| Description | Track 1: recording setup 0.19 mins
Interview with Kevin Mitchell from Derry. He talks about the power and influence of the Orange order because of their support from the government and his awareness that people would have thought it was his own fault if he had been injured while trying to cross the road during an Orange march. He discusses his dislike of Belfast as a city, but feeling that the people are friendly, despite it being a Unionist city, his love of Dublin as a city because of what it represents for Nationalists but his dislike of Dublin people and his disappointment when he went there for the first time. He talks about religious observance in Ireland and the relationship of the Orange order with the church, and describes a game he played as a child which involved children taking Catholic and Protestant sides, singing songs and play fighting. The game was arranged so that the Catholic side would win. He sings the songs from this game to Charles Parker. He goes on to talk about other games he played as a child, including handball, and attending school in the Bogside. He remembers hearing stories from his grandmother about the curfew and the time of riots in Derry in the 1920s and realising that this was a frightening time. He discusses the attitude of the Catholic church to the Nationalist movement, the lack of Republican priests and the manipulation by the British press to cast Bernadette Devlin as a Catholic Ian Paisley. He believes that it is possible to identify Catholics and Protestants by their vocal tone, the way they speak and what they wear, and talks about differences in speech and the use of words between Irish speakers and Presbyterians, and mentions that Derry is famed for its tenor singers. He explains the differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic, which is full of religious phrases and imagery, and talks about the influence of the Celtic and Catholic church on Irish culture and the interest that the Scottish Presbyterian church took in St Columba and the island of Iona. He considers that wealth and power has made Irish landlords and business leaders as exploitative as the people they had been fighting against, and that the Catholic middle class have accepted all the bad things about English capitalist society. He goes on to talk about the political views and identities of people in the Republic of Ireland and the lack of political awareness of the majority of people in both the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland who have just taken sides (tracks 1-17).
Total: 33.03 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF571E0551080 |