Troubles Over The Bridge

Christopher Owens 🔖 "…it is the policy of the Ulster Group Theatre to keep political and religious controversies off our stage…"

With these words, Sam Thompson’s play ‘Over the Bridge’ was pulled from the upcoming schedule for the 1960 season of the Group Theatre in Belfast. Writing for the Irish Times in 2022, Conall Parr does a great job of explaining why:

Over The Bridge engages with challenging themes of sectarianism in the Belfast shipyards, groundbreaking in the 1960s in the run-up to the Troubles...The play invites audiences to confront this sectarianism – without presenting simplistic narratives – by portraying different perspectives and experiences of the shipyard workers and through their engagement with the trade union and Labour movement…Over the Bridge’s central character Davy Mitchell represents the labour movement’s spirit of comradeship across all borders. During the sectarian dispute that anchors the play, Catholic Peter O’Boyle has been told to leave his workplace by Protestant workers. Davy – who is of the same religion as the mob – stands with him, defending a workmate’s right to work, insisting: “If I refuse to go out there and stand alongside my mate at the bench, everything I have ever fought for or believed in has been nothing.”’

It's a tale that is often left as a footnote in the history of this country: at best it’s seen as a stepping stone for actor James Ellis to go on to achieve UK stardom through the immensely popular (though now largely forgotten) Z-Cars. At worst, it’s seen as an example of how the state openly suppressed dissent in those pre-civil rights days (the Group Theatre was chaired by a prominent businessman related by marriage to the then Mayor of Belfast as well as a friend of Basil Brooke, then Prime Minister of Northern Ireland).

Published just after his death, Ellis recounts the tale of meeting the budding working class playwright Thompson, how the play was approved for production (and then withdrawn) by the Ulster Group Theatre, defying the ban by staging it in the Empire, taking it to Dublin and outperforming Orson Welles before crashing in London and Thompson’s failure to produce a follow up of equal power.

Quite the roller coaster, I’m sure you’ll agree.

However, while the tale itself is fascinating, the book is a bit of a slog to get through which is a shame as this should have been the definitive take on this sorry tale. Truth be told, it’s perfunctory in its writing style, coming across as a formal dictation by Ellis as opposed to crafting sentences at the typewriter.

Take this segment as an example:

I cannot adequately put in words the excitement and euphoria of that opening night…Both before and after, and needless to say during the performance, when the adrenalin was in full flow, we sensed the sweet smell of success; and to Sam in particular, all the confrontations and sacrifices, all the frustrations and postponements, must now have seemed worthwhile…

Whoopee, I guess.

However, it is still an important document about a particular moment where artists defied the censors and triumphed. The Ulster Group Theatre’s cowardice must not be forgotten, nor Ellis and Thompson’s bravery.

James Ellis, 2015, Troubles Over the Bridge: A First-Hand Account of the Over the Bridge Controversy and its Aftermath. Lagan Press. ISBN-13: 978-1908188557

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.