A little world of their own

British army pictures from the 1970s show the soldiers trying to create a little bit of England in Ulster, writes Susan McKay

Derry in the 1970s was full of English soldiers. This was of interest to us schoolgirls. We had to go through checkpoints to get through the town. These were bleak little sheds, made of sandbags at first, bricks later on. The soldiers searched our schoolbags, sniggering and making lewd remarks. We had a fad for a time for furry pencil cases.

One day as my friend and I went through, a queue behind us, they got these out and started stroking them. One of them asked: "Is your pussy like that?" This uncomfortable memory came back to me at the fascinating exhibition The English in Northern Ireland, which opens today in Belfast. Some of the more bizarre photographs could be subtitled "Sex and the Squaddie".

Perhaps the most bizarre of all shows a band of uniformed soldiers marching cheerfully toward the camera. Those in the foreground are holding on their shoulders a large television set. This was in 1974, when colour televisions were new, and the Sun newspaper had sent one over for "Our Boys". The soldiers hold aloft a smiling young woman in a bikini. This was Jilly Johnstone, one of the first page three models. (She now, apparently, writes novels.) A soldier at the rear of the group leads a large bearded goat with long horns, wearing the regimental flag on its back.

The billboard advertising the exhibition uses another version of this photograph. "The advertising company refused to put it up on the Springfield Road - they said it would be attacked," says Richard West of the Belfast arts company, Factotum, one of the exhibition's curators.

He found these pictures in the Imperial War Museum in London. There are photographs of models in bikinis being frisked. There is one showing a line-up of almost naked soldiers with crudely painted parodies of their regimental colours along with large phallic additions. A night's entertainment in a barracks starts with a communal rendition of the Wombles song, proceeds into a custard pie fight and ends with a giant phallus being thrust toward the audience.

"These are internal army photographs and have never been shown publicly before," says West. "We found a lot of sequences showing strange ceremonies, like the firing of cannons followed by the smashing up of a piano until it is in small enough pieces to pass through a hoop. One of the blokes is dressed in women's clothing and ends up on the ground while girls in school uniform pour liquid down his throat."

A crowd of bemused-looking locals stand behind railings with a mean Belfast street in the background. Some of the images of soldiers at play come from a mock Tudor pub inside an army base: a little bit of England in what must have been scary Ulster.

There are two videos in the show. One is a John Betjeman documentary from 1976. It features soldiers talking about being sent here.

There are some great shots of the Clash on a 1977 visit to Belfast, looking devastatingly cool as they pass through a checkpoint. Ken Dodd hams it up for sick soldiers in hospital, accompanied by one of his Diddymen. There are lots of a succession of bewildered or foolish-looking British secretaries of state, and a few of Margaret Thatcher, looking fierce and in her element in 1981. A peculiar sequence shows a line-up of journalists getting instruction from soldiers in how to fire guns at targets painted as terrorists. The reporters include Robert Fisk and Simon Hoggart.

There is a special issue of the Vacuum to accompany the exhibition. This is the monthly arts and culture freesheet edited by West along with Stephen Hackett. It includes essays by various English academics and writers, some of them based in the North. There is no comment on the once common practice during the 1970s and 1980s of giving second-rate English academics positions in the universities at Belfast and Coleraine, for fear, it seemed of letting potentially troublesome locals into high office.

"It was certainly a fast track for journalists," says West. "People like Jeremy Paxman started out here."

Simon Gill quotes Billy Bragg to the effect that "we have tiptoed around Englishness and into that vacuum have come the racists, xenophobes and imperialists". Simon Rooks from the London Gay Men's Chorus describes a 2003 gig at the Waterfront Hall. He quotes an "out" Belfast policeman who tells him most of the audience came to see who else was there, and admits to being amazed that policemen can be openly gay in Northern Ireland.

Fisk recalls the "outrageous poverty" he witnessed in the early years of the Troubles. He says it was in the North that he learnt to challenge authority, a lesson which has stood him in good stead ever since.

Carlo Gebler claims in an oddly peevish piece that after he mentioned he had become friendly with a policeman in Fermanagh, a Belfast writer living in London denounced him and the Guardian "never employed me again". He says he doesn't mind because "a right-wing Tory proprietor or editor or publisher is an infinitely better employer than a liberal one". They don't go on about "perfidious Albion" and they pay better, he says.

West and Hackett were hard-pressed to get the show together last week, as they were delayed in Her Majesty's High Court by a hearing of the judicial review they had sought of Belfast City Council's 2004 decision to withhold part of a grant to Factotum. The dispute arose after Unionist councillors took offence over articles which appeared in the Vacuum last summer. One councillor said the paper encouraged "devil worshipping". The Council claimed in court that the publication contravened its "good relations" policy.

"It is a fine example of the use of anti-sectarian legislation to try to censor people," says West.

Factotum had called on the arts community to support it. "The court was full," says West, with enthusiasm. "It seated about 15," adds Hackett, laconically. They like the irony of the fact that Belfast City Council is one of the sponsors for the English show. "We have some nice images of the City Hall," says West. "On fire," adds Hackett.

Judgment was reserved in the case. "We hope for a satisfactory outcome," says Hackett.

"Very judicious," says West.

Since the censure by the Council, Factotum was selected to represent Northern Ireland at the Venice Biennale and has just won a prestigious and financially generous award from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. "We've been plucked from obscurity and given these gongs," says West. "It makes Belfast City Council look like fools."

They will use some of the money to bring out two special issues of the Vacuum. "One will be on Madagascar because I've always had an interest in Madagascar," says West. "The other will be about the Isle of Man."

Why? "Because Stephen has long had an interest in the Isle of Man." They are a brilliant double act, these two.

The English in Northern Ireland runs until Jan 27 at Belfast Exposed Photography, Exchange Place, 23 Donegall Street