Geoff Bell reviews Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland, Director James Bluemel, BBC2 and Living With the Troubles, at the Imperial War Museum.

Once Upon Time in Northern Ireland is somewhat of a rarity for British television: it is a working class narrative.  Most of those interviewed in the five films are from working class communities. It is their stories we see and hear. They are shocking, emotional, moving, occasionally funny, but honest and heartfelt. The interviewees are true to themselves and to their communities. At the same time, it is also an exploration of working class division, for it is, of course, the story of two politically opposed communities: Protestant and Catholic, unionist/loyalist and nationalist/republican. No punches are pulled by anyone: these are not feel-good movies.

Those who talk include the daughter of a dead republican hunger striker, a man whose wife was blown up in an IRA bomb, a woman who planted an IRA fire-bomb in a shop, a woman whose policeman husband was killed by the IRA, a man who as a young boy was blinded by a rubber bullet fired by a British soldier and the solider who fired it. He is one of the rare non-Irish interviewees. There are no politicians interviewed, although clips of these appear in news footage. This is very much a history from below, featuring voices generally not heard before outside Northern Ireland. The exception is the comedian Patrick Kielty, who is interviewed as a son whose father was killed by a loyalist paramilitary for being a Catholic.

There is a lot of suffering on display, and the series is gripping, thought-provoking and superb film-making. The way it is shot and edited invites the viewer to have empathy with whoever is speaking. The only time I ran out of that emotion was when an RUC Special Branch member admitted collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, including, he implied, sectarian death squads. It seemed fitting that he was the only interviewee who chose not to show his face.

Contrast that with a sequence that featured an IRA bank-robber Rickie O’Rawe and his wife Bernadette who hated the IRA for taking him away from her. We learn at the end of their sequence that after 46 years they are still together. When he turns to her up close and claims the marriage was a good one, she says, “No Comment”, but both hint a smile. It is little touches like that that give the film its deep humanity.

Of all the testaments, perhaps the most pertinent for a British audience is when Kielty describes the day the Good Friday Agreement was signed. He was in London and says he couldn’t discuss that momentous event because nobody there really cared. That was one of many shocking statements, but given the way the GFA has been left to wither by the powerful in Britain these last few years his remark retains great relevance.

Which is why the abiding feeling I had after watching the series was one of anger at those British politicians who, after all, governed Northern Ireland in these years, and whose historic and contemporary politics created the mess that is Northern Ireland. Their absence from the films seems a justified contempt for all the suffering they allowed to happen – indeed, for encouraging it to happen (Bloody Sunday, etc) or boasting their indifference to it (the IRA Hunger Strike)?

Perhaps surprisingly, there are occasions when the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition, Living With the Troubles hints at such responsibilities. In one of the four short videos which are part of the exhibition, the voiceover says, “Ultimately, the British Army escalated the situation.” Or as the exhibition curator Colin Murray comments: “But as the situation developed in Northern Ireland and the army’s role became more intense, they were no longer seen as a neutral actor.“

“Intense” is one way of putting it, but on other occasions Murray is even more circumspect. He says, “There were accusations from republicans of [British security forces’] collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, some of which may have been true, others may have been overstated.” In fact, it is not just republicans, but academics, judges, coroners and the police ombudsman who have declared such collusion. One example of this, the massacre of Catholics at a Belfast bookmakers, features in Once Upon a Time.

That the Imperial War Museum is unable to address Britain’s role in such realities says a lot. So too when it relapses to cliches, such as talking of the rise of the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein as victories for “extremists”. The truth is that these “extremists”, as Once Upon a Time shows, were representative of their communities.  The important thing is not to insult but to explain this, and even ask why.

Instead, the exhibition and videos dodge too many important issues and often retreat to familiar British narratives. For example, they repeatedly talk about the “two sides” thereby underplaying the role of the third, British, side. Similarly, when the Imperial War Museum title their last video Why Did the IRA Lay Down its Weapons?, this implies it was the IRA who had been the obstacle to peace. This is a facile and selective view of contemporary history. After all, The origins of the GFA were in the talks held by Gerry Adams and John Hume. The British came very late to the process.

The physical exhibition is located on the third floor of the museum and has four smallish rooms. Ultimately, despite the use of selected but often unrepresentative cross-community quotes, it is insubstantial. It ends with a pious platitude saying that the Good Friday Agreement shows that “peace is possible for those with the courage to seek it.”

The exhibition visitor, having observed this worthy pacifism, can then return to the other galleries in the Imperial War Museum and enjoy the glorification of war with the vast selection of deadly weapons proudly on display.  

Geoff Bell is an Executive member of Labour for Irish Unity. His book The Twilight of Unionism is published by Verso, which he introduced on Labour Hub here.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time_in_Northern_Ireland