For two people who are basically fairly conservative (personally, not necessarily politically), cautious, risk-averse, middle-of-the-road folks, Suzie and I often find ourselves in unusually odd, slightly dangerous-seeming places during our travels sometimes. Last night was one of those, when we found ourselves in a hot, packed gymnasium in West Belfast with 300 or 400 highly partisan supporters of what was (and maybe is, I’m still learning this) the Irish Republican Army to hear a presentation by four of the men who were involved in what they called the “Great Escape” — the escape from Belfast’s Maze prison by 38 IRA inmates in September 1983. The prison, which was considered one of the most secure in Western Europe, had been the site of the infamous hunger strike in 1981 that resulted in the deaths of 10 IRA inmates.
Before beginning, I note for anyone having a particular personal interest in the conflict in Northern Ireland over the past 40 years that I have no personal favoritism or “rooting interest” for either side in the conflict, and, indeed, am somewhat embarrassed to say (as a political junkie) that I don’t even really know much about it (although I intend to learn more). So my description of the evening that follows should be taken by anyone having such a personal interest with that in mind, and not as a commentary on the righteousness or culpability of any of the participants in the conflict.
As noted in the previous post, this event was suggested to us by our home exchange partner, who suggested it because he knew of my interest in politics. It was described as a “lecture” or a “talk,” although, as you’ll see, it was much more than that.
But the adventure begins not with politics, but with what we’ve come to refer to as “The Sat-Nav Lady.” The Sat-Nav Lady is the voice that comes out of the GPS device that our exchange partner let us use (he calls it the “sat-nav”) along with the car. Last night was the first time we put the Sat-Nav Lady to the test. Her mission: Take us from Greenisland to the Whiterock Leisure Center in Belfast. We didn’t have an address for the leisure center, but we did have the postal code, which we were told would also work, so we put that into the GPS device and set out in a fairly heavy rain.
The Sat-Nav Lady did a fairly good job, it seemed to me, up until the point it took us off the freeway sooner than I expected, and into the middle of an older part of Belfast. Here we noticed something very unusual; although private houses and businesses seemed very neat, orderly, and well-maintained, most public buildings, especially police stations, looked like concentration camps, surrounded by high fences topped with serious amounts of barbed and piked wire. This created a very odd dissonant effect, warning of danger in a place that seemed perfectly peacable. We continue to follow the Sat-Nav Lady’s directions all the way, finally driving slightly uphill next to an immense cemetary that was also ‘protected’ by a fence and barbed wire. When the cemetary ended, the Sat-Nav lady told us to take a left, which we did. We found ourself on a mean-looking street, a fence and barbed wire to the left, the street itself intermittently littered with chunks and bits of concrete, which we had to drive around. It was at this time that the Sat Nav Lady informed us that we had reached our destination. Not good. We drove a bit further into a private housing project, and sat in the parking lot wondering whether we should program the Sat-Nav Lady to take us home. But Suzie, bless her and her stick-to-it-tive-ness, got out of the car and asked for help, and we learned that the Whiterock Leisure Center was simply on the next street down the hill.
When we arrived at that location, we were again struck by the fence and barbed-wire look, which made us wonder why, exactly, you would need to so heavily protect what was basically a pool and gymnasium. We also noticed that although it was 6:45 and the lecture was scheduled for 7, there were almost no cars in the parking lot, so few, in fact, that we questioned whether we were in the right spot. But when we went to the main entrance, we noticed that there were a handful of people standing and waiting (including an elderly gentleman in a Che Guevara t-shirt), so we concluded that we were.
The next unusual thing we noticed were several large men dressed in white collared dress shirts that seemed to be operating as security. They kept walking up to the main entrance and looking at the people waiting. We waited until a little before 7, and after we paid 7 pounds each for admission and were checked out more closely by the white-shirted men, they let us into the gymnasium where the event was to be held. It was a large, brick-walled gym with high ceiling consisting mostly of skylights, which let in a fair amount of natural light, even though it was cloudy and raining. The facility seemed too large for the small number of people that seemed to be wanting to attend. On the south side of the gym, there was a full bar set up, with several beers on tap, in addition to wine, liquor, and bottled beer. (I believe that this might increase the attendance at lectures in the U.S.) Most of those entering the facility made a quick left turn and immediately entered the line for the bar.
Suzie and I sat at a table near the center of the gym. Ahead of us was a small raised stage, upon which were four chairs, an Irish flag, and several other flags that I did not recognize. On the apron of the small stage were hung posters for the event, which looked like this:
On the walls above and to the left and right of the stage were photocopied pictures (mug shots, really) of the 38 men who had made the “Great Escape,” arranged in an “H7” pattern on one side (H7 being the cell block where many of the IRA prisoners were held) and “1983” (I believe, although I could be wrong about this), the year of the escape, on the other.
Suzie and I waited for the lecture to begin.
And we waited.
And we waited.
And we waited.
Finally, at about 7:30, the people who were providing the public address system arrived and started to set up.
We waited some more.
About 7:50, some men brought in some spotlights and started to set them up. Someone brought in a table and set it on the stage, then took it off the stage in a few minutes. Chairs were arranged and rearranged on the stage.
At about 8:15, a man arrived with a computer, a projector, and a screen. He proceeded to set up everything in order to present Powerpoint slides. The screen went up, but the picture was too small, so the screen was taken down, the table on which the projector had been placed pulled back, and projector was shown directly onto the wall.
I commented to Suzie that if this was the way the IRA conducted all their operations, it was a wonder they had any success at all.
At 8:30 the event still had not started. But starting at about 7:45, people had started entering into the hall in larger and larger numbers (apparently aware that a 7 pm scheduled time meant an 8:30 pm actual start). By 8:40, when the event finally did commence, the hall was packed, and people were continuing to enter. Most of them were drinking, and drinking a fair amount. Due to the large line for the bar (which never shortened, it seemed), people were coming away from the bar with as many beers as they could carry with them, usually three or four. I started to wonder what the fire marshal would think of the situation, and to be glad that the white-shirted security men had given everyone a good look-over before allowing them to enter.
Seated next to us on our left was a group of three very nice men, two middle-aged, one older. The older man, who was very distinguished, with almost movie-star good looks, looked straight at me shortly after he sat down and said, very earnestly, in a lilting Irish accent, “I know you from somewhere, don’t I? I know I’ve seen you somewhere before.” Suzie told him that was unlikely, unless he spent a lot of time in California. To our right we had worse luck: two women in their late 30’s, who were fully pissed (as the Brits say) when the arrived at the event, and who each carried four bottles of beer with them to the table for maintenance purposes. They were both past their prime but didn’t seem to realize it; the most obnoxious of the two was a bleach blond with too much makeup, who had squeezed into a short black dress that perhaps had fit well at some point before she’d put on the last fifteen pounds. They were hard, sorry characters, and spent the rest of the evening mostly talking loudly to one another about matters having nothing to do with what the speaker was saying.
The event started when a woman took the stage. After a few introductory remarks, she told everyone to rise for the playing of what I assume was the Irish national anthem. The crowd was silent and solemn, and a few people sang along. Finally the “lecture” began.
At this point, we were in for a real shock, for so depending upon which of the four speakers was talking at the time, I would estimate we understood anywhere from 20% to 80% of what was said, due to the strength of the Irish accents. Indeed, there was one of the speakers who was almost incomprehensible to us … he was speaking English, but it seemed to be some sort of dialect, and try as hard as we could, we were barely able to pick out individual words every now and then. As I said, this was a real shock to us. I always assumed that as a native English speaker, I had a natural ability to hear and tease out English words, even when listening to speakers having an accent. But we found ourselves at time wholly unable to follow what was being said, even though it was being spoken in our native language. A very odd experience (although, as Suzie notes, some of it also had to do with the poor sound system and the bad acoustics in the gym).
The story itself was riveting — the details of how the escape was planned and carried out. A fascinating story involving smuggling guns into the prison, of the IRA inmates changing their behavior several months ahead of the break to lessen the resistance of the guards, of intricately-timed plans to neutralize all the guards in the cell block and hijack a truck to drive outside of the main gate. The men telling the story were hilarious at times, telling the story in a very human way. The plan almost succeeded completely, but was derailed at the end by the unlucky fact that the escapees arrived at the last important point at the very time that the prison guards were changing shifts, which meant that the escapees faced double the guards they were expecting. As a result, they never managed to get the truck out of the prison, and were forced to flee on foot. Most were captured shortly after the escape. (Accounts of the escape can be found here, here, and here.)
Sitting and listening to the presentation, and the reaction of the crowd, it became apparent that this was not really a “lecture” or a “presentation,” but more a political event. The crowd was clearly highly partisan; this was not a detached examination of the escape, it was a celebration of the event and of the men who pulled it off. Their cheers and laughs were boisterous; several times other escapees who were in the room were pointed out, each given a hearty cheer. But each time I felt myself getting caught up in the partisanship, I thought — these men killed a guard during their escape, and wounded several others, and were in prison presumably because, whatever the validity of their cause, they engaged in violent acts. I wondered, ‘What would the family of the slain guard think of this celebration?’
And that started me thinking about what drove these men to join the IRA, to take up arms, to resort to violence. Suzie and I discussed this while driving back home, and she got it right, I think: Constant oppression, poverty, and lack of opportunity will drive otherwise peaceable people to violent acts. Reading a bit about Irish history since I’ve been here, the Irish Catholics have suffered all those things through their history. Indeed, after reading that history, and sitting through the event on Saturday, the remarkable thing may be that there now exists a period of peace. In fact, several of the escapees have become politicians, participating in the power-sharing arrangement that now exists in Northern Ireland (a fact that was rather sarcastically thrown at them several times during the event).
It also seemed at times during the event like what was being celebrated was an entire time that had since passed, like old hippies recounting the battles of the late ’60s. In fact, it was noticable that most of the attendees were middle-aged or older; the number of young people was quite small. But at other times, there was real passion in the room, a real sense that there was a battle still to be fought. No doubt this was fueled in part by the drinking, and in part by the fact that the gym was tightly packed, but beyond that there was a real sense of shared suffering and common purpose.
We left before the end, because we’d left the boys home alone, and because I wanted to get back before dark. Coming out of the leisure center, there was a small group of young people that made an obscene remark about Catholics as we walked by. As the Sat-Nav Lady directed us home through the streets of West Belfast, we felt slightly less safe than we did a few hours before.
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