A Very Funny Place: Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene

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A VERY

FUNNY PLACE

Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene

A Master Thesis by Dennis van der Pligt

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

Program: Human Geography (Conflicts, Territories and Identities) MSc, Radboud University Nijmegen Instructor: Dr. Olivier T. Kramsch

Student: Dennis van der Pligt, s4133625 E-mail: dennisvanderpligt@live.nl Phone number: +31 6 1227 3002

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“IT WAS OLD BUT IT WAS BEAUTIFUL AND ITS COLOURS THEY WERE FINE” blared among the otherwise quiet student dorm buildings of Hoogeveldt. The COVID-19 crisis had kept many away from Nijmegen. Besides, it was summer. A lone exchange student looked up, but clearly did not seem to understand the music. Neither did I. Or rather: I couldn’t figure out why it was playing here, and so absurdly loud, and not “…AT DERRY, AUGHRIM, ENNISKILLEN AND THE BOYNE”, or something like that. What the heck. Nevertheless there was an odd beauty to it. Not so much the song itself or the production values of this particular version, but that it was so out of context that hardly anyone could be offended or aroused. After all, “…THE SASH ME FATHER WORE!” is considered a sectarian song. A few days later in the middle of the night, a few neighbours of mine suddenly broke into singing the decidedly anti-sectarian composition Zombie. If anything, it proved that equalling the vocal capabilities of the late Dolores O’Riordan is tough, even under influence.

Anyhow. Cosmic balance restored, I guess.

Speaking of music related to Ireland, one of my personal favourites is The Man from

the Daily Mail. I suppose you can interpret it as a rebel song. My preference is to extract from

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

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

Although assumptions, interpretations and mistakes remain mine, I don’t have to answer that alone. I had the help of more than two dozen people who were willing to be interviewed by me, or as I prefer to say, to have a conversation with me. I hereby wish to thank them. I also wish to express gratitude towards my instructor at Radboud University, Olivier Kramsch, who somehow continued to put up with my somewhat chaotic and irregular communications, and who expanded my horizons every time we talked about this thesis; and to Liam Kennedy, who acted as my unofficial instructor when I visited Queen’s University Belfast in late 2019; and to my friend Jorn Bunk, who still pays for my fries “until you find a job for which you have to show your degree”; to Colm Wittenberg as well, a friend whose violin skills mask my limited capabilities on guitar. I want to thank my friend Jean Querelle, some of whose pictures I have used, and whom I visited when he lived in Belfast in 2018; and also my friend Noor de Kort for the discussions we have had about Dutch heritage of 1940-1949. Final thanks go to my girlfriend, Aaricia Kayzer, who took the trouble of reading parts of my thesis, has supported me throughout, and who lovingly held up the carrot of going on a holiday with me should I finish this work.

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I. Introduction

i. Research Question & Context

“You do know that this has been tried many times, right?”, curator Hugh Forrester asked me when I spoke to him for this research about a new Troubles museum (2019). The Northern Irish Troubles are a subject that museums sometimes awkwardly dance around, even though open-mindedly engaging with tough historical and political questions should ideally be a hallmark of democracies. Thus, in the main, I’m posing the following question: how do the museum scenes in Belfast and Londonderry, depicting modern violent conflict, relate to the idea of a new Troubles museum? This relation is reciprocal and leads to two other questions. How does the museum scene in Belfast and Londonderry position themselves towards the idea of a new museum for the Troubles? Additionally, what is the effect of such an idea on the existing museum scene, and as such on the wider community in general? As we will see, Northern Ireland still suffers cultural isolation. The world outside that country, the island of Ireland and the United Kingdom is reduced to simplicities and often understood through local lenses by its inhabitants. To further upset the debate, inspire new opinions and widen the horizon of possibilities, I will offer a transnational view. This thesis will also compare the depiction of war in, mainly, a Groesbeek museum (the Netherlands) with those in Northern Ireland. In Northern Ireland, the attention of visitors is split between the Troubles and the world wars. In the Netherlands, however, most public history of war revolves around the Nazi occupation of 1940-1945. These two regions are sufficiently alike to compare them. Both saw modern violence on their territories, and both experienced the world wars. The latter they did in their own social and political context, therefore a comparison would indicate particularities in public history. The Irish-British experience of the world wars is especially particular and insular, and hardly touches on what they meant for millions on the continent. Additionally both Northern Ireland and the Netherlands experience(d) segregation along religious lines, and have therefore already been compared to each other. An examination of world war exhibitions is used to break

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

A Troubles museum remains a relevant topic to discuss, in part because there is no such place and such efforts fail because of political contentiousness. Northern Ireland is indeed still coping with the conflict of the 1960s-1990s. Without having experienced it themselves, a post-Good Friday Agreement (GFA) generation is coming of age seeking to build a future on the societal rubble of the Troubles. With this 1998 treaty, most direct political violence ended. Irredentist claims of Irish unification or a unionist Ulster changed from being explicit political objectives assumed to be sacral, into one of many potential constitutional setups. Popular support for constitutional change is acknowledged to be unknown for the moment, as only by referendum in both Ireland and Northern Ireland can these polities be joined (Bew, Gibbon, & Patterson, 2002 (1995)). The Belfast government was dead-locked through the break-down of power-sharing between Sinn Féin and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in 2017. These Irish republicans and Ulster British loyalists entered new battlegrounds due to Brexit. The former are more inclined to European cooperation than the latter, yet used to run campaigns with a traditional nationalist Eurosceptic message (Murphy M. C., 2020). Now, Sinn Féin claims that stability in ‘the North’ can only be guaranteed if the region receives a special status within the borders of the EU, suggesting that the Irish nation can only be at peace when they are sufficiently united (Sinn Féin, 2016). During this research Brexit remained to be fully resolved, and Westminster sought to further that process by calling a general election for December 12, 2019. A Conservative majority in parliament enabled the UK to leave the EU as of January 31, 2020. That is not the end of it: negotiations are in progress. Since the same month, the Northern Ireland Assembly was running again. Yet, whether this will be remembered as the start of real cooperation or a brittle truce between Sinn Féin and the DUP remains to be seen.

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

ii. A New Troubles Museum?

Asserting a new general museum was possible and required, Kennedy recognised the opportunity technology provides to move beyond traditional glass displays. Engaging with history could and should be made immersive and multi-facetted. “[P]atrolling eerie, darkened terraced streets late at night, to ambush sites and even car-bomb explosions” could be ‘relived’, perhaps making it the closest experience to the real thing. “Through the medium of public history, Northern Ireland can speak both to its own divided self and to a wider world in terms of peace and reconciliation”, Kennedy wrote, seeing a chance to promote public discussion on the conflict’s causes, experiences and consequences in a shared space (Kennedy, 2018). True, it can be too overwhelming for many to be confronted with violent scenes. Kennedy later related to me that that indeed could be too much, but perhaps visitors should have the option (2019).

On the contrary, historian John Wilson Foster found the idea too dangerous. While he could be right to point out that “Troubles fatigue” might prevent many to buy a ticket for a Troubles museum, as alternative he offers very little. Also true is his claim that there are places

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

Two leading figures of National Museums Northern Ireland, Kathryn Thomson and William Blair spoke out in favour of a new museum. Thomson called it a “safe place to explore difficult questions”. This raises the issue of how existing museums invite visitors to engage with tough historical and political problems, and whether they stimulate questioning at all. Blair acknowledged that objects always carry power with them, the crucial question is how you frame them. Like Kennedy, they concede that indeed one has to be very careful in letting the public engage with artefacts invoking sensitive narratives (Meredith, 2018).

iii. Other Projects: The Military, Society & Art

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

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unionists living close to each other” (Hart, 2019b) (Hart, 2019a). A similar issue was raised by photographer and archivist Frankie Quinn: “Only recently has it become more public that the Ministry of Defence had a huge influence on urban planning.” To build on Hart’s ideas, one could open up discussions on how the particular lay-out of the Falls Road areas was, at first, terrible to control for security forces.

Quinn is a leading figure of the Belfast Archive Project. This organisation focusses on documentary photography as opposed to press photography. Popular journalism often focusses on the daily particular and epic, whereas documentary photography offers a view of the daily ordinary and systemic. “These pictures of the protestant working class people show abject poverty. And still they have a picture of the Queen in their living room. How they can relate to her is beyond me”. Showing imagery of the protestant and catholic lower strata could stress their shared economic circumstances, rather than their opposition to each other. Indeed, the images literary offer a glimpse into the intimate spaces that were loyalist homes. “It’s history, it’s people’s history”. One of Quinn’s own personal long-running projects has centred on the peace walls. These could give a visual element to the social conflict that played out between Belfast’s inhabitants. Quinn’s opinions shine through in his work. His series on Orange Order manifestations was made in part to “subvert it” (Quinn, 2019).

But the photographs he himself made or with which Quinn works are still close to material reality. More explicitly personal, interpretative and therefore opining is the realm of visual arts. Former Belfast City Councillor Jeff Dudgeon proposed an art gallery to tell the story of the Troubles (2019). When I spoke to her, artist Gail Ritchie was in the early stages of developing a work of art or monument that seeks to commemorate all the fatalities of the Troubles. One creative challenge is, of course, how to visualise nearly 4.000 people. Secondly, should they be visualised in an equal manner? Will not their individuality be lost to a significant degree? Do we understand the pain of the Troubles to a satisfactory degree with such a piece

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of art? Although ideally an artist has individual freedom, how will all this sit with Northern Ireland’s audiences? (Ritchie, 2019).

Many themes emerged above: the depiction of violence in exhibitions; the Troubles narrative as connecting lesson both within and without Northern Ireland; the existence of Troubles exhibitions in more local environments; the interplay between local, regional, national and international in a more abstract sense; the safe space a museum could and/or should be; objects on display in a museum; the interaction between visitors among themselves, the museum and individual objects.

Hereafter, in Chapter II, I will put these themes in a theoretical framework. Chapter III will consist of a short history of the Troubles. It is imperative to know what is to be captured in a museum. Moreover, the chapter serves to indicate what kind of narratives remain submerged. Chapter IV will contain an examination of museum depictions of the Troubles. Chapter V is a comparison between Ulster British, Dutch and (Northern and Southern) Irish treatments of world war history. Its aim is to lay bare particularities of these different public interpretations of what could be called the same event. Furthermore, those in Northern Ireland with living memory of the Second World War lived through the Troubles as well. Concluding remarks will be made in Chapter VI. Hugh Forrester is right: Troubles exhibitions have been tried, and some lacked success. But older generations should let go of the notion that because they failed at something, it is impossible.

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II. Theories & Methods

In the first section of this chapter, I will discuss basic definitions of a ‘museum’, ‘history’ and ‘heritage’. Museums create and spread certain historic narratives, which I will further explain in the second section. These histories create imagined geographies. This term and its father will be further discussed below (Said, 2003 (1978)). As a result, images and opinions take hold within certain social groups. By imagining Ireland-the-island as belonging to an ‘ancient’ Irish people, the Ulster British are easily excluded from a place that is as much their place of birth, and vice versa. By museums we can gauge how this process of ‘othering’ happens. By extension, the ability of one people to cooperate or peacefully coexist with another can be determined. In the third section I will deepen the understanding of museums’ possibilities, and how they can have a unifying and inclusive effect on a divided society as Northern Ireland’s. Neil Postman argued that museums are ever-changing spaces of dialogue, and primarily should exhibit voices that counter established opinions (2005 (1994)). To build upon his message, we could say that that ismuch like historians do in historiographic debates. By surveying what the current conflict museum scene of Northern Ireland depicts and what its implications are, this thesis aims to answer the question of what kind of Troubles exhibition Northern Ireland lacks, and what kind of museums it needs.

i. Basic Definitions

To further breakdown the main question it must be established what is meant by Northern Ireland’s museum sector in this thesis. For the current purposes, it consists of i) physical museum exhibitions in existence, and ii) the people that shape, propose, design, curate, manage, comment on them, and partook in activities that revolved around museums, exhibitions or artefacts. Some twenty such people have been interviewed, as well as a handful of people whose life was affected by the Troubles, though who are not necessarily linked to museums. Additionally, some public meetings were observed in which history occupied a central role.

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

Museums present an interpretation of the past, and thus present its visitors with a history and perhaps even a people’s heritage. Explicitly or not, this is always a subjective construct. To understand the term heritage, we must thus first pin down ‘history’ and the ‘past’. The past is all physical and mental realities that chronologically lie behind us. What we call historical sources and artefacts are gateways to those realities. History or historical narratives are that which someone makes of the past. Those stories are in part based on historical sources and artefacts, but gaps are filled in with assumptions that often have a basis in present-day political desires and culture. For the purpose of this thesis, heritage are those histories which an individual, a community or an entire society finds important. Therefore, society is prone to bestow those histories onto the next generation in the expectation that they will pass it on.

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

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did live through 1914-1918, since we deny that the decades drudge on and change our society. Every generation has dealt with the losses of the Great War in its own way, as it looked at it from its own circumstances (Aldridge, 2014). Second, it blurs how we interpret the present-day progeny of the WWI generations. When presenting a static and timeless 1914-1918, we run the risk of projecting those situations too much on today’s affairs. But whatever the circumstances, it is always, somehow, political (Edwards, 2018). In the case of the Troubles a static understanding has emerged: it is often presented as a struggle between ‘green’ and ‘orange’, sometimes with the British state as third party. In addition, the Troubles are often seen as just another bout in the contest between Irishness and Englishness/Britishness, presumed to be ongoing for centuries, as for instance shown by Buckley (2002).

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

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Rather than an ongoing struggle that largely stays the same, Jonathan Mattison, curator at the Museum of Orange History in Belfast, explained that during the 1798 rising, his protestant ancestors fought each other (Mattison, 2019). The rebels’ leadership consisted of middle-class, revolutionary United Irishmen from Presbyterian backgrounds. However, its followers included catholic Defenders, a sectarian organisation whose main interest lay with contra-harassing their protestant counterparts, like the Peep o’ Day Boys. Since a few decades before the rebellion, catholics were actively recruited into the military establishment. Especially the newly raised militia units used to defend the island from threats within and without included many catholics (Bartlett, 1996, pp. 265-268). These regiments in particular could very much be a theme to be touched upon in an all-Ireland military museum, as Andy Hart proposes: “It could be used to show the tradition of militia, of local service, which the UDR [Ulster Defence Regiment] continued during the Troubles”. Somewhat contrary to the above described viewpoints of an invading Britain, Hart’s understanding is that all Ireland’s conflicts are essentially civil wars. But, in addition, a submerged notion he wishes to reveal is the many times British and Irish people fought on the same side, for the same ideals. One could indeed think of the world war era (Hart, 2019b). Controversial no doubt, but UN missions too could be thrown in the mix. A volunteer at the Irish Republican History Museum in Belfast argued against static ‘England vs. Ireland’ history as well. “The loyalists celebrate the Battle of the Boyne. William [III] killed a lot of Irish people. But so did James [II].” With this anti-monarchist interpretation, he is opposing the Provisional’s reading above, even though both him and the ex-PIRA member identify as republicans.

Interpretations of the past and identities arising from it are diverse and forever changing. New political and generational circumstances are being established, and thus society and its heritage reconfigure themselves, each other and their relationships. Thus, heritage is indeed a morphing entity, as is also recognised by Crooke & Maguire (2018).

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Through an examination of public history in the form of museums, we can establish the geography and community people identify with. In other words: how far exactly do Northern Ireland’s gazes stretch beyond the person, the neighbourhood, region and perhaps across its constitutional borders, and how? In what manner exactly do they thus feel part of a greater imagined community beyond the self? These questions are important since their answers could serve as a yardstick for the capacity of both the Irish and British for cross-divide understanding and multi-ethnic cooperation within Northern Ireland and beyond it. Also, it shows what kind of story-telling resonates with people in Northern Ireland, and which cause divisive political narratives. A museum could very explicitly show a miniature depiction of the battle at the river Boyne (1690) like the Museum of Orange Heritage in Belfast does. Drawing attention to the crossing of the river, an event of great tactical and symbolic value, this object makes it important that one side won, and the other lost; or, in the Orange Order loyalist version, that protestant freedom overcame catholic tyranny. The museum exhibits nineteenth-century drums that were used in marches predating the present-day ones, celebrating the engagement.

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

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Additionally, maps and pictures from around the world show places around the world where Orange Order lodges have been established. In doing so, it suggests a feeling of community and continuity that stretches through time and across countries. It imagines a coherent history and a geography of friendly orange territory.

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

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

Inferno. Traditional museums not only existed for elites to understand, but especially for them

to educate, mesmerise and thus control the wider public. Like public schooling systems and mass conscription did with great force, museums were tools to dragoon individuals into nineteenth-century nations. Still, in a similar spirit like Dante, William Shakespeare wrote

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

Second, in Orientalism Said only describes how by extension the West defined itself while describing the empirically unknown Orient. In Northern Ireland’s museums, the Irish and British and others more emphatically imagine themselves directly rather than through an Other. Although not readily as imperialising entity, the nationalist Irish have had their own Orientalist tropes. Starting as an intellectual movement around 1800, it focussed on the supposed links between Irish round towers and Indian architecture, albeit that the former happened on a smaller and local scale. Chinese and Gaelic languages were seen as related, and geographically these connections were made by the Phoenicians. Ironically, however, Irish intellectuals too mainly understood the Orient through British imperial sources. The English themselves at times used similar tropes for the Irish as they did for Oriental peoples: superstitious, illiterate, lazy, unorganised, aggressive and warlike, obedient follower at best. In the end, Orientalist tropes were both used to describe the Irish as ancient nation, but also to legitimise imperial rule over the island (Lennon, 2003).

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Although its contents are always contested, every modern state invents a history for its nation to make sense of itself, as Eric Hobsbawm & Terence Ranger showed (1983). It would be impossible to cooperate with millions of people without some degree of shared notion of Britishness, Irishness and so on. Yet, in this process of imagining the present-day nations, we disturb notions about the past. These ideas are abused and misused, often with violent result. In his Vanished Kingdoms Norman Davies makes two important points. His first point is that we forget that the past was filled with states, peoples and identity markers that are no longer around. When exactly a group of individuals saw each other as a unified ethnic group for the first time (‘ethnogenesis’) is subject of debate. Or rather, we have no idea whether a people like the early medieval Scotti from the island of ‘Hibernia’ identified as such: up to the sixth century, the Romano-British wrote their history. Over the centuries thereafter, ‘Scot’ began to apply to every noble north of Hadrian’s Wall, regardless of Gaelic, Anglic or Frankish ancestry or language. And when tartan was invented, or reinvented, all from the Highlands and Lowlands and many in Ulster and North America could claim membership of that ethnicity. As a rule of thumb, therefore, the stronger a nationalism, the lower the respect for the problem of ethnogenesis. Since mass nationalism pushed away local identities and personal loyalties, this is extremely ironic. Nationalists have a tendency to see their sense of nation as a perpetual truth. But in reality they are transient, which is Davies’s second major point. Like organisms, state structures and ideas of nation eventually die. A less catastrophist reading would be that some states do not really experience a clear downfall, but morph into a new political body, unrecognisable from what came before. Five causes of death are identified: “implosion, conquest, merger, liquidation and ‘infant mortality’” (Davies, 2012 (2011), pp. 4, 37, 52-53, 640-649, 732). Mental merging between the peoples of Ireland, Scotland and England hardly occurred. Instead, they all possess a strong sense of separatism in relation to other nations. By infant mortality Davies mainly meant states such as the one-day Rusyn Republic of 1939. One could also think of the 1931 Spanish Republic. Although not completely innocent itself, it was

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so violently butchered by Francoism and fascism (Graham, 2005). In post-colonial settings too stillborn states can be found. Dutch imperial overlords claimed to foster an emancipating New Guinea in 1949-1962. A colonialist regime was swapped for a modernist, authoritarian and nationalist one after a short military conflict with the Republic of Indonesia. The Indonesians then black-mailed the West-Papuan representatives of the extremely short-lived country into full annexation by the republic (Hofman, 2018).

It is a description that would fit in with Irish nationalist thinking. Due to Anglo-British interference, the reasoning goes, Ireland had never evolved into a modern nation state by the early twentieth century: one of Liam Kennedy’s overlapping reasons for the sense of victimhood that constitutes Irish national ideology. England/Britain has always been the singular, consistent oppressing Other, which in turn has led to a stacking of traumatic historic events: Bloody Sunday (1920/1921/1972 – whichever one) became an even more dramatic and tragic event because of Cromwell’s massacre of Drogheda and the Famine. Kennedy shows that the belief to rank among the most aggrieved people is false, but was fostered by “[t]he insularity of much Irish thought, and ignorance of conditions abroad ... and a lack of interest in other cultures, [which] meant that comparisons could be made with impunity” (Kennedy, 2016). I will chip away at that impunity in Chapter V.

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

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fared in a war brought with it the idea that from Orkney to Dover, individuals had the same experience of that text. Davies and Anderson forcefully show that the pre-modern era is littered with identity markers other than present nations. Although in the main historians should steer clear of it, some counterfactual thinking explains the point: had the printing press been invented before the late middle ages, would Connacht rather than Ireland have been the primary modern node of identification? Would it, under an earlier emergence of capitalism become the main market zone in which people would begin to share economic news? To Anderson, nations did not lie dormant awaiting to awaken. Instead, they were never there, only to be invented (Anderson, 2016 (1983)).

By focussing mostly on states instead of a literature thread, Davies differs from Said teleologically: around 937 “England was no more inevitable than Scotland was, and different turns could have been taken at every step of the way” (Davies, 2012 (2011), p. 73). Said’s entire point is about the millennia-old consistency of degrading the Orient. But while states die pretty easily by violence and the like, one literary critic wrote that “[l]iterature is not a weapon that can be captured ... No writing remains in the exclusive control of anyone from the moment it leaves the author’s hands” (Bates, 2008, p. 9). This means two things. Firstly, indeed, wide-spread patterns of thinking can be more resilient than any state or army. Therefore, I would argue, it becomes all the more urgent to break down the inward-looking and (self-)destructive cultural tendencies of the Irish and Ulster British, by offering more counternarratives. Secondly, as literature is so omnipresent, both the Irish and British could and should use each other’s stories to build mutual understanding. Anna Burns’s novel Milkman garnered quite the readership and offers a refreshing new take on Northern Ireland’s conflict experience. Its main character suffers the unwanted sexual interest of a man, who abuses his position of power in a paramilitary organisation. Even those who did not care for green and orange ideologies had to deal with the consequences of wartime at the most individual level (Burns, 2018). Although an

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

iii. Sharing Powers, Museums & Identity

Shared identities as conflict resolution tool is known to Northern Ireland ever since the start of the peace process. These are said to be fostered through overlapping institutions like a shared parliament and cooperating ministers, a system known as consociationalism. Therefore the Netherlands has served as a model for Northern Ireland. Arend Lijphart, who coined the term, did indeed ground his argument mostly in Dutch socio-political organisation of 1918-1990. ‘Confessionals’, protestant and catholic parties, formed cabinets with either social-democratic progressives or neo-liberal conservatives. By 1980, moderate Christian-democrats of both major denominations formed into one party. After 1990, the landscape lost further rigidness, as for the first time social-democrats and liberals joined in government. Among politicians, enough trust existed to exercise pragmatic do ut des cooperation: ‘we get something, while accepting that you get something too’. On the ground, corresponding civil societies existed, separate from each other. Although it has lost much of its meaning, to this day many sport clubs in Dutch Brabant carry “Roman Catholic” in their name. The same is true for national radio and television stations (Lijphart, 1990 (1967)).

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

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European Parliament offers one such opportunity, while the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973 failed to do so. Then, only an all-Ireland body was guaranteed, and no similar British one (Williams & Jesse, 2001, pp. 572, 577-578, 585-586). The GFA partly addressed this problem in a constitutional and high political sense. However, putting the sharing of identity in a treaty is one thing, securing that it trickles down into the minds of the majority, another.

Notwithstanding travelling exhibitions, museums are tied to a physical spot, but can still change their stories more rapidly than Shakespeares and Dantes. Especially when compared to old, authoritative and established literature, their artefacts can more directly invite a greater public and provide more stimuli than big letter-filled tomes. Museums, therefore, offer part of the solution to the problem of elitist consociationalism and high culture. In that case, rather than top-down storytelling, they should invite visitors to partake in narrative creation and offer ways to do that responsibly with the aid of trained historians and other experts. However, although necessary to know that museums “collect, document, preserve, exhibit and interpret”, Gaynor Kavanagh argued that defining the term ‘museum’ is but a small step in understanding what they are and do. Of greater importance is to unravel their politics and worldviews (2005 (1994)).

While analysing several museums in Northern Ireland, the theory of Pierre Nora’s lieux

de mémoires is of use. Although it is a country especially keen on mixing history, memory and

politics, in principle history is not more important in one place than it is in another. Nora distinguished memory-history from critical history. Critical history is the practice of trying to know the past, which sparks sincere debate about what happened, how it did and why. Memory-history and memorialisation resides exclusively in the present and revolves around the people who commemorate, albeit with references to the past. The latter practice is often tied to a specific object grounded in a particular place, but an immaterial phenomenon can be a lieu de

mémoire as well (Nora, 1989). Despite their own biases, trained historians serve as opposites

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discourse in Ireland is often grounded in historical argument (Walker, 2019, pp. 14-24). Therefore it is right to ask whether for the moment Northern Ireland’s museums are either places of critical history, or of memory-history.

Collective memories are readily politicised, therefore it would be for critical historians in museums to offer a counterweight to ideologies that lack a firm basis in reality. When museums are done by politicians or overtly political people like the Maze/Long Kesh (MLK) project, they easily fail. During the Troubles, the MLK housed republican and loyalist prisoners. The primacy seemed not to be on the experience of a majority of those who lived through, in this case, the Troubles. Instead, the discussions ended with unionists and loyalists pulling out, concerned that the site might become a tribute to terrorists. Sinn Féin politician and former inhabitant of the MLK Séanna Walsh went further and stated that “they don’t want us to tell our stories at all”. Walsh embraced that it was an opportunity for loyalist prisoners’ stories to be told too, and underlined its importance (2019). But there is some merit to the unionists’ and loyalists’ argument. No doubt the MLK is a site that resonates more with republicans, as heroism is attached to the 1981 hunger strikes and the 1983 mass break-out. But in the end, Northern Ireland families all dealt with the social consequences of missing a child, parent or sibling. Although less fit to be the stuff of legend, those are narratives that do deserve attention too, perhaps even more so. As we will see later, Ulster British memory of the world wars is a narrative bastion too. Like republican MLK stories, they are punctuated with a sense of heroism. While complete objectivity is a myth, terrorism and heroism are terms that lack even the slightest hint of it. These descriptions are subjective to the extent that they distract from narratives that can be shared by those who lived and worked in the MLK, or otherwise suffered its consequences.

Since the GFA important steps have already been made by organisations like the centrist and consciously inclusive Beyond the Troubles exhibition in the Ulster Museum, or the Museum of Free Derry. The latter might be cynically described as polemical, or, with a more

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positive ring to it, as emancipatory. Think also of Healing Through Remembrance. But even if that has not been the intended messages of these projects per se, Northern Ireland’s everyday political narrative is still too much clad in green and orange: narratives are easily politicised when they deal with the strictly political: museums might explain parties or politicians’ positions, or even promote a certain ideological standpoint, while exhibiting weapons, protest banners, leaflets, and pictures of public rallies or negotiations attended by leaders of several sides. This politicisation is not necessarily a problem generated by the phenomenon ‘museum’: it is hard to expect of them to engage with a political history and then leave out political developments. Instead, the mistake is often made outside museums, especially when a commentator actively refuses to engage with the narratives displayed. As such was the case with the Museum of Free Derry. Manager Adrian Kerr, though himself identifying as republican, explained his political views do not automatically transfer onto the museum. DUP politicians Arlene Foster and Gregory Campbell dubbed the place a Sinn Féin museum, according to Kerr (2019). Interestingly however, this particular establishment also suffered criticism from the community it sought to give a voice. The exhibition also mentions all British Army members who lost their lives in Derry during the early Troubles, listing them together with all other fatalities. Relatives of some of those killed wished their next-of-kin not to be listed together with state forces. Two of them staged a week-long sit-in protest. Compromising, the museum then offered a digital display in which clear categories can be selected (Steele, 2017). Thus, the community from which the Museum of Free Derry sprang knows internal debate, and is not homogeneous.

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

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

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III. Two Troubles: High Politics and People’s History

i. What Were the Troubles?

Asking how old the Troubles are ties into the question about what its causes were. Here, I will argue that the 1960s-1990s conflict was in the main a result of competing nationalisms that have their origins in the early twentieth century. Overly simplistic Irish nationalist readings often claim the twelfth-century Norman invasions was the starting point. However those conflicts were as much internal as they were proto-Anglo-Irish (Bartlett & Jeffery, 1996, pp. 26-115). Dynastic loyalties, ethnic-religious backgrounds, theological differences and debates on kingship and kinship lay at the heart of early modern ideological conflicts. The 1798 rising saw a mix-up of liberal ideologies and subsequent conservative reactions. Its historiography revolves around the question of whether Presbyterian liberalism or catholic sectarianism fuelled that revolt (Gibney, 2017, pp. 124-141). By the late nineteenth century Irish nationalism and unionism took their modern, militant, irredentist and primordialist form. It can be argued that those movements had their origins in the revolutionary 1790s. Yet, it was a hundred years later that politics turned into their entrenched twentieth-century versions, attaching themselves to their current respective religious constituents (Walker, 2019, pp. 174-190).

The Ulster British legitimise their hold on the North through their freedom of religion which they propagate was attained during the Williamite Wars (1688-1691). However, their Northern Ireland statelet that emerged out of the Irish War of Independence in 1921 blatantly came to favour protestants over catholics. At first still an identity that Ulstermen stuck to in the 1920s, Irishness was increasingly seen as a threat to the physical well-being of ‘Ulster’ (Kennedy, 2016, pp. 134-136) (Walker, 2019, pp. 106-120). One ancient claim was countered with another irredentism. In the words of historian Diarmaid Ferriter, “As a political philosophy, unionism did not mature, adapt or evolve beyond a defensive reaction to Irish nationalism and the belief that they were threatened by enemies both within (the Catholic minority) and without (the southern state)” (Ferriter, 2019, p. 35). Nevertheless, some of them

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tried. After all, the first two post-WWII decades were a period of rapprochement as the IRA border campaign (1956-1962) yielded no military success or popular support. In 1962 catholic and protestant workers ensembled to protest the impending closure of the Belfast aircraft factory. The Dublin and Belfast governments worked towards lower trade tariffs, and explored their options with regards to joining the EEC, softening the Irish border (Ferriter, 2019, pp. 68-71). But the reform-minded Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill met fierce resistance from more conservative unionists and Paisleyite loyalists.

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, it was at this moment that a period of détente ended, and the violence characterising the Troubles started. In 1966 O’Neill and the RUC linked the populist and demagogic reverend Ian Paisley and his rallies to loyalist paramilitaries. Some overlap even existed between the members of these organisations and their own police officers, the RUC leadership reckoned. More importantly, O’Neill and the RUC recognised these protestant extremists as the foremost threat to stability in Northern Ireland, and thus its image on the international stage and within the UK. Since it would halt the moderate unionists’ road to reform, it is reasonable to state that the Troubles started with an internal conflict within unionism. After all, unionism does seem able to evolve, but loyalist elements on its populist and conservative flank proved more influential (O'Callaghan & O'Donnell, 2006). The lower protestant strata were operating class politics against O’Neill’s elitism, but they did so along sectarian lines and an Ulster nationalist sense of self. It was strongest in protestant areas close to catholic ones. And those in particular were eventually starting to unite and become a potent political force (Bew, Gibbon, & Patterson, 2002 (1996), pp. 171-172).

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

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

Fair housing allocation, a balanced labour market and political equality for both catholic and protestant voters made up the Northern reformist agenda. When negotiating with the London establishment in November 1968, Nationalist Party leader Eddie McAteer indeed claimed that partition was for the moment unimportant, and Irish unification ‘only’ a long-term goal. As they shook Derry’s streets, the movement that he and others had mobilised suffered greatly from internal division. Or as historian Simon Prince wrote, “differences between reformers and revolutionaries began to pull the coalitions apart. ... Without the reforms that would enable [the former] to claim victory, [prominent Nationalist John] Hume and his allies would be cast aside by the movement that had swept them to prominence” (2018 (2007), pp. 173, 176-179).

Events like the Battle of the Bogside (1969), the start of internment (1971) and Bloody Sunday (1972) made Irish nationalists feel that British presence was the one reason for their misery. The RUC officer on the street could be harsh and authoritarian to all civil unrest, but a disdain of catholics made them choose the loyalist side too often. Imprisonment without charge of those with only negligible connections to paramilitary activity, did not stop it, but fuelled it. Even present-day unionists admit that this practice of internment was a huge political and military mistake. Instead of protesting on the street, many nationalists started to support the Provisional IRA, and a significant portion began to join that organisation. This traditionalist and more sectarian branch of militant republicanism had outmanned and outgunned their socialist counterpart, the Official IRA.

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

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

ii. Long Road to Peace

Both nationalist and unionist moderates of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) tried to build a strong middle ground with the Sunningdale Agreement (1973). It sought to reboot and reshape the Northern Ireland parliament so that nationalists would gain influence in it. Yet loyalists primarily understood it to be a step towards a united Ireland, as the agreement also provided for cross-border institutions. To counter them, they orchestrated loyalist worker strikes (Farrington, 2007). And while Richard Reed convincingly shows that in internal and outward-bound communications prominent UDA and UVF figures agreed sectarianism was holding Northern Ireland back, they remained unmovable about the border (Reed, 2011). As a result, it remains hard to believe that loyalist paramilitaries

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as well as their republican counterparts were bodies that facilitated peace. In the end, that was acquired by a more lenient take on the border. With the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985) the divide was temporarily ignored in a constitutional sense, as the Dublin and London governments bypassed unionist voices when they negotiated it. Militarily and in terms of police, they agreed that they would watch the border together for paramilitary activity (Ferriter, 2019, pp. 108-109).

The Troubles had started with an attempt at reform and an outcry for social emancipation, but turned into a vicious, irredentist war over a border. Eventually, part of the nationalist community that was involved, got submerged into the extremist republican desire to unite the North with the republic. But this extremism did not yield a peace. Instead, the IRA was unsuccessful militarily as it lost the ability to exert command and control, infiltrated by British security forces (Toolis, 2000 (1995), pp. 192-257). As the republican leadership could not stop them, actions like the revulsive Enniskillen bombing in 1987 occurred, and thus they could not influence control relations. Losing support among the nationalist community and the hope of ever defeating Ulster’s and Britain’s forces, Sinn Féin’s leadership and IRA command turned their energies mainly into forging an agreement during the late 1980s and 1990s. Although the British government had stopped a victory for the IRA perhaps as early as 1972, they too could not completely defeat them by force of arms (Smith & Neumann, 2005). It has also been argued that the republican leadership under Gerry Adams kept the number of IRA armed actions artificially low. Those republicans who still believed in political violence would remain part of the movement, while continuing to put some pressure on the opposition. But in the end, Adams was “renegotiating the Union” rather than bringing down the border, as quoted by Bew, Gibbon & Patterson (2002 (1996), pp. 232-233).

A wider range of political players ranging from the American president, the Dublin and London governments, and local parties created an environment for peace talks (Gibney, 2017, pp. 234-236). In the main, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 created governing bodies that

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allowed British and Irish politicians to cooperate on the local and bilateral level with regards to Northern Ireland. Unionists and Irish nationalists were obliged to share power in the statelet’s executive branch. Lastly, anyone born in Northern Ireland was allowed to identify as Irish, British or both. Thus they accepted that borders and identities are fluid and transitional things. Carried out by republicans dissatisfied with the new course the movement was taking, the post-GFA Omagh bomb (1998) was the bloodiest single attack of the Troubles. However, it ironically showed that armed struggle republicanism had lost its support basis among the Irish populace in the North. In addition, enough unionists were mobilised to relinquish some power for peace (Bew, Gibbon, & Patterson, 2002 (1996), p. 238). Therefore, although sectarian rivalries continue to exist, we have been in another period of détente for some two decades. Like the period prior to the tensions and violence of 1912-1923, or the time between partition and the Troubles, we can now take a leap towards stability and interethnic merging and unity.

iii. Where All the People Have Gone

The above history might be true, and its message important. However, parallel to the history of ‘great’ men pulling the strings run millions of little narratives of everyday Irish and British people. Many were caught in poor economic conditions, moved around in a social environment that was local and ethnically configured, and were prone to politicised narratives that narrowed down their political opinions and choices. The objective here is not to provide a full overview of eyewitness accounts, as such would be a huge task even for a multi-volume history of the Troubles. Instead, I seek to draw attention to a kind of history that, as we will see, might resonate with museum visitors. Instead of abstract ideas and events, eyewitness-based history opens up a route to see individuals in a holistic fashion. Rather than being presented as for example republican, individuals are restored to their complicated and multifaceted realities. Additionally, many who experienced the Troubles do not even fit those narrow political

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descriptions like ‘Orangeman’. Many people other than the politically active lived through the conflict. Also, I will shed light on the challenges that these ‘people’s history’ accounts present. Between an individual interviewee and the eventual reader there is a middleperson, the interviewer-author. In a similar fashion, museums are such a conduit of knowledge. The conduit is not a sterile tube, but has an impact on the story. Interviewees are aware of this, and wary of whom they talk to. As a result they heavily safeguard their memories and are likely to internalise it as the absolute truth. Many groups do this in Northern Ireland, and subsequently base their politics on it, either as follower or leader.

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

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

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

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

Certain military units like the paratroopers, the Scots Guards and the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders differ greatly from the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Unlike the UDR, they were trained for high-intensity situations of outright hostilities in a symmetric and conventional war (Burke, 2018).

The UDR was especially created to maintain order in a more police-like style, even though it took some time before they reached the professional level during the later stages of the Troubles. Stephen Herron’s history of the regiment is somewhat apologetic, but mainly offers an insight into the daily struggles of its men and women. Commissioned by the organisation that seeks to preserve the memory of the regiment, the book opens with a roll of honour. The UDR experience is mostly described in terms of military practice, techniques and tactics. They patrolled, personnelled vehicle checkpoints and searched areas. Riots were not a situation for the UDR to police. Being recruited in Northern Ireland, they possessed a lot of local knowledge. As such they were especially well-suited for reading settings out of the ordinary: cows and milk in odd places, or trampled hedges might indicate paramilitary activity. The unit’s ethos could be characterised by restraint. Someone who threw a petrol bomb was not considered a direct threat, and surely not to be shot at (Herron, n.d.). Female members were supposed to only use the weapons of a killed or otherwise incapacitated male soldier, even though these women were trained in the use of firearms. Local acquaintance could also be very dangerous. One UDR member remembered that she recognised someone she knew from a catholic area while performing a vehicle check. Instead of normally completing the check, she quickly bungled it, protecting her identity before she herself was recognised (Anonymous-f, 2019). Especially for catholic members this could be hard, or those that lived close to IRA-controlled areas – so much for being part-timers. Psychological counselling was non-existent.

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To make matters worse still, even in British Army circles they were not considered a unit equal to regular regiments. In all, the regiment and their families lived under greater threat than most other military personnel, while observing a less aggressive stance (Herron, n.d.). By the early 1990s, the regiment was folded into the regular Royal Irish Regiment. This caused feelings of dissatisfaction within the Ulster British population. RIR member Andy Hart remembered graffiti that read “Ulster Defence Regiment not Royal Irish Regiment”, with Ulster and Irish in orange and green respectively (Hart, 2019b).

Neil Southern followed an approach similar to Herron’s. In addition to the RUC’s operational history, he described the social and family lives of serving officers, showing how the conflict was internalised by wives and children. Women were tasked with explaining to their children what their father did, why it took up most of their day (and sometimes night) and that they could not tell about that to others outside the family. Furthermore, they had to safeguard with whom their children played, and be aware of what their families were like, just in case a slip of the tongue happened. On one hand the young boys and girls themselves only got to know their fathers at a much later age. On the other, they did internalise the conflict and as a result ‘what side they were on’ as they tensely followed the news when an RUC officer got killed – it might have been their parent. Because of their secretive habits, police families often supported each other, thus furthering the inward-oriented mindset (Southern, 2018). This stance continues two decades after the GFA. RUC members appear willing to share their stories, yet they do so to a person like Colin Breen, a fellow officer compiling and publishing a collection in anonymity. While this gives a lay person the chance to get an insight glimpse into the Troubles as seen from RUC officers on the ground, they are still pretty isolated facts and selected anecdotes, often without dates. Still, they do paint a picture of camaraderie, fear, pride and at times humorous situations (Breen, 2017). Such stories can easily be found within Irish nationalist circles too (Toolis, 2000 (1995)).

A Very Funny Place: Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene

A VERY

FUNNY PLACE

Imagining Identity and Conflict in Northern Ireland’s Museum Scene

Contents