’ Both of these integrated educational institutions bring together children from different backgrounds to learn and play together. You can access the NICIE website here, and their page of the Ireland Funds site here.

The Cranmore Integrated Primary School focuses on integrating students of all religious backgrounds and also students with special needs. This approach encourages the students to not only work in a classroom setting, but also through the informal interactions that schools also foster. You can access Cranmore Intergrated Primary School’s website here, and their page of the Ireland Funds site here.

Like the other kinds of programs we have examined, schools create artificial spaces by having different rules, restrictions, and requirements. By placing children from different backgrounds in a context where they are not only required to share the same space, but also to interact in classroom settings with rules about seating, speaking, homework, etc., these programs create a ‘space’ that does not give preference to one denomination over another, but rather values them equally. In one sense schools feel real in that for kids they are spaces experienced daily where there is both validation and punishment, but in another sense they function as a 3rd space in that they create their own reality. This approach seems to fit our concepts about artificiality and the creation of an alternative space.

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