The Linenhall library's 300,000-item political collection celebrates its 40th birthday today, writes Fionnuala O'Connor
YVONNE MURPHY jokes that librarians have no charisma, but she knows libraries can be cutting-edge. She has been to Hawaii, the White House and Ramallah because of the remarkable Political Collection in her library, Belfast's venerable Linenhall.
It covers most views published during the Troubles: party manifestos, police appeals, British army and paramilitary posters; the reading-list UVF founder Gusty Spence set himself in jail; the smuggled letter from an H Block IRA prisoner ending the 1981 hunger strike. No conflict has a more comprehensive archive.
The genesis is a story in itself. It began when the late Jimmy Vitty came into his library in September 1968 with a Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association pamphlet - probably picked up in a pub. He sent staff to forage at demonstrations and barricades, adding material dating back to the first violent deaths in 1966. Successors scavenged to fund staffing and upkeep of a crumbling building. But they were a sturdy lot: labour historian and one-time student radical John Gray, who became librarian in 1981 and has just left the post; the scholarly John Killen; present-day Unesco worker Robert Bell, who made connections across the spectrum and charted the collection; and Murphy, whose reputation and grit took the show on the road. She was more nervous bringing a "Troubled Images" exhibition to her hometown of Portadown, she says, than to Bethlehem, Nablus and Ramallah.
As street clashes, bombs and bullets succeeded marches, artefacts arrived smelling of tear gas and cordite. But cataloguing the steadily more fevered marketplace of ideas became policy. If timidity policed the shelves, after all, what was the point of being independent; of being heir to Thomas Russell, the second Linenhall librarian, a United Irishman hanged for his extra-curricular activities and the hero of the poem The Man from God Knows Where. A John Gray essay noted that collecting material like the banned republican United Irishmanwas of "questionable" legality, and that in 1971 police threatened to seize the collection. But a governor who was also a member of the Ulster Unionist Council phoned the attorney general and saved the day. The library received written permission to keep collecting. It could still pull some strings.
The Linenhall attempt to "make the story as complete as possible" is important to Murphy. She also likes the consequent invitations to events at which librarians are the only outsiders: "We've been invited to a lot of weddings." She remembers offering coffee in return for loyalist material.
Those who remember the pre-Troubles institution marvel that it is now a magnet for international researchers. In the mid-1960s, as a young preacher named Paisley began to ride the tiger of sectarian hatred, all was musty peace inside the Linenhall.
Occasional students tiptoed around elderly subscribers to consult newspaper files. The panelled members' room sheltered aged gents who clutched their copies of the Daily Telegraphor The Irish Timesand bristled at newcomers. Wing-back chairs at high desks looked out at the City Hall.
The political collection now holds 300,000 items, and one of its fondest supporters - and biggest donor - is to chair a 40th birthday celebration this afternoon. By happy coincidence Tom Hartley is Belfast's Lord Mayor this year - the second Sinn Féiner to hold the post - and an early bearer of neatly packaged documents to the library. (Others left parcels at the door or posted anonymously, some from the US.) Hartley also recently gave the Linenhall a sizeable personal collection.
Some others got wires crossed on New Year's Eve 1993, when IRA volunteers planted incendiaries there meant for downtown businesses. The blaze destroyed more than 1,000 books, but missed the Troubles collection. It took a lot to embarrass the IRA in those days, but over the next few weeks An Phoblacht's"War News" carried three apologies to the Linenhall.
Caring about images came later to loyalists, last to mainstream unionism. Republicans had an eye on posterity even while they hung firebombs from meat-hooks on security grilles. The right hand printed leaflets and posters while the left burned books, and buildings, and people. The most graphic item in the Linenhall's anniversary exhibition was distributed 30 years ago by the RUC, after an IRA bomb killed 12 people in the La Mon Hotel. The image of a carbonised form is along the wall from the first image inside the swish modern entrance, a woodcut of a youthful Paisley headed "For God and Ulster". There are Linenhall stalwarts who note that some who complained the library must not collect "terrorist material" now say it should: "Let's not forget what they did." Through industry, and decent stubbornness, the Linenhall has kept faith with its own traditions and the divided city it honours.