Northern Ireland is built on such contradictions. It was created as a political compromise to bring an end to conflict, but conflict has flourished within it. It goes by the name of ‘Northern Ireland’, but its northernmost point lies to the south of part of the Irish Republic. Its people are divided by religion, but their quarrel is not religious. And while they are divided, they are also united. As a man once said, ‘If you understand Northern Ireland, you don’t understand Northern Ireland.’
As I eased my way into this world of divided, united people, I made my first base just outside the pretty town of Killyleagh, on the banks of Strangford Lough in County Down. I was staying with the Lindsays, a warm and generous family who had never met me before yet welcomed me like an old friend. Katie, their daughter, is a talented artist who works with patients at the Mater Hospital in Belfast. Their lives were a world away from my own in London, but I quickly became very adept at lighting a wood fire, and sitting by it with a glass of whisky. Through the Lindsays I had the fortune to meet Bobbie Hanvey, a photographer, writer, broadcaster, and one-time nurse in Downshire mental hospital, a man described by J. P. Donleavy as ‘Ireland’s most super sane man’.
Bobbie hosts a programme, The Ramblin’ Man, every Sunday night on Downtown Radio, in which he interviews local personalities. His easy-going charm allows him to get away with asking some very awkward questions. He prised several seconds of rare silence from Ian Paisley by asking him whether, had he been born a Catholic, he could have been a member of the IRA. It cannot be easy for Paisley to accept that God could have made him a Catholic, never mind that he could have been a member of the IRA. The eventual answer was, ‘No, I don’t think so,’ followed by an unprovoked denial that he had ever supported loyalist violence. A Hanvey trademark is the undercutting of a serious subject with a flash of mischief. He interrupted the ex-leader of the UVF, in mid flow on the subject of large booby traps, with the observation that the biggest booby trap he’d encountered was a brassiere. He also advised a Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), who had once worked in vice, to write a memoir with the title Pros ’n’ Cons. Nonplussed, his guest thanked him for ‘that very impressive suggestion’.
But Bobbie’s irreverence cannot mask a keen intellect and a shrewd understanding of the complexities of Northern Ireland, from which he seems to stand aloof, friendly with men and women of all sides. I would become very grateful for his insights, and even more grateful for the chance to quote from his interviews in this book. One of my abiding memories of my time in Northern Ireland is of an evening spent upstairs in his Down-patrick house, listening to recordings of interviews. As I wondered where I could get something to eat, I heard footsteps coming up the stairs and Bobbie appeared in the doorway, his Marty Feldman hair silhouetted against the light. He walked in and plonked a plate down in front of me, on which sat two foil-wrapped chocolate marshmallows. ‘I’ve got to tell you,’ he said, ‘I’m not much of a cook.’
Maybe not, but he was a very helpful ally in this strange and familiar place. He phoned me recently, asking me to find him a couple of Chasidic Jews to photograph. As though I’d have them around the house. That’s fair enough, though. He’s brought me his people. He can have a pair of mine.
Samuel Johnson once told James Boswell that the Giant’s Causeway was worth seeing, but not worth going to see. Early on in my journey I visited it with a guide who was even less enthusiastic. Just before it came into view, he turned to me and said, ‘You’re going to find this place disappointing.’ Luckily I was able to set both verdicts aside, especially the one from the man being paid to promote Northern Ireland. On an early summer’s day, with a stiff breeze blowing, the hexagonal black and gold columns seemed eerie and romantic. The Causeway was a bit smaller than I’d expected, and there were a lot of people around, but it didn’t matter; I was in a good mood, and my expectations had been set very low. Standing on a stone crop, staring out to sea, I was joined by the guide who took me into his confidence. All this, he assured me, wasn’t made by molten rock, forced up through the ground. It couldn’t be. The columns are perfect. They’ve got to be man-made. They must have been built by Stone Age people. Stone Age Irish people.
There is a legend concerning the Giant’s Causeway that it was actually built by Finn McCool (Fionn MacCumhaill in Irish), the leader of a band of great warriors, as a land bridge between Ireland and Scotland. McCool and a Scottish giant had been shouting insults across the sea at each other, but McCool wanted to be able to confront his rival in person. Constructing such a mighty land bridge proved hard work, however, and McCool fell asleep as soon as he had finished. While he slept the Scottish giant thundered down the Causeway towards him, but McCool woke up and spotted him. Perturbed by the size of his opponent, McCool – thinking extremely laterally – built a huge crib and lay down inside it, pretending to be a massive baby. The giant arrived, looked inside the crib, saw this grotesque infant, and panicked. If this was the size of McCool’s baby, how enormous must McCool be? The giant ran back to Scotland, tearing up the Causeway as he went, leaving only the remains that Dr Johnson did not consider worth going to see. Whether it was actually built by Finn McCool, a figure who came to inspire the republican movement, or by Stone Age nationalists laying claim to Irish territory, the Causeway, like so much else in Northern Ireland, has been used to service contemporary claims.
Perhaps the greatest character in Irish mythology is Cuchulainn, the Irish Achilles, who is supposed to have defended Ulster single-handedly against the warriors of Queen Medb of Connaught. Cuchulainn, fearless, earthy, and principled, is a character with whom many have wanted to be associated. Mortally wounded, he is said to have bound himself to a pillar so that he might die standing up, and this scene is recorded on a bronze statue inside Dublin’s General Post Office, erected in memory of the 1916 republican rising. But Cuchulainn is also claimed by unionists and loyalists; a huge mural on the Shankill Estate shows him waving his sword in defiance at those who would threaten Ulster. When I asked a leading unionist politician about the legend of Cuchulainn, he reacted crossly to the word ‘legend’. Cuchulainn’s defence of Ulster is not a legend, he made it clear; it is history.
I found an interesting version of history in a 1982 play, cowritten by Andy Tyrie, then leader of the Ulster Defence Association, a loyalist paramilitary organization. This Is It! is a sharply observed piece of drama that tells the story of a young working-class Protestant who grows disillusioned with unionism’s lack of political ambition. It particularly caught my eye for the views of one of its characters, Sam, who gives an account of Ulster’s early history from a Protestant perspective. Sam argues that the people of Ulster, Protestant and Catholic alike, share a common ancestry that predates the coming of the Celts in the centuries before Christ; in those days, Sam claims, Ulster and Scotland were populated by the same race, called the Picts in Scotland and the Cruthin in Ulster. When the Celts invaded Ulster, they carried out a long and cruel extermination, forcing the Cruthin to move to Scotland. So, says Sam, ‘You could even suppose that some of those who came over here for the Plantation [Ulster’s colonization by English and Scottish Protestants four centuries ago] were in effect coming home again.’ This reading of history allows Sam to argue that Ulster is the Protestant homeland: ‘Our roots are here! Ulster people – Catholic and Protestant – both have a common ancestry and a common right to be here.’
Fascinated by this, I spoke to a respected university professor who prefers not to be named. Evidently the subject is rather controversial. The professor told me that the pre-Christian period of Irish history is very dark. The Picts were present in parts of Scotland, and there is indeed a tradition of a Cruthin people in East Ulster. But while these people might well have communicated with each other across the sea, and there may even have been an exchange of population, it is impossible to say that the Picts and the Cruthin were the same race. With regard to the Celts, the professor says that although there is a tradition that they arrived in Ireland in the years just before the birth of Christ, no archaeological evidence exists for a mass arrival or for an invasion, and there is no evidence at all that they carried out a long and cruel extermination