Mags Gargan
Black Magic and Bogeymen: Fear, Rumour and Popular Belief in the North of Ireland 1972-74
Peter Hegarty
Societies experiencing wrenching, violent change are prone to all manner of panics and scares. By the early 1970s, a time Richard Jenkins vividly recalls, political murder had become almost an everyday occurrence in Northern Ireland, a place that had been almost crime-free until the late 1960s.
During 1973 macabre rumours about satanic ceremonies swept Northern Ireland: people told each other that devil-worshippers were ritually sacrificing animals in remote places, and that they planned to kidnap and kill children. Lurid articles in local newspapers seemed to bear out the rumours. Panics gripped small Ulster towns. Frightened parents kept their children indoors. Clergymen warned about the dangers of dabbling in the occult.
What he calls the ‘black magic scare’ has long intrigued Jenkins, who was studying social anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1973, and is now a professor of sociology at Sheffield University. In an insightful and thorough book, he places the scare in a context of political violence, psychological stress and popular religiosity.
In 1973, Northern Ireland was four years into its long ordeal. The savagery on the streets, and the awfulness in the news bulletins, sickened and confused adults and children alike, leading many to believe that demonic forces were indeed at work in their society. And. in an observant land where most people believed in the reality of supernatural events such as apparitions, miracles and the Resurrection of Christ, they were also inclined to believe in the reality of supernatural evil. Rumours – Jenkins reminds us – do not spread if people do not consider them plausible.
The scare coincided with a time of anxiety and confusion in Protestant Ulster. Unionists feared that Britain was preparing to cast them adrift; they were terrified of the resurgent IRA and they found the sadistic killings carried out by Loyalist murder gangs difficult to comprehend.
The fuss about black magic may have reflected popular anxiety; it may even have had a stirring effect, reminding God-fearing people that evil existed, and that they had a Christian duty to resist it. Interestingly, the dark rumours ceased to circulate as Protestant confusion and political frustration gave way to mobilisation and confidence, with the successful mass strike against the power-sharing executive in 1974.
Fascinating pages
Some of Jenkins’ most fascinating pages concern the state’s attempts to use the scare to associate black magic, in the public mind, with the paramilitaries. To this end, British spooks would leave occult paraphernalia, such as inverted crucifixes and cinnamon sticks for the public to discover, in fields, caves, derelict buildings and other out-of-the-way places where enemies of the state were likely to gather.
Black Magic and Bogeymen will deepen our understanding of an important period in Irish history. It is about this country but of general relevance in its exploration of the effects of violence and unrest on people’s behaviour and emotions.
