In the Shadow of the Shipyard Groundbreakers


In the Shadow of the Shipyard

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Thousands of men once crossed this bridge every morning on their way to

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work in one of Belfast's most historic landmarks - the shipyard.

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It has loomed large in the history of my family.

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My grandfather, my uncles, my father,

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all passed through its gates.

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As for me, my play, The Boat Factory,

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it tells of their experiences.

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But I wasn't the first.

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SHIP'S HORN

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While most of the men were building ships,

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there were others at work with their pens,

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inspired by this yard

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and the people of east Belfast who live beside it.

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St John Ervine, born in Ballymacarrett,

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gave a voice to early 20th century urban and rural Ulster

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with his ground-breaking plays.

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Thomas Carnduff was a shipyard labourer who dramatised the lives

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of working-class Belfast people during the recession of the 1930s.

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Sam Thompson was a painter and a fiery trade unionist

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who challenged the establishment with

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one of the most controversial plays of the 1960s.

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And Stewart Parker gave voice to a new generation

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in the 1970s and 1980s.

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Visionary and witty, his plays are strongly rooted in a Belfast

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troubled by the ghosts of its past and its present.

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These writers span a century of change in this city.

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Collectively, they have articulated the poverty and the politics,

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the hardship and the hopes of the ordinary working men

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and women of Belfast

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and, more importantly, put their voices on the stage.

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All of them were inspired by, and forged their ideas,

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here in the shadow of the shipyard.

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HORN BLOWS

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To understand a writer,

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you need to understand where he or she came from.

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And for these four playwrights, men who have inspired me

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as an actor and director, that means appreciating the very

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particular history of where they and I came from - east Belfast.

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The River Lagan is the natural marker that divides

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the east from the rest of Belfast.

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A couple of hundred years ago, the original town lay where the

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Cathedral Quarter is now.

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The east only became part of Belfast in 1853

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when land was needed for new industries, and the town boundary

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was extended to include the County Down side of the river.

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What I'm keen to know is, why did the city jump the river?

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You have to go to a lot of trouble to build all those bridges.

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When I grew up, east Belfast was just industrial,

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it was always that way. But what was there before?

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The answer may be inside this magnificent building,

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the Belfast Harbour Commissioner's Office.

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A painting from 1864 shows A View Of Sydenham, and tells us

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what was here - just two dozen large houses inhabited by business owners.

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By 1902, the population has expanded to 300,000,

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an influx from the countryside

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to work in the factories and the industries,

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and the streets of east Belfast begin to take shape.

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Ballymacarrett is the oldest part of the east,

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where there were two decisive moments in the 19th century.

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The harbour was dredged to create a deep water port.

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Then the tracks were laid

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for the Belfast and County Down Railway through east Belfast.

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There was a boom in industry, with new shipyards, ropeworks,

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engineering plants and whiskey distilleries.

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Men and women from rural parts of Ulster arrived in their droves,

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lured to the city by the promise of work.

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And the rows of red brick terraces built to house them

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ensured the spread of the city eastwards.

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Harland and Wolff Shipyard alone employed over 30,000 men.

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But other heavy industries, like the Workman Clark shipyard,

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the Sirocco Engineering Works, the Belfast Ropework Company,

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the St Ann's Iron Works Company, the Brickworks...

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..they all required a workforce as well.

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Well, in many ways, east Belfast is different to the rest of Belfast.

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It's a rural, Ulster-Scottish kind of culture.

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If you look at Belfast,

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even now, east Belfast is fringed

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by Ulster-Scots words, things like Tillysburn, Redburn, Cairnburn.

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We can imagine that these are named

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by local people who are Scots-speaking.

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It's very different to, um, to what's going on elsewhere.

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Tell me a little bit about the diversity of the people

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who found themselves working in that area.

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This creates a melting pot.

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Belfast vernacular comes out of a variety

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of different types of Englishes.

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Hiberno-English, Ulster Scots.

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And you see the strong vernacular culture developing

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because of the dynamism and the difference.

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Spoken word becomes really powerful in people's minds,

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and they have to express this, so they find ways of doing it.

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The word "culture" is bandied about here a lot.

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What is the culture of east Belfast?

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Culture of east Belfast is...is a tricky one to define.

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One might say that there is an awareness of the industrial culture.

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You see the city, you see industry, you see the great,

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red wall of the rope works.

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But if you turn around, you see what CS Lewis called

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the boundless northern sky,

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and the things that, often,

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working class people are told that they shouldn't have

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interests in - the idea of art and ideas and politics

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and philosophy and literature.

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And there's this tension within east Belfast, in a sense,

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which way you turn.

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And these writers are aware of both of those things,

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and they grasp the opportunity to move beyond

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where the red brick walls might place them.

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In 1911, shipbuilder Gustav Wolff penned a rhyme to the east,

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his favourite part of Belfast.

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He wrote, "You may talk of your Edinburgh

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"and the beauties of Perth

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"And all the large cities famed on the earth

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"But give me my house, though it be but a garret

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"In the pleasant surroundings of Ballymacarrett.'

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Wolff's workers had good reason to have a less rose-tinted

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view of their surroundings.

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It was thanks to their labour that Belfast had become famous

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as one of the world's greatest manufacturers of ships.

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SHIPS' HORNS

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But it came at a cost.

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Relentless, physically punishing work,

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cramped housing, unfair wages and tensions between

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Protestants and Catholics in the yard that spilled out

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into the streets adjacent to it.

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As the 19th century turned into the 20th, a teenage boy observed

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the tumult of life outside his door and began writing it down.

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This church, Westbourne Presbyterian, was built in 1880,

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but it's more commonly known,

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even today, as the Shipyard Church.

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These walls once rang with the voices of local men

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and women who worshipped here every Sunday morning.

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And their children, they attended the school just next door.

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This church could hold up to 1,500 people.

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That's 500 more than the Grand Opera House in Belfast.

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And I have it on very good authority that,

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often, it was standing room only.

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There's a blue plaque high up on the old school wall

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to commemorate one of its brightest students,

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John Greer Ervine, writer and playwright.

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He later adopted the St John Ervine,

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as a sort of dramatic flourish.

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St John Ervine wrote plays that were performed in Belfast, Dublin,

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London's West End and Broadway.

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He counted amongst his friends leading

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literary figures of the day, such as George Bernard Shaw and WB Yeats.

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His early life, however, was spent in much humbler surroundings,

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here on the Albertbridge Road.

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His father died in the year Ervine was born,

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so it was the women in his life

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who became his greatest source of inspiration.

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His grandmother was from Donaghadee, an Ulster-Scot, who moved, like

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so many others, from the country to Belfast in search of work.

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This determined and enterprising woman set up a hardware shop

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on the Albertbridge Road.

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Ervine spent much of his childhood in it,

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and both the setting

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and his grandmother's distinctive turn of phrase

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found their way into what is perhaps Ervine's best loved play,

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a rural comedy called Boyd's Shop.

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Another influence, however,

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was the unusual household kept by his mother.

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The young widow ran a boarding house for deaf-mutes.

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One of the male boarders is listed as a driller from the shipyard.

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But perhaps more significantly was the fact that

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Protestant boarders sat alongside catholic boarders

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at Mrs Ervine's dinner table.

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Ervine's childhood home clearly welcomed guests

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irrespective of religion.

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And growing up in this tolerant atmosphere arguably

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inspired one of Ervine's earliest and most successful plays,

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Mixed Marriage, a cautionary tale on the dangers of religious prejudice.

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A meeting with the influential WB Yeats in London led to

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Mixed Marriage being staged here at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin,

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under the direction of Lennox Robinson.

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The play caught the mood of the time.

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It's set in the working class home of the Rainey family.

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The men have been called out on strike,

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and there are fears that it might erupt into sectarian violence.

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John Rainey, the head of the household,

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shows his prejudice against

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the marriage of Catholics and Protestants

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when he discovers that his son, Hugh, is courting a Catholic girl.

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Did I hear you say you're going to marry this woman?

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-You did.

-And you're going to take him, I suppose.

-I am.

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You're a Catholic, aren't you?

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Yes, I am.

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Isn't it against your religion to be marrying a Protestant?

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Well, it can be done. But I don't care.

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-Will you turn Protestant if you marry him?

-No. No, I won't.

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That production was very faithful to the period.

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I think that's exactly what people here

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in the Abbey would have seen 100 years ago.

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The play ends in tragedy.

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Nora, blaming herself for causing a rift between Rainey

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and his son, rushes out of the house amidst a riot and is shot dead.

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GUNSHOT

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Mixed Marriage premiered on the 30th March 1911.

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Due to run for just four nights,

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it was so successful that it was put on again a fortnight later.

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The Abbey then took the play on tour to the Royal Court in London

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and from there travelled to Broadway, New York,

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before finally staging it in Belfast in 1912.

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Mixed Marriage was a runaway hit, a transatlantic success

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and St John Ervine's reputation as a playwright was firmly established.

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It's an extraordinary play.

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For the first time, the voices of the ordinary,

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working-class men and women of Belfast are heard on the stage.

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And just as important, it's also a dire warning of

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the potentially fatal consequences of religious prejudice.

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The success of Mixed Marriage eventually led to Ervine's

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appointment as the manager of the Abbey Theatre in 1915,

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but his time here was unhappy and short-lived.

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How do you think Ervine's stint at the Abbey

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affected his career as a playwright?

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He was very unhappy with the Abbey players.

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He thought they were a fairly undisciplined lot,

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and, of course, they thought that he was an absolute tyrant.

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It didn't help that he was manager of the Abbey

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during and after Easter 1916,

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a very bad time to be doing anything in Dublin.

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And a number of the Abbey Players were, in fact,

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active in the Easter Rising.

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He was maverick in his politics

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and when he went off to fight on the Western Front,

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his decision to fight with an Irish regiment rather than with

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the Ulster Division in itself seems to signal a continuing

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attachment to Ireland rather than to Britain more generally.

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Ervine was wounded during the First World War.

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He actually took a bullet in the knee in March 1918.

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And, erm, it turned out that it was much more serious

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than at first expected and eventually,

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the leg had to be amputated.

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People said to him from time to time, "Why are you so cantankerous?"

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Because he could be very cantankerous, which I think came

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from the irritability of being in constant pain from that leg injury.

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The 20th century, like no other century I think,

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had a real crisis of identity going on in Ireland.

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He was from Country Down, he worked in Dublin,

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he lived in London in England...

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What was his identity?

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Composite, I think.

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When he's in London, people think that he's Irish.

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When he's back in Ireland, people think that he's English.

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All of these identities - English, Irish, Ulster -

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I think feed into the way in which he thinks about himself

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and that influences his writing.

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After the war, St John Ervine made his home in England.

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Despite being in constant pain from his injuries,

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he was determined to continue forging a career

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as a dramatist and a critic.

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He wrote drawing-room comedies such as The First Mrs Fraser

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that held appeal for an English audience but, in 1936,

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he returned to his Ulster roots with a play that would become

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a staple of the local theatre scene here in Belfast.

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Boyd's Shop was inspired by his grandmother's hardware shop

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and, in a nod to her birthplace, Donaghadee,

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he set it in the fictional village of Donaghreagh.

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Billed in its first run as "a simple comedy

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"in which the essential kindliness of the Ulster people appears,"

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Ervine focuses on the gossip and intrigues of village life.

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At its heart is a love triangle between the daughter

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of shop owner Andrew Boyd, an ambitious young clergyman

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and a newcomer to the village.

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The play marks the shift in Ervine's politics.

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While Mixed Marriage offers a critique of the prejudices

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of the Protestant working classes, Boyd's Shop is a much kinder,

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almost sentimental portrayal of the Protestant rural middle class.

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It was first staged in Belfast in the Ulster Group Theatre in 1940.

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Its homespun characters and happy ending

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were a welcome respite throughout the war years.

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And it was so popular that 42,000 people saw it

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performed between 1940 and 1944.

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This success led to Boyd's Shop being made into a film in 1960

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and while the setting and the characters

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remain faithful to Ervine's original play,

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the language and the accents of the Ulster village are a little...

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off.

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We're in the wrong business for this town, aren't we?

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Selling gossip instead of groceries.

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In Boyd's Shop, Ervine wanted to capture the words

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and phrases of his Ulster-Scots grandmother.

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-ALL:

-What did you hear, Miss McClure?

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The Reverent Patterson is retiring in a month or two.

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The film, however,

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was made with mostly Dublin actors from the Abbey Players.

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There's more to a man than success or failure.

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More often than not, it's a matter of luck.

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Maybe the makers thought an English audience wouldn't notice or care

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about the accents, but being an actor from Ulster,

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I'm going to try a reading in the way Ervine intended...

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You look annoyed about something, Father.

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I am annoyed.

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After the meeting the night, one or two of the elders was

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talking about Mr Patterson's remarks before the sermon.

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They seem to think he ought to retire.

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Well, he's old, Father.

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So am I. But I'm damned if I'm retiring.

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I don't like it, all this hinting and suggesting behind a man's back.

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It's not decent, daughter.

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Well...

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It's no use thinking about it the night. I'm dropping with fatigue.

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-Will you bolt the door or will I?

-I'll do it, Father.

-It's upset me.

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I hate to see people getting up a kind of a conspiracy

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behind a man's back.

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Goodnight, daughter dear.

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Goodnight, Father.

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Ervine lived until he was 87.

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While he died in Sussex far from his childhood home in Belfast,

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he never forgot his roots.

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Instead, he celebrated them.

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Why should a patch of land called Ulster have such an effect on me

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that when I catch sight of it from a ship's deck,

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I can feel tears rising in my eyes?

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In his later years, Ervine may have left behind the hard-hitting

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subject matter of Mixed Marriage,

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but there was another aspiring writer - a docker -

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who was ready to step into the breach.

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In the 1930s, Belfast's pride, the shipbuilding industry,

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was reeling from the impact of a worldwide recession.

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Thousands of men who depended on the yards for their livelihood

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were suddenly thrown out of work.

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One unemployed dock worker took up his pen

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and articulated the toll that the poverty

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and industrial decline was having on the men and women of Belfast.

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His name was Thomas Carnduff.

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Carnduff was born in 1886 in Sandy Row

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and he would always remain proud of his Protestant heritage.

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He would eventually become a Worshipful Master

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in the Independent Orange Order.

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His grandparents were Ulster-Scots like those of St John Ervine,

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and they had moved from the village of Drumbo to Belfast for work.

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Carnduff lost both his parents at an early age and had to fend

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for himself in a number of low-paid jobs.

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Married and with four young sons to support,

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he found work as a labourer in the shipyards.

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Carnduff laboured for 17 backbreaking years

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in Workman Clark's, the rival yard to Harland & Wolff.

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He was that most unusual of writers, a working man

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who was also a poet and a playwright.

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He worked a punishing 50-hour week starting at 6am

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and finishing at 5.30pm for a pittance.

0:22:170:22:20

And there were accidents, sometimes fatal, almost daily.

0:22:200:22:24

And then there was always the threat of being laid off hanging over him.

0:22:240:22:28

And on the occasions when he was let go, he would gather with the other

0:22:280:22:32

men at the gates, hoping that his name would be called for a shift.

0:22:320:22:36

Carnduff took pride in his labour.

0:22:410:22:43

He saw himself as a member of a workforce that was

0:22:430:22:47

contributing to the industrial success of Belfast.

0:22:470:22:50

And he enjoyed the company of the men too.

0:22:500:22:53

"Rough, hardy characters" but who were also the

0:22:530:22:57

"most thoughtful and kindly" he knew.

0:22:570:23:00

It was in this energetic world of camaraderie

0:23:000:23:02

and hard labour that Carnduff began writing poetry.

0:23:020:23:06

These lines are seen every day by the hundreds of visitors

0:23:220:23:26

to Titanic Belfast.

0:23:260:23:28

They're a homage to the shipyard men by one of their own.

0:23:280:23:32

"O city of sound and motion! O city of endless stir!

0:23:330:23:39

"From the dawn of a misty morning

0:23:390:23:41

"To the fall of the evening air.

0:23:410:23:45

"From the night of moving shadows

0:23:450:23:47

"To the sound of the shipyard horn.

0:23:470:23:51

"We hail thee Queen of the Northland

0:23:510:23:54

"We who are Belfast born."

0:23:540:23:56

Songs From The Shipyards, Thomas Carnduff, 1924.

0:23:570:24:03

At its peak during World War I,

0:24:090:24:11

Workman Clark employed over 10,000 men.

0:24:110:24:14

By the early 1930s, however, orders had dried up

0:24:170:24:21

and most of the workforce was laid off.

0:24:210:24:23

Carnduff was one of them.

0:24:230:24:25

Just as his money was running out,

0:24:260:24:28

Carnduff went to a lecture by the Belfast poet Richard Rowley.

0:24:280:24:32

During a chat afterwards,

0:24:320:24:34

Rowley suggested that Carnduff write a play.

0:24:340:24:36

The very next morning, Carnduff started on Workers.

0:24:370:24:41

Into the play, he poured all his experiences of shipyard life.

0:24:460:24:50

He would say afterwards, "I had drawn the characters from real life

0:24:500:24:55

"and the dialogue was their everyday speech."

0:24:550:24:58

Who bargains for you when you want a rise in wages?

0:24:590:25:01

Who got you holidays with play and a five-day week?

0:25:010:25:04

I suppose you think Santa Claus brought them.

0:25:040:25:06

I'm telling you, mate, if we'd no trade unions,

0:25:060:25:08

they'd be paying us in soap wrappers.

0:25:080:25:09

What has the union done for us in this firm, eh?

0:25:090:25:12

Sure, the working conditions here date back to Methuselah.

0:25:120:25:15

Look, Alec, a minute ago, you were the fella that was saying

0:25:150:25:18

it was no good of us trying to get better conditions here,

0:25:180:25:20

weren't you?

0:25:200:25:22

Workers focuses on a group of shipyard men

0:25:270:25:29

and the complicated relationship between the violent John Waddell,

0:25:290:25:34

his wife Susan and her former sweetheart, John Bowman.

0:25:340:25:37

The Grand Opera House rejected it, saying it was too inflammatory

0:25:390:25:44

and working-class...

0:25:440:25:45

..but to Carnduff's delight,

0:25:470:25:49

it premiered at the Abbey Theatre Dublin on 13th October 1932.

0:25:490:25:54

As the audience showed their appreciation,

0:25:580:26:00

Carnduff commented that the years of poverty, misery

0:26:000:26:04

and disappointment were forgotten in the solitary moment from heaven.

0:26:040:26:10

He also found humour in the fact that he was

0:26:100:26:11

an Orangeman from Sandy Row being applauded on the Dublin stage.

0:26:110:26:17

APPLAUSE

0:26:170:26:19

Deafening cheers, a dozen curtains and imperative clamour for author

0:26:210:26:25

marked the end of Thomas Carnduff's Workers.

0:26:250:26:28

When the author thanked them for their sympathetic

0:26:280:26:31

reception of his play, a woman in the stalls cried,

0:26:310:26:34

"It was worth it!" And a man urged him to write ten more.

0:26:340:26:37

One critic said that the dialogue was delightfully natural,

0:26:390:26:43

written with the true eye of a keen observer.

0:26:430:26:45

I think in this case, for once, the critic was right.

0:26:470:26:50

Next up was Belfast.

0:26:560:26:58

But would Carnduff's controversial play be a success

0:26:580:27:01

when it opened at the city's Empire Theatre?

0:27:010:27:04

The answer is...

0:27:070:27:09

yes.

0:27:090:27:10

"Last night's splendid audience not only applauded

0:27:100:27:13

"warmly at the final curtain,

0:27:130:27:15

"but also throughout the action of the play,

0:27:150:27:17

"many of the forceful lines exciting spontaneous approval."

0:27:170:27:21

Carnduff went on to write three more plays - Machinery,

0:27:240:27:28

Traitors and Castlereagh.

0:27:280:27:30

Again, these plays garnered good reviews

0:27:300:27:32

and filled theatres in Dublin and Belfast.

0:27:320:27:35

Curiously though, after Carnduff's death in the 1950s,

0:27:360:27:40

the plays almost totally vanished from the public domain.

0:27:400:27:44

Today, his papers are held here at Queen's University, Belfast

0:27:450:27:49

and his precious typewriter has been lovingly preserved

0:27:490:27:53

by the Ulster Museum.

0:27:530:27:54

Tell me about the physical mechanics of Thomas Carnduff writing

0:27:580:28:03

plays on this typewriter.

0:28:030:28:04

Well, you can see it's a travelling typewriter.

0:28:050:28:08

And that was very useful because he had to move digs regularly

0:28:080:28:13

when he was laid off at the shipyard,

0:28:130:28:15

so this little machine was ideal for that.

0:28:150:28:17

The only problem that came across was that he was very poor.

0:28:170:28:20

He frequently was out of ribbons and paper, which he had to borrow

0:28:200:28:24

or beg for and so he would sit in very, very cold lodging rooms

0:28:240:28:29

in the very damp, wet conditions

0:28:290:28:31

of those back-street terraced houses in Belfast

0:28:310:28:34

with gloves on and he would tap away determinedly.

0:28:340:28:41

And his own family didn't really appreciate what he was doing.

0:28:410:28:44

They thought he was wasting his time.

0:28:440:28:46

But all through that, he sat tapping away at that little machine.

0:28:460:28:50

That was his sole road to freedom, to a wider audience.

0:28:500:28:56

This is a copy of Carnduff's letters to Mary who was his wife and muse.

0:28:560:29:01

Well, you can see here quite clearly,

0:29:010:29:03

it's a measure of how poor he was that he couldn't afford paper

0:29:030:29:05

many times in his writing life, so he appropriated,

0:29:050:29:09

borrowed and begged for paper and he used both sides of it.

0:29:090:29:13

And he writes to Mary, "It took 18 long years to climb up

0:29:140:29:18

"the little distance I managed, and I had to start at the very bottom.

0:29:180:29:22

"While others were having a good time, I was working hard.

0:29:220:29:26

"I drank little, gambled little and played little.

0:29:260:29:29

"But those boys down at the shipyard didn't half show me their loyalty

0:29:290:29:32

"when I had to face public appreciation of my efforts.

0:29:320:29:36

"During all those years, I had my dreams."

0:29:360:29:40

-Wow!

-So this is the means for him achieving his dreams.

0:29:400:29:44

What's this image and why is it so important to Thomas Carnduff?

0:29:450:29:49

This is Drumbo Round Tower which is in the graveyard

0:29:500:29:53

of Drumbo Presbyterian Church.

0:29:530:29:57

And this is an imitation of an Irish tower

0:29:570:30:00

and Carnduff took this as symbolic of his belonging in Ireland,

0:30:000:30:05

because in that graveyard, there are Carnduffs buried.

0:30:050:30:08

And he looked at that and in one piece he wrote,

0:30:080:30:14

"Is it my fault that my ancestors

0:30:140:30:16

"looked on the land with approval and stayed?"

0:30:160:30:19

So this was a hugely important to him, this was like an identity

0:30:190:30:22

as a Presbyterian who was born here, but had ancestors elsewhere.

0:30:220:30:28

That was hugely important in the Carnduff story.

0:30:280:30:31

Carnduff never capitalised on his early success as a writer -

0:30:380:30:42

he was the odd man out

0:30:420:30:44

in a middle-class literary establishment -

0:30:440:30:47

maybe too uncompromising, too critical.

0:30:470:30:51

And he certainly never made his fortune from writing.

0:30:510:30:54

He remained a working man until the end of his days.

0:30:540:30:57

Finally getting a job here in the Linen Hall Library

0:31:040:31:08

as a caretaker, I'd like to think he found some consolation

0:31:080:31:12

spending his days amongst the books that he loved.

0:31:120:31:15

But you can be sure that the world of the shipyard

0:31:150:31:18

was never far from his thoughts.

0:31:180:31:20

Harland & Wolff survived the recession of the 1930s

0:31:330:31:36

and became a major supplier for the armed forces during World War II.

0:31:360:31:41

By the 1950s, a new generation of men was working in the yard.

0:31:410:31:46

Amongst them was a painter from East Belfast who would redefine

0:31:460:31:50

the type of plays that could be staged in Northern Ireland.

0:31:500:31:54

He was passionate in his belief that the theatre was the place where

0:31:590:32:04

the social and political injustices of the day could be aired.

0:32:040:32:09

His name was Sam Thompson.

0:32:090:32:11

Thompson was born in 1916 at Montrose Street in Ballymacarrett.

0:32:130:32:18

In later life, he would remember being aware, as a young boy,

0:32:180:32:21

of two things - that his destiny lay in the shipyard

0:32:210:32:24

and that there was tension

0:32:240:32:26

between the Catholics and Protestants in his community.

0:32:260:32:29

We always played our games on the island part of the park,

0:32:380:32:41

across a bridge, and only a stone's throw from the shipyard,

0:32:410:32:44

where we could see the red oxide painted boats on the slipways.

0:32:440:32:49

There, our fathers and brothers worked.

0:32:490:32:51

And some day, we would work there also.

0:32:510:32:54

Hello, fellas. That new boat in the slips is away.

0:33:000:33:03

It's not away, it's only lanced. My da saw it lanced yesterday.

0:33:030:33:07

My da won't take me to see a lance.

0:33:070:33:09

He says I'll see enough lances when I'm working in the shipyard.

0:33:090:33:13

Hey, there's some fellas, let's challenge them to a match.

0:33:130:33:16

I wouldn't play with them, they're Catholics...

0:33:160:33:19

I don't care, I'll play with them if they want to.

0:33:190:33:22

Although my playmates and I were around the nine years old mark,

0:33:220:33:26

it was the first time we'd met up with other boys

0:33:260:33:29

who we knew for sure were Catholics.

0:33:290:33:31

And there was no mistaking the tension that existed between us.

0:33:310:33:35

Until we realised that neither of us

0:33:350:33:37

had horns or pitchforks dangling out of our pockets.

0:33:370:33:40

Sam Thompson and his playmates DID end up in the yard.

0:33:450:33:48

At the age of 14, he started working at Harland & Wolff

0:33:480:33:52

as an apprentice painter.

0:33:520:33:54

It was a place that he described as

0:33:540:33:56

"a fearful, sprawling mass of gantries, cranes, ships and men".

0:33:560:34:01

Soon after he finished his apprenticeship,

0:34:090:34:12

he left and began working for Belfast Corporation as a painter.

0:34:120:34:16

Some years later, he would write his most famous play,

0:34:160:34:20

Over The Bridge,

0:34:200:34:22

but for now he was painting the underside of this one...

0:34:220:34:25

..the Albert Bridge.

0:34:260:34:28

It was a dirty, unpleasant job.

0:34:280:34:30

Sam noticed that some men were assigned it and others weren't.

0:34:300:34:34

This triggered a desire to do something about it,

0:34:340:34:37

so he became a shop steward

0:34:370:34:38

and negotiated a rota system with the management.

0:34:380:34:41

His union activities got him the sack.

0:34:410:34:44

Regardless, Thompson remained a lifelong, committed trade unionist

0:34:460:34:50

and this, along with his membership

0:34:500:34:52

of the Northern Ireland Labour Party, allowed him to stand

0:34:520:34:55

outside the dominant Unionist and Nationalist politics of the time.

0:34:550:35:00

A friend of Thompson's described him as "always appearing to be

0:35:000:35:04

"on the verge of exploding into flames

0:35:040:35:06

"at the first glimpse of injustice."

0:35:060:35:09

A chance meeting in his local pub with Sam Hanna Bell,

0:35:180:35:21

a BBC writer and producer,

0:35:210:35:23

gave Thompson the perfect outlet for expressing his passionate beliefs

0:35:230:35:28

on the ills of poverty and bigotry that riddled Belfast society.

0:35:280:35:33

At first, he wrote nostalgic radio features,

0:35:350:35:38

such as The Long Back Street and Brush In Hand

0:35:380:35:42

about his childhood in East Belfast and his apprenticeship as a painter.

0:35:420:35:46

But in 1955, he began writing the play that would make his name

0:35:480:35:53

and stir up one of the biggest controversies to date

0:35:530:35:56

on the Belfast stage.

0:35:560:35:58

What is Over The Bridge about?

0:36:030:36:07

Over The Bridge is a parable of sectarianism in the shipyards

0:36:070:36:11

and within the Labour movement in Northern Ireland.

0:36:110:36:13

The figure of Davy Mitchell, the main character, decides to protect

0:36:130:36:18

a Catholic worker within the shipyard

0:36:180:36:20

who is under the threat of a mob.

0:36:200:36:23

Sam Thompson would paint in the shipyard, come home,

0:36:230:36:26

go into his attic in East Belfast

0:36:260:36:29

and write what became Over The Bridge.

0:36:290:36:31

But of course, Sam Thompson would say that he'd been writing it

0:36:310:36:34

his whole life, and the incident was in fact based on something

0:36:340:36:37

he witnessed himself in 1935,

0:36:370:36:40

when a Catholic man was beaten to death on the Albert Bridge Road.

0:36:400:36:44

If you're not going with us, just where do you think you are going?

0:36:470:36:52

To my bench out there when the horn blows to start work.

0:36:530:36:57

-But, Davy, they'll tear you apart.

-Pete does my meat at that bench.

0:36:570:37:01

If he lifts one tool to start work,

0:37:010:37:03

I'm duty bound as a fellow trade unionist to work with him.

0:37:030:37:07

Two weeks before the play was due to go on,

0:37:070:37:10

the board of the Group Theatre decided by six votes to two

0:37:100:37:13

to withdraw the play.

0:37:130:37:15

There was a very interesting moment where Sam Thompson went round

0:37:150:37:18

to the house of John Ritchie McKee,

0:37:180:37:20

who was a former estate agent and a golfing companion

0:37:200:37:23

of the Unionist Prime Minister Lord Brookeborough.

0:37:230:37:26

And Ritchie McKee said, "I can't do this play,

0:37:260:37:28

"I can't do Over The Bridge.

0:37:280:37:30

"It's too incendiary, what will happen, firstly,

0:37:300:37:34

"I regard the language which you use as blasphemous

0:37:340:37:37

"and if we show this play, the theatre will be wrecked by a mob."

0:37:370:37:41

I don't give a damn about old boy. He's had his chance.

0:37:410:37:44

But I do care about you, Davy.

0:37:440:37:46

And when that horn blows, there's only one man going out to work,

0:37:460:37:49

and by Christ, it's not going to be you.

0:37:490:37:51

Just get one of you try to stop me and see what happens.

0:37:510:37:53

If I refuse to go out there and work alongside Peter,

0:37:530:37:56

everything I've ever fought for and believed in is nothing.

0:37:560:38:01

What do you think Sam Thompson was trying to achieve?

0:38:030:38:06

Sam Thompson's view, in that very combative, pugnacious

0:38:060:38:10

and feisty way, is that we have to confront sectarianism.

0:38:100:38:15

And I have to show it within this play, so that we can confront it.

0:38:150:38:19

You can reason all you like,

0:38:190:38:22

but you're not change one iota the feelings of that mob out there.

0:38:220:38:25

Come on, lads,, let's start.

0:38:250:38:27

The man that tries to stop me doing my duty...

0:38:270:38:30

So help me...

0:38:330:38:34

..I'll kill them.

0:38:350:38:37

Thompson's play pulls no punches.

0:38:370:38:39

He writes Davy Mitchell as a fair-minded, courageous

0:38:390:38:43

and selfless man who puts his trade union principles

0:38:430:38:46

of supporting his Catholic workmate before his own personal safety.

0:38:460:38:51

His stand against an angry mob results in

0:38:510:38:54

his eventual murder at their hands.

0:38:540:38:57

To see it is a shock. You're meant to be shocked by it.

0:38:570:39:00

And you're meant to find it abhorrent.

0:39:000:39:02

When we didn't see that on stage,

0:39:020:39:04

and we didn't hear that on the radio,

0:39:040:39:06

even though it was there, was very important.

0:39:060:39:09

The play is a great warning from history in that way.

0:39:090:39:12

There had been outbreaks of sectarian violence in the yard

0:39:130:39:17

in the 1920s and the 1930s

0:39:170:39:19

and Thompson believed that it could happen again.

0:39:190:39:23

He also believed the issue was not being talked about

0:39:230:39:26

by ordinary people and those in power.

0:39:260:39:28

He would later say that the play was his own "plea for tolerance".

0:39:280:39:33

Getting it onto the stage, however,

0:39:330:39:36

would be Thompson's greatest challenge.

0:39:360:39:39

Belfast Telegraph, Thursday, May 14, 1959.

0:39:390:39:43

"Over The Bridge man gets legal advice.

0:39:430:39:46

"Mr Thompson said today that he had done so

0:39:460:39:49

"after reading a statement made yesterday By Mr Ritchie McKee,

0:39:490:39:54

"chairman of the theatre's board of directors, that,

0:39:540:39:57

" 'It is the policy of the directors to keep political

0:39:570:40:01

" 'and religious controversies off our stage.'

0:40:010:40:04

"Mr Thompson said, 'That is an unfortunate statement.

0:40:040:40:08

" 'Not only for me, but for Ulster playwrights in general.

0:40:080:40:12

" 'It lets the playwrights see where he stands with this theatre.' "

0:40:120:40:16

Sam Thompson and director James Ellis saw

0:40:180:40:22

the withdrawal of the play as censorship.

0:40:220:40:24

Ellis resigned from the Group Theatre and although it took

0:40:240:40:27

months of struggle and strife, the two men set up their own company

0:40:270:40:32

and staged Over The Bridge at the Empire Theatre on 27th January 1960.

0:40:320:40:38

On the first night when that curtain came down

0:40:380:40:41

to an absolutely tremendous reception

0:40:410:40:44

from all parts of the house,

0:40:440:40:46

I think Sam's and my feelings were both

0:40:460:40:49

one of triumph and of justification.

0:40:490:40:52

There were no missiles being hurled at the stage, there was

0:40:520:40:54

nothing but applause. People were standing shouting for the author.

0:40:540:40:58

I remember in the confusion having difficulty in introducing him.

0:40:580:41:01

There were people from all sections of the community,

0:41:010:41:04

people who'd never been in a theatre,

0:41:040:41:06

there were shipyard workers who'd never visited a theatre before

0:41:060:41:10

and they were on their feet cheering a play about themselves.

0:41:100:41:13

Belfast audiences voted with their feet.

0:41:130:41:16

Over The Bridge was a roaring success

0:41:160:41:18

playing to a full house every night for six weeks.

0:41:180:41:22

As Thompson's friend Sam Hanna Bell said,

0:41:230:41:26

it was possible to detect

0:41:260:41:27

an almost extraordinary feeling of relief

0:41:270:41:30

that at last the unclean spectre of sectarianism

0:41:300:41:36

had been dragged before the footlights.

0:41:360:41:39

I don't know the answers, Rabbie, I don't know.

0:41:430:41:47

I've asked myself what unions would be like

0:41:490:41:53

if there wasn't men in them like Davy.

0:41:530:41:55

And I've wondered what sort of Christians they were

0:41:550:41:59

who'd form a mob and maim a man

0:41:590:42:02

and murder another in the sacred name of religion.

0:42:020:42:07

-And man told me yesterday...

-"A ma told me yesterday

0:42:100:42:13

"that when the mob went into action, he walked away.

0:42:130:42:16

"And so did hundreds of his so-called workmates.

0:42:160:42:21

"They said it was none of their business.

0:42:220:42:24

"None of their business, Rabbie.

0:42:260:42:28

"That's what they said.

0:42:290:42:30

"And then they walked away.

0:42:320:42:34

"And that's what frightens me.

0:42:340:42:36

"They walked away."

0:42:380:42:40

The success of Over The Bridge meant that Thompson could become

0:42:470:42:50

a full-time writer.

0:42:500:42:52

He continued to challenge the status quo in Northern Ireland society

0:42:520:42:56

writing three more plays that again explored controversial issues

0:42:560:43:00

including evangelism and dirty election tactics.

0:43:000:43:03

He said, "A writer like me may criticise his own people

0:43:030:43:08

"because he likes them very well."

0:43:080:43:10

His career as a playwright, however, was short-lived.

0:43:130:43:16

In February 1965, aged just 49, he died of a heart attack

0:43:160:43:22

in the offices of the Northern Ireland Labour Party.

0:43:220:43:25

This bridge is a relatively new Belfast landmark.

0:43:280:43:31

It links the old shipyards with the Victoria Park

0:43:310:43:34

and right into the heart of East Belfast.

0:43:340:43:36

And also, in recognition of the work of Sam Thompson

0:43:360:43:39

as a playwright and trade unionist, it's named after him.

0:43:390:43:42

It's a fitting monument because there is an overwhelming sense

0:43:420:43:46

of crossing over that bridge to stand beside a workmate

0:43:460:43:48

or a friend, just as Sam Thompson did, no matter what the religion.

0:43:480:43:53

And also, being able to stand up and speak out about it.

0:43:530:43:57

In 1960, a teenage boy who had dreams of becoming a writer,

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went to see Over The Bridge with his uncle, a shipwright.

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For the boy, it was the first time he had seen characters from his own

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community - working-class men and women from Belfast - on the stage.

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In later life,

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he said it was as if he'd been thrust in front of the mirror

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for the first time and he was both scared and delighted by what he saw.

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Witnessing the power of theatre in showing the two faces

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of Belfast working-class life -

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ugly and violent, and civilised and decent -

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was a life-changing experience.

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The boy, Stewart Parker, would eventually become

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one of Northern Ireland's most lauded and visionary playwrights

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of the 1970s and 1980s.

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And the mirror he held up to Belfast reflected an image of the city

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that was provocative, witty, honest and hopeful

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during some its grimmest years.

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Parker spent his early childhood here in Sydenham.

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As an adult he remembered the trains to and from Bangor

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rattling past at the end of the street

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and beyond the tracks rose the inevitable gantries of Queen's Island.

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Three sounds were constantly in the air.

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There was the industrial noise,

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the distant clanging of the shipyard

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and the sudden roar from the aircraft testing at Shorts.

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Tell me what it was like growing up, to have Stewart Parker as a brother.

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He had lovely blue eyes, really blonde hair.

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And we all mollycoddled him

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because he wasn't well and he couldn't come out that much,

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so we played indoors with him,

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colouring in, snakes and ladders, stuff like that.

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He had terrific lung problems.

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It was called "delicate" in those days, he was a delicate child.

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When did you realise that Stewart was a writer?

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Well, he told me he was going to be a writer.

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I says, "What's your future? What are you going to do?"

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"I'm going to be a writer."

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And if you read that little poem there,

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you'll see what I mean about that.

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This poem is titled I Will Write.

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"Though soft sleep tempts my leaden eyes to warmth and comfort

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"Or fills this pen with rock

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"Though trend or temper will always be of my everything,

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"Till all but pen and paper stay

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"And then they'll never have, I say

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"Though the weird masters, time and age

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"Make the body an abhorrence

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"Pouring senile liquid through the brain

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"Turning the hair white

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"Still I will write."

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-He knew he was going to be a writer.

-Yes.

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He wrote the original in 1957, so he was 15, 16,

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and then he revised in May 1958.

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So that was way early on, before he really seriously started to write.

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How did you and your parents feel about somebody who was moving

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away from the kind of traditional route the family took?

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My father said the usual things to Stewart.

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When Stewart said he was going to write, my father said, "Well,

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"that'll do till you get a proper job, son, I'm happy with that."

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I think that's pretty typical of working-class fathers

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whose sons elevate themselves

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into literature and stuff like that, you know.

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Unlike his predecessors, Thomas Carnduff and Sam Thompson,

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Parker wasn't destined for the shipyards.

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After the Second World War,

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there were a lot of university grants and places available

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for smart teenagers from a working-class background.

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Parker seized the opportunity with both hands

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and came here to the Queen's University of Belfast.

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Queen's was a revelation for Parker.

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He became involved in the drama society,

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writing and appearing in revues for the first Queen's Festival.

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He wrote and published poetry

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and acquired the education that enabled him to travel

0:48:160:48:19

and work in America as a tutor for five years after university.

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EXPLOSION

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However, in August 1969, Parker returned home

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to a radically different city.

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He recalled later how, "After a long slow simmer,

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"the place exploded - the very week I came back.

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"Barricades in the streets, gutted buildings,

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"the Army everywhere and then gunfire at night."

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Parker's relationship with the city of his birth would become

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a constant theme throughout his work for radio, stage and screen.

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He confessed to a love-hate relationship with Belfast.

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But it was also, as a friend of Parker said,

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"the live wire that electrified his writing".

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And like his predecessors, Irvine, Carnduff and Thompson,

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Stewart Parker returned to the industrial heritage of East Belfast.

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But his take on the Titanic story, with his radio play The Iceberg,

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was not like anything anyone had ever heard before.

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SHIP'S HORN BLASTS

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"At least they could have put us in the table of statistics.

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"SS Titanic, length overall - 882 feet, 9 inches,

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"gross tonnage - 46,328,

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"passenger capacity - 2,440,

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"crew - 860.

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"Workers killed during construction - 17."

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The two main characters in The Iceberg, Hughie and Danny,

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are ghosts who died while building Titanic.

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Nevertheless, they "join" the passengers on board the maiden voyage.

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Their ghostly status gives them freedom to roam the ship

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and they weave in and out of first class, third class, the boiler room

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and even briefly join Thomas Andrews,

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the chief designer of Titanic.

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The exchanges between Hughie and Danny are witty and eloquent,

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expressed as they are in the vernacular of East Belfast,

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but they serve a greater purpose -

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to address the bigger issues of the day, things like social injustice

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and Home Rule, and ultimately to remind the audience

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that the deaths of two humble workmen are just as important

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as the deaths of the world's wealthiest men.

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After writing The Iceberg, broadcast on BBC Radio Ulster in 1975,

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Parker fully committed himself to drama.

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He gave himself an even greater challenge for his next project -

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a stage play that would use the humble bicycle as a symbol

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that could potentially unite the divided city of Belfast.

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I realised it was going to be difficult to write a play

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set in contemporary Belfast,

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which would take account of the last 50, 60, 70 years of history there,

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and I was searching around for some kind of unifying image, really,

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and I just came up with bicycles.

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HE SNAPS HIS FINGERS

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The evolution of the bicycle!

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An illustrated lecture.

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Spokesong is set in a run-down Belfast bicycle shop

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inspired by Stone's Bicycle Shop, which once stood on Cromac Square.

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The main character, Frank Stock, is a good-hearted shop owner

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who is under threat from developers, paramilitaries

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and his prodigal brother Julian, who is a rival for love interest Daisy.

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And then came the internal combustion engine.

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Stewart was so far ahead of his time.

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In 1975, in the bicycle shop, he gives Frank Stock these words.

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"Something more is needed.

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"Imagine a fleet of civic bikes,

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"gleaming with the city's coat of arms,

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"stacked on covered racks on every street, which anybody can ride

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"anywhere, free of charge, inside the city centre.

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"The air clean, the people healthy,

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"the time saved, the energy conserved.

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"Earth would not have anything to show more fair."

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Spokesong offers up a glimmer of hope in a time of gloom and despair.

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It catapulted Parker into the limelight and he was awarded

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the prestigious Evening Standard Most Promising Playwright Award.

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Stewart Parker really excites me.

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I was lucky enough to meet the man and be in his plays

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and he brought an exciting, fresh new approach, like new paint.

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He had ghosts in his plays, he had flashbacks,

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he had music and song and dance,

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and bicycles.

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Parker had been deeply affected by

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his discovery of radical Presbyterianism in 1790s Belfast.

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It connected with his belief that his own heritage was more complex

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than simply being a Protestant from a largely unionist area of East Belfast.

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He said that, "The ancestral wraiths at my elbow are,

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"amongst other things, Scots-Irish, Northern English,

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"immigrant Huguenot - in short, the usual Belfast mongrel crew."

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It must be understood, there is no vendetta against the Orange society.

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It's true that many lodges have been formed into companies

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of yeomanry by the landlords.

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They will be sent against us, just as the Catholic militia are,

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but all these men are the gulls of history.

0:54:150:54:17

In his highly acclaimed play Northern Star, Parker delves into

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the history of the United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken,

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one of the Belfast Presbyterians who brought together Protestants

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and Catholics in a rising against British rule in 1798.

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It is set in a crumbling cottage on Cave Hill, in the aftermath

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of the failed rising, just before McCracken is captured and hung.

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Throughout, the character of McCracken alternately mourns

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and rages against Belfast's lost opportunity of unity

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between Protestant and Catholic.

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"We can't love it for what it is, only for what it might have been.

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"If we had got it right. If we had made it whole. If.

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"It's a ghost town now and always will be,

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"angry and implacable ghosts, me condemned to be one of their number.

0:55:120:55:18

"We never made a nation.

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"Our brainchild, stillborn, our own fault.

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"We botched the birth.

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"So what if the English do bequeath us to one another some day?

0:55:290:55:34

"What then?

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"When there's nobody else to blame except ourselves?"

0:55:360:55:41

Parker died tragically young in 1988 after contracting stomach cancer.

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He was at the height of his creativity and there's no doubt

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that he had many more plays inside him,

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but nevertheless, in his relatively short career,

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he managed to hold a mirror up to Belfast -

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one that showed the city in all its glorious variety and contradictions.

0:56:010:56:07

The four playwrights I've been exploring - Ervine, Carnduff,

0:56:260:56:31

Thompson and Parker - were all inspired by East Belfast.

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They all shared a sense of what was fair and unfair,

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and they also had a strong desire to challenge the status quo.

0:56:400:56:44

It's often said that it's part of the Ulster-Scots identity

0:56:440:56:47

to stand up and to say things that others won't.

0:56:470:56:50

In Mixed Marriage, St John Ervine confronted prejudices

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about Catholic and Protestant intermarriage,

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while in the milder play Boyd's Shop he still reveals

0:57:060:57:10

a strong dislike of hypocrisy.

0:57:100:57:12

I've seen a great many smart people who seemed awful foolish in the end.

0:57:120:57:16

Thomas Carnduff was a trailblazer, a man who wrote

0:57:160:57:20

about industry and the issues faced by the working-class man in Belfast.

0:57:200:57:24

In Over the Bridge, Sam Thompson tackled on stage

0:57:260:57:30

issues that weren't being confronted in society.

0:57:300:57:33

Stewart Parker started writing in the 1960s, an era of optimism

0:57:360:57:41

that was shattered by the Troubles.

0:57:410:57:44

But he believed that writing can bring about change -

0:57:440:57:47

that it is something inherently worthwhile.

0:57:470:57:50

The East has changed, the streets redeveloped and the industries gone.

0:57:580:58:02

Only Harland and Wolff, the original biggest and busiest of them,

0:58:020:58:06

is still here, and they now repair oil rigs and build wind farms and tidal generators.

0:58:060:58:11

Is there a new generation of playwrights waiting in the wings,

0:58:120:58:16

ready to articulate what needs to be said about this place?

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That's the challenge.

0:58:190:58:21

But if they are out there,

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they'll be standing on the shoulders of giants.

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