The Corner Boys

Geoffrey Beattie

Victor Gollancz 16.99

Geoffrey Beattie is a media psychologist, Manchester University Professor of Psychology, he is noted for telling Big Brother viewers they are not mentally disordered watching it. Having finished this book (emphatically described on the dust cover as ‘a novel’) I momentarily wondered if he ought not to have put on his ‘psychologist’ hat to read it over. The only genuinely wicked character in this book, set in working class

Belfast in the 1980s, is the only Catholic character. She is the only female character of any substance. Both these matters may be alienating devices. They may be Geoffrey Beattie exposing his own raw subconscious feelings. Maybe he’s not the Guardian-reading liberal he appears.The narrative’s straightforward, dealing with men in their late teens, out of school, for the most part, searching for jobs. Which, in

North Belfast are no longer easy to get. They’d been relatively, (I emphasise ‘relatively‘) easy to find up to the late ’70s / ’80s for youngsters from Protestant backgrounds. In the shipyard, the engineering works, and other remnants of the industries that made

Belfast a great manufacturing city. These industries were dominated by Protestant worker, like workers in the rest of the

UK, they became victims of the capitalist system. It’s cheaper to produce everything ‘ from liners to spools of thread ‘ in (largely)

Asia. Catholic workers, in a sense, are luckier, they dominate the construction industry. There’s a lot of building going on in

Belfast. The separate RC school system opened itself out to the Second (or is it the Third?) industrial – cybernetic – revolution before the State system did. And the Catholic system is less class striated than the State’s. Working class kids get a better run at the cybernetic goodies available to those with suitable bits of paper. The Catholic community could be accused of suffering / ‘diplomiasis’. This is to put Corner Boys in context, the lack of Catholics, except as objects of abuse is not unrealistic, especially dealing with working class ‘ghettos’.The central character is similar to Geoffrey Beattie, having passed the ’11 plus’ exam (so-called because it is sat by children about the age of 11). The ’11+’ decides whether or not they go to (or went to) Grammar, or other, Secondary schools. They were called Secondary Modern in GB, in NI they were called Secondary Intermediate (called ‘inter-idiot’). This probably had to do with the fact that the ‘technical’ schools envisaged in the ‘Butler Act’ of 1947 did not emerge. ‘James Lyttle’ what is clearly BRA (the Belfast Royal Academy), or possibly ‘Inst’ (the Royal Belfast Academical Institute) – these schools date from the days of the United Irish in the 1790s – being founded by opposing elements in that seminal movement of Protestant Ulster. The ‘Royal’ element in both titles refers to the fact that the movement was not ideologically republican, but democratic, in origin. The Union brought nearly all of what they had been prepared to fight ‘

Dublin Castle’ to achieve. Catholic Emancipation was not put in place by the Act of Union ‘ but all of them campaigned for it until it was put on the Statute Book in 1828. Then they largely became capital-’U’ Unionists. Despite the radical / revolutionary origins, the school still does Latin. The fact that it is at the origin of European culture is neither here nor there. James appears to be implying that it is a bit of a waste of time. But he returns to the grind after having walked out (in the course of a ‘bomb-scare’). He has months of enforced ‘leisure’ and is nearly sucked-in to membership of the UDA (Ulster Defence Association) at a time when it appeared to be trying to turn itself into something other than a ‘murder gang’ cum protection racket. He decides to return to study and go to university in

England ‘ it might have been a better book if he had decided to join the UDA and help it along a ‘political’ path. But that might have been too far outside of Professor Beattie’s experience to have been credible. This book is described (on the flyleaf) as ‘beautifully written’ – and I have to agree with that judgement. There are some oddities, James’s mother uses the word “perhaps” which is rather unlikely. The odd social climber (or Donegal Gaelic-speaker) might use the word, but “maybe” (pronounced ‘mebbiy’) is the norm. Nobody in

Belfast has ever used the term ‘Georgie Best’ ‘ it’s Geordie Best ‘ is that difficult? (For intellectuals / Inner London wankers – maybe: for anybody outside of the M25 (except the over-educated) ‘ NO!).This novel is beautifully written in that it is impossible to second-guess what is going to happen next. James has understandable feelingSeand ‘adventures’. It would not be fair to explain of what the ‘adventures’ consist. You will (probably not actually) enjoy reading about them, but they ring true. A ‘pre-quel’ would be interesting. Geoffrey Beattie has a pretty unsentimental attitude to young people. Apart from the strange character ‘Shannon’ (the wicked woman) all of the characters are quite believable. Professor Beattie makes the proper ‘BBC / Alliance Party’ noises about Loyalist paramilitaries but he makes joining them a rational choice in the circumstances in which the characters find themselves.There is a sting in the tail of this tale. There are a number of (for me) genuine surprises in the text. Maybe Geoffrey Beattie should try his hand at thrillers?