Portadown-'Mark 2'
- Rush (Channel 4)
- Heart of Darkness (BBC1)
- Teen Spirits
In the early days of the Civil Rights Movement, Bernadette Devlin
set off to the US on a fundraising/speaking tour, whereupon she
highlighted the many similarities between the treatment of
American blacks with Catholics in the Six Counties.
She was castigated and largely ignored by much of Irish America
as a result, and found herself allying with such groups as the
Black Panthers.
Bernadette's comparisions have been borne out recently with the
similar events of Portadown and Jasper, Texas, featured in
Channel 4's ``Heart of darkness'' which casts a long shadow over
the supposed racial harmony of the USA.
Nobody hates blacks in America, but the white flight continues -
whereby white neighbourhoods disappear at the first signs of
Black families (aka Belfast) one in four Black men serve time
(aka Long Kesh) unemployment among black males is high (see
Strabane, Derry etc etc) and there are continuing accusations by
the Black minority of discrimination by the state, particularly
the police (RUC).
Forty-nine-year-old father of two, James Byrd was recently
abducted by Ku Klux Klan affiliates in Jasper, Texas, where he
was bound by the ankles to a pick-up truck and dragged for two
miles until he was decapitated and his body dismembered,
suffering a similar fate to Portadown's Robert Hamill. In an
uncanny resemblance to the tactics of Portadown Orangemen, his
body was dumped in a black neighbourhood as a ``warning'' to all
Black fenians to stay at the back of the bus.
The murder was''condemned'' by all ``decent'' Klansmen who merely
wanted to protect their race and traditions - see Orange Order.
This didn't prevent them however in attempting to march through
the centre of Jasper (presumably a traditional route) as they put
on their own Drumcree, but were opposed by Black residents, with
the police ``intervening'' RUC style. Their skinhead haircuts and
hoods are mirrored in the Lambeg drumming at Drumcree sending out
a similar God-fearing message to all ``second-class citizens''.
Although the number of anti-Catholic groups doesn't match the 474
racist groupings of the states their origins and ideologies are
similar, both mushrooming during the early part of the century
and both engaging in periodic pogroms against their ``lesser kind''
We were introduced to various wizards (that word again) who
espoused ``patriotism'' and similar ideas on their ``enemies'' be it
``Papacy'' or in this case Africa ``which has only created
destruction''. Scary stuff.
Sherlock Holmes was the original junkie - any avid Holmes reader
will testify that nothing pleased Holmes more after a good case
than a good oul' fix of cocaine.
Channel 4's intriguing new documentary ``Rush'' on the history of
``recreational'' drugs started a little later with the unwitting
housewives and middleaged victims of ``black bombers''
(amphetimines) prescribed by the bucketload by ignorant doctors
in 1950's Britain, in order to cure depression or to combat
weight gain. Phyllis quickly became an addict, cleaning the house
a thousand times over and getting her ``children out of bed at 3am
to wash the sheets''. They soon dribbled out onto the streets and
into the mouths of teenagers and Cambridge scholars, who availed
of them to stay up for twenty four hours at a time on study
binges, despite suffering the after effects including paranoid
schizophrenia.
Drugs became a media issue by 1964, then following a police
clampdown and a reduction in prescriptions, naive pill-heads
turned to heroin, which was available on prescription up to the
end of the sixties in tablet form.
The programme gives a detailed description of the then relatively
low number of addicts, who congregated around Picadilly Circus,
gathering their supply from liberal doctors, including Dr Franco,
an aristocratic old lady who doled out 600,000 prescriptions in
one year alone.
Nevertheless numbers were as low as 300 in the mid-sixties, but
following the historical ill-judgement of outlawing
prescriptions, heroin was driven underground and into the hands
of the pushers, where it has remained since, with a resultant
explosion. Will we ever learn?
Modern day junkie Donny was busy trying to detox on ``Teen
Spirits'' and despite his tender years, seemed to have been
through similar horrors as that of his heroin ancestors. His
stomach was being churned ``inside out'' as he began ``turkey'' at a
friends house, supported by fifteen-year-old girlfriend Collette,
who was carrying their first child.
This was in stark contrast to Mark, a thirteen-year-old spotty
git, complete with shirt and tie and the solutions to the worlds
ills, from a public schoolboy view. This programme however caters
for the tabloid in us and the horrors and trials of children, are
best left in private.
By Sean O Donaile
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