The Quare Fellow – a few reflections.

I was a fan of Brendan Behan from the age of 11. I had a tape of his songs. I heard of his play the Quare Fellow and saw excerpts of it on RTE. I read the script aged 17. Last night I watched the film of it. It tells to story of a man sentenced to die for the murder of his brother. Behan wrote it in 1954, the year of the last execution in the Irish Republic. Incidentally, ‘Quare’ is the Irish prounciation of ‘queer’. Queer has come to mean homosexual but back then it meant ‘strange’. The Quare Fellow is the man due to die. He is the centre of the play but never appears or speaks.

The play has great witty, credible dialogue. It has a few stock characters of prison dramas. There is the upper class fraudster, the homosexual, the old lad and so on. There is the rookie guard and the more experienced on nearing retirement. Some guards are emotionally close to their wards.

Brendan Behan served a few stretches in prison on both sides of the Irish Sea. He knew some men who were topped and he came close to it for firing on an Irish policeman. Behan was a fanatical nationalist but in the 1950s mellowed and realised that the IRA was vicious.

The play is rewarding and contains a range of emotions. It grows more poignant as the hour of execution draws near. The hangman’s hand is on the lever – he throws it – cut to the wife of the condemned. It is her head we see writhing, writhing in bereavement.

I recall a line in the script that I do not recall from the film – ”what did the Free State change but the badge on the warder’s cap?” That was the republican attitude. Incidentally, the play was conceived and made into a film at a time when republican activity was very slight.

The Minister of Justice appears is very haughty and has something close to the British upper class accent with an only faint Irish flavour to it.

One part of the play that is unrealistic. All the prisoners are smart and amiable. There is no nastiness to them – none are ruffians. This is absurd. The same flaw is observable in the Shawshank Redemption, there at least Bogs is a loathsome gaolbird.

The Pianist (book) – some thoughts ‘pon it.

I have just finished this book a couple of hours ago. Itbis not terribly long. It is a gripping, like rigor mortis. It is spare in its prose but rather evocative especially of mood. It is not so strong on appearance of people and things. He spent so much time in solitude, in hiding. What thoughts must have rushed through his head to fill the time, he could have crafted his work better. Still it is churlish to detract from this great work. It is a testament of survival. Szpilman was a Pole of the Jewish faith who survived in Warsaw throughout the Second World War. By some incredible inner strength he kept going. There is no plea for pity, no boasting about his courage. Rather he has the courage to admit that he was often despondent and overcome by grief.

The odd thing is that the tale doe snot conjure up more pathos. So many grisly deaths, so much animalistic cruelty is described. Somehow, much of is not moving. Towards the end it becomes so. Right at the end there is just a great emptiness, a desolation rather than joy at survival.

I would have thrown in the towel much earlier. He was saved by a German solider at the end. This German brought Szpilman food and clothing. The unfortunate German was captured by the Red Army and barbarously treated. He died in a POW camp after 7 years.

It is a moving book and very intelligently written. I recommend it to anyone. My word, it makes me muse on my own petty tribulations. How they vanish beside the daily menace of death with which Wladyswaw Szpilman had to contend. One should see it as uplifting. If he could survive, I can more than survive. He had the inner strength to struggle on and he lived to see better days, to bear witness to a murdered people.

Why the US was always a freer country than the USSR.

Some assert that the USSR was a more benign country than the US. Other assert that East and West are but point of the compass, there was no difference between the competing imperialisms of Washington and Moscow. Let me refute these opinions.

The US always had the self-confidence to permit a right that the USSR could never allow. The right to leave. If you do not like it here you may go. As John F Kennedy said at Berlin, democracy has its problems but we have never had to build a wall to keep pur people in. The Eastern Bloc was like a vast prison. Exit visas were permitted and very few applied to even travel abroad briefly. Only those who were trusted by the Party were allowed to do so. If one absconded one’s family would suffer, he harassed, sacked and blacklisted. Lee Harvey Oswald, the probably assassin of JFK, went and lived in Belarus for a time working at a radio factory in Minsk.

After years of pressure from the US and the United Kingdom some Soviet Jews were allowed to move to Israel.

People accused the US of being paranoid, of being fixated with security. These accusations are true only of the USSR. In the 1970s the US had a more or less porous border with both Mexico and Canada. People drove across and were often not stopped and asked anything. One was permitted to go back and forth without so much as a passport or driving licence.

The US always allowed the Communist Party of the USA to exist. The CPUSA fielded presidential candidates at all elections and obtained a derisory share of the vote. I have never heard it claimed that this was anything other than the verdict of the American people on the Communist creed. Yes, the FBI kept a close eye on the CPUSA as they CPUSA indefatigably argued the case of the USSR which wished to impose its oppressive system on the United States.

The USSR would not permit an opposition party.

The US allowed people to express Communist views. US Army radio allowed people to voice anti-war opinions in Vietnam. American were allowed to form trades unions and to go on strike. They were allowed to protest against their government and ridicule their presidents. None of this was given a moment’s tolerance in the USSR.

The lonely woods of Upton – Sinn Fein-IRA link

”Many homes are filled with sorrow, with sadness and with pain/ For those who died at Upton for Sinn Fein. ” – so runs this republican ballad. Irish republicans try to pretend defeats are victories. Loyalists celebrate victories because at least they have had quite a few around 1690.

At Upton on Co. Cork in 1920 or so the IRA attempted to ambush a train in which some Security Forces personnel were travelling along with many civilians. The IRA got short shrift and a few of them were killed.

The republican movement long tried to claim that the IRA and Sinn Fein were different organisations. The truth is that they overlapped considerably. Many were members of both. They walked hand in hand at the very least. It would be more helpful to think of them as Siamease twins, or a two-headed monster.

One of the terrorists killed at Loughgall in 1987 turned out to be an Sinn Fein councillor (I actually started writing ‘IRA’ rather than Sinn Fein and then went back and ”corrected” myself there). I recall speaking to a chap who worked in the Ahern Crowley Sinn Fein office in about 2000 and asking the ginger type whether there were any INLA in Cork, I mean, IRSP in Cork. I actually made that paralepsis but he did not bat an eyelid.

”The badge of the UVF” – an exegesis of the lyrics.

”They’ve an Ulster badge upon their breast/ these are the men of the UVF/ Men who mean just what they say/ To fight and die against the IRA./ Now watch these men they dress in black/ And when they move they never turn back/ And when the scum’s reduced to tears/ It’s one more victory for the Volunteers/ Now Gusty is their number one/ They’re sworn to fight the rebels’ guns/ These words to all his men he’ll say/ Death to all the IRA./ Through two world wars they fought and died/ Now the sons let their fathers rest/ To guard the badge of the UVF/ So on your feet and toast with me to the UVF/ And victory/ And when Ulster once more is free/ And rids itself of Popery/ We’ll all say/ Thank God for the UVF”

I first heard this song in 1998. I bought a tape on Sandy Row in Belfast. It was part of an attempt to understand loyalist terrorism in the same way that an oncologist would attempt to understand cancer. How best can this monstrous force be exterminated? Loyalist terrorism is as great a danger to unionism and republicanism. I abominate loyalist terrorism. Let that be realised.

The UVF badge says ”for God and for Ulster.” Gusty Spence was the man who founded the modern UVF in 1966. He was in the British Army as a Royal Military Policeman and served in Cyprus. He is from the Shankill Road. He started the UVF in the manner in which it was due to continue by murdering a perfectly innocent and unarmed Roman Catholic youth.

Popery is a disparaging way to allude to Roman Catholicism. The word is antiquated. It is notable that this song see Popery as the root cause of the troubles.

The Volunteers alludes to the UVF. The two world wars is self-evident. The 36th Ulster Division in the Great War absorbed many of the men  of the UVF. There was no such UVF organisation in the Second World War.

The UVF when the paraded in uniform did like to wear black.