Republican News · Thursday 7 February 2002

Bloody Sunday on film - McGovern speaks

BY FERN LANE

That's what patriotism is all about - it's being eternally vigilant and critical of your own country, especially if it's and imperial power with all that history behind it - Jimmy McGovern

The renewed interest of the wider world in the Bloody Sunday issue, aroused partly by the ongoing Saville Inquiry and by the recent showing of both Jimmy McGovern's 'Sunday' and Paul Greengrass' 'Bloody Sunday', was evident at all the events held over the commemorative weekend, but most particularly at the packed out Gasyard Centre on Saturday afternoon.

Dave Duggan chaired 'Writing Wrongs - Sunday', a public forum which explored the making of the McGovern's film. The panel included Maura Young, around whose family's story the film's narrative is constructed, co-producers Stephen Gargan, Jim Keys of Gaslight Production and Gub Neal of Box TV, and Jimmy McGovern himself.

Stephen Gargan began by explaining how he and co-producer Jim Keys began to formulate the idea of making a film of Bloody Sunday, using McGovern's docu-drama 'Hillsborough' as a model. McGovern was invited, informally, to the Bloody Sunday weekend in 1998, when the tentative idea that he should write the script was put to him.

Although initially reluctant, when McGovern agreed he and the producers then set about a careful process of consultation with the families of those killed and with the surviving wounded. McGovern said that for him "the main thing was that we got the process right. I think it's wrong just to come over here and pick people's brains, explore people's hearts and then piss off. So we were all determined that we would get the process right.

"I'm proud of the film, but I'm even more proud of the process we went through to get the film. It was a case of going into people's houses - and it was great for me because I have a stammer, and I'd walk into people's houses and just start stammering, and Irish people would just give me everything. I just listened and listened and then I went away and wrote the story."

Maura Young told the audience that the reason the families had co-operated so fully with the making of the film was because they needed to have their story told. "It's easy to sit and read," she said "but when somebody puts it on film as well as Jimmy and all of them have, it brings it a bit more closer to home."

During the question and answer session, McGovern was asked whether making the film had affected his own sense of national identity. He said that travelling to and from Derry whilst researching, writing had given him "a profound insight".

"As I was coming over here I was thinking it's so unfair; the Irish are patriotic and it's easy to be patriotic if you've been victimised and shat upon for thousands of years. But when you are a son of the imperial power, how difficult is it to be patriotic then?

"And yet I found that I loved my country. So that made me think; I'm here amongst Irish people and we have slaughtered, murdered Irish people and yet I love my country. Why? Then I realised it's because my wife and kids are there, all my family are there, all my friends, everything I value is in England. So I instinctively love my country. And that made me think, the question I must ask is; how can my country make itself worthy of my love? Then you demand great things of your country - truth and justice overwhelmingly. I thought that's what patriotism is all about - it's being eternally vigilant and critical of your own country, especially if it's and imperial power with all that history behind it. That was a revelation to me. I would never have got that without coming over to Ireland for four years."

Speaking to An Phoblacht afterwards, co-producer Stephen Gargan spoke more about the way in which McGovern had come to write the story of Bloody Sunday and about the close involvement in the families. It was, he says, an almost "organic" process.

As part of the Gasyard Féile, he says he wanted Jimmy to "actually come and talk about his writing, and to talk about his depiction of Irish characters in things like Cracker. His characters always seemed to have a little more depth than your average character.

"So I met him in Belfast and we just started to talk about Hillsborough and the notion of doing something on Bloody Sunday emerged because the Hillsborough experience was really about engaging with the relatives' story, speaking to the relatives, and then the story emerged out of that.

"Then we invited him to Derry for the commemorative weekend in 1998. At that weekend it started coming a bit more into focus." During this process, both he and McGovern, says Stephen, learned an incredible amount. "You think you know something," he says, "but when you actually speak to people who have experienced particular aspects of what happened on the day, it's only than that you really start to assemble the picture - like in a sense what Saville is doing."

"When Jimmy came in he was more focused on the notion that individual soldiers or the Parachute Regiment was the problem. He came away realising that, certainly the soldiers pulled the trigger and they have to be accountable for their actions, but ultimately they were just a tool of the British government and by the end of the process he was more firmly of the belief that the responsibility should be put at the door of Number Ten Downing Street rather than with the Parachute Regiment."

In respect of the soldiers themselves, one thing the filmmakers also wanted to address, says Gargan was "the fascination for a lot of people: who are these people? What's the mindset of an individual that he can come into an area and do what he does? That's a very interesting story in itself, another aspect of Bloody Sunday."

Although the researchers did not speak to any of the Parachute Regiment members involved with the Saville inquiry, they did speak to members of the first and second battalion of the Paras and members of other regiments, like the Royal Green Jackets.

"That research was very good in terms of getting some insight to the mindset," says Stephen, particularly "the deep racism, the regimental rivalry and how the Paras see other regiments - they call them 'crap hats'. When people say that Bloody Sunday was chaotic, that it was confusing and the Paras didn't really know what was going on, well it was very important to nail that nonsense really, because they are a crack, elite regiment who were put together for a very particular job. They're killers, executioners; they're not a police service. They were brought from Belfast for a very particular job and they were busted out again the next day. The idea that they came into Derry and let's say for argument's sake that there were some shots fired at them, that they were somehow confused - it's a nonsense."

Stephen points out the irony that the Rossville area has now been refurbished but the area of Manchester where the killing scenes were shot are still at the same level of deprivation as they were in the 1970s. "These people in England are living in worse conditions, but they were brilliant."