Johnny Rodger- Are Derry's Walls a Field?

SPRING/SUMMER 2011 ISSUE 39

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ARE DERRY’S WALLS A FIELD?

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SPRING/SUMMER 2011 ISSUE 39

Johnny Rodger

Roddy Buchanan’s new work ‘Legacy’ which examines two Glaswegian marching flute bands, opened on the 5th May at the Imperial War Museum in London. The bands Black Skull Fife and Drum and Parkhead Republican Flute Band come from different sides of the sectarian divide.

Buchanan has filmed them both as they performed in (London) Derry in Ireland: one on the Relief of Derry parade marching round the walls of the city; and the other as it marched for the Republican Network for Unity from the Creggan shops to the Republican cemetery plot. The two films are shown side by side in the exhibition, separated by a full height black partition wall, so that the viewer can watch just one film at a time, or if they stand back to the end of the wall can watch both simultaneously. The films are coordinated so that only one band will ever be playing at the one time – with some quieter, background aspects going on in one film while the other band performs. On the wall entering the exhibition is the legend Scots/Irish, Irish/Scots.

From the Scottish point of view it would have been hard to find a more momentous, not to say poignant, time and even specific date – to open such a show in the Imperial capital city. On that day Scotland also elected for the first time a national parliament with a majority representation in favour of a complete end to the Union with its partners in the former imperial exercise. Just the time for a re-examination of that imperial history, one might think: of Scotland’s role in it, and of her relationship with its driving power in the city of London (although we wonder if the metropolitan organisers of the exhibition were, in picking that date in advance, even aware of the election set for that day…?).

Sadly however, perhaps a greater part of the exhibitions acute timeliness is due to this period of interesting Scottish politics being accompanied by a flaring up of sectarianism – that misbegotten progeny of British constitutionalism which tags along wailing like a banshee to all the debates, all the deliberations, all the hustings. Some two months before the election a physical tussle between respective members of Rangers and Celtic management at an Old Firm derby caused a raising of the sectarian temperature in our biggest bigoted city. The police subsequently released figures which showed an alarming increase in both violent crime and domestic abuse in the West of Scotland on days when the two football teams – who attract the

support of the opposing sides in the sectarian divide in Glasgow – meet in competition.

The police requested the Scottish Government to hold a summit on sectarianism in the country and how best to deal with it. But the talking didn’t stop the violence: by mid-April (2-3 weeks before the opening of this show) several individuals including the Celtic manager, his lawyer and an MSP who had worn a Celtic football top to the closing of Parliament were all sent letter bombs packed with nails which had been posted somewhere in Ayrshire. Then exactly one week after the opening of the exhibition, a man jumped down from stands at a football match in Edinburgh and ran alongside the pitch to launch a physical attack on the Celtic manager. The following week the newly elected Scottish Government promised it would bring in new ‘anti-sectarian legislation’ before the next football season begins.

Never, it seems, has the sectarian tension been so palpable, and never have connections between football, bigotry, terrorism, religion and Scots/Irish ethnicity been put in such apparently unavoidable relief (--in the West of Scotland at any rate). The moment seems not just ripe, but utterly compelling for an open and honest examination of this sectarian nexus. On the scarred and contorted face of it then, it may appear that Buchanan’s show about marching flute bands from opposite sides of the historical division could not have opened at a more urgent time. The case for its relevance – nay for its necessity, not just as a disinterested cultural investigation but as part of a civil and humane healing process can be seen all around us.

Yet seen from this pragmatic point of view the exhibition may also prove problematic for some.

One immediate logistical problem for those who would wish to see it as having a straightforward educative and thence peacemaking role is that the exhibition is on show in London and subsequently in Edinburgh and Dublin, but not in Glasgow Belfast or (London)Derry or any of the areas arguably at the front line of the sectarian divide.

Another problem might arise from a deeper level inasmuch as this exhibition is a work of art and treats of the material as such on its own terms.

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The work is therefore not necessarily a sociological or anthropological study, although these elements are present. It looks at the phenomenon of the marching bands of the West of Scotland to examine what is there through a political, aesthetic and ethical framework constructed by the artist, rather than examining it through those myriad wonted connections made in the day to day life of football, geography, religion, wider politics, history, sectarianism, war and religion.

even ritualised – tasks and gestures together.

Thus while his dual screen format throws up what might be considered some obvious and clichéd contrasts and almost invites us to reach for readymade judgements – the polished boots, perfect uniforms and grim British military might of the Orangeman’s march, as against the mean, rough and readiness of the Republican’s rebel shuffle – we cannot deny the evidence of our eyes. This format of the double screen with one band playing while the other is silent --packing their gear, drinking with their friends, getting on or off a bus-- is a wellestablished artistic trope for excavating some deep truths, exposing some superficial differences, and above all for inserting the viewer immediately into a dialectical situation between two poles of difference. It was seen, for example, in Shirin Neshat’s 2000 show ‘Turbulence’ at the Fruitmarket Gallery, where projected on one wall was a film of a Persian singer performing to noisy acclaim and ecstasy of an auditorium full of men, and when he finished, then on the other wall was projected a female singer performing to an empty auditorium , while the men on the first wall fell absolutely silent. With the political presented as an aesthetic category here, as a series of moves, sounds, shapes and colours, we immediately understood – even if we speak no Farsi and do not know the Shiite prohibition on women singing in public- – something of a culture, of a set of relationships, of a history, and are invited to an immediate engagement with this difference.

In a way Buchanan performs the same artistic manoeuvre. No-one would suggest this is an immaculate fully authentic presentation of the marching-band-in-itself: the artistry, the framing, the editing of Buchanan’s presentation are open to see. Buchanan also supplements the film with collective band photographs, individual portraits of members (with a fine array of Scots and Irish surnames captioning both bands…) and a brief written description and history of each band.

This helps to recreate the image of the band (along with those non-playing scenes shown in the film): as a collection of individuals from a particular background who make social connections through performing a series of peculiar, formalised – and

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That’s all very well for casual tourists, art freaks, Sunday museum goers and disinterested browsers --they get to see human endeavour in all its wonderfully odd specificity in a field ( --are Derry’s walls a field?) of which they might have hitherto either been ignorant, or found to be a baffling bigoted mystery. But problems arise here when we make that claim for the ‘timeliness’ of this exhibition.

For if it is indeed vital because of its timeliness, then for whom is it timely except those who are precisely ‘involved’ in that ‘field’ in some way, voluntarily or no – the SW Scots, the Northern Irish, the Old Firm fans, the Orangemen, the Hibernians and so on … Yet these very people are perhaps the ones who would reject, or be most annoyed, or irritated, or bewildered, or upset at the attempt to view this marching band phenomenon through a lens which excludes the well-recognised contexts of war, football, religion, politics, ethnic strife, sectarianism bigotry and religion.

The use of the term ‘war’, for example, has tended to operate as a shibboleth in terms of the description of the conflict in Northern Ireland/ the North of Ireland. While Republicans have favoured the use of this word, Loyalists object. There was, according to the Sunday Times (29/3/09), ‘fury’ when Buchanan was appointed as ‘official war artist by the IWM’ with William Frazer of the campaigning group ‘Families Acting for Innocent Relatives’ saying, The Imperial War Museum should stick to what it was set up to do, which is remember soldiers who have died in wars. What happened in Northern Ireland was not a war and this film sounds as if it has nothing to do with a war museum. This is giving a voice to certain sections of the community which don’t deserve to be heard.

On the question of constitutional politics as a timely background, even some commentators from the Scottish mainstream media (which has always largely ignored the bigotry problem) have attempted to make direct connections between the recent rise in the popularity of Scottish nationalism, and the simultaneous flaring up of sectarian aggression and violence in Scotland.

The alleged connection is more twisted than one might imagine: writing in The Scotsman, Joyce McMillan speculates that In some places around Scotland , where a traditional form of sectarian and Rangerssupporting Unionism has been an important part of collective identity, a kind of panic has

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set in, a desperate sense that the Unionist tribe is dying out; and that a tiny hard core of people has been crazy and criminal enough to express their fear of extinction by trying to kill and maim others.

There is a degree of plausibility to this take on the situation, and it is definitely a connection worth talking through and assessing in its importance.

The unsubstantiated particularity of the thesis is however holed below the waterline by a psephological glance at the statistics. Take the village of Larkhall for example – it is some kind of legendary ‘Orange Central’; the popular paradigm of a place which is ‘traditionally’ sectarian and Rangers-supporting. Yet if we glance at its voting patterns over the last forty years, it has always voted either Labour (supposedly the catholic party), or SNP – and never Tory. So we have to be suspicious of these visions of a Scotland where religion, politics and armed intervention are the same thing (as once was in freedom fighting Ireland, allegedly), and understand them as largely the fantasy football-fan visions of silly boys in their bedrooms, or as Graham Walker once so memorably put it, as Pearse Envy. The football songs and the bigotry simply do not translate into any coherent or measurable grown-up electoral phenomenon.

It’s not to say that religion doesn’t have some sort of defining role both in wider politics and in what these bands actually do. This is seen in the books accompanying the exhibition, where Buchanan carries out extensive interviews with the leader of each band . Colin Patterson of the Parkhead RFB points out that there are protestants in the band, and that , ‘Republicanism has no religious dimension’ and that his band has nothing to do with the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ and only campaigns on political aims for Ireland. Some commentators are worried about

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this band’s alleged connections with dissident Republican splinter groups in the North of Ireland.

There are also worrying – if very finely nuanced— aspects to the declaration of faith by the other leader, Andy MacAdam of the Black Skull Corps.

The band, like Parkhead, is independent, has never belonged to the Orange Lodge, and indeed has had disputes with the organisation. While MacAdam says further ‘I don’t define myself as religious, as a Protestant, Presbyterian, Church of Scotland …’ he then goes on to make the bizarre claim that four million people in Scotland are of the reformed faith. While describing the band as part of ‘my traditions, my culture’, he claims that there is ‘religious discrimination’ against Orange Parades in Glasgow. Buchanan gives him a way out of this evident contradiction by inviting him to see his traditions as a ‘working class expression of identity’ which are despised by the controlling middle class.

MacAdam rejects that understanding, ‘Nothing to do with class whatsoever.’

After all the attempts at rationalisation, at contextualisation and explanation, we are left watching a film of the several dozen individual members of these bands, preparing, marching, playing, drinking with their friends in Ireland then going home to Glasgow. Perhaps it’s the best way to look at all the ritualistic aspects of the religious divide in Ireland, and Scotland. –not in their connections and interplay and significance and meaning, but separated from any idea of a sectarian nexus, just to see what the human beings actually do, and how they do it. It’s a human thing, isn’t it?

If the Scottish Government is going to legislate to make sectarianism a crime, they might want to follow the personable Buchanan’s patient and inclusive approach, rather than the ‘deserve no voice’ blanket attitude of some of the victims of

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the tragedy across the Irish Sea – understandable though their reaction may be. Buchanan’s work shows us just how difficult it could be in practice to define what exactly counts as sectarianism.

But somehow the ancient and sclerotic symbolisms which shore up sectarianism and its aggressive forces in these islands will eventually crumble into dust. And that break up will probably not come about because of legislation against and criminalisation of an officially disapproved of everyday ‘culture’ (although in the meantime that might save a few lives …), but from the most unexpected symbolic quarters – eg the Queen of England coming back from a land beyond the wave to lay a wreath for the fallen in Ireland’s Republican struggle. That actually happened in that same week as the prospective Scottish anti-sectarian legislation was announced. Were they all operating together in some sort of Union? – certainly the whole archipelago was at it together. So where’s the infinite prospect of yer ‘No surrender’ and yer ‘tiocfaidh ar la’ noo? Not where they once stood.

The ‘la’ these war cries wait respectively against and for, in their shangri-la dreams of ethnic purity, endless party bunting and self-standing attitudinising, could soon be nothing more than a note in the music of history.

Legacy will show at the Imperial War Museum in London until 7th August.

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