For many, the troubles in Northern Ireland conjure up images of soldiers, bombs and sectarian violence.  Yet there is another side.  The streets of Belfast are alive with Loyalist and Nationalist culture.  Marchers carry banners drawing on their long historical traditions.
The arts establishment has chosen to conceal these cultural differences, promoting instead an ideology and view of Northern Ireland as a 'cosmopolitan village'.  But this, the programme argues, ignores the true culture of the people who are determined to define their own culture in defence of their different political objectives.  The programme offers an insider's view of the two traditions and finds a visual language rich in symbolism and hidden meaning spilling out into the streets.

"Belfast is buzzing and British as Finchley,'
Say Ministry men bragging,
Issuing timely press releases
'It's getting' better, back to normal, this war's almost over, almost over…."
But is it?

"To make all Irishmen citizens, all citizens, Irishmen" said the United Irishmen in 1798 and in Belfast they were in the main radical Presbyterians.  From the grave of Henry Joy McCracken we tour the now dilapidated and vandalised graveyard where many of his fellow compatriots lie buried - and learn of their interest in exploring a common Celtic past, their support for indigenous Irish culture, the revival of the Irish language and the ancient harp music of Ireland.  Yet the very dilapidation of the graveyard symbolises another political alternative in popular thought which was to come to the fore in the next century, the rise of the Orange Order.

"Remember our Glorious past, for the country that has no past has no future" rants a young man to the rousing tune of an orange band.  But whose past to remember?  A visit to one of the many Orange museums in the North reveals more than the gloves worn by King William at the Battle of the Boyne or the oldest Orange warrant dating from 1798, the year that the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland was formed.  Is there now a growing awareness that promoting a distinct Orange culture is important in sustaining political arguments?

Ireland, land of the welcomes, with her green fields and age old way of life say the glossy tourist brochures but is this the reality?  Why was the Irish language driven underground by the Northern Ireland state, "in their eyes the Irish language was synonymous with nationalism and therefore sedition" comes the reply.  Yet since the beginning of the present troubles Irish nationalists and republicans have begun to resurface, openly defining their own culture and history as part of their opposition to the British state, expressing it not just through political protest, and the revival of the Irish language but through wall murals and even by tours of local cemeteries recounting the history of those who died for Ireland…"this is the link in a chain, whose links have never been broken from 1798 to the last volunteer who died…"
"But Belfast is just like any other city, most people here live perfectly normal lives" comes the rebuff.  What crisis? Let's ignore it, it only encourages them.

"In the air and on the streets, in our psyche, yet little evidence of our daily conflict is to be found or debated within our schools, galleries, art centres, churches, and museums."
Is it to divisive or sectarian, too temporary or not worthy of comment?

Only the Linenhall library, Belfast's first independent library founded by Presbyterian radicals in 1788 has an active policy of collecting the political ephemera of our times, over 35,000 printed items relating to the current troubles and available to the public.  The library itself was "an interesting foundation in a period when government often considered the mere assembly of a library of books as a potentially seditious act."

Have times really progressed from those distant days in 1798 when Henry Joy McCracken cried "To suppress the liberty of expression is to destroy it, and like the air that we breathe, it loses its spring, stagnates, corrupts and then issues out of the grand Jury rooms, hot and pestiferous to check the rising prospects of the people.

Directed by David Hyndman  Produced by Marilyn Hyndman Music by Rick O'Shea

Broadcast Channel 4 1990. Louisiana Cultural Cable Channel, USA, 1992. SELECTED TO REPRESENT IRELAND at the Celtic Film Festival 1991. Toronto Irish Film Festival 1990. Edinburgh Fringe Film Festival 1990.