The Anger and Energy of Gary Mitchell

Born and brought up on the overwhelmingly Protestant Rathcoole housing estate, Gary Mitchell explored the fragmentation of Ulster Loyalism during the era of the peace process in his key plays and continues to mine the disillusionment and travails of the Protestant working class across Northern Ireland. The Rathcoole focus highlights the dying embers of the Labour movement which carried on in Newtownabbey while the rest of the Northern Ireland Labour Party had faded away, a spirit embodied by the independent councillor Mark Langhammer. Though Mitchell was forced to leave Rathcoole in 2005, he continues to grapple with the strains of working-class Protestant communities in the form of policing tensions, identity questions, and a growing underclass (or ‘precariat’) which considers itself—like other white working-class groups—‘left behind’ by politicians and deindustrialization.