However outspoken a playwright aspires to be, only rarely in this country does he or she run the risk of serious punishment for producing controversial work. The furore over Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti’s play Behzti at the start of 2005 was however a warning that we cannot take for granted that a consensus over freedom of expression will continue to exist.
Where the Behzti protests were concerned, it was easy to make the false assumption that such actions are the monopoly of the United Kingdom’s newer and specifically non-Christian ethnic communities. Events before Christmas served to remind us otherwise.
Gary Mitchell, one of Northern Ireland’s most accomplished chroniclers, has been forced to flee his house with his family, under threat of death. No one need be surprised that the terrorists who petrol-bombed his car on one occasion did so when his wife and seven year old son were present in the Mitchell home. Nor that his uncle was targeted too and his pensioner parents forced to quit their home of 50 years.
The irony - if that is not too euphemistic - is that the playwright has been victimised by members of the same protestant community which he has done so much to humanise in the mind of the wider world. Ulster’s sectarian majority has traditionally not engendered nor invited much public sympathy. Three decades of the Troubles and IRA terrorism has not altogether erased memories of a history of blatant political gerrymandering and loyalist counter-violence. And without a substantial overseas community such as Irish catholics can boast in the United States, protestants have won few friends even in mainland Britain. Gary Mitchell’s contribution to showing his community in an altogether more varied light should not be underestimated. Nor indeed should his struggle to stage his work in the face of reluctance in many quarters to focus on ordinary protestants, preoccupied with the mundane business of life rather than the perpetuation of Orange rule and extremist politics - three dimensional people rather than lazy caricatures.
Unfortunately for Mr Mitchell, no valid depiction of any working class, Belfast estate can avoid mention of its various, self-appointed ‘defenders’. To his credit, the playwright has been uncompromising. Stung by his representation of them as bigots and thugs, they have demonstrated the truth of his claims by their very actions. As a result, the only face of Irish protestantism to be presented is that one which most of the community would rather forget.
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