A new play explores the issues raised by one of the most controversial periods in Irish politics - and how they were dealt with at the time.
'IT'S A PRISON piece, really," says Gerard Humphreys of his new play, Our National Games. "I just had the image of this man who's arrested, and he's in the Bridewell and he's left languishing in a cell with the toilet going 'glug, glug, glug' and all the rest of it. And then he's suddenly summoned by the Taoiseach. I thought it was very bizarre and dramatic. So I just wrote a piece about this man in a cell."
The man in question is the late Captain James Kelly, who found himself at the centre of one of the most extraordinary events in Irish history - a strange, sordid, labyrinthine business which has never been properly investigated. "If you were born after 1960," says Humphreys, "you refer to it as 'the arms trial'. If you were born before 1960, you call it 'the arms crisis'."
The ambiguity of language is entirely appropriate for this most ambiguous of episodes; indeed, there is still no "official" version of what, exactly, happened. Two years ago, in an address to the Ancient Order of Hibernians national convention in Boston, Justin Kelly told the story from his family's perspective. "My father, Capt Kelly, was an Irish army officer who was charged with illegally importing arms to Ireland, in what came to be known as the arms trial in 1970," he began. "At the time, it was the longest-running trial in the history of the Irish state and received massive attention due to the fact that among the defendants were two leading government ministers, Neil Blaney and future taoiseach, Charles Haughey."
The real drama, perhaps, lies not so much in the beginning of the story as in its end. Blaney and Haughey went on to enjoy long and successful careers; but despite being cleared of all charges against him, Capt Kelly retired from the army amid a cloud of allegations and counter-allegations; his name has never been cleared to the satisfaction of his family and friends. When he died in 2003, Bertie Ahern issued a personal statement to the effect that Capt Kelly had been prosecuted in "circumstances of great controversy" - an understatement which brings ambiguity to the point of opacity.
OUR NATIONAL GAMES explores the issues which underpinned the trial and its aftermath, including loyalty, ideals, cover-ups and exposures, according to its author who, after a career in the army which included a tour of duty at UNIFIL headquarters in Lebanon in the 1980s, now works as a barrister in Dublin. "The play actually doesn't deal with the arms trial and what happened or didn't happen," says Humphreys. "It focuses on the dilemma of the individual - the moment when he has to make huge decisions. This play is about our sense of ourselves, our sense of identity, how we deal with problems, who we are, what we stand for and where we're going."
At one stage, he recalls, it was suggested that the play could have been set in America, or in England, where there has been a striking recent parallel with another Kelly, Dr David Kelly. "David Kelly said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and he also ended up standing alone," says Humphreys. But he insists that to move the location of the piece would be to totally miss the point. "It would be a lie, because this is us. We did this, all of us, to ourselves. It would be a bit of a cop-out to set it elsewhere because then people could say, 'Oh, yeah, the Americans did this or the Brits did that'. This is us. This was a moment, and this was how we handled it - or didn't handle it, as the case may be. And everything was changed afterwards."
Humphreys admits that he has taken some liberties with the story. "To recreate it in a dramatic way, I've obviously had to create the characters around Capt Kelly," he says. "And although it deals with the period from August 1969 to May 1970, the action is reduced to a period of two days." But he says the response from people who've read the play, and from actors, director and crew, has been extremely positive. "Everyone gets excited about it. Everyone has a view." This includes a young man who slipped into one of the early script readings at the axis theatre in Ballymun. "He came up to me afterwards to talk about it, and it turned out that his parents were from Belfast. They had fled from the North, but had never spoken about it. He understood everything about the story, so I was delighted with that."
It's also, he says, highly appropriate that the play will be staged at axis, aka the Ballymun Arts and Community Resource Centre. "It's really about the early 1970s, which is when Ballymun was being set up, and that was also the time of the mass exodus of people from the North, many of whom came to live in Ballymun," says Humphreys. The area is currently a hive of artistic activity, with a recording studio and dance studio as part of the axis complex; eight schools in the locality are also involved with axis on a regular basis, putting on plays and creating new works of their own.
Much of this activity is due to the energy and commitment of artistic director Ray Yeates. "He's doing a great job in Ballymun," says Humphreys. "He doesn't preach, but he has standards. It's fine that we're importing so much theatre nowadays, but it's important that we tell our own stories as well. The local community up on stage doing something in front of their own - it gives a sense of belonging and a sense of identity."
Humphreys has done a bit of acting himself, first at school in Colaiste Mhuire in Dublin under the inspired guidance of Tomás Mac Anna, then during his time in the army. "I did a small bit of acting in the Taibhdhearc," he says, "and then, when I was stationed in Athlone, with the Little Theatre, which the army was heavily involved in."
His time in the army has obviously made a deep impression on him: he wrote a book, Clocha Ceangailte, about a tour of duty in the Lebanon, and a play, Éiric, on the same topic. "It was really about our attitude towards the Arabs and Muslims," he says. "We've really got a problem, and I feel very strongly that the invasion of Iraq without a UN mandate was wrong. In many ways, what has happened to Lebanon is really a microcosm of what has happened in Iraq - they're making the same mistakes again and again and again."
ANOTHER OF HIS PLAYSis on the subject of military justice. "The tradition in the British Army was that anyone who deserted would be brought back to their regiment and shot by their comrades," he says. In 1920, Irish soldiers from the infantry regiment, the Connaught Rangers, mutinied in India where, they said, the treatment of natives by British forces mirrored the injustice being meted out back home by the Black and Tans. Among those sentenced to death was Private James Daly, who was shot by firing squad in November 1920, aged 21. Like Our National Games, Geasa focuses on the motivation behind an individual act of bravery, and on the tension between private emotion and the ruthlessness of large-scale realpolitik.
What would Humphreys like people who see the play to take away from it? "I'd like them to think about it," he says. "I'd like them to think about how we respond to crises, and how we make decisions. Everyone can understand this play, and everyone can follow it. You don't need to be anything at all; you just need to be a human being.
"It's about standing up for what you believe in. It's about public duty and private conscience. It's a recreation of the situation, and the people around it are a creation. That's the only way I could write it. I mean, you could write about it as a cold legal discourse. But at the time, people were passionate about it. And I wanted to capture that passion."
Our National Games by Gerard Humphreys, directed by Ray Yeates, runs in axis, Ballymun, from tonight until Thursday and from June 4-7, with Eamonn Hunt as Capt Kelly, Michael Judd as Sgt Krinnion and Céire O'Donoghue as Orla Kelly. Set design is by Robert Ballagh.
