The trouble with history
IT SEEMS unfair to start the review of one documentary about Northern Ireland by discussing another one. But I could not watch the latest film from Vanessa Engle, THE FUNERAL MURDERS (BBC2) without thinking of the trilogy Peter Taylor made in the 90s – Provos, Loyalists and Brits. There is a moment in one of those films – I believe it is Loyalists – where a contributor talks about “looney gas”.
“They did not just drop looney gas on Northern Ireland one day, you know,” he says. And in a way, every film on The Troubles grapples with the same point.
In last night’s documentary there were many tiny, visual slaps in the face – a giant sectarian mural sat next to an advert for a well-known supermarket chain, silent angry crowds watched IRA coffins go down a very ordinary British road with bus stops and Give Way signs.
We want to believe this stuff happens somewhere else. If it happens here, then what is it? Looney gas?
Adopting the same three-way approach of Taylor’s films, Engle veered off the politics to get people on all sides talking. They talked about what they remembered of the days and weeks following March 6 1988, when three members of the Provisional IRA were shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar.
A dreadful chain reaction followed as loyalist gunman Michael Stone mounted a one-man attack on mourners at the IRA funerals and on the following day two British soldiers were lynched at the funeral of one of Stone’s victims.
The film concluded by saying there could be no single truth, only the different versions of everyone involved. It had certainly gathered together a great deal of them with courage and sensitivity and – as all documentaries should – added something to history.
Yet the striking thing was how much all these different versions had in common. In the aftermath of Stone’s attack – which killed three and injured 60 – ex-British military men reported being appalled at the rejoicing of the RUC.
A Catholic woman who had witnessed the mob attack on the two British soldiers named her babies after the dead men. A staunch Republican, who had travelled from Glasgow to attend the funeral, said he still prayed for the murdered soldiers.
Commenting on the same lynching, a Protestant man said there was no moral high ground and the same fate would have been dished out by his community to a suspected spy. It is as human to shoot at innocents and turn a funeral into a lynching as it is to be appalled by those things.
In the end, Engle’s film was less about Northern Ireland and more about the light and dark in all of us. To the great long list of things I’ve never worried about, FOOD UNWRAPPED (C4) added one more last night. “Fat bloom”, apparently, is a phenomenon caused by temperature changes in chocolate, causing a faint white residue to appear on the surface.
Predictably, the people on the care lines and helpdesks could not help and did not care, so Jimmy Doherty went on a European tour in search of the truth. The industry is aware of this non-issue and working on a solution to the non-problem apparently. In the meantime, if you are affected by fat bloom, I suggest scoffing your choc so quickly you do not notice it.
Believe me, this works. The only fat bloom I worry about is when I step on the bathroom scales.