The Belfast-born writer and producer behind Netflix hit Top Boy says a visit to the James Connolly Centre held ’very personal’ ties.
Ronan Bennett sat down with the Irish News in Áras Uí Chonghaile, just yards from his late grandmother’s home.
Discussing his life in Belfast, imprisonment in Long Kesh and Brixton, and career so far, the Bafta Award winner reflected on his ties to Belfast and life since moving.
The previous night he had taken part in ‘A conversation with Danny Morrison’ and said it was ‘an honour’ to be part of the event at the James Connolly Centre.
“He’s someone I’ve always admired and Connolly’s books and pamphlets were things I devoured as a teenager. To have a centre like this is just amazing and bringing together the two sides of the Irish struggle for independence and freedom, the socialist side and the republican side, together in one venue is fantastic.”
His grandmother grew up in the area, a mill girl with 10 children in St James.
“The family had different political allegiances, and some were interested, and some weren’t but generally, it was a nationalist/republican background, with a strong element of socialist thinking in there as well, and also very Catholic, so it was a mix of those sorts of things, which I don’t think was unusual then.”
It was this upbringing that stirred a curiosity that would later serve him as a writer.
“I had never been encouraged by anybody to write, I always thought that writing was for other people,” he explained.
“I went to school in Belfast in St Mary’s, Barrack Street and then on Glen Road and that was an aspirational school that wanted its students to do, well, but there was never any idea of careers in the arts, it just wasn’t on anybody’s agenda or horizon.”
In 1974, when he was only 18 he was convicted of murder and imprisoned in the Long Kesh prison, but the conviction was declared unsafe the following year.
After moving to England he was also accused of conspiring to cause explosions but the charge was later dropped and he was acquitted at a trial of related offences.
Bennett then studied history at King’s College London on the path to becoming an academic, but as he wrapped up his PhD he faced a crossroads.
“I knew I didn’t want to teach, I didn’t want to work in a university,” he recalled.
“By the latter stages of writing my PhD, I had broken off to write bits and pieces of memory and incidents of importance to me. I didn’t have the technique or the self-confidence to think of it as a novel, but somehow, I managed to thread it together and get my first novel published by Penguin. Once I had that start, it was like a door had opened for me and I was going to go through it.”
Ronan is best known for his TV work on Top Boy, Gunpowder, and The Day of the Jackal. While they don’t engage directly with the Troubles there is a subtext explored.
“I think we’re all politically motivated one way or another, but I grew up here at the height of the Troubles. I went to prison, to Long Kesh, and those years and those experiences left their mark. All writers build from their own experiences and mine were quite particular.
“They’ve informed a lot of what I do, which is not to say that I write propaganda or anything like that, it has to work as a novel or a short story, a play, a film, or a television piece first and foremost, but yes, there are political elements to it. There are things about the world, things that I am concerned about and I want to talk about and I do it through the Arts medium.
“Top Boy was something I created when I looked at the Black community in London, and it reminded me a lot of the demonisation of the republican community specifically in west Belfast during the ’80s and ’90s when it got a lot of police attention.
“I’d be riding around on buses in London and I’d look out the window and see young black men being stopped by white police officers, spread-eagled against a wall or a car and questioned. I just thought I could connect with this, and I knew I wanted to write about it, and that became ‘Top Boy’.”
“You’re constantly developing stuff.
“Something is being filmed at the minute in London with the actors Tom Hardy and Pierce Brosnan so there’s an Irish element too. At the minute it’s called the fixer. In fact last night there was a lad here I didn’t know because I haven’t been on set but he’s a camera operator from Belfast and he’s working on the show.”
As for settling between London and Spain, Ronan says Belfast will always be home.
“I always like to come back, Belfast is a big part of me. You see the Black Mountain and the hills which isn’t something you see in London and I love that especially on a day like today when it’s cold but very bright.
“Cities change, it’s inevitable but Belfast has changed so much. One thing I noticed is the landmarks and how some are still around and some of them are gone. Barrack Street, where I went to school, that school was redeveloped years and years ago, but I find myself looking for it even though I know that it’s not there. So I look for the landmarks and I keep thinking, oh, how much things have changed.”