Ballymuners have been fighting to regenerate their community for 40 years, writes QUENTIN FOTTRELL
JUST BEFORE the bank holiday weekend I found myself standing on a grassy knoll outside the locked doors of the Plaza Hotel in Ballymun, with a speaker blaring the Furey Brothers across the wasteland between the remaining tower blocks and the rallying cries of Siptu's "May Day Wake-Up Call!" for Ballymun's ambitious regeneration project.
Seán Corcoran, who worked at the Plaza, said: "Just as we thought we would finally see some reward for our hard work, the hotel was repossessed." Some 6,000 people have signed a petition protesting the closure and loss of over 40 jobs with money still owed. By my headcount, 150 turned up. But word is, there will soon be a new hotel operator.
However, I was an accidental activist. I was here for Changing the Story, a day of reflection organised by Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, Ballymun's Axis Arts Centre and Siptu. And when I saw the rolled-up Siptu banners on our bus, I must also admit to looking nervously out the window to check the weather.
Like many Dubliners, we drove through Ballymun in the 1980s, en route to the airport to fly away on a JWT holiday to the Costa del Sol. As the Ballymun towers came into view, I am sorry to say, I initiated a rhythmic clicking of buttons on the locks of the car doors. (Ironically, the high-rise hotels of the Costa del Sol did not look so unfamiliar.)
That summed up the perception of this place at that time. Ballymun was painted a sombre grey in the public imagination as a dark and forgotten place, with acres of newsprint documenting its crime. It inspired fear in our hearts, a chilling warning of what could also happen to us if our benevolent Big Brother averted its gaze and left us out in the cold. In 2003, I returned to Ballymun proper to visit Breaking Ground's Superbia, a house turned into public art. As part of the exhibition, a giant chandelier vibrated regularly. Did this represent social stigma or government neglect? Or was it shuddering in horror, trying to free itself from possible poverty tourism? Whatever it was, it wasn't activism.
The best Breaking Ground projects involve locals. I also bought a print of the towers by Ballymun resident Rachel Brant who took part in a printmaking workshop. The towers are black, framed by a stormy, yet brilliant blue sky, overlooked by a murky black moon; the light in the windows glows warmly with whimsical dots of orange, yellow and pink.
An article in The Irish Times of December 20th, 1968, declaring Ballymun's new model housing scheme officially complete was the impetus for the Axis/Create event. At that time, there were already cutbacks in landscaping; nor had the expected community or entertainment centre, cinema, restaurants or shopping/office facilities materialised.
This was a successful dystopia masquerading as a failed utopia. When asked in the Dáil on November 28th, 1968, if he was aware of great dissatisfaction among tenants in the Ballymun housing estate and if Dublin Corporation still planned to go ahead with the towers, local government minister Kevin Boland replied, "I am not so aware."
Fast-forward 40 years. At Axis, Dermot Bolger, who used to attract the ire of the Garda here by hanging posters for poetry readings, read his Ballymun Incantation, composed for the wake of the demolition of the first Ballymun tower in 2004. Once that red button of activism is pushed - rather than the one on the car door - it is engaged for a lifetime.
Michael Byrne, a dapper septuagenarian in a trilby, moved here in 1967 from the Liberties and, in 1976, set up the Court Variety Players, now the Court Theatre Group, for local children who had little else. Last year's Christmas panto had three generations of Ballymuners. "What am I? Am I an activist?" he asked. "I don't feel like an activist."
Singer Little John Nee sang an impromptu song on a ukulele and Carlow-born Ballymun resident Aideen McBride told an old Nigerian fable about how the chicken came to be used for sacrifice: the other animals were holding a public meeting and the chicken decided to stay home, telling the animals: "Whatever you decide will be fine by me!"
The next generation, Dean Scurry, a comedian and youth worker, said teenagers he has worked with write songs about being themselves, equality and multiculturalism "They didn't know about Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, but they know now," he said. "It's the proudest thing in the world to wear Ballymun and say this is where I'm from."
The Plaza workers are entitled to feel angry. There was a time when CVs with the word "Ballymun" went to the bottom of the pile. Some probably still do, which is why newer developments morphed into Glasnevin, a mystical regeneration that only exists in the imagination. I'm with Scurry. Ballymun carries more oomph than, say, Howth or Dalkey.
Ballymuners fought for basic human rights, fought to save a community ravaged by drugs and, to add insult to injury, fought for public respectability. Activism is contagious and can be stirred in the quietest of souls by a poem, song, play or even a picture that allows you to see another world, however utopian, through the unblinking eyes of a stranger.