When ‘tradition’ becomes a clear display of hatred

[WhereIsMyJumper]

Am I being unreasonable to be aghast at the bonfires in NI? Burning the tri-colour as well as an effigy of a migrant boat. How can this be referred to as ‘tradition’??

https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/firefighters-take-two-hours-to-extinguish-controversial-bonfire-topped-with-migrant-boat-and-irish-flag-in-co-tyrone/a1274789953.html

I was about to post something similar- apparently it’s completely acceptable to burn effigies of nationalist politicians but this is what has drawn people’s attention. Both completely abhorrent of course but this kind of aggressive threatening intimidating behaviour is nothing new. The sheer size of those bonfires is insane.

Please read all of my posts.

Ironically who are also of immigrant stock!

These people identify as British - you are spectacularly missing the point of these displays

It's nonsense saying "En masse you don't give a shit."

You do know that 48% of those who voted at the Brexit referendum did NOT vote Leave, don't you? It wasn't enough, obviously, and yes, Brexit is one of the maddest things ever, totally with you there.

Don't tell me what I care about. You have no idea.

This. I voted remain. One of the reasons was the border on the Island of Ireland

I confess to being very ignorant of the bonfire situation in northern Ireland.

I think this has drawn my attention, because my attention was drawn to it by the press!

I grew up in an era where the news on NI was, I dont know the right word, managed, filtered by the government. So i guess I recieved propaganda until the good Friday agreement? Then its not been on the news much at all until brexit, then the focus was on brexit.

I appreciate i can go out and educate myself but education is a lifelong journey so now I have more info.

This is exactly how I feel about it. And have posted similar on this thread. Have tried to be respectful and be very careful to state that I am not an expert, but I am trying to learn. And then got lambasted for thinking I know it all just because I took a black taxi cab to West Belfast. I can’t win, it seems.

The lack of knowledge of the average British person of the roots of the situation in Northern Ireland is very frustrating to Irish people. It’s no individuals fault and it is good that people are trying to understand. But how can people know so little about an area that is (officially) part of the United Kingdom, your country? Unless it is deliberate policy by the British establishment.

The Village, right beside the home of the Irish Football Association? I see thousands of working class young men around there wearing a shirt with the word Irish on it.
I also went to school in East Belfast with pupils from clonduff, ballybeen, tullycarnet, newtowards road etc as rugby school we had Irish internationals teaching and coaching and plenty of people supporting Ireland and being perfectly comfortable with their own Irish (in addition to British) identity. Of course others preferred football and went to watch the glens in the Irish League every weekend.
Then there were the working class kids that joined the army and served in the Royal Irish Regiment with their Irish motto 'Faugh A Ballagh'. Which incidentally I saw displayed on a flag at a bonfire in dundonald this week.
And if course working class Irish boxers like Wayne McCullough and Carl Frampton boxes for Ireland, won medals under the flag and are heroes to kids from their areas.

In my opinion, your last sentence nails it. I know I wasn’t taught about it in school. I was a little too young to understand any of the coverage running up to the Good Friday agreement and my parents weren’t political at all so it was never discussed.

I can understand why it’s frustrating.

Also to add, I guess to try and understand the circumstances that brought about the troubles, you have to dig through and learn about 800 years of Anglo-Irish history. I don’t know that much about it all, but what I do know is that it seems very complicated. I know enough to know that Irish catholics were treated extremely badly by the Brits.

Then still you have to ask yourself what prompted you to make this thread now. Why is this where it's gone too far. If you've known that this was happening with effigies of the native population for decades, but that didn't prompt to to start a thread saying; 'hey, this is taking things way too far,' when they were directed at an ethnicity that makes up half of your own child's ancestry but you did start it now.

Seriously, why now? What has prompted you to think this is a step too far? It's a serious question, not a criticism. People who think this is a step too far need to ask themselves very seriously why they have never thought it about what has happened before, when there was even a literal war going on and for decades after that war ended, but these effigies threatened that peace. Why now but not then?

I think we need to get a hold of this awful small boat crisis immediately but this is unconscionable..
Unfortunately it does show how angry people are if in extremely bad taste.

Ok this is a very fair point.
Firstly, the sentence I used when I said that THIS is too far was very clumsily worded. I apologise for that statement. I’ve always thought it was too far - from when I first started learning about the bonfires anyway.

I created this thread, I think I mentioned this in a previous post, to try and bring it to the attention of people who perhaps have never bothered to think about it. Because the effigy is so topical, and sadly is likely to cause more outrage than previous ones amongst our population. There’s been a few shots fired on this thread but hopefully, it has started to make some people think a little bit more about the entire story and not just the events of the past week.

I apologise for causing you any offence.

To be fair, the people that do this are not the brightest anyway

It's probably not something that we will look back on as unconscionable in the future. Because what it is, is very, very likely a sign that things are going to get an awful lot worse in the next decade. This effigy will only be remembered as a footnote, if it's remembered at all compared to what will come if people are continually ignored.

This is Northern Ireland, ignoring people led to war. It can happen again, and it's very much on track to happen again. I have mixed race family that I love with every fibre of my being and I'm genuinely terrified for them, because the longer that people with grievances are not just ignored, but continually prodded, the harder they will ultimately push back. It has happened again and again throughout history and we're arrogant as fuck if we think it won't happen again, not just in NI but all over western Europe. People are very, very angry and we haven't seen but a fraction of a fraction of what that looks like yet.

Well I think it probably is/was.

Ive no doubt its frustrating. Adulthood has been a revelation to me. Learning all the things I wasn't taught. But I think we also weren't taught much about why things are how they are in england either. Working class history sort of vanished for a start.

I loved history in school. We did Egyptians, Romans, Henry 8th, cavaliers and roundhead, great fire of london, guy fawkes, origins of ww1 and ww2, Russian revolution, Vietnam, Cuban missile crisis, korea and the depression. We did a local history project twice. So for me, i learned about Guillaume the Conquerer. We did one session on the slave trade and how awful it was. But no idea how it started, ended or anything. Just it happened and was shit. Nothing on empire or colonialism. Although we knew the terms and it existed, no idea how or why or what it involved.

Obviously other schools might have had different curriculum on offer.

Ireland is not Northern Ireland.
The 6 counties that make up NI are the ones that are part of the United Kingdom. The other 26 are a different country entirely. They have a different government and are not at all influenced or funded by the UK or Westminster.

NI has an ineffective "Government" based in Stormont in Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland. The country still tethered to the United Kingdom. You will have heard of Great Britain and Northern Ireland....thats us!

We are ruled by them. Our politics aren't based on policy. They are based on religion, even if most people are not "religious" in the true sense anymore. Catholics vote for Sinn Fein, Protestants for the DUP. It keeps threatening to change but never does... well it has changed in so far as SF are now the biggest party. More often than not, the party's fall out over some insignificant issue and close the government for years.

People in NI due to the Good Friday Agreement are allowed to identify as Irish or British. Some prefer to identify as Northern Irish.

These bonfires are built by loyalists, a subsection of those who identify as British, usually Protestant.

They are mainly only built within estates, which are usually under the control of paramilitaries (UVF/UDA mostly). 30 years after the Good Friday Agreement they have still not decommissioned their weapons and are only now thinking about it. But they still want to retain commanders in each area....to maintain the peace.

Essentially, they want to run drugs, keep the estates they control living in fear and not let the Police do their jobs due to the threat of rioting and violence.

Many people living on these estates don't want bonfires or flags but you can't say anything as you will be targeted (bricks through windows etc) if you don't pay money towards the bonfires collection or hang flags/bunting from your house.

Yes, there is a small proportion of people here who enjoy these displays of hatred and bigotry but MOST do not. The majority of the country is sick of it. Sick that the police do nothing as the loyalist paramilitaries seem to have them in their pockets, sick that rioting breaks out and nothing is done.

The race riots here a few weeks ago were a disgusting show of what these arseholes are like. Yes, there was an attack on a young girl. But the extent they went after other people not like them was pure racism. Then it just turned into rioting at the usual spots.
As I said on another thread...it then rained so they went home. It always happens. They can only riot if the weather is good.

I think 24 women have been murdered here since 2020. Not one riot for any of them.

Except Faugh a Ballagh is not actually Irish. It's an anglicised version of Fág an Bealach. So really a bit like the use of the word spaghetti in English.

It doesn't cause me offence. I'm very, very worried about what's coming over the next few years. People are angry and that anger is being stirred up. We need, more than anything to think about the 'why' of everything we're feeling, what we're seeing and why we're reacting to it in the way we are.

I don't like seeing effigies of anyone burned, but peace in Northern Ireland is very finely held. There are plenty of people there, my age and not too much older, who grew up genuinely ready to fight and kill. And are more likely to snap into real violence if they feel pushed to it. And if it happens there, all indicators from history are that it's likely to spread. I've been reading as much as I can about the last years of Yugoslavia, personal stories from people who lived through it, the way tensions there bubbled up, the utterly ineffectual efforts to ease conflicts, and how they ultimately boiled over. We're at such a similar point right now, if we're going to have any chance at stopping ourselves from hitting that boiling point, we have to all think about the 'whys.'

This times 1000.

Obviously I'm not the op and I'm Irish so probably not in the best position to reply but I suspect, given the general attention paid to NI in the UK media and the bias against nationalism, that this bonfire has been reported widely whereas previous bonfires that were "only" burning effigies of Taigs or the pope were not reported. It's kind of reasonable to start a thread about something in the news even though you haven't mentioned previous equivalents due to them not being reported.

Well I guess that negates the whole post then?

I corrected your mistake. I didn't comment on the validity or otherwise of the rest of your post.