“A Discussion of representations of Irish Identity in The Wind that Shakes the

Barley (Ken Loach, 2006) and In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993)”

– Brendan Madden, Core Studies, November 2006.

By dictionary definition, Irish identity refers to something/someone that is

characteristically Irish. However, to define what exactly is characteristically Irish

can be quite an ambiguous task. If ‘Irishness’ is instead defined as ‘the identity

possessed by those who live either in Ireland or elsewhere and that call

themselves Irish’, then the question must be asked, ‘Is Ireland a land at all, in

the sense of a self-determining country and culture, or is it a product of

everyone else’s perceptions?’ (Kennedy, 1999: p.1)

In this essay, I will explore how the Irish Identity is represented in two films, The

Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006) and In The Name of The Father

(Jim Sheridan, 1993). Although there are some areas of overlap in the message

of both of these films, they each represent and identify with a starkly different

Irish Identity.

On National Identity, Anthony D. Smith says the following in his 1991 book:

Of all the collective identities which human beings share today, national identity is perhaps the most fundamental and inclusive… other types of collective identity – class, gender, race, religion – may overlap or combine with national identity but they rarely succeed in undermining its hold. (Smith, 1991: p.143)

This is true for most countries, even with those whose demographics are as

diverse as Britain and the United States. However, in the case of Ireland, and

indeed several other countries, such as Iraq, Pakistan, and (former)

Czechoslovakia, this does not apply and both of the selected films show this.

There were several attempts to forge a unanimous national identity by the

cultural revivalists, the Home Rule movement and others in the end of the 19th

and early part of the 20th century, but religious differences, issues of class and

conflicting opinions on issues such as the speaking of Gaelic prevented the

formation of an undisputed identity. Instead we see the development of several

versions of ‘Irishness’ many of which, including the two represented in these

films, are mutually exclusive.

Ruth Barton writes the following in her 2004 book on Irish National cinema

From the late nineteenth century, the creation of an appropriate literary idiom became the preserve of an educated Anglo-Irish elite… The revivalists’ desire to construct a new national literature was in tune with similar movements such as the Gaelic Athletic Association with its opposition to English games, and the Gaelic League, established in 1893 as the intellectual counterpart of the GAA. … The Irish literary revival wove a myth of Irishness that was both antiquitarian and revolutionary, that defined itself through its difference and superiority to Englishness, and made direct appeal to the sympathies of local and international audiences...” (Barton, 2004: p.13)

Of the two distinct Irish identities that I cover in this essay, it is the one

represented in which The Wind that Shakes the Barley, Michael Collins and to

an extent, The Dawn that is most strongly represented by Irish, and Irish-themed

film from the beginning of the 20th Century up until the late 1990s and to a

lesser extent today. The wish to appeal to expatriate American audiences can be

a reason for this. However in the case of The Wind that Shakes the Barley, this is

not true for when it was made it was not even intended for a US release. In an

article about the Protestants in Irish cinema, which shows us some of the other

reasons for this partisan approach, Brian McIlroy writes the following:

As the Irish film scene progresses … one is conscious that stories focusing on the Catholic nationalist and republican communities have been dominant. Yet, this observation only begs the question: How have their counterparts in the Protestant unionist and loyalist communities been addressed? Or, indeed, those Protestants who live in the republic of Ireland? On of the key difficulties faced when approaching this conundrum are the conflicting definitions of a majority and a minority. Both communities in Northern Ireland, for example, can see themselves as both. If one stresses the all-Ireland concept. Catholics become part of a 80% majority and the protestants a 20% minority; if one stresses the Northern Ireland state alone, then there emerges a 60% Protestant majority and a 40% Catholic minority (this leaves the Republic of Ireland with not even a 5% protestant population). (McIlroy, 1999: 56)

The two films are set in 20th Century Ireland, which been the period of the

greatest ever change in Irish Identity. The Wind that Shakes the Barley, is set

near the beginning of the century in an Ireland that is struggling for (and then

with) its independence. In the Name of the Father is set in Northern Ireland

during the troubles near the end of the century, but both are set against a similar

backdrop of a violent struggle for sovereignty. Even though the Identities

represented in them contrast sharply, either of the stories could in fact be set

against the other’s backdrop and still represent the identity that they already do.

Essentially, there had been no dramatic change in either Irish Identity from the

period in which The Wind that Shakes the Barley is set up until the mid 1990s.

The Dawn and The Wind that Shakes the Barley have much in common in that

they portray loosely the same Irish Identity, are set in the same region, and

cover roughly the same historical period. However, where they differ is that

although they both represented a desire for a united and independent Ireland,

unlike The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Dawn does not suggest that Ireland

would be united today if we had not accepted the treaty. This ‘What if…?’

notion is actually quite a strong part of the identity represented in The Wind that

Shakes the Barley. However, as a result of its focus on the war of independence

and not on the civil war, The Dawn manages to be an apolitical representation

of the same facts. In 1995, a year after the release of Michael Collins, and eleven

years before the release of The Wind that Shakes the Barley Kevin Rockett writes

the following:

British Cinema only rarely touched on the reasons for the War of Independence. In fact, the Chief Censor at the British Board of Film Censors during the 1920s and 1930s, Colonel Hanna, who had served as a British military officer in Ireland during the war, discouraged film-makers from exploring the period. … Unlike their American and Irish counterparts, British films dealing with Irish history and politics tended to represent violence, as is common in British cinema in general, as debilitating and negative, destroying both the family and personal relationships. (Rockett, 1995: p.24)

Hence, The Wind that Shakes the Barley is quite remarkable because it is a

British film that unashamedly covers the 1916-23 era in a way that is extremely

critical of Britain, which is an almost unique stance to take in British cinema.

Most British and American films depicting Ireland portray one of two

stereotypical Irish identities, firstly, the idealized peasant, as in John Forde’s The

Quiet Man, and secondly, that of a nation torn apart by violence, a violence

which has a profound impact on the Irish Identity, almost becoming a part of it,

with revenge and sectarian hatred being ingrained in our character. Untypically,

The Wind that Shakes the Barley does neither.

According to Martin McLoone in an essay on National Cinema in Ireland, the

origins of cultural debate in Ireland emerged as a nationalist response to the

colonial domination of Britain, and that following independence the successive

Irish governments’ strategy on culture mirrored that debate. (McLoone, 2006:

p.88) This theory strongly supports the ‘Irishness’ represented by films such as

The Wind that Shakes the Barley, The Dawn, and Michael Collins. The British

occupation of Ireland is very much at the fore of these films and in each of

them, and especially in The Wind that Shakes the Barley, the message presented

is that if one wishes to claim to be Irish, they must be a republican, and be

willing to take up arms against Britain, thereby saying that those who are not

opposed to the Authority of Britain in Ireland are not Irish. We see this

especially in the depiction of, and attempt to justify the murders of the

protestant ascendary. This idea of Irish Identity is grossly unfair to those of us

who believe that our Irish National Identity lies in our culture and our heritage

and not in our supposedly mandatory collective hatred of Britain.

If one, however, looks at the actual roots of the Modern Irish Identity, which

were carved out only at the turn of the last century by the cultural revival

movements, we can see that this representation of ‘Irishness’ as presented in The

Wind that Shakes the Barley is not representative of the Irish Nation as a whole,

for in fact, the prominent cultural revivalists were mainly of the protestant

ascendary classs, and even those revivalists who weren’t of the Ascendary were

quite happy for Ireland to remain (in some way) as part of the empire and to

enjoy all the benefits that such membership entailed. The Maguire family in In

the Name of the Father are a perfect example of this. At the beginning of the

20th Century, National Pride was actually at an all-time high in a suddenly

prosperous nation who were, by and large, more than happy to maintain the

status quo. This can be seen clearly in the initial public anger towards the 1916

uprising and its participants. The anger and frustration of the people was not

directed at the British, but at the rioters who had, with their intellectual ideology

of an Irish republic caused the destruction of Dublin.

It was not until the British Authorities retaliated disastrously, executing and

imprisoned people who were ironically, by and large, actually opposed to the

rioting (E.g. Francis Sheehy-Skeffington) that the anger and disgust of the nation

faced Britain. This is totally ignored in The Wind that Shakes the Barley.

In the Name of the Father is set more than fifty years later in what is technically

a different country, (the partition of Ireland into two separate states occurred in

1921) but it represents more accurately the identity to which the majority of the

Irish would have subscribed at the time in which The Wind that Shakes the

Barley is set. We see the same mentality and identity, and the same sense of

Irishness, and the same desire to have peace above sovereignty as there was in

Ireland in the early 20th Century. The character of Giuseppe Conlon represents

this Irish identity clearly.

It was not until, yet again, the British enacted their policy of internment without

trial and gave the population no option but to allow themselves to be policed by

the IRA that the anger of the public was directed towards the authorities and the

troublemaking rioters and idealists were in any way sympathized with. We see

this misplaced empathy with the IRA in the character of Gerry Conlon in In the

Name of the Father in his initial relationship with Don Baker’s character, Joe

McAndrew, the IRA leader who actually carried out the bombings for which

Gerry and his friends and family were wrongly imprisoned. However, Sheridan

only uses this as a device to further convince us of the evil of the IRA and later

Gerry realizes that even as an Irish nationalist there can be no empathy with an

organization who kill and maim innocent civilians, even if they do so in the

name of the Irish people. The harshness with which the British Authorities

treated the Irish, however, can not be ignored, can not be condoned, and is to

be abhorred. The Interrogation and courtroom scenes in In the Name of the

Father convince us of this absolutely but that does not mean that it is in any way

justifiable to bomb innocent civilians, and Jim Sheridan puts this across quite

strongly in this film which was made in 1993 while the IRA bombing campaign

was still going on much to the disgust, embarrassment, and shame of the Irish,

and especially the Northern Irish people. The scene of horror and disgust in the

Conlon family home in Belfast when they discover that Gerry has been charged

with the Guildford bombings depicts this element of Irish Identity perfectly.

Although the In the Name of the Father encourages us to reject the identity

represented in The Wind that Shakes the Barley, it nonetheless does depict it

accurately and fairly through the character of Joe McAndrew

It is quite true in fact that In the Name of the Father represented the Irish Identity

just as much at the time of its making as at the time of the earlier IRA bombing

campaign twenty years earlier in which the Guildford four were wrongly

indicted, and upon which the story of the film is based. The same cannot be

said of The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Although it was made just thirteen

years later than In the Name of the Father, the Ireland in which it was made was

an utterly different place, having, in the late 1990s and early part of the 21st

century changed utterly as it shook off or revised it’s longstanding community

values, moral codes, and cultural identities. The Troubles had finally drawn to a

close with the decommissioning of the IRA and the reform of the Administrative

and Justice systems in Northern Ireland. The British Army had withdrawn its

troops and Ireland was at peace.

It appears that the notion put across by Ken Loach in The Wind that Shakes the

Barley is that the Ireland in which the movie is set was, as far as its identity was

concerned, similar to the North of Ireland in 2006, and so he takes the facts

from the period and uses them as a backdrop for his intended message.

However, his message is not actually about the War of Independence at all, but

about the current and ongoing occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan by British

and American forces, and in fact, it is not the Irish Identity that he wishes to

represent at all, but that of the Iraqi and Afghan people.

In a press conference at the Cannes Film Festival, having won the Palm D’Or,

Ken Loach discussed the reasons for making this film in 2006,

"I think that a story on the struggle for independence is a story that reoccurs and reoccurs. It is always a good time to tell that story. There are always armies of occupation somewhere in the world being resisted by the people they are occupying. I don't need to tell anyone here where the British now, unfortunately, forcefully and illegally have an army of occupation. It's also a story about extraordinary comradeship and heroism and a tragic conflict within that story. It seemed to us a story that in the end we could not avoid "

Ultimately, however, despite its aims, the film loses focus towards the end and

the last twenty minutes are spent putting forward the case of the Irregulars, those

who did not support the treaty and initiated the civil war in a biased, partisan

and historically inaccurate way. We see the Free-Staters going around

pedantically and groundlessly killing anti-treaty forces in the same way as

earlier in the film, the Black and Tans kill Michéal because he can not his name

in English as he only speaks Gaelic. This resounds strongly of George Orwell’s

Animal Farm but has nothing to do with Irish history and is in that context

wholly inaccurate. However in the context of what it means to say, that the Iraqi

and Afghan people are no better off now than when Sadamn Hussain and the

Taliban respectively were in control is a fair point and is well depicted.

With the exception of these last twenty minutes, The Wind that Shakes the

Barley is technically more accurate historically than In the Name of the Father,

but by focusing so strongly on using the facts of the period it depicts as a means

of protest against the war in Iraq, it actually loses out and compromises its

representation of the Irish identity. Contrastingly, In the Name of the Father lets

go of key facts, such as the fact that for much of their imprisonment, Gerry

Conlon and his father Giuseppe were actually in different jails, or that Garth

Pierce only joined the case close to the end, or that she did not actually speak

in court (as being a solicitor and not a barrister, in 1989 she would not have

been allowed to do this) and instead focuses on the relationship between Father

and Son, and the unique resilience and determination to endure all hardship

that is such a central part of the Irish Identity that it represents.

We learn that historical accuracy must sometimes give way to something deeper

if we wish to represent ‘Irishness’ accurately in film.

Word Count: (Excluding Block Quotations): 2344 Word Count including Block Quotations: 2837

Bibliography and Reading List for essay entitled “A Discussion of representations of Irish Identity in The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006) and In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993)” by Brendan Madden.

Websites: • Unnamed Author (May 2006)

“The Wind that Shakes the Barley” http://www.festival-cannes.fr/films/fiche_film.php?langue=6002&id_film=4336504 (Accessed 20.11.2006)

• Waters, Darren (30.05.2006)

“Loach Revisits Irish Struggle” Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/5026620.stm (Accessed 20.11.2006)

• Delaney, Padraic (28.05.2006)

“The ghosts are still in Ireland and still do haunt” Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/entertainment/4993956.stm (Accessed 20.11.2006)

• Jack, Jeffery K (November 2005)

“Irish Representations in the Films of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan” Thesis submitted to the Graduate College of Marshall University: http://www.marshall.edu/etd/masters/jack-jeffrey-2005-ma.pdf (Accessed 20.11.2006)

Films: • The Wind that Shakes the Barley (Ken Loach, 2006) • Michael Collins (Neil Jordan, 1994) • The Dawn (Tom Cooper, 1936) • In the Name of the Father (Jim Sheridan, 1993)

Articles: • Rockett, Kevin (1999) ‘Irish cinema: the national in the international.’

Cineaste, Vol. 24, Issue. 2-3, Pp23-25 • Hanley, Brian (2006) ‘The Wind that Shakes the Barley’ History Ireland,

Vol. 14, No.5, Pp 50-51 • McLoone, Martin (1999) ‘Reimagining the Nation: Themes and Issues in

Irish Cinema.’ Cineaste, Vol. 24, Issue. 2-3, Pp 28-34 • McIroy, Brian (1999) ‘Challenges and Problems in contemporary Irish

Cinema: The Protestants.’ Cineaste, Vol. 24, Issue. 2-3, Pp 56-60 • Hill, John (1999)* ‘Filming in the North.’ Cineaste, Vol. 24, Issue. 2-3, Pp

26-27

Chapters in Books:

• Rockett, Kevin (2006) ‘Irish History on Screen’ in Laverly, Paul, 2006, The Wind that Shakes the Barley: Screenplay, Cork: Gailey Head Press.

• Hill, John (1997), ‘British Cinema as National Cinema’ in Vitali,

Valentina and Paul Willemen (ed.s), 2006, Theorising National Cinema, London: British Film Institute

• McLoone, Martin (2006), ‘National Cinema in Ireland.’ in Vitali,

Valentina and Paul Willemen (ed.s), 2006, Theorising National Cinema, London: British Film Institute

• Hill, John (1987), ‘Images of Violence,’ in Rockett, Gibbons and Hill

(ed.s), 1987, Cinema and Ireland, Beckenham: Croom Helm Ltd • Kennedy, Harlen (1999) ‘Shamrocks and Shillelaghs: Idyll and Ideology

in Irish Cinema’ in MacKillop, James (ed), 1999, Contemporary Irish Cinema: From The Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa, New York: Syracuse Press

• McIlroy, Brian (1999) ‘History without Borders: Neil Jordan’s Michael

Collins’ in MacKillop, James (ed), 1999, Contemporary Irish Cinema: From The Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa, New York: Syracuse Press

• Backus, Margot Gayle (1999) ‘Revising Resistance: In the Name of the

Father as Postcolonial Paternal Melodrama’ in MacKillop, James (ed), 1999, Contemporary Irish Cinema: From The Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa, New York: Syracuse Press

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• Richards, Jeffrey, 1997, Films and British National Identity: From Dickens

to Dad’s Army, Manchester: Manchester University Press • Rockett, Kevin; Luke Gibbons and John Hill (ed.s), 1987, Cinema and

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Cinema, Dublin: Four Courts Press • Vitali, Valentina and Paul Willemen (ed.s), 2006, Theorising National

Cinema, London: British Film Institute • Rockett, Kevin and Eugene Finn, 1995, Still Irish: A Century of the Irish

on Film, Dun Laoghaire: Red Mountain Press • Flynn, Arthur, 1996, Irish Film, 100 Years, Wicklow: Kestrel Books • Flynn, Arthur, 2005, The Story of Irish Film, Dublin: Currach Press • McIlroy, Brian, 2001, Shooting to Kill, Richmond: Stevenson Press • McLoone, Martin, 2000, Irish Film: The Emergence of a Contemporary

Cinema, London: British Film Institute • MacKillop, James (ed), 1999, Contemporary Irish Cinema: From The

Quiet Man to Dancing at Lughnasa, New York: Syracuse Press • Barton, Ruth, 2004, Irish National Cinema, London: Routledge • Barton, Ruth, 2002, Jim Sheridan: Framing the Nation, Dublin: Liffey

Press • Negra, Diane, 2006, The Irish in Us: Irishness, Performativity, and

Popular Culture, Durham: Duke University Press • Hennessey, Thomas, 2000, A History of Northern Ireland, Basingstoke:

Palgrave MacMillan • Smith, Anthony D, 1991, National Identity, London: Penguin Books • Smith, Anthony D, 2001, Nationalism: Theory, Ideology, History,

London: Polity Press