Writer's drama becomes reality

Loyalists have forced Gary Mitchell out of his home, although he is one of the few playwrights giving them a voice. He talks to Susan McKay

'I heard this bang and I ran to the window. There was one guy on top of our car beating at it with a baseball bat and when he got a hole smashed another one threw a petrol bomb in . . . another guy was running up to the front door. They had masks on and Rangers scarves. I screamed at Gary and I ran and grabbed Harry out of bed and ran out the back. When the car exploded I threw myself over him to protect him and he said, 'Mummy, I'm going to die, aren't I?' I didn't know where Gary was because after I screamed he ran toward the front door."

This is how Alison Mitchell describes the events of the night of November 23rd when she and her husband, writer Gary Mitchell, and their seven-year-old son, were forced out of their home in Glengormley, in the outer Belfast suburb of Newtownabbey. It sounds like a scene from one of Mitchell's harsh and brilliant plays, which have explored the psyche of loyalist paramilitaries and the communities in which they live.

Mitchell has for years insisted that we must listen to and understand the voices of these angry, inarticulate men. Now they have turned their rage on him.

It isn't easy to work out why - not least because while they are capable of extreme violence, they may not be the brightest.

"When we went to make the film of my play As the Beast Sleeps in Rathcoole in 2000, we were told we weren't allowed," says Mitchell. "This guy told us that the 'men of three letters' didn't like it. I asked him, 'What do you mean? The IRA? The UVF? The PUP? The RUC?' He said, 'No, the men of three letters.' "

Rathcoole is a huge housing estate in Newtownabbey, dominated for years by the UDA.

Then another leading loyalist light in the area said they could go ahead - with one proviso. "He said, 'You can make your wee film, but no cameras.' "

Mitchell laughs, a short, mirthless bark of exasperation. In the end, the UDA across the city in east Belfast "allowed" the film to be made there, though not in loyalist clubs and bars. Those scenes were shot in Republican west Belfast. The play deals with the difficulty elements of unionism were having with the demands of the peace process.

The PSNI have blamed a "rogue element" of loyalists for the November attack.

"These scumbags were wearing Rangers scarves and my father and I were sitting inside watching a very important Rangers match on TV," says Mitchell. "They aren't Rangers fans and they aren't real Protestants."

The Mitchells stayed with relatives until they found a house to rent at a location they don't want disclosed. Mitchell's parents, who were living with them after being forced out of their home in Rathcoole seven months ago, are also in hiding. Chuck and Sandra Mitchell had lived in their house for 50 years.

Sandra's elderly mother, Sadie, had lived with them in recent years, though she kept on her own flat nearby, and moved back there when they left.

"She said no one was going to put her out and no one would harm her because she'd too many friends. It was a very old-fashioned idea," says Mitchell. "She wasn't really fit to live alone. She lasted five months."

Sadie died two nights before the attack on her grandson's house. The family had to have a police escort at her funeral.

Gary and Alison sit in the impeccably tidy front room of the rented house, looking out nervously every time there is a sound on the road.

"We don't know how much danger we are in," says Mitchell. "One policeman said to me, 'Go on home, you'll be fine,' but when I said that to Alison, she told me another policeman had just said to her, 'Go away, as far away as possible. You are not safe.' Between the paramilitaries and the police, it is a sandstorm of conflicting information."

Mitchell used to be militant about the need for him to stay living in Rathcoole, even though by the late 1990s he had won a string of awards and been appointed writer-in-residence at the Royal Court Theatre in London. He insisted he needed to stay in touch with the voices of those he was writing about. He only moved out after he and Alison married.

"Yes, there were threats and there used to be taunts and harassment - playground bully stuff I was used to," he says. "Fenian lover. Traitor. Turncoat. Taig."

He says a majority of people in the area probably knew nothing about his work, or if they did, they were proud of him. "Unfortunately, as usual in Northern Ireland, the majority was silent. If I'd been concerned about my own safety I'd never have written the things I did, but now it's about a wee boy."

Harry is himself already writing plays.

They moved to a "better" area. "We had a lovely bungalow with a big garden, and we used to have family parties there. We'd have had everyone round over Christmas. Harry's wee friends would have been in and out, " says Alison. "Now we can't even tell anyone where we are.We are lost and lonely."

"And we don't know why," says Mitchell. "We don't know what line in the sand we are supposed to have crossed."

It has been rumoured that this started when a young girl was attacked by a gang of men, and a woman related to Mitchell retaliated by beating up the gang leader. There may be something to this, but Mitchell points out that the attack on his home was more severe than any perceived revenge on the woman. Paramilitary sources had also let it be known that this matter was deemed closed months ago. "I think these people may have been waiting a long time for an opportunity to get at me," he says.

Alison thinks it is about jealousy. "Gary is a genius," she says. "Those people probably can't even read."

Mitchell has always had to battle against the negativity of his own community toward art and the artist. When he told his careers teacher at school he wanted to write plays, the man said, "Well you can't" and gave him directions to the dole office. When he did a drama course, his peers scoffed that drama was for "taigs and faggots".

Painter Dermot Seymour, who [like Alison Mitchell] is from the Shankill Road, has spoken of similar experiences, and the figure of a headless man recurs in his work. "You are not allowed to think," he has said. "There is this constant putting each other down so that no one moves. It is a world of inferiority complex."

Mitchell may be paying the price now for "getting above himself". The Troubles are more or less over but extreme, irrational behaviour hasn't stopped in hardline unionist areas. Last summer loyalists descended on a Catholic ceremony in a Newtownabbey graveyard, threatening to dig up the bodies of Catholics buried there.

Creative writers in the North admit to having felt threatened over the years, though no one has been put under a Salman Rushdie-type fatwa. Loyalists murdered journalist Martin O'Hagan in 2000. When novelist Glenn Patterson heard about the intimidation of the Mitchell family, he organised a letter of protest signed by more than 30 other writers, including the poets Michael Longley, Ciaran Carson and Carol Rumens, film writer Tim Loane, and novelist Colin Bateman.

Mitchell was on the BBC's Culture Show in October. "I said that if one of my plays stopped one young man from picking up a petrol bomb, that would make it worthwhile," he says. "Two weeks later, young men attacked my home. A former paramilitary once told me he'd seen a film and it had really turned him against violence. It turned out it was As the Beast Sleeps." I said to him, 'I wrote that.' He said . . . " - and Mitchell puts on a scoffing, "don't be so ridiculous" voice - "'No you didn't.'" He gives that unhappy laugh again.

Mitchell says he has sickened himself with thoughts of revenge since the attack on his home. "I thank God we survived. Plenty of people have suffered as we have, and no one deserves it. But I have three plays to write. My weapons are words."