Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

A Pint Of Plain – An Interview With Bar Owner Chris Roddy

It has been argued (Flynn 1943; O’Shaughnessy, deWitt et al. 1922; Ní Giolla Léith & Ramsbotham 1867) that the primary consideration in designing a bar is the ratio between the height of the bar stool and the height of the bar (the “Stag’s Head” ratio; the presence or absence of a brass footrail also inflects calculations, determining as it does the angle of the knee). Correct application of this ratio leads to what is known as an “inverse temporal” effect: a primitive form of time travel in which four pints appear to be one and three hours five minutes. This account is not itself necessarily flawed, but it is by no means exhaustive. What is required is a more idealist approach to the question, one that does not position itself in such a definitive and exclusive way in front of the bar. For the concept ‘bar’ is a dualism; one is either in front of or behind the bar. The privileging of either side of this binary leads to potentially unjustifiable conclusions.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

Parks Review

Tree Score 1 tree = Desolate. Municipal. 2 trees = I can see the swings but there’s too much dog muck. 3 trees = Promising, offering some alternative vistas on the city. 4 trees = Good all-weather potential. Urban and ‘natural’ are conjoined with pleasing affectation. 5 trees = The city burgeons with new life. I can hear the grass growing.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

Going West

J.M.: You didn’t set out to make a career in film but simply had these ideas for images which you wanted to put sound to, which ended up as finished film works.

J.T.: That was one of the things that drew me to using moving images, the fact that you could work with sound. The story was, my uncle died and one of the things he left me was his 8mm camera and that’s the one I made my first film ‘Transfer’ with. It was about cross-dressing and people’s sexuality; coupled with things you were into at the time, which was drug taking. This room that we’re in used to be my studio and still is in a way, there was a cutting room and editing bench right down one wall, with a big screen at the far end. There was also a section cordoned off and used as a projection booth and right down the bottom was a sound dubber with a little four track and mixing desk. ‘Shell Shock Rock’ was done in this room, by the time I got to make that, it was relatively sophisticated down here. Prior to that I had made loads and loads of little things, trying to learn how to do things, like holding something in sync. You would have a little L.E.D reader, which was hooked up to the pulse on the tape recorder, which flashed behind the perforations of the film going into the machine. The air raid shelter which is behind the house here was where I used to put people, God love them, to do voice-overs. People don’t believe how technically difficult it was, and that was only in the mid 1970s.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

The Vacuum Issue 15 – God – Contents

I Met God 1

I Peed in Church Ruth Graham

I Met God 2

He’s The Boss: On the Meaning of God’s Authority Colin Graham

The Man in the Desert Jonathan Olley

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

A Life In Banking – Interview with David Keith

I was born in Toronto, Canada, on the 22nd of June 1936. My parents emigrated in the 1920s, my father went to Toronto, and my mother went to Montreal. They met at a party, got married, and I was the firstborn. My father was from Aghoghill, and my mother from just outside Portadown. We were in Canada until August 1939, we came home for a holiday and we got caught on this side of the Atlantic when Britain declared war on Mr. Hitler, in September, and we never went back.

I remember my grandparents’ house, bi-planes flying overhead, just after the war started. We moved to Omagh when I was about five.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

Bears Shit In The Woods

The following proverbs and expressions concerning members of the animal kingdom were mostly suggested by various people in a bar. There are the logical similes: “blind as a bat,” “busy as a bee,” “mad as a March hare” – these make sense. Someone can have “eyes like a hawk.” They can be “as stubborn as a mule,” “as fit as a flea” – which is more likely, anyway, than “fit as a fiddle” – “like a fish out of water” or “the cat that got the cream.” It is even possible to be “crazy like a fox,” though probably only if you’re from an American police show from the seventies, or jumpy as “a cat on a hot tin roof,” if you’re Tennessee Williams. The authenticity of the expressions “angry as an otter” (purportedly from the West Country) and “prickly as a pigeon” might be questionable.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

Old Cinema Memories

The public art piece entitled ‘Omnibus Route 77’ took to the streets last May 2002, for five bus tours. The process of re-activating the 77 route was part of a larger public art event under the banner, Routes, which was an acknowledgement of the contributions from busworkers in keeping Belfast moving during its breakdown period. The Routes Project was set up and managed by Littoral Arts to record the history and experiences of the bus workers in a variety of art forms. Working in partnership with the Amalgamated Transport & General Workers Union, Translink and the local arts community (Flaxart Studios, Belfast Exposed, Banter Productions & An Crann), Routes aimed to put a spotlight on the bus workers and their stories, highlighting their success in maintaining an essential public service to all communities during the past 30 years of conflict.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

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.

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

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

Posted By : thevacu823 2 Apr

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.