The Mechanism (or The Basket Case. Part One) by Randall Stephen Hall

23.1.15.

Just click on the audio link or cut and paste it into your search engine. Thanks.

https://soundcloud.com/hugh-midden-speaks/the-mechanism-4-4-15

When many of us came here . . . (now what do I mean by “us”or “came here”

or “when” ?) When indeed?

I’m talking about the Plantation of Ulster around 1610. I’m talking about Planters.

Now if you mention “Planters” to most people beyond these shores, few of them would know what you are talking about. “Planters?” they might say “ . . . oh you mean nuts.” And to a certain extent they might be right, though this might be a case of mistaken identity.

“Planters . . . Nuts.” , but not something confined to a bag that you eat in a bar. Confined? Yes. Contained? Yes? Misjudged? Absolutely. Especially with regard to identity. (Another story for another time.)

When I was growing up I didn’t know any of my story, my back story, my past, the context in which I found myself, (in which we all find ourselves). It was to be explained by osmosis, by guess work, by random snatches of conversations, overheard from my parents, my relations and my friends.

This shaping of identity must be a common experience for us all. Picking up bits of this and bits of that as we grow.

As a wee baby, I was dropped into this situation. My parents, in a generic sense, were both Protestants. Both Presbyterians, in fact. A very different thing from being just a Protestant. But of course, as a little creature who could not talk, who was totally reliant on my parents for everything, it didn’t really matter what I was. For at the end of the day, what was I ?

I was just a baby. Like a brand new page from a new sketch pad. Un-blemished. Not one line, daub or finger mark upon me. I had no sense of identity. I was not genetically Protestant. My DNA didn’t make me Protestant any more than the distance between my eyes being an indicator of my Protestant birth right. (Though, they are fairly close.)

I was just me. Just me with my white freckly skin. Just me in the way I burped and reached out my arms to the world. As far as I remember, at the time, I was not a “Taig hater” as Tadgh or MacTeague had no meaning for me yet.

So there I was. Born at Ardenlee nursing home, just behind the Good Doctor’s Spirit Shop, on the Ravenhill Road in 1957. In a city full of smog, pollution, heavy smokers, flat caps and knowing your place. It was important to know who you were and who you weren’t. Is that true today, or is it just a new re-imagining of the old? Us and them. It hasn’t gone away you know.

Like it or not, baby, youth or adult, I still got branded a “PROD”. Under the blanket. Under the blanket of this four letter word (no pun intended . . . “aye right, big lad.”). Just sucking my thumb and watching the world go by. Unknown to me, me and my Moses basket were being slowly fed into a huge and hungry mechanism. But before I could reach it I must point out that I was being carried there by a number of people . . . A Presbyterian minister, a number of MPs, the Civil Service, the state education system, the Health system, the Public Record Office, the City Hall and a number of other public bodies. All carrying me and my wee basket, up above their heads. Almost a parade! Walking behind me was a Catholic Priest and the Catholic Education system as they wanted no part of me. (Too hard to digest.) That’s okay I’m not offended. After all, it was 1957 in old cold Nornia.

The mechanism to which I was being taken to looked like a cross between Stormont, a factory, the Titanic and the ghost train at Barry’s in Portrush. All combined. I was taken round the back and left on the steps. From there I was lifted with Asbestos gloves (all the rage in those days, especially in schools), and left to be weighed, and tagged (LEFT or RIGHT). As a wee Prod I was taken to the “RIGHT” room (the room on the right), and left in a gigantic cot, with several other thousand wee dotes from the day I was born. All “RIGHT” and Protestant, but in a sense, all wrong. Off to a bad start. A start from which many of us never recover.

Down a corridor my doppleganger “Ragnall Stiofán MacHalla”, a wee Catholic, equally white and freckly, was on his way to the LEFT room, (the room on the left), to crawl in amongst his Gaelic brothers and sisters. Sucking on the teet of mother Ireland with Sian O’Riada tunes getting his wee left foot tappin’ nicely. (Ah now . . .)

So there I was, like raw material, flesh in a basket, moving forward, still in my container, within a factory like system. Like a Cow or a Pig or a Donkey, being led along. Moon faced and open. Unaware of where I was going, who I was, or that someone had created this ride for me and those like me. That someone was operating it, a system, deliberately. It was to be many years before I would begin to question what I was experiencing. I just accepted it. Why would I not accept it? I was a baby.

Remember, that my doppleganger “Stiofán” was moving along within the same system. The one fundemental difference between us (as two human babies) was, that he went left and I went right. For that is how the mechanism worked. The two of us. Separated. At the beginning of our lives. Everything we were about to experience in the first 18 years of our lives hinged on one small thing . . . “Catholic or Prod.”

Jesus, I have to tell you, when I see it as clearly as that. it makes me mad. Angry, Annoyed. Fuming. That such a thing, such a minor denominational difference could have such a devastating effect on so many lives. “Catholic or Prod?”

Like babies in a car assembly plant, the damage was done, right there, right then. In the 1950’s to now. We have lived, loved, played, existed and died in a free range factory. Northern Ireland or NORNIA (as I like to call it), has been run along the lines of a factory system, allowing the raw material . . . us, you and me, to be sorted and dispatched out into the world as two products. Of course, it’s more complex than that with much more details and subtle variation, but essentially, that’s it. No different than Conway Mill, Harland and Wolfe or a toy factory in a cobbled, one way street.

Deeper and deeper into the mechanism me and my basket went. All those cogs and wheels, barriers and boundaries, pushing me on. Guiding me to be denominationally,

Administratively, and politically a Prod. And equally so, for “Stiofán” my doppleganger spirit friend. Anam Cara. For he was being as packaged, labelled, and processed like myself. But to what end?

Whether I knew it or not, there was even a role for me as a baby. Even as a statistic I was useful to the accountants in this factory. At “Nornia Limited”. Little Prod. “Baa Baa!”. There, there now. Little Stephen and little Stiofán, growing and learning to be different things to each other. Not knowing of the presence of “the mechanism”, or even each other, in their early lives.

If you were to fly over Northern Ireland, any time over the past fifty years or so, you would have seen green fields and what seemed to be a settled and productive land.  A well organized agricultural system with boundaries and barriers. The whirring wheels of tractors and combine harvesters guiding their product to market in time honoured fashion. The black and white cows, looking like toys from the air. The pigs, sheep and goats.  The chickens clucking. All contained and docile. Raw material, all destined for market.

But for us. What are we destined for? In Nornia, from the cradle to the grave we live in different fields. If we were goats we would be cut off from the sheep. If we were cows we would be over the hedge, or the fence from the pigs (I they were organic). All knowing our place. Still. For we are the produce of Nornia Limited and we support the lives of the few, who we rarely meet. They farm us and process us in their factory. For it is the mechanism that runs our lives.

The longer they can keep us focused on our differences and happy to remain in our different fields the longer they will continue to be in control of “the mechanism”. It’s the mechanism you need to be aware of.