In the film Blue Velvet the opening sequence starts with an atypical small town America and the eponymous white painted fences surrounding, detached clapboard houses, framed neatly by the deep blue summer sky. On the surface suburban America never looked trimmer, more serene and content. The film moves quickly through the device of the human ear found lying in the undergrowth, into which a young lad gains entry to a world which completely belies the domesticated facade of small town America.
A visiting rugby fan to the Maze stadium, were it ever to be built, might look from its upper tiers across the 365 acre site and espy a corrugated tin sentry tower, freshly painted, simmering in evening sun. He might well be tempted to wile away a few hours amongst the watch towers, prison cells and fortified hospital block, whilst acquainting himself of the history of the stadium site, the former Maze prison.
Where he to find the human ear, he could venture into the underworld of the site’s history and how a sports stadium came to be situated alongside a museum celebrating the past and controversial aspects of Northern Ireland’s troubled history. This underworld might present itself as a hall of mirrors, more ethereal than the newly fixed up razor wire, cold grey concrete walls and rebuilt corrugated tin Nissan huts.
I knew a guy who was involved in the early stages of the Maze site’s transformation from Prison Camp to Conflict Transformation Centre/ Retail Park/ possible National Sports Stadium and potential Equestrian Centre. He calls himself the ‘lawnmower man’ and this is how he saw the 365 acre site as the transformation got underway.
You can drive along the 5 metre plus high concrete walls for almost half a mile before finding an entrance into an industrial wasteland type landscape of twisted metal, concrete rubble, half demolished Nissan huts… and unscrambled barbed wire. Moving slowly in the dust of the track through the twisted reinforcement of the demolitions you can pick your way into pitted tarmac and the entrance to the long abandoned internment compounds.
In the early January light of late afternoon you can stand amidst the wire cages that form the compounds and suck in the silence. Save for a distant jackhammer and low hum of motorway traffic it is a silence broken only by the nearby crack of a swinging, broken down door, like a wave hitting rocks in a gentle swell. The ghosts of the past reverberate back at you. The awkward yakking of crows fuel eeriness in the fading light.
It is hard to imagine men imprisoned behind these wire cages, in draughty, thinly insulated tin huts, neatly arranged in rows of four. There are echoes of Stalag Luft here, but only in physical and aesthetic. For it is easy in the absence of human presence to forget that the men imprisoned behind these wires were put there for at a time when Northern Ireland peered into the abyss of absolute anarchy.
On another day you might drive a half-mile along the concrete perimeter wall, up towards the rusting World War 2 hangars that housed Stirling bombers and along the old runway till you find an entrance into a world of high grey walls, austere buildings, helicopter trip wire and watch towers.
Here lies H block 6, a dank, empty and featureless building of caged windows, half open cell doors, gridded locks and blandly painted walls, ceilings and floors. It is easy to imagine the once crowded cells of violent men. It is easy to imagine their shouts and yells up and down the bland corridors, the taunts and threats at the men guarding them, the clanging of the gates and slamming of cell doors. It is not hard to escape the overwhelming impression though, that this is a prison pure and simple. For the uncommitted that is what it is.
Retracing your steps between the high walls from H6, you will find yourself at the entrance to the Hospital Block. As featureless as the other buildings and just as well guarded with concrete grills on the inner side of the window. You can wander down the corridor past the little cells with single beds, spring mattresses and the bed frame, as visible remainder of went on here. This is presently the most visited area of the complex. It is here that the most history resonates for those that visit, in the form of the cells were the hunger strikers breathed their last. It is here that evidence of the so-called shrine to terrorism is rendered starkest.
So what has all that to do with a sports stadium on the same site? Everything! It is intertwined with it as sure as clouds and rain follow one another. In Northern Ireland, the politics are defined by gestures and symbols. Symbols are important because they define who or what people stand for politically, culturally and spiritually. Gestures too are a dual motif, a balancing act to reconcile two apposite traditions.
We have two men as our political leaders, one from each diametrically opposite spectrum of our religious and ideological sections of our society. We have voting systems in our parliament that ensure a balance is struck and no one part of our society will gain an ‘unfair’ advantage over the other. Our society itself is split into opposing factions. This is reinforced by declaring the origins of your education and defines whether you are bracketed as a protestant or a catholic for employment quotas.
At the Maze, the proposed ‘National’ sports stadium is intended to reflect the new dawn and a cohesive society. It is intended to demonstrate the coming together, however dubious the glue is, of the polar strands of our divided society. The red white and blue/ green and orange, protestant and catholic, former enemies, bitter foes, all cohabiting in the spirit of unity which once was but a distant pipe dream. Sport was to be the glue that would bind.
To achieve this unity it’s decreed that the 3 main sports of our tiny country would all play at the stadium. In parallel, echoing the diversity that now unites us, a Conflict Transformation Centre will co-exist as if to show that sport, that bastion of respectability, can cohabit in splendid harmony with history.
The sports themselves reflect the divisions that the stadium seeks to illustrate don’t exist or at least are perfunctory. GAA is a sport played by Catholics, watched by Catholics and administered by Catholics. That is not to point a finger at the sport and ask why it doesn’t appeal to Protestants. Rather it states a reality.
Soccer is played by both traditions. Many of its teams though, are supported uniquely by one or other section of the community. Rugby is mainly a sport associated with the now under siege Grammar schools and by extension ‘protestant’ schools but can claim to be united in embracing a broad church appeal partly because of the All Ireland dimension to its game and by the fact that Catholics wholly participate in playing without the issue of religion being a matter for debate, either off or on the pitch.
It is hard to escape the feeling that sport has become hostage to the politics of symbol and gesture. A political party wishes to present the Maze site as a physical and spiritual demonstration of their ‘new Ireland vision’ whilst enshrining the past.
That past is a selective one. For some politicians it is a ‘romantic’ vision of the country’s recent and troubled history with the enshrinement of characters that many in wider society view as criminals. The same politicians have sought to hide their own troubled and deeply murky past. Do not ask what they did in the ‘war’.
Sport should not have to sit alongside divisive and confrontational, commemorative symbolism as a means of granting it, (commemorative symbolism), credibility. Conflict Transformation is a cover name for the enshrinement of personalities whose agenda was at odds with democratic society.
As a lawnmower man I was a democrat. I paid my parking fines, and my taxes. I sent my kids to school, I went to work every day and occasionally strayed into high personal risk as I dodged the bombs and once a stray bullet. My God we couldn’t all go out and throw stones, don a uniform or dispatch a fellow human with a bullet in the back of the head. Someone had to toe the line and keep democracy on the straight and narrow.
The ‘lawnmower man’ was a sobriquet penned by Eoghan Harris, a Southern Irish media writer and political commentator who castigated protestants (Unionists), who were disillusioned with politics here in the 90′s. They retreated unto developments to cut the grass, be with the wife and kids and generally turned their backs on the politicians by rejecting sectarian politics and declining to vote.
The sobriquet lawnmower man now extends beyond that reasonably narrow definition and could be applied to the GAA fan, the soccer supporter and the rugby officio. Generally it could be anyone who leads a decent life, interested in sport, is prepared to work hard for his family and give the kids a future.
Lawnmower man’s reward for keeping his nose clean is to be ensnared into the historical debris of the past conflict. He is being charged literally, to pay for damage caused by others, for reconciliation, to fund projects that project the political will of people who are entangled in the past conflict in a manner that is an affront to ordinary citizens.
The payment isn’t just in real money but in the giving up of moralistic ideals of what constitutes justice and right from wrong. So it is that people are being asked to swallow the concept of sport acting as a conduit to ‘Conflict Transformation’ and giving recognition to the blunted vision of our troubled past.
Make no mistake we live in a skewed society. If you scratch below the surface of the shiny presentation board with pasted stadium views, little white rectangles for museums and lots of green grass and trees, you will find that skewed world.
It’s a world were perpetrators are seen as victims. Were former bombers and gunmen advise you on how you must grow as a good citizen, where you are requested to pay for reconciliation, where sport has been asked to furnish a facade for the politics of commemorative gestures.
Thankfully it would appear that realism has saw light of day here. The Maze stadium may never be built. Certainly not in the grandiose manner that was envisaged. The sport I love, rugby, must no longer be held hostage to the wiles of political masters who have shamefully sought to manipulate by withholding funds for redevelopment of its own stadium whilst rugby was asked to agree to support the Maze Stadium concept by playing rugby there.
Ulster Rugby can get on with rebuilding its future on the pitch and rebuilding its future off the pitch. It would seem the government has all but given up trying to railroad UR into conditional support for a new sports stadium beside a ‘conflict transformation centre’. The release of funding for the redevelopment of their own stadiums may well reinvigorate the funding further by distributing money to all sports involved in the Maze fiasco to allow the sports to grow in their own right without interference from politicians.
As for the lawnmower man, he will continue to cut the grass of course and support his team without having to carry the baggage of other people’s politics. I will not be celebrating our grim past. The Maze should be buried along with its name. It is a symbol of everything that was wrong with our society and as such should be put out to grass.
It is significant that something as totemic and powerful as sport, rather than say a retail park, is held up as a symbol of significance worthy of carrying the controversial concept of Conflict Transformation. It would be fair to say many sports fans have rejected this gesture for what it is. A blatant attempt to legitimise terrorism and give it a veneer of respectability it never deserved.
The real victims of our troubled past, reside within their own memories, physical and psychological damage, grief and all the other paraphernalia that comes with trauma. Many get on with living their lives and care not a jot, nor want to be elevated to a status of victim or any such other title. These are the real people we should celebrate, not the psychopaths who scorched a path through Northern Ireland over the last 40 years.
Lawnmower man was celebrated many years before Eoghan Harris coined his sobriquet. Here it is, by Pete Townsend:
I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution,
Take a bow for the new revolution,
Smile and grin at the changes all around,
Pick up my guitar and play,
Just like yesterday,
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again.
Meet the new Boss!
Same as the old Boss*!
*(Apologies to Hugo the Ulster no.9 the above Boss is no relation!)
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One Response to ““The Maze and Me”, by the Lawnmower Man”
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That write up is just awesome. I have never seen it expressed so eloquently before.
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