Sorry tales and Satan issues

A Belfast freesheet is off to the High Court because the council says it's offensive. Susan McKay drops into its office

Factotum's logo is a headless dog. "It means dogsbody so we cut off its head," explains Stephen Hackett. A headless stuffed dog slumps against the window of the arts organisation's office in Belfast's Donegall Street.

This is where Hackett and Richard West edit the monthly cultural freesheet, The Vacuum. On September 13th, they are to face the City Fathers in the High Court. Belfast City council says they've caused offence and must apologise. Factotum says, via a poster showing a lion facing a demand for an apology from a donkey: "Kiss my furry arse."

The doorbell doesn't work. Inside, the place is a mess. Cigarette butts on the parquet floor. Heaps, tangled wires, broken things. A request to use the toilet is uneasily received. "It's not the nicest," says Hackett, and indeed it isn't. In fact it is remarkably like the toilet in Trainspotting. Horrific.

Yet lovely things emerge from this midden. A poster slithers off a chair - a squirrel with a beautiful tail embossed with gold and silver, holding up a banner describing the artistic vision behind Northern Ireland's first entry to the Venice Bienniale this summer.

Curator Hugh Mulholland of the Ormeau Baths Gallery chose Factotum as one of the contributors to the six-month international exhibition. It is launching a paper about fairs at the Venice pavilion in October.

There's a book on songs about Belfast, which includes a brilliant essay by the poet Paul Muldoon about the Stiff Little Fingers song Alternative Ulster, which came out in 1978. "The well-justified rage embodied in the song represents a key moment in the artistic life of Northern Ireland," he wrote. This was Factotum's first publication.

The Vacuum takes a theme for each issue, and has an eclectic range of articles, reviews and stories, illustrated with photographs and a great range of old ink drawings. It uses absurdly small print on cheap and nasty newsprint. The Arts Council of NI, which gives it a grant, calls it "exciting and sometimes controversial", and has said it intends to defend its "artistic integrity".

Fionola Meredith, the paper's reviews editor, says Belfast needs it."It takes a sideways look at this place," she says. "It is irreverent and subversive and doesn't bow the knee to the old orthodoxies."

Or the new ones either. The Vacuum doesn't pretend that just because you can get a cappuccino on Great Victoria Street now, Belfast is a normal city. Themes have included sex, the media, film, fashion, culture, underground scenes, and "Down Mexico Way" - as in, south of the border.

Hackett and West are working on a sports issue, and they're also preparing for an ambitious show about the English this December. This will feature previously unseen images of the army in Belfast, from the Imperial War Museum. "It will include photos of Frankie Howard and Ken Dodd visiting the troops - quite surreal," says Hackett.

There's also a publication planned for an exhibition in London about sound, and a book about architecture due out at the end of the year. Hackett finds time to work for the Belfast Film Festival, direct an audio-visual festival and work as a DJ. West is also co-editor of the photographic magazine, Source. They're about to start a choir. "We just get stupid notions," says Hackett.

It was last summer's twin issues on God and Satan that got Factotum into trouble. A citizen complained. Unionist councillors decided the council was funding an "extremely offensive" publication, and proposed that if funding was to continue, the council would have to be allowed to vet the paper, "to ensure that [ it] will not be likely to offend the majority of the city's rate payers and will contribute positively to the image of Belfast".

The unionist daily, the Newsletter, carried the headline: "Council in Satan Shock". Councillor Jim Rodgers said on the BBC that a person would have to be "sick of mind" to read The Vacuum. Councillor the Reverend Eric Smyth said it encouraged "devil worshipping" and was blasphemous.

The Satan issue parodied the language of those who preach about "the coming of the FINAL DAYS", and the language of property developers. There was an interview with an exorcist, who is also a Protestant minister, and an article headlined "Irish dancing is evil".

Councillors took particular umbrage at a piece in the God issue called, "I peed in church", in which an unnamed writer recalled an embarrassing incident when she was eight. Further inside, there is a rant in biblical style which contains the "F" word side-by-side with Hallelujah and Amen.

The DUP's Sammy Wilson said the paper "holds up to ridicule . . . the old, mentally ill and cripples". It was "vile" and full of "juvenile toilet humour". The party's spokesman on culture, Nelson McCausland, urged that funding to Factotum be stopped. The council's legal advice was that this could be considered in contravention of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

However, the SDLP and unionists passed a motion to withhold a grant to Factotum until it apologised for any offence caused to members of the council and citizens of the city, and agreed to comply with "such criteria as may be established by the council". Sinn Féin and Alliance voted against the motion. The council later said it would settle for an expression of regret. By way of response, Hackett and West published a special "Sorry" issue, with a weeping crocodile on its cover, and a defiant editorial. The council's demand was "unjust and bullying". Its decision was "ill informed and arbitrary" and came out of "a regressive and repressive desire to stifle legitimate debate." Factotum would fight. "We will not say sorry."

Historian Roy Foster lent his support, with an amusing essay called "Sorry for History," in which he denounced Eric Segal's "love means never having to say you're sorry". Maggie Bench said she was sorry there were those who promoted Ulster-Scots as "the defining expression of Northern Protestant culture" but had never heard of the great blues guitarist, Henry McCullough.

The poet Leontia Flynn reached catharsis with a rave against Bushmills whiskey advertisements. Eamonn Hughes explored "Protestant guilt and Catholic shame" and decided that "Catholicism, then, is always having to say you're sorry, Protestantism is always trying to ensure that you never have to say sorry."

There was a public apology: "Titanic, I'm so sorry. Iceberg." At a "Sorry Day" last December, there was onion-chopping and foot-washing on Cornmarket, and you could get "Sorry" stamped on your body. There was a Sorry debate. Councillor Rodgers said he'd be prepared to forgive them, "if they meant it". Factotum sought, and got, the right to a judicial review of the council's decision.

The amount of money involved in this dispute is small - around €5,000 - but both sides see it as being about big issues. Nelson McCausland says he won't comment before the court hearing.

"This is about censorship and self-censorship," says West. "These people could be running the arts ministry if we get devolved government back".

He and Hackett want the arts community to come to court to support them. "This is the first time the right to freedom of expression will be tested," says West. "We hope this will prove empowering. We want artists to stand up against the belligerence of councillors who want to shut them up."