Seen And Unseen

"The "street" is the reality and unreality. The centre of the universe, the beginning and the end of time. The whole spectrum of all human existence in full living colour written on the walls, scored with the thump of explosive, photographed in the mind of a diseased body. Replayed every day, relived with boredom. We live in the commercial break of a battered building. Selling our morality to ourselves over and over again, with the help of war books, films, T.V. and sleep. Don’t think of the rights and wrongs, just let the beast rise and enjoy the primeval passion."

A.F.N. Clarke, "Contact"



"Contact", written by A.F.N. Clarke and published in 1983, was an obyvatel account of his two tours of Northern Ireland, in Belfast in 1973 and South Armagh in 1976, as a Captain in the Parachute Regiment. Written as an unmediated soldier’s account, it offered a harsh and unforgiving verdict on all sides participating in "The Troubles".

The book depicts the soldiers of the British Army living a strange dual existence, between isolation in dark, improvised urban fortresses, forever trying to fend off boredom or to simply catch up on sleep, and their release onto the streets, where their tensions and frustrations are released in bone-crunching episodes of violence, as local youths are pushed up against walls to have their balls squeezed, pubs are turned over and their contents smashed, and rioting mobs are steamed into with armoured personnel carriers. The "toms" live in fear of, and enthusiasm for, "contact" with the enemy, be it the ruthless I.R.A professionals of the border counties, or the slippery, cunning "loyalists" of the U.D.A.

"Contact" depicts the war in Ulster not as one of territory, or religion, or ideology, but as a war to control the narrative. In such a fissile environment, with the aggressors living cheek-by-jowl, incidents are depicted as inevitable, even when the Paras are not deliberately trying to stoke them up. What matters to all sides is not what happens, but how it is interpreted by the outside world. Clarke paints a portrait of a ghost war, where major riots are forgotten almost as soon as they have ended, where casualties are hushed up, and where the perpetrators of an act of violence can change between news bulletins. Indeed, part of what allows the soldiers to get away with their violent harassment is that they know that there are many situations where it suits the paramilitaries to keep quiet about Army incursions onto their territory.

A year later, in 1984, "Contact" was adapted for television by Alan Clarke on behalf of the BBC. Clarke was always the most cold-eyed and unsentimental of the social realists, and he abstracted the story even further. Concentrating on the second half of the book, he depicted the Paras in South Armagh almost as a wandering tribe, endlessly patrolling the hills around Crossmaglen, observing the ambivalent comings and goings on the local farms carefully but remotely. Like the mercenaries in "Predator", the soldiers are always watching, always being watched, their lives an exercise in unending low-level tension. That is until we see just how lethal the border country can be.

"Contact" was much criticised at the time, for its refusal to moralise, to offer "solutions", or to make an obvious statement. Not one to take criticism lying down, when Clarke was to return to the subject of The Troubles five years later, it was with the most pared-down and brutal 40 minutes of drama that British television had ever seen, and is ever likely to see.

Oliver's Army

Stomach head and genitals
Choked until unconscious
Cold water poured in the ears
Plastic bag held over head
Thrown against the walls
Then they were thrown against the wall
Then they were hit with karate chops
Beaten in the face
Bending of the wrists
Lifted up by the ears
Burnt with cigarettes
And teeth knocked out
Then they were spread-eagled on the floor
Then they were spread-eagled on the floor
And then jumped upon
And then jumped upon
And then jumped upon

- The Pop Group 'Amnesty Report on British Army Torture in Northern Ireland'

The Abuse Of Sex

The Greco-Armenian mystic and esotericist G.I. Gurdjieff held strong opinions on what he considered to be "the abuse of sex". For him, this constituted not the everyday perversions that are the subject of boundless wobbly camcorder footage on the internet, but rather the channeling of sexual energy into non-sexual activity. As he himself put it:

"The energy of the sex centre in the work of the thinking, emotional, and moving centres can be recognised by a particular ‘taste’, by a particular fervour, by a vehemence that the nature of the affair concerned does not call for. The thinking centre writes books, but in making use of the energy of the sex centre it does not simply occupy itself with philosophy, science or politics - it is always fighting something, disputing, criticising, creating new subjective theories. The emotional centre preaches Christianity, abstinence, ascetiscism, or the fear and horror of sin, hell, the torment of sinners, eternal fire, all this with the energy of the sex centre……Or on the other hand it works up revolutions, robs, burns, kills, again with the same energy. The moving centre occupies itself with sport, creates various records, climbs mountains, jumps, fences, wrestles, fights, and so on.

In all these instances, that is, in the work of the thinking centre as well as in the work of the emotional and the moving centres, when they work with the energy of the sex centre, there is always one general characteristic and this is a certain particular vehemence, and together with it, the USELESSNESS of the work in question. Neither the thinking nor the emotional nor the moving centres can ever create anything USEFUL with the energy of the sex centre. This is an example of the ‘abuse of sex’".

It was fortunate for Gurdjeff that he died before the publication of the first edition of The Guinness Book Of Records, which he would no doubt have regarded with horror as the cultural institutionalisation of the abuse of sex. The brainchild of Sir Hugh Beaver in the mid-fifties, the book was a compendium of both natural facts and stupendously useless feats of human persistence, endurance, and megalomania that was annually compiled by twins Ross and Norris McWhirter, and printed every October to cash in on pre-Christmas sales.

It was a measure of that free-wheeling era that BBC bosses considered this filth fit for imposition on the nation’s children, and in 1972 "Record Breakers", a show based around the book, began its long broadcasting run. Light entertainer Roy Castle was chosen to be the main presenter, focusing on record-breaking attempts around the world, and, when not watching people fly upside down under bridges, or the largest aerobics class in the world, channeled his surplus sex energy into breaking nine world records himself.



Tellingly, the McWhirter twins’ abuse of sex manifested itself in other fields. The McWhirters were tireless political activists for a strand of right-wing Libertarianism that culminated in their role in the foundation of The Freedom Association, a pressure group that was profoundly hostile to the trades unions. Ross McWhirter’s calls for harsher treatment of Irish Republicans, the constant monitoring of ordinary Irish civilians living in the UK, and finally his offer of a reward of £50,000 for information on a wave of terrorist attacks in the capital, led to his assassination by the Provisional IRA’s Balcombe Street gang, who were themselves engaged in an increasingly bold and reckless campaign against "ruling class" targets in the West End. This act was weirdly unfathomable to children at the time, like hearing today that Alan Titchmarsh has been singled out by Al-Qaeda.

Roy Castle’s biography was no less unusual. An agoraphobic, he would reputedly take refuge from the vast studios of Television Centre 1 by diving into a strategically placed wicker laundry basket, whose lid would be safely sealed by the weight of Cheryl Baker so as to assure the stricken Castle that there was no chance of it being inadvertently removed. It is difficult to resist speculating that this impromptu, Bucks Fizz-topped structure acted as some kind of primitive Orgone Accumulator, that, as well as curing Roy’s panic attacks, had the accidental secondary effect of charging his extraordinary libidinal surplus.