The contemporary account of the recent conflict in Northern Ireland is told in the words of British squaddies in Soldiers’ Stories on History Channel. This Remembrance Sunday the programme will be shown at 10pm on HD.  It was shown first on 26^th October, presented by former soldier Ken Harnes.  Throughout operation banner some 300,000 British troops served in Northern Ireland, some 1300 were killed and 6000 wounded.  With the murder of soldiers still making the headlines in 2009 this programme is not entirely the historic record it ought to be.

This is a programme that presents first hand accounts, and although a little long for one programme, it still manages to offer a stark, honest and very personal account of the lives of soldiers serving in Northern Ireland over 40 years.  It provides another perspective that lacks political spin, and doesn’t seek sympathy or accolade.  A frank account, and well worth watching on the night, or keeping for later.

A record of conflict was not available following World War One.  This year the last of the veterans of this war passed on: 108 year-old William Stone, 113 year-old Henry Allingham, and 111 year-old Harry Patch.  It made the short programme of events through the Maiden City Festival all the more relevant.  The ‘Three Cheers for the Derrys!’ programme was based on the book by Gardiner Mitchell of the same name, which had the benefit of reminisces of two old soldiers, Jim Donaghy from Londonderry and Leslie Bell from Moneymore.

Elements of the programme are now available on a dedicated mini website to give voice and life to the story of the ‘The Derrys’, the 10th Battalion Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers. The young men who acted in the short performance as part of the programme were no older than those who had gone to war 1914-1918.

Finally, there are those left behind.  Which makes the stories in a new book to be published on Wednesday, Remembrance Day itself, a worthy addition to this selection of means of recalling the sacrifice of the few for the many.  The outline is available in Eamonn Baker’s contribution to ‘The Derrys’ project.  Remembering has grown out of research conducted over the past few years by Trevor Temple, staff member of the North West War Memorial Project. The following is the description of the book provided by Yes Publications for the launch:

“Remembering is a tapestry of stories created from edited interviews with families who lost loved ones during the First World War. Without the generous commitment and openness of all twenty eight interviewees, this book would not have been possible. Each interviewee has shared precious family stories which previously had remained hidden from our collective view.

Many interviewees had researched in loving detail the life and times of their relative. We hear for example of Wesley Maultsaid’s football skills, of Holmes Haslett’s athletic prowess, racing down the Culmore Road ahead of the mail boat on the waters of the Foyle, of Denis Doherty’s working life at McCullagh’s in Waterloo Place and on the docks, of George Hasson “sweeping” around the city. We have been privileged to gain access to the family photographs, documents, keepsakes, memorabilia used to illustrate this publication.

Though all of the interviews were conducted in the spring of 2009, more than ninety years after Armistice Day 1918, it quickly became clear that many of the interviewees were grieving over the loss of their grandfather, grand-uncle, uncle (whom they, of course, had never known personally) in ways which suggested that the family loss had never been fully resolved.”

Remembering was launched in the Tower Museum on Wednesday 11^th November 2009. Books are on sale in local bookshops from 12 November priced £10 or direct from YES! Publications, 10-12 Bishop Street, Londonderry BT48 6PW  www.yespublications.org  This community-based project was developed by Holywell Trust and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund. 

Three very different records of soldiers’ lives and service, each making a contribution to this year’s time of Remembrance, underscoring that Remembrance is often very personal to those who served, their families and friends.  It is hard to really share those memories, those experiences.  But this is a time when we can all respectfully honour those who selflessly acted for us all, regardless though no less aware of the likely cost to themselves.

If you go expecting to see Republican propaganda on the big screen, then you’ll see Republican propaganda.

Republicans seemed to welcome the movie as a tribute to the courage of Bobby Sands and Unionists condemned the waste of State money that supported the making of the ‘Republican’ movie in Northern Ireland.

The tackling of a subject matter such as the 1981 Hunger Strike makes the movie ‘controversial’? Thought provoking perhaps, but no movie is controversial simply because of its subject. Is ‘Hunger’ a true portrayal – of course not, it is a movie. Is the treatment of the subject matter ‘fair’ – by whose judgement or against what criteria? Does it make Sands the Hero – Steve McQueen, the director, says ‘take a closer look if that is what you think.’

There has been a great deal of focus on the dialogue between Sands (played outstandingly by Michael Fassbender) and the fictional Fr Dominic Moran (Liam Cunningham). This is the most intense piece of dialogue in a movie that largely speaks through its cinematography. The movie is a triptych. To understand the importance of this dialogue it is necessary to explore before and after this centrepiece.

The first part of the film is about the Prison Officer Raymond Lohan (Stuart Graham). This is a portrait of a man on the edge. His only fleeting escape is locker room bravado with his fellow officers. Lohan is a lonely man. He dresses alone, eats alone, stands alone. His loneliness is compounded by visits to an aged mother who does not know his name. He is a man who no longer knows himself. Lost.

Then there is the new inmate, Davey Gillen (Brian Milligan) uncomfortable with his demand for political status, longing for family, out of place among his fellow inmates on the IRA dirty protest. Yet a member of the IRA and therefore obliged to conform, to believe. Trapped.

The focus of the film moves slowly towards Sands as the central subject. The encounter with Fr Moran is gripping. It is Moran who frames final act. He questions Sands’s motive in pursuing a hunger strike to the death. He points to the IRA inmates as being out of touch. Inside too long. Brutalised by the system, and yet of the system. How in such circumstances could any decision be rational? Deluded.

Sands responds as a driven and focused individual. It is his vision, his will, his decision. Moran points to the inmates as a mill stone around the neck of the IRA, the dirty protest as being a no win strategy that took the initiative away from a leadership outside the prison. Sands was taking them into a new no-win battle that would simply draw attention to IRA impotence. Sands does not accept this. Sands believes he is the future. His death will be a new dawn, an inspiration to the next generation. Martyr.

The last part of the movie guides us through the death of Sands. The brutality of the opening part of the movie is contrasted with the serene, humanity of death.

All that is left is the question posed by Fr Moran to Sands: ‘what does death achieve?’

This movie does not present Sands as a hero. He is presented as a man with purpose, but out of date and out of touch. His death was his choice, his decision: as was the death of Lohan. It was right that the film ended on the death of Sands. It was an end in more ways than one.

For the first time since reading Richard O’Rawe’s book ‘Blanketmen’, the end of ‘Hunger’ allowed me to understand why Sinn Fein/IRA/Republicans dislike O’Rawe so much. O’Rawe’s proposition is that the inmates wished to end the hunger strike after four men had died, but the outside command allowed the strike to continue to enable Owen Carron to keep the Parliamentary seat won by Bobby Sands.

Fr Moran points to the deep hole in which the ‘outside’ command found itself at the time of the hunger strikes. There was no military victory possible and the course of political discourse was being driven by factors inside the Maze prison and beyond ‘control’. Ironically the Sands hunger strike provided the IRA with a way out of that hole. The election of Sands and then Carron set them on a political path that has ultimately led them to Stormont.

Sands represents the end of an era. That is why O’Rawe has been cast out of the Republican family. He pointed out that the hunger strike became a vehicle for change; a change that ended the IRA of Bobby Sands and heralded a new political era – not quite the new dawn that Sands had anticipated. Betrayed.

Hunger is a powerful movie. There are powerful performances by the cast. There are powerful undercurrents too.

The prison is turned into a metaphor for a society that is brutalised. People, ordinary people are caught in a self-perpetuating cycle of violence being fed by alienation and disassociation from all else outside this maelstrom.

In Sands there is a man who seeks to inspire a new generation – the revolutionary vanguard to a new United Ireland. Instead, his death served a cause far removed from the one for which he was prepared to die. The Armalite placed on the shelf in exchange for the off the shelf Armani.

Sands. Lost, trapped, deluded, martyr, betrayed.