Has any one got any change?
I remember listening to a satirical comedy show on BBC 4 in the late eighties or early nineties. The show, who’s title is lost to the mist of time like many of my old memories, was trying to use satire and humor to explain the Troubles (‘Northern Ireland conflict’ or what ever term you might know it by) - primarily to British listeners. Radio 4 was , and is, the station of the stolidly middle class as they quietly aspire to rise higher. And there was I listening at night on my long wave transistor mono-speakered radio across the Irish sea - a 12 year old spying on his more powerful neighbor. It’s a funny station for a 10 year old Irish boy to start listening to but they had comedy and plays and news and Woman’s Hour and I was fascinated. Hind-sight might allow me to talk at length about being the other to the majestic metropol and if you ever want to talk about post-coloniality I’m game but right then I was looking to be entertained by those strange englishmen who’s language I speak, who’s clothing I wore, who’s food I ate. (Really I ate it and it’s still comfort food to me but I eat better now). The show started with a northern Irish guy in a phone box trying to make a phone call. The narrator speaks to say that the phone box was about to witness the answer to the Northern Question (yet another euphemism for the death and destruction in the North of Ireland at the time and a damn good metaphor for the political expediency with which it was deployed to fundamentally avoid facing the issues). The show, as I said, started with this guy in a phone box and it cut away to do a shallow (necessary for the 28 mins run time) overview of 300+ years of Irish history. Or more accurately 300+ of the history of the British in Ireland. A Subtly I only appreciate looking back. 27 minutes later the show find itself back at the phone box to hear the man utter - Has anyone got any change? The tone was bitter, desperate, and hopeless.
Background Element from The Troubles map.
It’s funny how we render complex clusters of memories, ideas, ideals, and experiences down and nail the compressed and distorted thing to an image or object, sight or smell, or indeed statement. How and why we do is at the heart of advertising and is worth a discussion in itself at a later point but I am aware I need to explain a little bit of where I’m going with this as my blogs up to this point have been about the visual and interactions I think of and implement when I do (perform?) graphic design for games. I think I’m trying to explain why I volunteered to work with Hugh O’Donnell on his first foray into game design. And yes, it is because I am Irish. It used to be that I didn’t feel the need to explain what i meant by Irish but given the propensity of white (usually American ofter Irish American) to claim they are Irish’ for a variety of deeply problematic reasons (that ‘the Irish were slaves too’ bullshit amongst others) that I need to be more clear. As clear as Irish man can be given room enough to really get talking. There is also the need to expand on the surprisingly wide spectrum of what actually is Irish but again more on that another time. I’m from the Republic or Ireland, the South, Ireland, Eire - theres something in that list to upset someone. I was raised Irish agnostic, a social catholic (definitively lower case c) as it were, going to mass for weddings and funerals and maybe Christmas night so we could open our presents early. I grew up in the seventies in a country that was a ‘developing nation’, not yet started on the road to dealing with its colonial past and a decade or two short of becoming an emerging economy. That was partially, if not wholly, because of our failure to deal with our colonial history and post colonial failures. (the mother and baby home report is a continuation of that failure). My earliest memory of news was a report on the civil war in the Lebanon in the mid to late seventies and the reporter remarking on the destruction resembling Belfast. I was confused because I knew Belfast was only at the other end of the country. And I know from geography at school that Ireland was small, a days travel north to south. But I had no exposure to that violence. There had been bombs in Dublin but I was isolated from that in Cork what with Dublin being 5-6 hours drive it represented a possible destination not a regular or likely one. I had heard a good deal of ‘up the ‘RA’ at school and around my neighborhood (housing estate as we term them). Its funny (yes I know more ‘funny) that the loudest rabble rousers are often the furtherest from the front. My nan was extremely proud of being in Cumann na mBan in the twenties but had only short shrift for the new IRA. Her father and uncle had died in British Uniform in France in the Great War. One of my uncles had been interned for his role in the peace movement; he was, and is, a fervent pacifist. I remember Republican Flute Bands marching through my housing estate with guys in ' ‘band’ uniforms handing out flyers or ‘chatting’ with teen boys. I went to school with lads who most likely went on to try if not succeed in joining the IRA and I went to school with lads who talked big like they would but were just scared (not of the troubles just of school and the bullies), like kids often are in school and it was a shield. I know people who are deep ashamed of what they did do and for what they failed to do. I could go on at great length about connections on all ‘sides of the conflict’ but this is a blog not a book. And its usually about boardgames too.
When COIN first appeared almost a decade ago I remember the excitement and clarity with which the community saw the possibilities in the system. From the earliest posts on BGG there was call to do a COIN game on the Troubles in Northern Ireland. along with Irish Independence and Indian independence for that matter - and theres been a lot of COIN attention to colonial subjects in general since . COIN provided a space to run with an experience that hex and counters couldn’t handle. It’s (you guessed it) funny how many of the COIN games deal with ‘non traditional’ wargame subjects. Revolution and insurrection is asymmetric, who knew. No one touched the Troubles despite its popularity (as much as one can say that about our little subset of the gaming hobby). Then along came Hugh. I watched for quite a while (over a year) and he was making all the right noises to make me think he was doing an honest job of it at least as far as any one person can). He doesn’t hit every moment but my word he got a lot of them. He doesn’t hold punches and if he’s taken a side its the side of the people who lived the Troubles and the agenda he is pushing appears to be an attempt to allow us to ask a question; what happened? I figured that if he was going to go that far with it I could help out and stick my neck out to help. When I first met him we agreed that if no one published it he would share it. He had me sold at that point.
So here I am, writing a blog about it. And I can see from what i have written above its going to take me a few more attempts to say everything I think I want to. I finished a Masters a few years ago on Medieval History but my minor was in Early modern Irish History so I think I have. a good understanding of the roots of were the Troubles started and how badly Irelands past has been miss-represented of a short term advantage and thereby fed ignorance and misunderstanding of the experiences of the past. COIN works because it portrays that part of the human state that is formed by experiences. Hugh has put layers of the experiences I had growing up but as I suggested above I was, in relative terms, aloof from the North. There is so much that were not in my experience directly but lurked in the shadows of my younger selfs subconscious. That deserves a chance. I could do nothing else but help out. Its been 30 years since I heard Has any one got any change?. Given Brexit and that, in last few days, Loyalist groups have disavowed the Good Friday Agreement, maybe not.
If you’d like to know a bit more about me you can follow me on Twitter, FaceBook and Instagram. Or if you would like to start a project with me you can find my contact info at the bottom of this page.
