The second part of Sean McGouran’s review of MIke Parker’s book, ‘The Irish Scene: Gay Guide to Ireland”

STROKE

 
Derry’s being denied the second university in the mid-1960s was of the first insults the city refused to take lying down.  (The only other place that could convincingly have been given the new university was Armagh [now a ‘city’ again, due to a piece of paper signed by Bessie Windsor], on the grounds of its historical importance and relatively central location.  But Derry had Magee College, ironically, a state-funded Presbyterian foundation set up in the Anglican-Ascendancy city of Derry, in the 1820s to get trainee Ministes away from radical Belfast.  Injury was added to insult when the O’Neill government  gave the university to Coleraine, which patently did not want it, and is now complacently watching most of the degree courses being moved to the Maiden City.  If o’Neill, the only genuine bigot to rule Northern Ireland, had given the city the university we may not have had to put up with twenty-five years of war).
Limerick’s acquisition of a university was less tortured, a section of the National INstitute for Higher Education (rather more similar to a ‘Poly’ in the UK then the IHE’s) about twenty years ago and it became a university about 1992 – it is a very handsome set of buildings in a big park – too good for mere students  [Paul Calf lives!].

GHOST TOWN

As hinted above, Mike Parker has distinct quirks, and he clearly doesn’t like Belfast.  This might make for entertaining reading, but I suspect that Mike hasn’t bothered to visit the place.  He obviously drove around the Mournes (which he describes as “bucolic”), and along the Antrim Coast road, and seems to have been impress by the Giant’s Causeway (I’ve never been).  Anyway, about Belfast, the industrial revolution sort of happened (this is the usual reason why Brits dislike Belfast – it looks like an industrial city – a handsomer version of Oldham).  There’s no mention of the United Irish-persons (Wolfe Tone is mentioned on page 13) or of the 1798 Uprising.  Odly enough, the Gay law appears to have changed of its own accord, no local agency or agent is noted.  Paisley gets abused, and the DUP is called “tiny”; which it is, in UK terms, but it is a major part in local, or even Irish [geographical expression] terms.  Mike also describes our newspapers, “The staunchly Unionist News Letter (including some stomach-churning attitudes to progressive social ideas) sits against the Republican Irish News.  Straddling the two is the responsible Belfast Telegraph”.
I’d have thought, being a journalist, Mike Parker might have taken an interest in the oldest newspaper in the world (it has been regularly published since 1737).  During the 1790s, when Belfast was the revolutionary foco for the whole of these isles, it was somewhat less revolutionary that the Northern Star, which was the organ if the Society of United Irishmen.  As for “stomach-churning attitudes to progressive social ideas”, he doesn’t quote anything; could it be an attack on our (unselected) rulers in Stormont Castle closing down a bit of another hospital?  Is this ethnic solidarity on MIke’s part?  Would the Irish News relish the description of itself as “Republican”?  The Bellylaugh is taken by most people in Northern Ireland – for the advertisements for houses, cars and jobs.  Its editorial policy was smugly suimmed-up about ten years ago as dealing with the “real-life Unionist/Nationalist conflict” (ie no class politics, please, we’re the Ulster bourgeoisie).  As readers know, our community has had more hassle off the BT than the Irish News or the News Letter (which has given Gay ~ er ~ leaders, column-space, in its time).  You’d also have thought that a journalist might have noticed the growth of small, and not so small, publishing houses in the Six Counties, a walk around any bookshop would have done the trick.

COULDN’T BE ARSED?

Mike clearly does not like Prods; Bushmills is described as a “tight-arsed little Protestant town” – as opposed to slack-arsed little Papist towns, undoubtedly.
MIke rather sells the tourist short, practically nothing is written of County Londonderry, Tyrone, Armagh – or Fermanagh.  No Belleek, no Marble Arch caves, no Bo Island, no mention of the Lakes.  Enniskillen is described as a “nationalist town” –  the good people of Skin Town must have been keeping the rest of us in the dark all of these years.  Even in County Down (or “Downshire” is you are an aspirant West Briton) thee is no mention of Mount Stewart, or say, Hillsborough – the list could go on, and there’s plenty of info as the Tourist Office.
If Mike’s little book goes to a second edition, a sub-editor should cast a cold eye on it.  The “history” is rubbish (the Ulster Plantation led to Partition apart from anything else, this is the One Big Boat theory of the Plantation.  It was not a complex series of events spread over more than a century involving from south west Scotland, as well as State-run Plantations in west Ulster, the Hugenots, the Moravians, the Quakers as well as a fair number of villains).  The attitude to the majority of people who live on this geographical expression, is p[atronising (Mike Parker may well be outraged at this assertion, but it is) and to the Ulster Prods is pretty racist.
All of the above may seem like taking a sledgehammer to the proverbial … but there is no reason why GMP should be allowed to add to the gigantic pile of nonsense written by English sentimentalists about, “Ah-land” or the BBC’s “Eye-land”.
Mike Parker isn’t a good enough writer to make the prejudices witty or sardonically memorable.
 

Editorial – this review was written by Sean McGouran in our paper magazine ‘upstart’

 
 
 

First published in our paper magazine – upstart
 
Publisher: Gay Men’s Press (29 May 1996)
Mike Parker compiled the (English) Northern Scene in this series, which I praised in a previous upstart. Yes: I didn’t much like this book.  MIke, who was so efficient shoving a quart (almost a gallon) quantity into a pint pot in his last outing seems to be one of those people who was lyrical when theyh come across the word “celtic” or even just “Irish”.  He also decides that history loms large here, so he gives us some of it.  “Daniel O’Connell, a brilliant young Kerry man…won the County Clare constituency in the 1828 election.  As a Catholic, however, he was barred from taking his seat.  British Prime Minister William Pitt… scrapped the ban”.
In 1828, O’Connell was in his fifties, PItt the Younger had been dead for a quarter of a century.  The Elder Pitt (Lord Chatsworth) had snuffed it in the 1780s.  Mike also appears to be saying the Irish Labour Party only just got into power recently.  Labour has held Cabinet seats since the 1940s, and has been a constant in government for fifteen years (it is being described these days as “the-even the– Party of government”).  There is also some very odd stuff abut the Celtic Twilight/Literary Renaissance (one would have thought that someone visiting Ireland, whether the political entity or the geographical expression, over the past twenty years might have noticed that we have become less provincial and embarrassed about our contribution to ‘art’ (painting and sculpture) and ‘classical’ music, there is a booming industry in art-books and a quite large discography of the latter).  The ‘folk’ and pop/rock end of things hardly needs mentioning.
Mike Parker admits that he has spent his holidays in Ireland in a Guinness-induced haze, which is fair enough – so do I – in fact, I spend my non-hols in a Guinness-induced haze, if I can manage it.  He also says that the outer rim of Ireland is more interesting that the centre, that’s his business, though I quite like the Irish midlands and south east, which he rather gives short drift.  I think Wexford, town and country are very interesting, but I’m not the author.
The problem here, is that Mike has to write more ‘touristy’ stuff than in his English book, as the “scene”, as such, is not really very big (the whole population of the island is less than Greater Manchester, or Merseyside, or the West Midlands).  He deals with the scene very well.
He compares Limerick with Derry (no ‘Londonderrys’ here – not even for the sake of a bit of alliteration), and rather approves of them, but he does not investigate what effect having a university has had on the town(s) and their scene(s).  Mike appears to believe that Limerick is still brooding on KIng Billy’s government reneging on the Treaty of 1691 – I doubt it.  Limerick was the Holy City of Irish Catholicism for over a century.  This came to a climax during De Valera’s period (if the word “climax” is permissible in the same sentence as “De Valera”).  Dev represented County Clare, just down the road from Limerick City, and his long supremacy is characterised in this book as ‘insular’.

The Pope’s Divisions

Catholic Ireland at that time quite often spoke of itself in the same breath as Communist Russia, and was not in the least fazed by the huge disparity in population and power.  Ireland, (which had not been Catholic in the days of Gaeldom), became, not more Catholic than the Pope – but just as Catholic as the pope wanted.  Missionaries spread out from Ireland through Latin America, the British Empire (and most of the other colonial empires) and the Orient, proselytising with a vigour the Bolshevik might have (and probably did) envy.  All of this was cultural vandalism of the first ordr – but to give the Blackcoats their due, they destroyed pagan, Gaelic Ireland’s immemorial culture before they set out.  Whtever this was – it was decidedly not smug insularity….
Part Two to follow