Showing posts with label Twelfth bonfire culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Twelfth bonfire culture. Show all posts
Matt Treacy ✒ The death of John Steele in Larne while building a bonfire for the Orange 11th night celebrations in Larne was predictably followed by the social media celebration common when one of their ones dies, preferably in tragic circumstances.


Steele was engaged in constructing a more than 50-foot-high bonfire that was to have been burned last night but it was taken down as a mark of respect to the dead man.

Watch On Twitter.

People may mock, and they do, the claims that all of this is part of a great cultural tradition. That’s as may be, and the Twelfth and all that goes with it; the bonfires, the big parade today in Belfast, the beating of the Lambeg drums and the celebration of a British loyalist identity that few English, Welsh or Scottish people – other than in places similar to Belfast and Larne around Glasgow – bother with anymore, may seem anachronistic but if people believe them to be important then they are. Lots of people have died and killed for that culture over the centuries here.

The Twelfth, as in the making of July 12 as a holiday, dates back to 1796. It remembers the date of the Battle of Aughrim in 1691, effectively the last stand of the remnants of the old Gaelic order fighting on the side of the Catholic King of England James II who had been overthrown in 1688. Unfortunately, it was not the last time that the Irish nation found itself disastrously dependent on unreliable foreign “allies” and ideologies.

While the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 in England is regarded as the beginning of constitutionalism, in Ireland the conflict between the Williamite Protestants and the Jacobite Catholics had to do with far more basic things – namely, the taking of almost all of the land of Ireland by English and Scottish settlers and the total suppression of everything that defined the losing side chiefly our language and religion.

That is what the bonfires and the drums are about. Reminding the Fenians who won in 1641 and 1691 and 1798 – and 1998 if it comes to that. That the Twelfth as the central celebration of the victory of the settlers should have become that definitive cultural expression in 1796 is no coincidence. It followed on the founding of the Orange Order in September 1795 after a battle between the Protestant Peep O’Day Boys and the Catholic Defenders near Loughgall – where another decisive defeat of nationalist insurgency took place almost 200 years later.

The 1790s were the time of the United Irishmen and the simplistic myth in republican historiography is that the budding union between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter had been cunningly diverted into sectarian squabbling by the Ascendency class.

That myth has been regurgitated ever since in various guises; from the naïve belief that within the heart of every UVF man in a Rangers top there beats the ghost of a pike wielding Unitedman; through the Griffithian claim that the Orangeman would miraculously rediscover that separatism was a good business plan, to the leftist fantasy that Proletarian Internationalism would one day bring the workers together to smite imperialism and monopoly capitalism and build a Bucharest on the Boyne. The main nationalist party now seems to believe that more mass immigration under the guise of Pollyanna multi culturalism and diversity will help to heal the uncauterised running sores of the last great experiment in population plantation.

While there is no doubt that the English and the Protestant establishment in Ireland encouraged Orange violence and used it as part of the Terror that was unleashed after 1795 in order to pre-empt a feared insurrection backed by a French invasion, there was little encouragement needed.

The descendants of the settlers and the natives, especially in Ulster, had been at open and covert war for over 150 years. Even in Belfast and Dublin where there was support for American and French republicanism among the Protestant business and professional classes, there was huge suspicion regarding the mass of the population of Catholics.

While this was lent the cover of Enlightenment democratic concerns over Papist absolutism, Tone and Russell identified the issue of land – and the settler nightmare that the Cromwellian and Williamite expropriations might be overturned – as central to that suspicion. It was that which won out in 1798.

Tone had sought to persuade the Jacobin Protestants that the old Gaelic elite had been mostly destroyed and dispersed, and that Papist ignorance could be destroyed through enlightened education just as it had been among the formerly priest-ridden peasantry of France. When push came to shove, they mostly chose to ignore Tone and to place their trust in the older methods.

On the other side, it is apparent that the Defenders, enticed into an ultimately disastrous alliance with the United Irishmen whose leadership was both largely incompetent and prone to striking “honourable” gentlemen’s deals to save their own skins while the peasants were tortured, raped and murdered, represented what one historian described as the expectation of “millenarian proportions” that the land would indeed revert to the descendants of its rightful owners.

That is partly then what the Twelfth is about. It is the celebration of the historical victory of the descendants of the settlers, even the least successful of them, over the dispossessed natives. It is also of course a reminder that nothing will alter the formal constitutional position without the consent of the Ulster Protestants. This was accepted by all the representatives of Irish nationalism including the IRA in 1998.

Perhaps the start to any solution might be to move beyond the zero-sum game whose rules were set centuries ago. In the midst of prevailing international trends, the conflict here is increasingly irrelevant. Most Irish “nationalists” no longer believe in national sovereignty, and if anything their attempts to win over Ulster Protestants with the promise of submergence in a centralised EU which has nothing at its core other than corporate led economics and all that goes with that, is even less attractive than a British polity that at least partly bucked against the trend.

The more astute Irish nationalists have long since accepted that an independent sovereign Ireland would need to accept the historic ethnic and cultural differences within the island. Ulster Protestants are not going to one day undergo a miraculous epiphany and decide that they have only imagined that they were British by virtue of their historical heritage.

What they might do is realise that the future of anything resembling their Ireland and the historic Irish nation which goes back a lot further than its imagined beginnings in the late 18th century – which is the myth of civic nationalism – will only survive within a united Ireland based on an historical compromise in which the two nations, for want of a better word, come to a mutual agreement independent of, and separate from, any external political authority.

Happy Twelfth.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

The Twelfth Is A Celebration Of Dispossession And Subjugation ✑ But Its Time To Move Beyond The Zero-Sum Game

Lesley Stock ✒ on her misgivings about the Twelfth bonfire culture. 


As we are in the midst of what was lovingly called the ‘Silly Season’ in work, and the constant jibes from loyalists to me for not ‘celebrating’ my ‘culture’, I felt it necessary to put pen - ok laptop to paper. Not to ‘explain’ as such, because I honestly couldn’t care less what people think I’m turning my back on, but more to admonish I guess, those who cannot see where I’m coming from.

I came from a pretty Unionist background, with Gran being lovingly called ‘Loyal Lil’, even though her name was Rachel!! She was, in my eyes, pretty hard core loyalist, but had a heart of gold – and that included her Catholic neighbours, until they were burned out of the street. She and my Granda stood guard on their houses until the savages took over and they could do no more.

So why did that loyalty not transfer onto mum or myself? To an extent, my parents would be classed as liberal Unionists, but me? Well, thankfully, my parents did the same as I did with my kids: they let me decide my own thoughts on the subject, never indoctrinated me, much to the disgust of my Gran. I’m going to be honest and say I did attend the 11th Night bonfires, maybe twice in my teens. But will also be honest and say, it was not out of any ‘duty’ to my culture. It was a way of drinking in the street, without actually walking around with a can in my hand!! The Cregagh Estate Bonfire was basically my closest, so it was chosen for the quick stagger back home!

So now we come to present day. Why do I not feel the need to extoll the benefits of my culture and indeed ram it down every unsuspecting sod on Twitter? I guess it’s like if you go to church, you either do, or you don’t. I don’t hear the same ones in the PUL community who call me a turncoat, Lundy or, just recently, a disgrace to my religion and profession!!

For 28 years, I was forced to watch and police the locals of North Belfast celebrate what they class as their culture. I only unfortunately found it to be a piss up fest, and a time when they rubbed the noses of the Nationalist and Republican Communities into it as they passed the areas. Now, this is where I kind of contradict myself ... I also watched the residents of Ardoyne come out at 6 am on the 12th morning, along with the scores of others from all parts of Northern Ireland who’d been bussed in, to take offence at the bandsmen ‘walking up their road’. 

It infuriated me that both sets of ‘tribes’ battled with shouts of aggression at each other as the 10 minute procession passed the shopfronts. I understood both sets of arguments, believe me I did, but when push came to shove, who were always the ones stuck in the middle? Yes, the police! The PUL community weren’t perhaps trying to kill us, but their orange bricks hurt just as much as the opposing green ones. The PUL community have and had zero allegiance to the Police. So for them to come off with I’m ‘a disgrace to my profession’ quite frankly holds no candle to me! I’ve seen the PUL community turn on police as quickly as the Nationalist/Republican community, purely because we Were impartial and whatever we were enforcing just didn’t happen to go their way!

Perhaps if the PUL community acted more appropriately during this often tense time, I wouldn’t have so much of an issue in claiming ownership for my culture, but burning the Irish flag, effigies of people who I don’t agree with, and pissing in the street, is something I, in all conscience can’t and won’t be a part of! 

I was in the village my aunt lives in just outside of Belfast. A mixed community, but still the flags are abundant on lamp posts and streets. As long as they take them down a few days after the 12th, I’ve no issue with that. The bonfire the village had was reasonably small compared to the other dangerous monstrosities we now see going up. It had bunting on it and a union flag on the top which I’m assuming was taken down before being torched. It was actually lovely to see! No emblems of hate or sectarianism and no offensive boards waiting to be fried to ashes in front of the lovely Catholic community she lives in harmony with.

So, the next time someone in the PUL community feels the need to complain about me turning my back on my culture, I want them to look at themselves in the mirror first. My idea of culture is not one of antagonistic, hate filled bile. My idea of my culture is celebrating all that is good in that community. Community spirit towards their neighbours, helping their friends and neighbours whatever their culture or religion. I want My culture to be one of enjoying With friends without having to worry about bringing my Catholic friends to be subjected to a barrage of insulting actions and pissed up louts.  

⏩ Lesley Stock is a former PSNI and RUC Officer currently involved in community work. 

Cultural Expression ➖ No Thanks