julieann campbell

FULL EPISODE NOTES

Considering the future of Northern Ireland

A panel considered how to engage in a friendly and unthreatening conversation about the future constitutional arrangements for Northern Ireland. This was held as part of a concluding reflection on the Holywell Trust’s series of 35 Forward Together podcast interviews.  

The panel comprised author Julieann Campbell, the commentator Denis Bradley (who was co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past and former deputy chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board) and Maureen Hetherington of the Junction, plus myself as the person who conducted interviews for the podcasts.

This podcast also includes contributions from audience members Eamonn Deane, chair of the Holywell Trust, and Declan McGonagle, a former director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.

We began by listening to extracts from earlier podcasts.  Former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party Mike Nesbitt called for unionism to recognise that the environment is changing: the demographics are changing, there is a rise in English and Scottish nationalism and the attitude of the DUP is causing the political environment to change.

Irish language activist Linda Ervine urged a new discussion to take place, considering a new Ireland within a close-knit British Isles, involving a closer link between Ireland and England.

Victims campaigner Alan McBride argued this is not the right time to have a discussion about Irish unity, but that the time might come in the next few years, depending on the impact of Brexit – a bad Brexit for Northern Ireland while the Irish Republic prospered through its membership of the EU could create the conditions for that discussion.

Peter Sheridan – chief executive of Co-operation Ireland and former assistant chief constable of the PSNI – said that this is the wrong time for a debate on unity, which might need to wait for five or 10 years. What is required is for everyone to be told what Irish unity would look like, not to just have a yes or no vote with inadequate information.

In his earlier podcast interview Denis Bradley said that one of the things that has changed is that the Europeans have accepted that they have a key role in determining the future of Northern Ireland, for cross-border relationships and the constitutional settlement.

Solicitor and former president of the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce Philip Gilliland described Brexit as “a gift”, because it allows Protestants for the first time to discuss the constitutional settlement without it being a heresy. Brexit has demonstrated that the British don’t know or care about Northern Ireland. “It has allowed all of us to consider why we were unionists in the first place.”

In the panel debate Denis said that everything at a constitutional level has now changed. He predicted there will be another referendum on Scottish independence. “And of course we can consider Ireland re-joining the Commonwealth.” He added that it is no longer just about Protestants and Catholics, or just north and south, but about relationships across all of these islands. Brexit will force us to have a mature debate.

Denis added: “I don’t think a border poll should happen any time soon, but it shouldn’t be off the table.” A border poll being up for discussion is the only way to get unionists to discuss the future, he suggested.

In my contribution I raised doubts as to whether republicans are correct in suggesting that a unity poll would necessarily generate a majority in favour in the south, especially given the weak state of the northern economy. I argued that it is in the interests of both unionists and republicans for Northern Ireland to be an efficient and functional society – for unionists to continue to receive the financial and political support of English nationalists and for republicans to obtain the votes for unity in a referendum of people in the Republic.

Maureen suggested that much of the population in the south is not deeply committed to reunification, nor do they have much understanding of the north. Her main concern is the recovery of truth. She added that Brexit is “a brilliant opportunity” to move beyond tribal politics. We need to have an informed choice over the future, not a simple yes or no vote.

Julieann expressed the view that it is wonderful that the current situation provoked by Brexit is seen as an opportunity, not just as a negative.

Declan McGonagle argued that it is dangerous to consider only the economics of unity – we need to deal with the bigotry and divisions within our society. Eamonn Deane added that we should consider the current situation as an opportunity to create a better society.

This is the very last Forward Together podcast. A complete collection of the transcribed and edited interviews will be published in the early part of next year.

Holywell Trust receives support for the Forward Together Podcast through the Media Grant Scheme and Core Funding Programme of Community Relations Council.

FULL EPISODE NOTES

Dealing with the past

A discussion on how to deal with the past was held as part of a concluding reflection on the Holywell Trust’s series of Forward Together podcasts.  The panel was author Julieann Campbell, the commentator Denis Bradley (who was co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past and former deputy chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board) and Maureen Hetherington of the Junction, plus Paul Gosling who conducted the interviews for the 35 podcasts.

This podcast also includes a contribution from audience member Declan McGonagle, a former director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.

We began by listening to highlights from the recordings.  Senator Frances Black emphasised that our communities are united in pain from the violence of the past and that the trauma is passing through the generations.

Mark Durkan, a former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, argued that we can’t simply draw a line under the past, but we mustn’t endlessly pore over the past, nor glibly pass over the past. And we must recognise that some of the issues that are central to our understanding of the past – including distrust, accountability, evasion – affect attitudes and perceptions that continue today. The Eames-Bradley report had made clear that there could not be a ‘one size fits all’ approach to legacy issues.

Victims campaigner Alan McBride said he favoured Eames-Bradley as the best blueprint for dealing with legacy issues, but that the Stormont House Agreement was perhaps now our last chance of having an agreed approach to addressing the legacy of the past.

Former justice minister Claire Sugden expressed concern that our society has not resolved how to deal with past trauma. Conal McFeely, a community sector activist, argued that we have not learnt from the past and instead are repeating the mistakes of the past. Lord Robin Eames warned of the danger of re-writing history.

In the panel discussion, Julieann Campbell spoke of her work in telling the stories of women’s personal experiences during the Troubles. But she said that while story telling is important and that these stories need to be told, they also need to go somewhere and influence the future direction and policy.

Denis Bradley said that he stands over Eames-Bradley as a good report, but a lost opportunity. Its value was that it was a holistic report. One aspect that is now typically forgotten is that it recommended the allocation of £100m to go into trauma services

Maureen Hetherington spoke of her work on ‘testimony’. The community sector, she said, has held people together, but there is a massive need for more counsellors and more availability of counselling sessions for people dealing with trauma.

Declan McGonagle warned that the narrative of the past has become a re-fighting of the Troubles by other means. The consideration of what has happened needs to be framed not as dealing with the past, but as dealing with the future.

Denis Bradley responded that this will only be possible if the two governments – of the UK and Ireland – see the process as being about the future.

Julieann Campbell said that she believes politicians are sweeping everything under the carpet: “It’s a big carpet.” I added that my feeling is that Northern Ireland’s politicians focus on what they want to do, not on what they have to do.

This latest Forward Together podcast is available here. The podcasts are also available on iTunes and Spotify.

A further panel discussion will be included in another podcast to follow next week.

 Holywell Trust receives support for the Forward Together Podcast through the Media Grant Scheme and Core Funding Programme of Community Relations Council and Good Relations Core Funding Programme of Derry City and Strabane District Council.

FULL SHOW NOTES

Creating a shared and integrated society

A discussion on how to create a shared and integrated society was held as part of a concluding reflection on the Holywell Trust’s series of Forward Together podcasts.  The panel was author Julieann Campbell, the commentator Denis Bradley (who was co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past and former deputy chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board) and Maureen Hetherington of the Junction, plus Paul Gosling who conducted the interviews for the 35 podcasts.

We began by listening to highlights from the recordings.  Linda Ervine suggested that the majority of people want to share Northern Ireland, want peace and do not want to go backwards, or support the stalemate politics we have here.

Claire Sugden MLA explained that while we all have our ideologies we need to focus more on improving public services, and that too often the political differences get in the way of this. Fergus O’Dowd TD urged greater educational integration, based on children attending their local schools.

Simon Hamilton argued there needs to be a greater recognition that social reconciliation is a long term, 50 year project.

In her podcast interview, Maureen Hetherington said that while integrated education is essential, there needs first to be greater social integration across society. She added that if more people understood the financial cost of social and educational segregation there would be more support for school integration.

Conal McFeely urged greater support for a human rights framework as the basis for making social progress, which the Good Friday Agreement provided for.  But, he argued, this has still not been properly or fully implemented.  He added that the failures of governance that led to the Troubles are still reflected in Northern Ireland society today.

In the panel debate Maureen urged greater focus on parenting and child development, which requires more support and respect for women as, usually, the main parent.  “We need to start with the children upward,” she said.

The discussion also considered the contribution in one of the podcasts from Andrew McCracken of the Community Foundation of Northern Ireland. He emphasised the class differences within our society, with class and family income often reflected in the different intake of selective and non-selective schools.

Naomi Long had said in her interview that there was a £750m to £1.5bn cost per year of service duplication because services in many cases are segregated.

Interviewees had suggested ways of bringing society together. Peter Sheridan had called for a Department of Reconciliation, Father Martin Magill had proposed a Social Integration Agency, while Peter Osborne had urged a review of the schooling system to reduce costs and promote social integration amongst children.

Denis Bradley responded that parents are determined to get their children into the best academic school, rather than focusing on integration.  “Having said that, it is an absolute disgrace we are wasting about £1bn a year. And the way to sort that is to pull the £1bn out.”

But Denis added that he is optimistic that Northern Ireland will sort its challenges out – in contrast to the situation in England, which is beginning to deal with divisions that are now surfacing.

Maureen warned that too often schools are focused on academic achievement, rather than servicing the needs of all children, including those with disabilities, and are often not helping children to develop beyond education qualifications.

Julieann stressed that increasing numbers of children want more than the schooling system currently offers – especially those children of the very many mixed background families.

Further panel discussions will be included in other podcasts to follow over the next three weeks.

Holywell Trust receives support for the Forward Together Podcast through the Media Grant Scheme and Core Funding Programme of Community Relations Council.

FULL EPISODE NOTES

‘Telling Troubles stories can help deal with the past’

Telling stories about the past – about the Troubles – can help families and society move on, says playwright Jo Egan.  She dramatised the events that killed six children during the Troubles in‘The Crack in Everything’, which was produced by Derry’s Playhouse Theatre as part of a European Union Peace project.  She was also responsible for ‘Crimea Square’, a community theatre play about the history of the Shankill Road.

“People want to be heard,” says Jo. “They want their stories recognised. And I think we need to recognise and hear the stories.”

Some families had never told Troubles events to younger generations.  The staged dramatisations enabled younger family members to learn about past traumatic events in their families.  These productions involve people telling their own stories on stage and in their own words, helped by research from Jo.

“I had all the traditional fears that I wasn't going to be able to write the play that reflected what the people wanted,” says Jo. “And that fear drives you as an artist.”

One of the challenges was that the narrative of people’s experience had become distorted and needed to be placed in a clearer context for the audience to understand.  “It did feel as if their capacity to tell a story coherently had been fragmented, had been blown apart.  People go to tell you a story, and it's traumatic storytelling, they spiral off into different things and can't quite pull it together. They can't quite grab it.... it felt to me at the end of it, when we were performing the stories, that I was giving them back a coherent story that they hadn't been able to put together.”

She adds: “I needed a coherent story where [the audience] could clearly see the wrongs, the rights, the injustices of the story and hear what had happened.... [that] was a joyful aspect of it. I could see that there was a kind of happiness to have got this cogent story.... But there's always different perspectives that have crept in. It was not quite the play you thought you were going to deliver.”

While dramatisations and storytelling can be helpful for understanding and considering past events, it is also essential that support services are available to people dealing with trauma.  “It's fine to have counselling and psychotherapy,” says Jo.  “I think the correct type of treatment for post-traumatic stress is very, very important. I don't personally believe that we have enough counsellors who can do that.”

One of the features of post-Troubles Northern Ireland is the many books written by survivors about events.  “And that perhaps is a way for people to try and make sense and also to try to reduce the emotional impact of their experiences,” says Jo.

Jo Egan was interviewed for the second in a series of three special podcasts featuring writers of historic events in the Troubles, asking them how these stories affected them and what their experiences might mean for how we deal with the Troubles legacy.

‘The Crack in Everything’ was produced by the Playhouse Theatre, in partnership with the Holywell Trust, the Thomas D’Arcy McGee Foundation and Queen’s University as part of the Peacebuilding Academy, financed by the European Union’s Peace IV programme.  Performances took place in Derry and Belfast at the end of last year.  The programme of a range of peacebuilding performances continues into 2020.

The latest podcast interview is available here. The podcasts are also available on iTunes and Spotify.

Holywell Trust receives support for the Forward Together Podcast through the Media Grant Scheme and Core Funding Programme of Community Relations Council.

‘Unless we start listening, we’re not going to move forward’

“Unless we start listening, we're not really going to move forward,” says Julieann Campbell, editor of the Unheard Voices collection of women's stories from the Troubles. She was interviewed in the latest Forward Together podcast.

Julieann reflects in the podcast on the impact on her of the interviews with women about their experiences in the Troubles. “I think it has affected me on several levels, emotionally and in my work,” she says. “It is a fact that it has made me more sensitive. It has made me more empathetic towards people I meet. And it has made me less judgmental.

“And I think it has opened my eyes to the hurt that is still here that I would never have seen if I hadn't engaged in this kind of work. So it was a real eye opener for me personally.

“I think some of the strongest work that I've done in recent years was with the security forces. And being from my community I would have been afraid to speak to those people. But they were some of the most powerful interviews I've ever done. 

“And it was really, really interesting to hear that point of view, because it was something that I had never, ever been privy to before. And it gives you a different perspective, because it shows that the hurt and the fear was universal.”

Julieann adds: “Across the board, there was a feeling of a shared anguish and a shared pain. And that shared feeling that you were afraid to go to bed at night because you didn't know what was going to happen. And that was [true for] victims and perpetrators. And that was [true for the] security forces. Everyone had that same sense of dread and uneasiness. And I think that comes across very powerfully in the work that I've done.”

Unheard Voices is unusual in terms of studies into the Troubles, because it not only contains first person stories, but also they were from women. “They were the backbone of society, we always say,” explains Julieann. “But nobody ever asks women for their voice. That's why this Unheard Voices project was a challenge. 

“When you sat down with these women, most of them said, oh, I haven't anything to tell. And then they would start speaking and you could hear a pin drop. And it became very obvious that no one had ever asked before. And that's something that we need to address. If there's all these untold stories out there, who's asking and who's listening? That would go a long way to healing and moving on. It’s just that basic human want to be heard and acknowledged.”

Julieann adds that there is “a recurrent trait that people think no one wants to know what happened to them”.  Capturing stories at this time is essential, adds Julieann, because many of the people involved in events are towards the end of their lives. 

“My daddy was present in Bloody Sunday and is not with us anymore,” says Julieann. “And I wish I had asked him, because he never spoke of it and never gave evidence at the inquiry. Whatever he saw was so horrific.”  And for witnesses of various events, the impact “has been life changing”, but so too has been the opportunity for them, years later, to tell their stories.  “That was a few hours of our life, but it changed someone else's life,” says Julieann.  “I would say it is a catharsis.”

She adds: “We can't just brush it under the carpet.  It comes up time and time again. There's so many historic cases that have never even had an inquest, let alone a police investigation. And these are coming on 45, 50 years ago. And if it's not addressed right, then we are actually leaving the next generation with a burden. And that's not fair on them... it's an open wound passed on.”

While Julieann says that listening to the stories has been positive for her, it has also been painful.  “I would've had a lot of crying in the middle of the night. And one time there was a story about a woman whose husband was shot dead through her living room window when they were just sitting, watching TV - and speaking to that woman about that and then writing that out and transcribing it. I had to stop and drink wine and watch cartoons in the middle of the night, I remember. 

“And that was one that particularly affected me, that I had to do anything to get those images out of my mind. So it became quite difficult, intruding on someone else's grief, almost. But in a way, that's a privilege as well. And you have to do their story justice.

“There’s no point shying away from it. That could be very easy when someone is telling you something that is so significant, and so detailed, to move on to the next thing, but, no, let them speak and let them go into every single detail, because even if it is uncomfortable for us to hear, my God they need to say it.”

Julieann Campbell was interviewed for a series of three special podcasts featuring writers of historic events in the Troubles, asking them how these stories affected them and what their experiences might mean for how we deal with the Troubles legacy.

The Forward Together podcasts are also available on iTunes and Spotify.

 
Holywell Trust receives support for the Forward Together Podcast through the Media Grant Scheme and Core Funding Programme of Community Relations Council.