Molly Malone, immortalised in song as she "wheeled her wheelbarra/ through streets broad and narra'/" is the symbol of Dublin's sturdy working-class street traders, mothers and daughters with their portable kerbside stands and pram stalls crying their wares. They are the subject of Sé Merry Doyle's documentary, Alive Alive O!, which opens the Ireland on Screen festival at the Hammersmith Centre in London on Wednesday.
In a country where welfare was miserly or nonexistent, and mostly in the control of interfering clerics, these street traders provided the supplementary income for their impoverished tenement families. They were not crooks or con merchants, they gave good value and were for generations liked and appreciated by all classes. They were part of the sounds and flavour of central Dublin.
Molly "died of the faaver/sure no one could save her". Now her sisters and daughters are dying of a different kind of illness: the avaricious gold fever of tiger- economy Ireland, which wants both to wipe out cheap trading and present a glossy image to the outside world.
The Mollys have been the targets of heavy-handed action from the police, ostensibly trying to stamp out illegal trading but, as the north end of Moore Street and west of Henry Street have been demolished to make way for shopping centres and office blocks, it is clear enough whose interest the authorities are protecting. Often unable or too embarrassed to drag muscular Dublin mothers to jail, the police use sneaky tactics and take the wheels off the trader's prams.
Sé Merry Doyle sees this as a symptom of a general mind-set in Ireland. "People are trying to elevate themselves. They don't necessarily want to forget the past, but they don't want to see it. There is a sense in which the new society in Ireland does not feel happy in both camps, as we used to."
Another documentary, May the Road Rise Up (shown on May 30) charts the virtual annihilation of another impoverished Irish group, the travellers once known as tinkers. They are said to be the descendants of the evicted tenants of the Great Famine (1845-47) who roamed the country eking out a living mending pots and pans and breeding ponies. In the 1960s, Alen MacWeeney spent two years photographing them. Now, 35 years later, he returned to discover that their way of life has virtually been snuffed out.
But the documentary which uses the camera as a weapon to attack or analyse social and political problems makes only sporadic appearances in Ireland. The problem is partly economic: there is no theatrical distribution for social documentaries. In addition, Doyle says: "The Arts Council does not really have a clear policy on documentary and with RTE, it is still very much a begging-bowl situation". But there also appears to be an innate cultural inhibition. Harvey O'Brien, who teaches at the Centre for Film Studies at University College Dublin, wrote recently: "Contemporary documentary practice has a tempered approach to social and political issues. The Irish voice now prefers to whisper." There have been notable exceptions, among them Louis Lentin's Dear Daughter (1996), an account of abuse in a Dublin orphanage which opened up a debate which was to reveal horrendous abuse in schools and orphanages nationwide. Francis Barrett - Southpaw (1998), the story of a member of the same disenfranchised community featured in May the Road Rise Up, was one of the great successes. This story of a young traveller's attempt to qualify as a boxer for the Atlanta Olympic games was shown at the Sundance festival.
But, as Harvey O'Brien says, "Most Irish documentaries are concerned not with issues but with entertainments". He even suggests that there is a psychological constitutional obstacle: article 40, section 6 of the constitution deals with the education of public opinion and declares that liberty of expression "shall not be used to undermine public order or morality or the authority of the state", the state, of course, being heavily guided by Irish Catholic morality. O'Brien adds that while literature and the theatre have demonstrated their independence "the limits of freedom have never really been tested by broadcasting and the visual arts".
• Ireland on Screen is at the Irish Centre, Hammersmith, London W8 from May 9. For details phone 020-8741 3211.
