The Mosney Road

The Mosney Road has been the Mosney Road since 1950. A straight, half-mile stretch, it connects the main Dublin/Belfast Road with Gormanston Military base, the Sea and Mosney the Camp. It is lined on either side with small cow-filled fields and 27 detached houses. Residential development in townlands Keenogue and Briarleas, whereupon it lies, is strictly controlled. The area adjoins the Dublin conurbation, and is a designated green belt amenity and agricultural resource base. The Mosney Road was perceived initially as a transport corridor to the gate of Butlins Holiday Village and divisive debate surrounding its construction reflected local attitudes towards the holiday camp itself.

In July 1948 the Minister for Social Welfare, William Nortan opened Butlins Holiday Village at Mosney in the presence of some 1,200 glamorous guests. It proceeded to attract seasonal holidaymakers from urban centers, Belfast, Dublin, Cork, Galway and elsewhere. The Butlins Holiday Camp experience was conceived as a fusion of open-air seafront and private hotel holidays. It was pitched as a high quality all-weather, all-inclusive holiday accommodation aimed at families of moderate means and was characteristic of leisure industry growth following the introduction of Holiday Pay provision.

Sedulously built in 9 months, the Camp consisted of many rows of chalets, ruthlessly geometric and coloured like an old fashioned modern painting, and a church from which the Last Supper by Bonifazio Veronese was sold through Christies in London in 1983. The Camp included shops selling only the brightly packaged; utilities; a Pet Farm for children and a photolab for evidence. The Amusement Park, Boating Lake, Swimming Pool, Snooker Room, Slot-Machine Arcades, Gaiety Theatre, American Parlour, Ballroom of Romance, Dan Lowry’s Bar, the Pig and Whistle, the Wishing Well lounge, Zany Shakers and the ‘Krazy Nite’ capers were the dominating centers of attraction.

Initially the Irish holidaymaking experiment was greeted with local hostility. In an article entitled ‘Holiday Camp and Morals’ in the Catholic Standard, Captain P. Giles TD and a number of ecclesiastics expressed grave concern over the unwholesome influence this ‘foreign combine’ would have on the minds and morals of the Irish people, asserting that “Holiday camps are an English idea and are alien and undesirable in an Irish Catholic country, outside influences are bad and dangerous”. To placate the hierarchy a Catholic church was built adjacent to the gate, with a resident chaplain, and assurances were made that the enterprise was intended for Irish people whose applications for reservations would be given first priority1. Butlins’ Irish and Continental Holidays Ltd issued public shares to the value of £1,250,000 and 9 Irish directors out of 10 retained effective control of the Camp.

The Mosney Road

Fractionate discussion accompanied the New Mosney Road proposal through monthly meetings at Meath County Council from late 1947 to March 1948. Driving the motion to accommodate increased traffic volume, via a new road, was the view that Butlins was a vehicle for development. The Electricity Supply Board had been extended to nearby Julianstown to facilitate the supply of a national leisure service to city dwellers and the underprivileged. The Camp would in turn provide substantial employment benefits and an improved local agricultural market economy. Also influential were the charitable initiatives with which Butlins had become associated; sizeable contributions to children’s hospitals and orphanages, and projects coordinated by the Dublin Central Mission (a free 2 week holiday for inner-city children) and the Lyons Club for senior citizens. The Opposition – supported by admonishing letters from local area residents, held vehemently that it was the Council’s obligation to amend Land Commission roads before facilitating tourists at the ratepayer’s expense – were outvoted, and the road was built.

In 1982 Butlins Holiday Village was purchased for £1m by Drogheda businessman Phelim McCloskey. The ‘Butlins’ name was relinquished for Mosney Holiday Centre to mutterings of “Butlins is dead, long live Mosney!”2 Thematic projects such as Funtropica were designed to claw back declining visitor numbers from the gadarene furore of cheap foreign package holidays. The 50m, 3 to 9ft swimming pool had its dignified depths drained to a level of ceaseless splashing and was gadrooned in varicoloured plastic. Once again, coach-filled guests in transports of delight filed down the Mosney Road to be relieved of any contraband by two Tonys and their posse of deputies at the Gate. They were then corralled toward a white-brick ticket box where entry was gained through Mazy with her steel-wool framed East London accent and extraordinarily long, cerise fingernails curling obediently over the calculator digits.

In 1999 pedestrian traffic on the road substantially increased. Siting three Homelands 24hr dance festivals at Mosney ensured the fascinating spectacles of road-long processional entrance and congealed, vapid post-session exit. Alongside its commercial entertainment function, the camp was a venue for annual public events such as the Vintage Classic Car show and the National Community Games.

In December 2000 a 5yr £15m agreement between Phelim McCloskey and the Department of Justice re-designated Mosney as a Refugee Camp for the containment of up to 500 Nigerian, Romanian and Czech asylum seekers. The decision was made exclusive of public consultation and was regionally decried. A Mosney Area Residents Committee was formed to seek clarification on the terms and conditions of the agreement and to address issues of education and segregation. Concerns regarding necessary infrastructural improvements to the Mosney Road are ongoing, where poor nightlight and drainage provision has left the locals and some 500 foreigners struggling to get along.

Mapping 100 Years Of Belfast Gay Life

According to Roger Casement’s diaries, from 1903 to 1911, the gay cruising areas in Belfast were at the Albert Clock (probably also around the Customs House toilet), Botanic Gardens, Ormeau Park, and the Giants Ring. Cottaging went on in Victoria Square in an elegant wrought iron edifice (which was still operating in the 1960s and may be in the Ulster Folk Museum) and at the Gasworks.

From then until after the 2nd World War, the GNR station in Great Victoria Street and DuBarry’s bar at the docks were recognized haunts, the latter, as in other cities, being shared with prostitutes. The blackout from 1939, and the arrival from 1943-44 of 100,000 American troops in Northern Ireland had a huge impact and special place in gay memories.

The Royal Avenue (RA) Bar in Rosemary Street (the hotel’s public bar, opposite the Red Barn pub) as portrayed in Maurice Leitch’s fine 1965 novel The Liberty Lad (probably the earliest description of a gay bar in Irish literature) was the first in the city. It operated from some time in the 1950s being shared at times with deaf and dumb customers who often occupied the front of the bar. The two (straight) staff in the RA ran a tight but tolerant ship. Two lesbians, Greta and Anne, were the only females who in the 1960s were regular customers. At that time and until the end of the 1970s, pubs closed sharply at 10 p.m.

When the Royal Avenue Hotel was on its last legs due to the troubles, Ernie Thompson (who has just died) and Jim Kempson, from 1974, ran, in its elegant ballroom, Belfast’s first ever and highly memorable discos in Belfast (probably the first in Ireland).

After the RA closed, the Casanova Club (prop. Louis Wise) in Upper Arthur Street (presently part of the British Home Stores site) flowered briefly until bombed by the IRA in c. 1976.

Meanwhile, the Gay Liberation Society (GLS) was meeting at Queen’s University Students Union from 1972 with significant town as well as gown membership. Initiated by Andy Hinds and Martin McQuigg it was taken forward by Dick Sinclair, Maeve Malley, Joseph Leckey and Brian Gilmore. Later from about 1975 until the early 1980s it ran highly successful Saturday night discos in the McMordie Hall, attended by up to 300 gays (and indeed many apparent straights). Key helpers included Kevin Merritt, Billy Forsythe, John McConkey, and Michael McAlinden. This was at a time, during the most brutal years of the troubles, when there was next to no night life in the city and only gays ventured out.

Cara-Friend started its befriending and information operation as a letter service in 1974. After a brief telephone service at the Students Union which ended in the switchboard collapsing, it moved on to a permanent telephone service in about 1976, operating first from Doug Sobey’s flat in Ulsterville Avenue (Doug is still a C-F officer after 30 years). Lesbian Line and Foyle Friend developed later. Cara-Friend was grant aided by the Department of Health and Social Services, at Stormont, from as early as 1975 despite the RUC raids that next year with twenty arrests of key members of Cara-Friend, NIGRA and the Union for Sexual Freedoms in Ireland (USFI). Prosecutions for sodomy were set in train by the Northern Ireland Director for Public Prosecutions until the Attorney General in London intervened and stopped them.

NIGRA started in the summer of 1975 when USFI became corrupted. Early NIGRA Presidents have included Dr Graham Carter (who sadly died young), former life-President Richard Kennedy, and Tim Clarke ably supported by Sappho sisters Geraldine Sergeant and Maureen Miskimmin. A large number of NIGRA officers married and had children which was baffling for some. The Strasbourg case taken by Jeff Dudgeon to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 1982 ultimately resulted in the ending of life imprisonment for gay men, was started by NIGRA in 1975. P.A. MagLochlainn, current NIGRA President, has filled the post longer than any of his predecessors.

From about 1975 until the early 1980s Gay Lib (GLS) met in No. 4 University Street, a large house loaned by the university, where Cara-Friend had a room with a telephone cubicle. It was in constant use for regular Thursday meetings and parties.

The Chariot Rooms in Lower North Street was the first gay-run bar in Belfast, which was operated successfully, and with flair by Ernie and Jim in the darkest years of the troubles. It had its own disco. The reasons for its closing are obscure although it was well frequented. It is now the site of the NI Human Rights Commission.

Off and on in the 1970s and 80s, the Europa’s Whip and Saddle bar in Great Victoria Street was the city’s only gay venue. Despite, at times being the only customers in such a bombed hotel, we were never entirely welcome and were ultimately driven out. At one point in the 1970s NIGRA mounted a picket because of a member being barred for some minor indiscretion like kissing.

Due to Kieran Hayes, a gay staffer’s efforts, the Crow’s Nest in Skipper Street then became a gay bar with a small disco from c. 1986. After several makeovers, it changed its name to the Custom House in 2002 and is re-invigorated as a gay bar hoisting Men of the North events.

The Carpenter Club in Long Lane (proprietors Richard Hodgson, Jeff Dudgeon, and NIGRA in a limited partnership) was an extensive, unlicensed disco and coffee bar on two floors operating from the early to the mid 1980s. Cara-Friend had offices upstairs. It was ultimately compulsorily purchased by the DOE to make way for the currently renamed Writers’ (formerly Skinhead) Square. The Carpenter Club though gradually successful was ultimately vulnerable to any premises like a hotel on the skids with a drinks licence. Such licences were prohibitively expensive. Cara-Friend moved to new premises at Cathedral Buildings in Lower Donegall Street where Lesbian Line also has rooms and GLYNI and NIGRA meet. Both C-F and Queer Space have run Saturday drop-ins at Cathedral Buildings the former having had previous rooms in Botanic Avenue and Eglantine Avenue.

The Orpheus Bar/Disco in York Street had a successful three year existence under the proprietorship of Ian Rosbotham in the mid-1980s, despite the rampant damp, and a short afterlife once renovated.

The Dunbar Arms in Dunbar Link was firebombed by the INLA with drag queen Mae West being nearly singed to death. After rebuilding, it became the Parliament Bar, run by two straight guys, Martin Ramsay and Brendan, continuing as a gay venue with an upstairs disco, from the 1990s until 2003.

One nighters have been operated since the mid 1980s in the Midland Hotel (Saturdays), the Limelight (Mondays), the Venue, White’s Tavern (Wednesdays) and Milk (Mondays).

The Kremlin, an extensive, gay-owned (by André Graham and Seamus) bar and disco(s) in Upper Donegall Street after opening in March 1999 has become the dominant gay venue in the city, regularly enhancing its facilities. Most recently they have brought property in nearby Union Street to house the men’s health, Rainbow Project (formerly in Church Lane) and Belfast’s first ever gay sauna, the Garage, in whose tropical climate romance blossoms. Sex in saunas, that is sex with more than two males present, will be legalized later this year thanks to NIGRA’s successful campaign to have Northern Ireland included in the Sexual Offences Bill’s abolition of the crimes of gross indecency and buggery. Its sex in a public lavatory clause is still being debated in the House of Commons.

Remember: Anthony McCleave * Harry McClarnon * David Templeton * Darren Bradshaw * Ian Flanagan * Warren MacAuley

Jeff Dudgeon is the Author of Roger Casement: The Black Diaries. Publisher: Belfast Press, 2003. ISBN: 0953928721. Price:£25.00 The book is available from: www.politicos.co.uk

Statistics Of Danger

Is Northern Ireland a dangerous place? Many people would believe so. The image of the province is above all associated with political assassinations, sectarian murders, bombings, shootings, kneecappings, and other punishment beatings. On top of that, there are the usual dangers of illness, accidents, and crime. To have a clear picture, it is necessary to quantify and qualify the nature and extent of dangers. The best source of information is the University of Ulster’s CAIN website .

The website has probably the most extensive database of official and independent statistics on various kinds of dangers.

Statistics Of Danger

First, how dangerous is the province in terms of political violence? An independent and reliable source (Malcolm Sutton’s index of Troubles related deaths) records 3,523 deaths directly linked to the conflict in Northern Ireland, occurring between 14 July 1969 and 31st December 2001. The discrepancy between this figure and the official British figure arises because of differences of interpretation in a small number of cases. One might point out that 3523 deaths might be small, but it is for a population of 1,685,267 (Census 29 April 2001). Almost 2 percent of the population of Northern Ireland have been killed or injured as a result of political violence since 1969. The equivalent ratio of victims to population in Great Britain during the same period would have been over 100,000 killed, and in the USA over 500,000, about ten times the number of Americans killed during the Vietnam war.

Of course, the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland remain a “low intensity conflict” not comparable to major wars where hundreds of thousands or if not millions have died like in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone, etc. It is also important to note that political violence does not occur with equal intensity in space and time. For example, 479 died as a result of the “security situation” in 1972, but only 8 in 1999. And the spatial distribution of killings is also uneven. Much of the violence has been spatially concentrated within specific areas (like North Belfast’s infamous “Murder Mile”, the Tyrone/Armagh “Murder Triangle” etc), leaving the rest of the province fairly normal. Government agencies have tried to downplay the scale of the conflict and stressed the “normality” of the province. For example, they point out that the number of people killed as a result of road accidents during the period 1969-2003 exceeds the total number of those who died as a result of political violence.

Compared to the rest of the UK, Northern Ireland is the most dangerous place to be on the road, as it has the highest number of deaths resulting from road traffic accidents (with 10 deaths per 100,000 of the population as opposed to 6 per 100,000 in England). This figure is also substantially higher than the figures for the Republic of Ireland. Roads in Northern Ireland are more dangerous than the conflict. But Brendan O’Leary, a political scientist from the London School of Economics, has pointed out that comparisons between dangers resulting from the “security situation” and dangers resulting from road traffic are fundamentally misleading.

Statistics Of Danger

“Deaths because of political violence are an addition to other socially caused deaths, and in functioning and stable liberal democracies deaths caused by road accidents should be, and usually are higher than deaths caused by political violence. There is nothing exceptional about Northern Ireland’s road accident/political violence ratio, except that it is used as a distracting indicator by a police force anxious for good press. Citizens of liberal democracies and their governments support private and public transport policies which have known and built-in risks of death. There is no comparable way in which they explicitly accept built-in risks of death from political violence when they make and enforce public policy.” (Brendan O’Leary and John McGarry, The Politics of Antagonism, 12-13)

If governmental agencies are looking for the single most persistent cause of premature death to compare with the death rate from political violence, they should point to the death rate from heart and respiratory diseases. Ulster fries and Regal cigarettes are more dangerous and lethal than local drivers or the security forces and paramilitaries, as Northern Ireland has a higher incidence of deaths resulting from both heart diseases and respiratory diseases than any other part of the UK. The province is also a dangerous place to be born in. Northern Ireland had the highest rate of infant mortality in the UK. However, this has been decreasing steadily over the years, and has fallen from 22.7 (per 1,000 live and still births) in 1971 to 6.1 in the late 1990s.

Another comparison used to “prove” that the six counties are not a dangerous place is that the numbers killed as a result of political violence in Northern Ireland are much lower than those killed in homicides in major US and European cities. For example, Invest Northern Ireland promotional material boasts that according to the 2001 World Victimisation Survey, Northern Ireland has the lowest crime victimisation rate in the world (even lower than Lichtenstein!) and according to the 2002 Peace Monitor report, Northern Ireland is a safer place to live than other UK regions many European countries and the USA, with a death by violence rate of 2.5 per 100 000 compared to a UK and US average of 4.4 and 8.9 respectively. For O’Leary and McGarry, the comparison of the death rate in the Northern Ireland conflict with the homicide rate in major US cities is equally misleading: “Ordinary violent criminality is dramatically less in Northern Ireland: it is politically -not criminally- violent, whereas the converse applies to the USA.” On the whole, the overall level of crime (excluding “scheduled offences”-political violence) in Northern Ireland is significantly lower than that in England, Scotland, or Wales, notifiable offences (per 100,000 population) in Northern Ireland being less than half of that recorded in England and Wales.

There are, however, three categories in which Northern Ireland had a higher rate of offenders than any of the other areas. These categories are sexual offences, fraud and forgery and ‘other’ offences. Northern Ireland also has a high proportion of burglaries (although proportionately fewer than England and Wales) and these accounted for almost three-quarters of all recorded crime in Northern Ireland. The number of drugs related offences in Northern Ireland has been increasing steadily and rapidly over the past number of years. Having said this however, these figures are still dramatically lower than the figures for any other part of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland. Overall, comparing various “dangers” is problematic as it raises the spectre of incommensurability. What is there in common between heart diseases, car accidents and political violence apart from some Wittgensteinian “family resemblances”? A more relevant question perhaps is to ask who is most at risk from the various dangers?

The vast majority of those who died as a result of political violence in the North were of a working class background. The lower you are on the social ladder the unhealthier you will be and the shorter will be your life expectancy. If you are in a low-income group you are more likely to suffer from lung cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease, obesity and violent accidents; your birth weight will be lower, your diet will be poorer and your life expectancy will be five years shorter than those in upper-income groups. The same goes for industrial accidents. Last year, a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research showed that children from the UK’s most deprived neighbourhoods are three times more likely to be knocked down by cars. The number of children in poor wards of the UK have 2.2 casualties per 100,000 children compared to 0.6 in rich areas. From available statistics, the conclusion is that the poorer you are, the more dangerous life in Northern Ireland is likely to be.

Statistics Of Danger

A recent programme on Channel 4 (“Casualties of Peace”, 14 July 2003) revealed that since 1991 over 2000 British soldiers had died on duty in non-combat situations, victims of everything from drownings and suicides to car accidents. That is about four times the amount of British soldiers (excluding local Irish regiments) killed during the whole Troubles. Years ago, one of the NIO’s favourite arguments was that West Germany was a more dangerous place for the British Army than Northern Ireland as more soldiers died in car accidents there than in political violence in the North.

Famous Monsters of Film

John Mathews: I understand you first started making films with a strong science fiction and horror basis in and around your home town.

Roy Spence: Well it all began in the early sixties working in standard 8mm and 16mm and old audiotapes. Mainly horror, science fiction and turn of the century frock coat films. We liked costume piece stuff because we were influenced by the films we were seeing in the cinemas at the time. Italian stuff, things like ‘Black Sunday’, ‘Crypt of Horror’. We were also influenced by German expressionist film, then we moved up or down, depending on whatever way you want to look at it to the American drive-in movies. The Roger Corman style, which we got enchanted by, the teenage scene of ‘I was a Teenage Werewolf’ and ‘The Blob’. Some of the films we began to make were not so much copies of but tributes to them. We did are own version of ‘The Blob’ called ‘Keep Watching the Skies’, which features a drive in movie sequence filmed locally but supposedly set in America with U.S, left hand drive cars, a big rock and roll dance sequence, a sheriff and his car, teenagers, American style phone booths. The whole thing was based on Americana really.

The Spence Brothers

J.M. That’s an interesting contrast to use Northern Ireland people and locations to try and recreate all these notions of glamour and exotic far away American culture.

Noel Spence: We used local people and actors, anybody who could jive, especially for the rock and roll sequences. We did quite well with that and got number one in a big worldwide competition at the time called ‘The Ten Best’, which was organised by the National Film Theatre in London. It was a big influence to win ‘The Ten Best’ and we won quite a lot of them.

Roy: It was quite prestigious, you had guests like Jimmy Stewart presenting the trophies, Glenda Jackson, Jenny Agiter, Joan Collins, we met all those people in the late 60s and early 70s. It sounds awful boastful but its just a fact, it was a world-wide competition with over 500 entries. We got ten ‘Ten Best’ out of that and three of those were number ones.

J.M. You were working under very tight budgets.

Noel: The one thing that characterises our films is that it’s low budget and if I say we’ve made our name that way, it’s not being pretentious, we had practically no budget at all and you made your film by innovation and making do.

J.M. How did you develop all these special effects in the first place?

Roy: When we were working there were no courses or anything like that, you just had to do it yourself. We made films because we wanted to make them, not because there was any courses, degrees or grants, we just wanted to make films. We experimented, whatever worked we remembered and if it didn’t we forgot about it.

Noel: It’s such a different scene now especially equipment wise because people can just go to a shop and buy a camera which is going to give you perfect pictures and lip sync. When we were shooting films there was no connection between the camera and the tape recorder, so you had to devise all these ingenious methods to try and get the lip movement matching the sound. It was good to have that grounding, film was so expensive back then I would even drive miles to avoid a slice, editing in camera all the time, doing everything that shouldn’t be done. We always found poverty was a great discipline.

J.M. What drew you to making science fiction films in the first place?

Roy: That was always our interest, there was a magazine that came out called ‘Famous Monsters of Film’ in 1958 which was devoted entirely to horror film and that was our bible and we bought it every month, even the photographs were a great inspiration. There wasn’t the same range of T.V programmes back then, they only showed the odd film, no video recorders to tape them, so we used to record the soundtracks and listen to that.

Noel: What had a big effect on us at the time was the Quatermass series on T.V., which got us really interested in sci-fi. You’re talking about amateur films, we prefer to call them independent films but the word amateur is right in so far as nobody is getting paid for it. So you can’t argue or boss them about. Everything is rushed, they wouldn’t be given copies of the script till they got to the location. People get a line to learn and two minutes after learning it they were being filmed delivering the line with only one shot at it.

Roy: Even though now we maybe have more money or equipment we tend to work the same way, we still do everything in a rush, panicking, looking up to see if its going to rain.

Noel: We do workshops in places like the Nerve Centre in Derry and in two days we take a group of people who know nothing about film at all and we introduce them to the basics of film making. We hammer a script together on the first day and on the second we film it. So in two days you end up with a finished ten to fifteen minute film, from complete beginners, which are really good even though we say so ourselves.

Roy: I would go so far as to say that’s where our strength lies, working with actors and getting the best out of them.

J.M. Why did you built your own cinemas?

Noel: Cinema was always in the blood, something we have always wanted. When we were youngsters we had a cinema at home in our bedrooms.

Roy: When you say cinemas, we had a projector and a white ceiling with curtains on the wall. I suppose when we got our own houses and got married the next step was to build our own cinemas. They weren’t built as a distribution point. We were making films and we had somewhere to show them, one was not dependent on the other.

J.M. What sort of audience would you attract to your venues?

Noel: The cinemas we have built are strictly private, a lot of the shows I do are for people who like old films because there’s no use trying to show contemporary films, if you want to see a contemporary film you go to contemporary setting. We would show films that have a nostalgic value. Our cinemas have a strong 1950s feel to them. I suppose its nice for people to watch 50s films in a 50s style cinema, especially if they saw the film originally.

Roy: Another string to our bow, apart from building our own cinemas, we’ve built cinemas for other people. We get a great buzz out of that, converting an old garage, shed, cellar or roof space and converting it into a plush little cinema

Noel: We have a whole stock of original cinema fittings, red velvet tip up seats and we would tear the seats down, trying to recreate the ambience of a real cinema.

J.M. You mentioned earlier about taking your films to international competitions in London. What were people’s reaction to these strange sci-fi films and horror films made out in the backwoods of Co. Down, a place not normally associated with horror movies?

Roy: Northern Ireland at that time had a very strong reputation, apart from us there was filmmakers from Ballyclare, Belfast, Terry Mc Donald up in Derry, quite a few people from here. One of the theories, which I didn’t subscribe to, was that Northern Ireland didn’t and still doesn’t have its own native film industry: the people hadn’t an outlet for making films so they turned to making their own. That was a popular notion of why so much good stuff came out of N.Ireland.

Noel: The Northern Ireland Film Commission has since been formed and there’s an active film production scene in N. Ireland now. But this was pre N.I.F.C and there simply wasn’t anything, it was all amateur.

Roy: I think there was hardly a year were there wasn’t at least one in the ‘Ten Best’ from N.Ireland. We had a very strong reputation.

Noel: There was a lot of inter club competition from cine and film clubs

J.M. There must be a world of difference with all the funding bodies now, there were none?

Noel: You did it entirely on your own, funded, wrote the script, everything. When I started I did cameraman, lights, sound, wrote the songs, a whole one-man show. I suppose it was a bit of an ego trip in some ways but I didn’t look at it like that, I looked at it like if I didn’t do it, it wouldn’t be done, it was out of sheer necessity. You begged costumes from drama societies and if you happened to know someone who owned a pub you wrote a scene into your film so you could shoot inside it.

Roy: Or somebody who had a big American car, you would work that car into your film, you made use of what you had. When you read now what Ed Wood or Roger Corman did, it had an awful lot of parallels with what we were doing, purely inadvertently. We were begging things and doing all sorts of scams to get stuff, trying to get as much for as little as possible and exploit people as much as we could.

J.M. You seem to have a strong musical influence within your films, trying to incorporate song and dance numbers at some point within them?

Roy: We put a lot of Rock and Roll and Do Wop into it and all the films we make now, we try and incorporate a Do Wop song at the beginning or end or else playing in the background. A trademark almost, if there is a hotel scene, there’s a Do Wop number in the background. The early 50s films we made always had a rock and roll scene in them, teenagers with Jive sequences.

Noel: Some of the teenagers were a bit iffy.

Roy: Some of the teenagers were pushing forty, you disguised them as best you could. In ‘Keep Watching The Skies’ there was a big rock and roll sequence and a lot of them were losing their hair a bit, so the answer to that was I made all these motorcycle hats. If they arrived and were balding a bit they got the cap put on. If they still had hair we gave them two big wacks of bryl cream down the side, the sensitive director would say those with bryl-creamed hair get to the front and those with hats get to the back, it was great fun.

J.M. Do you see yourselves working as outlaw filmmakers working very much outside of the establishment and accepted approaches to filmmaking?

Noel: I suppose we are mavericks in that respect but it really does please us when someone we have worked with starts do well. Enda Hughes is a very good film director, you might remember he did ‘Flying Saucer, Rock and Roll’ which we did the special effects for. Enda has gone on and is now a very promising and successful young director and we would like to think we had some part in setting him on that road. Paul Walsh was another guy who we did a course in Armagh with and he was doing camera work and now he’s a trainee cameraman in London.

Roy: I tell you what were not good at and that’s paperwork: marketing, chasing grants, chasing money. I’d rather be out there and doing the thing, just enjoy doing it; we can’t be bothered with all that. When you ask are we outside the system, we are because we’re not patient enough to get involved in it. I’d say in our whole careers we’ve never got a grant for anything, we only got a couple of small grants from the Arts Council in the early days.

Noel: The sort of stuff were doing is not the sort of stuff they’re looking for, they’re looking for avant-garde stuff, we like beginnings, middles and ends in our films. What we’re doing is really a scaled-down version of commercial cinema. Without wanting to denigrate anyone, there have been film schemes, which have been around a few years in N. Ireland. Most of the films that have come about as a result of these schemes are a total waste of money, absolute rubbish and they get fairly substantial budgets of £15 – £20,000. More money than we ever thought possible.

J.M. It’s very encouraging and refreshing to see people making films purely out of a desire to just get out there and do it no matter what.

Roy: We went to an exhibition one time in the Golden Thread called the ‘Belfast Independent Film Festival’ run by Verity Peake. Two weeks before Premier ran their awards at the Waterfront with films whose budget was £20,000 each, and the B.I.F.F festival showed films made by people who had £20 or £30, just for the hell of it, no other reason. I know which one I enjoyed more, they handed round slices of pizza and bottles of beer, people had old videos and all sorts of gear to show it on, Hi 8 video, real low budget stuff but really inventive. I came away that night feeling really refreshed. As you say making films just for the sheer fun of doing it, not because were getting a grant.

J.M. You have obviously been involved in film for a number of decades, so what is your opinion of the state of local cinema and films in N. Ireland at the present time?

Roy: People say there’s a great deal of talent here, I don’t know if it’s a generation thing but I don’t see it. It sounds terribly conceited but I think there is more acting talent.

J.M. Apart from your workshops what film work are you engaged in at the moment?

Noel: We’re making a documentary called ‘Comber Bypass’, we do promotion and training stuff. We’re not really, in all honesty, doing fictional films outside of the workshops, simply because nobody wants to watch them now.

Roy: In the early days we could have run a film show in a hall down in Bangor and it would be packed, you try that now and you’d be lucky to get half a dozen. Even if you gave them free tickets and transport, they’d rather have a karaoke night or go to the pub. We thought when video came out and the technology became a lot easier that there’d be an absolute deluge of films but the opposite has happened. When the technology was difficult and making films was hard, people were making stuff; it was part of the challenge almost. When we look at a lot of the films now, you wonder how on earth you did it. We would film at night with electric cable stretched across fields and the rain would come on and lights would blow, we used to kill thousands of moths burning off the lights at night. If the lamps blew, then that was your budget gone, £18 for a new bulb, the whole film cost less than £18. We would build our own sets as well, I had a studio which is the cinema now, we built an American café, an old Irish cottage and we built a whole graveyard in it once, making the gravestones out of polystyrene. You can see this on the training video we made, ‘No Budget Special Effects’.

J.M. So why did you build a cinema each?

Noel: Well, mine’s called the ‘Tudor’, named after a cinema in Bangor when I was at school in the 50s. I saw ‘Beast of Hollow Mountain’, ‘Pharaoh’s Curse’, ‘Return of the Vampire’, I said if I ever had a cinema of my own I’d call it the ‘Tudor’. The ‘Tudor’ in Bangor closed in 1962, when I opened my own cinema in 1974 the first film I showed was ‘Them’, with the big giant ants, it’s a great film. I wanted a cinema as I thought if I was going to watch films I’d show them in the proper location, instead of people watching T.V and carrying cups of tea past you or people putting coal on the fire and all that carry on during a film. It’s a sixty-six seater specializing in B-Movies of the 50s and I’ll let you guess what sort of music plays in the intermission. When we were very young one of the first films we saw was about 1950 and it was ‘Abbot and Costello and Jack and the Beanstalk’. Our mother took us to the Ritz in the city center and it really made a big impact on us. Then the sci-fi and monster movies came along in the mid 50s with ‘Tarantula’, ‘It came from Outerspace’ and ‘Creature from the Black Lagoon’. Those films got a hold on you and never let go, the hold they had on us then we still haven’t lost.

The Vacuum – Issue 18 – Waste

Unlike body functions defecation is considered very lowly. As a result very few scholars have documented the toilet habits of our predecessors. The Nobel Prize winner for Medicine (1913) Charles Richet attributed this silence to the disgust that arises from noxiousness and the lack of usefulness of human waste. Others point out that as sex organs are the same or nearer to the organs of defecation, those who dared to write on toiletry habits were dubbed either as erotic or as vulgar and, thus, despised in academic and social circles. This was true, for example, of Urdu poets in India, English poets in Britain and French poets in France. However, as the need to defecate is irrepressible, so were some writers who despite social stigma wrote on the subject and gave us at least an idea in regard to the toiletry habits of human beings. Based on this rudimentary information, one can say that development in civilisation and sanitation have been co-terminus. The more developed was the society, the more sanitised it became and vice versa.
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In my own country India, how can anyone ignore the subject of the toilet when society is faced with human excretions of the order of 900 million litres of urine and 135 million kilogrammes of faecal matter per day, with a totally inadequate system for its collection and disposal. The society faces a constant threat of health hazards and epidemics. Sewerage facilities are available to no more than 30 per cent of the population in urban areas and only 3 per cent of the rural population has access to pour flush latrines.
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As long as man did not have an established abode, he did not have a toilet. He excreted wherever he felt like doing so. When he learnt to have a fixed house, he moved his toilet to the courtyard and then within his home. Once this was done, it became a challenge to deal with the smell and maintain cleanliness. Man tried various ways to do so such as chamber pots, which were cleaned manually by the servants or slaves; having toilets protruding out of the top floor of the house or the castle over the river below, or common toilets with holes over a flowing river or stream underneath. While the rich used luxurious toilet chairs or close stools, the poor defecated on the roads, in the jungle or straight into the river.
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It was only in the 16th century that a technological breakthrough came about and helped human beings to have clean toilets in houses.
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Historical Evolution
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The perusal of literature brings home the fact that we have only fragmentary information on the subject of the toilet as a private, secluded place to help the body relieve its waste. Sitting type toilets appeared quite early. In the remains of Harappa civilisation in India, at a place called Lothal (62 Kilometers from the city of Ahmedabad in Western India) and in the year 2500 BC, the people had water borne toilets in each house linked by drains covered with burnt clay bricks. To facilitate maintenance they had man-hole covers, chambers etc. It was the finest form of sanitary engineering. But with the decline of Indus valley civilisation, the science of sanitary engineering disappeared from India.
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The archaeological excavations confirm existence of sitting type toilets in Egypt (2100 BC), in Rome, public bath-cum-toilets were also well developed. There were holes in the floor and beneath was flowing water. When the Romans travelled they constructed toilets for their use. Historical evidence exists that Greeks relieved themselves outside. There was no shyness in toilet use. It was common at dinner parties in Rome to see slaves bringing in silver urine pots for important people to use while they celebrated.
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At this period it was also common to emphasise the medicinal values of human waste. Urine was supposed to have many therapeutic values. Some quacks even claimed that through the study of urine they could confidently say whether a young girl was virgin or not. Hiroshi Umino(1) reports that a Pharaoh cured his eye by use of a woman’s urine; he later married her. It was also widely believed that the dung of a donkey mixed with nightsoil removed black pustules or that the urine of a eunuch could help make women fertile. In the Indian scriptures there are stories about the strength of wrestlers. If a wrestler defecates too much, he is relatively weak because he cannot digest all that he eats. Similarly, a perfect saint has no need to defecate, for he eats no more than he can digest.(2) So not to defecate was considered saintly while in other societies not to defecate was considered manly.
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The period 500 to 1500 AD was a dark age from the point of view of human hygiene. It was an era of cess pools and human excreta all round. It was also an era of ‘liberty to pee’ French poet Claude le Petit described Paris as ‘Ridiculous Paris’ in the following words :
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My shoes my stockings, my overcoat My collar, my glove, my hat Have all been soiled by the same substance I would mistake myself rubbish
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There was lot of jest and humour relating to toilet habits and toilet appurtenances. Ballets were performed with dancers dressed in toilet themed costumes moving around to toilet sounds. The characters were known as Etronice (night soil) the Sultan Prime of Foirince (i.e. diarrhoea) etc. There are stories given by Guerrand(3) which depict the mood of Europe at that time. A lady of noble birth requested a young man to hold her hand. The young man suddenly feels the urge to urinate. Forgetting that he is holding the hand of a lady of noble birth he relieves himself. When he is finished he says ‘excuse me Madam, there was lot of urine in my body and was causing great inconvenience’. Joseph Pujol (hero extraordinaire of French scatology) in his shows could demonstrate many different types of farts i.e. young girl, mother-in-law, bride. He could even extinguish a candle 30 centimeters away through his farting.
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Public Habits and Attitude
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In the absence of proper toilet facilities, people perforce had to defecate and urinate wherever they could. While the authorities were encouraging people to have private places for defecating in practice there was total disorder. Squalor and filth abounded in cities. Social reformers advised people where to defecate, how to defecate in privacy and the need to control themselves when in company. Children were taught not to touch human waste.
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Laws however, could not prevent people defecating in the open. A delegation in France led by a master weaver protested against these laws: ‘our fathers have defecated in this place, We have defecated here and now our children will defecate here’.
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The rich used wool or hemp for ablution while the poor used grass, stone or sand or water depending upon the country and weather conditions or social customs. Use of newspaper was also common. In 1857, Joseph Cayetty invented toilet paper in the USA. In India it is very common to use water for ablution. However, the hand one uses varies in various parts of India. While in South India, people use the right hand for eating food, it is considered disgusting to use the same hand for ablution with water, so the left hand is used for sanitary purposes. In most parts of the North India, however, no such sharp distinction exists.
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According to Hiroshi Umino, European culture blossomed after Crusaders had contact with the East. Washing hands before food for example became popular. There were no separate toilets for men and women until a restaurant in Paris put up Male and Female at a party in 1739 AD. It is also around this time that the urinal pot was introduced to enable men to relieve themselves more conveniently. The facilities for women were niggardly and they were taught the virtues of control.
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Public Toilets and People
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In every society from time to time the government has felt the need to provide public toilet facilities to those who could not afford to have their own. Public toilets have a long history in a number of countries, mostly constructed and managed by municipalities. They have consistently caused disgust with their poor maintenance, vandalism and lack of basic facilities. The Mughal King Jehangir built a public toilet at Alwar, 120 kms away from Delhi for use of 100 families in 1556AD. Not much documentary evidence exists on the quality of its maintenance but with rudimentary technology it was probably in very unsatisfactory condition.
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It was in 1872 that local government in France asked private companies to manage public toilets for a lease period of 20 years. The private companies were also offering fees to government as they felt confident of recovering the same through user charges. Ground floor owners were also being requested to construct latrines for use of the passersby. At the Palais Royal Hotel in Paris, the owners started charging monthly fees from diners. Incidentally condoms were also sold as part of the facilities.
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In 1970 in a small village in Patna I founded Sulabh International, people laughed at me when I proposed the introduction of pay-and-use toilets. But my approach has succeeded and today 10 million people use Sulabh facilities every day. Most public toilets are being given to us to construct and maintain on a 30 years basis at no charge to the State. At the beginning of the 20th century most public toilets in Europe had gone underground, but in India these are still overground. Much more attention is being given to the construction of these toilets on a pay and use basis in slum areas. Men pay half a rupee per use, women and children avail of these facilities free. The facilities available include a toilet, bathing or washing of clothes and changing rooms. We are also setting up primary health care centres at these places. However, a lot of effort is required to get people’s participation in the efficient operation and maintenance of public toilets. This remains a big challenge to be met by NGOs. Based on my experience of the last 25 years, I am also convinced that only cooperation between Government and NGOs can make the sanitation programme a success. Neither the NGOs nor the government can create an impact if they work in isolation.
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Law and Citizens
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In order to improve sanitary conditions, governments in various countries have resorted to legal measures. In 1519 the provincial government of Normandy in France made provision of toilets compulsory in each house. The French government also passed a parliamentary decree to make cesspools in each house compulsory. Again a similar attempt was made in 1539. In Bordeaux the government made construction of cesspools compulsory. It was tried again in 1668 when the Lieutenant of Police made construction of toilets compulsory. In England the first sanitation law was passed in 1848. In India the first sanitation bill was introduced in 1878. It tried to make construction of toilets compulsory even in huts of Calcutta the capital of India at that time. The Bill even proposed construction of public toilets at the cost of neighbouring houses. The government of India enacted another Sanitation Act in 1993. Under this Act construction of a dry latrine and its manual cleaning was made an offence. But despite these enactments open defecation is rampant, proving that unless adequate social awareness is created in a developing country where instruments of state are weak and family income is low, it is a hard task to make significant progress in this area.
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Toilet Technologies
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The eighteenth century was a century of toilets. Despite the invention of the water closet by John Harrington in 1596 which cost only 6 shillings and 8 pence this was not adopted on a large scale for 182 years. During this period people used earth closets, chamber pots, close stools; open defecation remained. Meanwhile Harrington’s toilet under the name Angrez was being used in France, though not introduced on a large scale in England. In 1738 JF Brondel introduced the valve type flush toilet. Alexander Cummings further improved the technology and gave us a better device in 1775. In Cumming’s design water remained in the toilet so it suppressed odours. Still the working of the valve needed further improvements. In 1870, S.S. Helior invented the flush type toilet.
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From 1880 onwards, however, the emphasis has been more on aesthetics to make cisterns and bowls decorative. The bowls were so colourful that some suggested using them as soup bowls. It was in 1880 that toilet curtains made their appearance. During 1890 we had the first cantilever type of toilet. Since then the world has not witnessed any significant technical change except some changes in the shape of toilets and reductions in the quantity of water per use.
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Unlike in the past when latrines were tucked away in attics to keep them away from the noses and eyes of the family and society the twentieth century has given pride of place to the toilet in the home. These are now more opulent, more spacious than at any time in the past. While the provision of toilets in the house solved household problems of cleanliness the challenge remained as to how to dispose of human waste at city level. This was also solved when the sewerage system was introduced. Haussmann, the mayor of Paris in 1858, described it: ‘the underground galleries which are the organs of the big city will work in the same way as organs of the body, without being revealed.’ Around the same time the sewerage system was introduced at Calcutta capital of colonial India. However its extension into the country was, and remains, slow as it is capital intensive and beyond the resource capacity of the economy, even today.
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Though the challenges to provide toilet facilities have been totally overcome in rich countries, it has still to be met in developing countries like India. The journey of toilet has ended in Europe and North America but continues in the developing countries.