Ballycarson Blues Page 7

  And so the Nationalist councillors in Ballycarson wished to express their new-found power by honouring De Valera. At the Council meeting held to implement the new policy, all the old political clichés were rolled out to honour or disparage the man whom the Unionists still regarded as the Devil from Eire. In choosing De Valera as their starting point for street reform, the Nationalists had a real problem because a Ballycarson street of a character similar to that of their hero was not easily found. As the Unionists only too eagerly read from their book of approved and well-used political critique, for De Valera there was no street narrow enough, long enough, or crooked enough. Eventually, the Nationalists gave up the search and plumped to rename Crown Street, which was the main street running through Ballycarson.

  “A primary route would suit the character of such an eminent statesman,” asserted the Nationalists.

  Much to the astonishment of the Nationalists, the Unionists immediately agreed and offered to vote in favour of the renaming.

  “It would suit De Valera down to the ground. It’s a one-way street,” laughed Councillor Montgomery Cherry.

  Even the normally taciturn Councillor Dick Lamb did not remain silent. He read the line directly from his prompt card and scorned: “An arterial route would suit a butcher with so much blood on his hands.”

  This political impasse was a real roadblock to the new roads policy. Cooperation in local government had the potential to be even more obstructive than active opposition. An important step in the redirection of political life in Ballycarson, such as street-naming could not possibly occur by unanimous cross-party vote. What use would the policy be if the political opposition were not to be noticeably aggrieved? Maybe the Unionists had learned new tricks? It must be a political trap.

  “If the Unionists vote for this, our new administration will look like a bunch of fools,” was the conclusion of the new Councillor Chairperson Finvola O’Duffy.

  The idea of renaming Crown Street was quietly dropped. The lack of acrimony irked, but what could be done? As a compromise the Nationalist majority voted to remove the name Crown Street and replace it with nothing. So what had been Crown Street became a street with no name. Of course this was a half measure, a compromise. But, in the world of local government, it was far better for the town to appear to be completely directionless than to give the impression that the Council was doing absolutely nothing. It was the logic of the drunken man: it is better to stagger about than stand still.

  Of course, some semblance of political face had to be saved. Salvation was sought in Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll’s assertion that by removing a street name the Nationalists were following the precedent of what had been done during the 1939–45 “Emergency”. He declined to use the word “war” as no British government had any right to declare war on behalf of “his people” who had remained scrupulously neutral and solidly anti-British throughout the entire affair. During those dangerous times all the Ballycarson street names had been removed and a blackout imposed to stop foreign flyers and continental paratroopers from knowing exactly where they were. But Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll’s recollection was selective. On the very first night of the Emergency blackout his own grandfather, the then leader of the local northern Nationalists, had organised a huge bonfire in the west side of Ballycarson. So much for the Celtic twilight. It was of no consequence that if they had been flying over the area at the time the servicemen of the Luftwaffe could have seen the bonfire for miles and could have flattened those dancing around the flames in the west side of town.

  And, of course, the flames of defiance were accompanied by the councillor’s grandfather’s fireside chat with the enthusiastic assembled supporters. What was the substance of these words of comfort? It was a truly remarkable melange of half-baked analysis and overdone emotions. By this concoction the councillor achieved the remarkable feat of making a speech that was both base and baseless. What was really important, he intoned meaningfully, was that this very bonfire was a bright beacon of defiance in the face of British rule that had kept Ireland in darkness for centuries. This present difficulty in Europe, this continental war of that schismatic neighbouring island, was no more than a dispute between foreigners – indeed, a mere clash between evil empires – in which Ireland should not take sides. Indeed there should be complete moral ambivalence as to the outcome. Why should the Irish care who should win? There was safety and a moral superiority in neutrality as would soon be demonstrated by the positions of Luxembourg, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Norway. In addition there was the shining example of the constructive and neutral fascist states of Italy, Spain and Portugal. They served as models for Irish aspirations. Ireland was not isolated after all! Indeed the neutrality of the free twenty-six counties will throw a protective blanket over the six occupied by the British. The Unionists in Ulster should be grateful! Instead of mobilisation and the building of the machines of death, it was essential that what should be promoted in Ireland was the living culture of sturdy children, athletic youths, comely maidens and cosy homesteads. This alone would lead Ireland into the prosperous future of poetry, dance and folk songs, provided, of course, these forms of art remained pure, untainted and morally acceptable to those who knew in their hearts what Ireland wanted. There would be jobs for all in Ireland as peaceful prosperity blossomed! There would be no more emigration to support the British war machine. And after he had spoken, the crowd, clearly moved by his under-spoken oratory, broke into song and concluded the evening around the cosy bonfire with the popular melody:

  “The year was 1939

  The sky was full of lead

  Hitler headed for Poland

  And Paddy for Holyhead.”

  But it would be most unfair to represent the new Nationalist administration in a uniquely bad light. The Nationalists were not up to anything new. The Unionists had been into street-naming for decades. In latter years of their administration they had run out of heroes and many streets in Ballycarson were named after total unknowns found in the ranks of the Unionist councillors themselves or their relations. After all, was it really any worse to live in a street with no name than in a street named after an unknown? Even the local Loyalist population had begun to complain that they were living in streets named after yesterday’s nobodies. The whole problem had been irritated by the fact that in Ballycarson many local politicians were interrelated and almost all belonged to petty family dynasties. In addition, the politicians usually employed their close family members as researchers and rented property from other family members who, in turn, had acquired that property from the fruits of political research paid for, sometimes several times, out of Council funds or so it was said. The result was that a small number of names dominated everything in local politics, leading to little choice for street names. Most aggrieved were the residents of a small housing estate built in the 1980s where every street had been named after the politically active members of the Lamb family. The family tree had been laid out in a series of streets branching off a main trunk road. Tom Lamb Street led in to Dick Lamb Street and Harry Lamb Street, which in turn branched into Samuel Lamb Street and Mildred Lamb Street, etc. etc. Given the presence of all the Lambs the whole area became known as “the Sheep Farm”.

  Of course there were complaints. “We don’t want to live in a street named after any Tom, Dick or Harry. Let us stop looking to the past and, instead, grasp the future!” ran the anonymous letter to the then Council chairman, Tim Boyne.

  The letter was copied to the Provincial Enquirer. With a view to piling on the political pressure, it was printed in full under the headlines “More Bleating from the Sheep Farm” and “Lamb to Get Chop?”

  Whoever sent the letter had picked a most responsive addressee. Councillor Tim Boyne had always been sensitive to the issue of Christian names because his own had led to unjustified accusations that he was the product of a “mixed” marriage or, to adopt the local technical adage, a Roman Calvinist.

  The Council chairman was stung in
to immediate action. Noone could accuse the Unionist Council of being unresponsive to their electorate.

  “There will be no more Tom, Dick or Harry,” confirmed the Council chairman in his weekly newspaper column. “In future, when we name streets, we will leave out all Christian names and, in addition, we will re-write the past.” So all the Christian names were deleted from the various street names in the Sheep Farm leaving it with sixteen streets all with the name of “Lamb Street”. As the newly built streets were all short and straight the overall impression facing the uninitiated map reader was of a crossword puzzle where every question had the same answer.

  When it comes to political repentance over the mis-naming of streets and roads it pays to travel the extra mile. In a further, and perhaps a last ditch, effort to tart up the tarnished street-naming policy, the Unionists decided to rename the new dual carriageway bypassing Ballycarson after those councillors responsible for local economic development and regeneration. The chosen two, the distinguished duo, the irreplaceable pair, were Councillor James Morrow and his twin brother, Wilburt Morrow. Again Christian names were to be left out. The official Council press release was suitably effusive.

  “The new dual carriageway, the road of the future, will bypass Ballycarson. It will look to the future and be known as the road of the Two Morrows.”

  With such a twin track approach, it was obvious that the future was bright for Ballycarson. The effect was rather spoiled when the politically unreliable columnist in the Provincial Enquirer suggested that the dual carriageway would lead to a double crossroads.

  In the latter days of direct rule in Ulster the central government in Northern Ireland had attempted to water down the effect of street renaming by the use of the universal solvent. The effect was achieved not by giving the various Councils public money but by depriving them of it.

  The rationale of the policy was summed up in a secret memo sent within the Northern Ireland Office: “If they cannot afford to build new streets, they will have nothing new to name.” And so “the Roadblock Policy”, as it became known, was approved.

  Unfortunately, local politicians worked out ways to get round the roadblock. For even the most minor of public works the Unionist-run Council in Ballycarson had been forced to seek funding from private investors. The quid pro quo was usually a requirement that the new structure be named after the investor. The policy may have been politically neutral, as central government had wished, but more often than not the sponsors were after inappropriate advertising. In the latter days of the Unionist administration the Council had almost come unstuck when they had accepted funding from the Estonian manufacturers of cheap pharmaceuticals. They had wished to sponsor the laying of new roads into the Ballycarson industrial estate. Initially the Estonian investors had insisted that the roads be called after their own areas of speciality. It was product placement at its most basic. For a while there had been a real prospect of “Anti-emetic Avenue”, “Botulism Boulevard”, “Cirrhosis Crescent”, “Diarrhoea Drive” and “Expectorant Expressway”. The Council recruited a writer of signs, then got stuck on the letter “F”. He could not immediately think of a type of road that would accompany a reference to Farmacology. The term “Freeway” was an Americanisation beyond his somewhat limited and localised vocabulary. The hiatus caused by limited literacy of the sign writer and the fact that he had reached the limit of his creative powers were perhaps fortunate. This held up the completion of the alphabetically inspired street-sign project for just enough time to enable the Estonian firm to go bust before the new name plates had to be put up. The unused signs joined much other material already dumped in the former Union Canal.

  The legacy of street-naming obviously would be remembered for some time. It would seem that the Nationalists recalled the practice just as soon as they got into power. Immediately after the election, the main route leading to the Ballycarson Council headquarters was renamed and became known locally as “China Crescent”. However, this was not as a result of the scrapping of some erstwhile Unionist-inspired street name. And if you thought the new name was aimed at pleasing some potential Oriental investor you would also be wrong. “China Crescent” was inspired by the Nationalist councillors taking out all the official Council crockery bearing the Queen’s image, smashing it and dumping it beside the road. “We can build on this firm foundation,” was the comment of Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll as he jumped up and down to level out the piles of white shards.

  The cynical resident of Ballycarson may have sworn nothing had really changed. However, perhaps that downcast denizen was deluded. Immediately after the Crown Street/De Valera fiasco, the new Nationalist Council administration insisted that they had learned from the mistakes of the Unionist predecessors. This war of street-naming could be carried out by different means. A different angle of public transport was chosen. Thirty-two bus shelters, one for each county in Ireland, were built around Ballycarson by the Nationalist-run Council in the early days of their administration. Immediately after the change in the Council administration, new sources of public funding became available directly from Europe. The Unionist-run administration had previously eschewed approaching such institutions on the basis that the Council’s political position would be compromised by taking funds from bodies that also gave vast amounts of cash to the local authorities in the Irish Republic. The Nationalists swept this policy aside and the money poured in for essential projects. They included the redecoration of the Council Offices, the building of ornamental gates for the Council chairperson’s house, the extension of the existing kennel for the official Council Irish wolfhound and the construction of bus shelters. Only the very last of these vital and socially uplifting projects need detain us here.

  The main, indeed the sole, condition of the European funding had been that the bus shelters would be located in a non-sectarian way and there would be no sectarian input in their design and layout.

  Despite repeated Unionist objections, it was difficult to substantiate the allegation that the Nationalist administration had failed to comply with the main conditions. Indeed, to the most neutral of observers, it was manifestly obvious that they had been implemented in various ways.

  First, the newly elected Nationalist Ballycarson Council required that the bus stops and shelters be deliberately built in locations where no buses ran. In particular, they should be built in locations nowhere near roads. The official reasoning? If noone at all could use the bus shelters, noone could accuse the Council of showing bias to those potential bus users with a particular religious or political persuasion in any one part of the town.

  Secondly, the Council required that the bus shelters be built of a material that could not be painted a particular colour. This would avoid mini-murals of contentious battle scenes being added on the side of the bus shelters. In addition, although this was not admitted, it would put some of Camp David’s painters out of a job. That would bring the Loyalist big man down to his real size. So all the bus shelters were made of glass. This would comply with the Council’s targets to produce transparency in local government. Who cared if they were easily vandalised? At least the reconstruction projects would assist the hard-pressed glazing companies around the town, which had suffered so badly since the start of the terrorist cease-fires.

  The third method of compliance with the main European funding condition was the avoidance of naming the bus shelters after sectarian war victories and battle sites in Ireland. So the Nationalist-led Council named them all after battles that the British had lost around the world.

  “It’s nothing to do with us if the British got a cuffing outside Ireland,” ran the publicity blurb issued by the Council.

  So the shelter at the Spion Kop bus stop was one of a set of bus shelters with foreign names comprising places as far afield as Arnhem, Crete, Dieppe, Dunkirk, Gallipoli, Isandhlwana, Kabul, Ladysmith, Magersfontein, Majuba Hill, Mons, New Orleans, Saratoga, Singapore, St. Valery en Caux and Yorktown.

  With a view to furthe
r humiliating the British community the researcher employed by the Nationalist Council to complete the task wished to demonstrate that this list was not exhaustive. So, after setting out thirty-one specific names, he named the last of the bus shelters “Et Cetera”. Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll, a history teacher in the local Christian Brothers’ Academy, wasn’t sure where this was but did not want to admit his ignorance to his pupils. So he told them it was a fortress near El Alamein. When one of his pupils complained that this was not mentioned anywhere in his history textbook, Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll’s incisive, authoritative and conciliatory response was:

  “All those history books written in English never tell you the truth. Let me tell you what really happened.”

  Clearly Councillor Eugene O’Driscoll was living up to his reputation amongst his own colleagues that he had gone to higher education and teacher-training college not to broaden his horizons but to deepen his prejudices.

  As was the way of things, the territorial claims of both indigenous traditions led to the exclusive appropriation of all of the various bus stops. The new structures would now all serve the greater political purpose. In the new political economy that represented the Peace Process, the Republicans occupied twenty-six, whilst the Loyalists grabbed the remaining six. Complaints of inequality were futile and the Loyalist big man Big David simply decided to make the most of what he could get.