Republican News · Thursday 17 July 2003

A burning hatred

BY PEADAR WHELAN

The Twelfth of July, the pinnacle of the Orange marching season, is brought in with a bang as the Eleventh night bonfires are lit.

To the loyalists and the members of the Orange Institution who attend these fires, they are harmless and the night is presented as another aspect of Orange culture.

This past Friday night, 11 July, An Phoblacht sent a reporter and photographer to the Short Strand, a nationalist enclave in predominantly unionist East Belfast, to witness at first hand the events surrounding the burning of a huge loyalist fire at the bottom of the Newtownards Road.

Up until the start of this year, a block of derelict flats stood across from St Matthew's church at the junction of the Newtownards Road and Bryson Street, which leads into the Short Strand. The flats were knocked down to make way for redevelopment and immediately the loyalists saw their opportunity to move their bonfire site down to where the fenians would get to see it at first hand.

This provocation was compounded by putting up dozens of UVF and Red Hand Commando flags directly across from St Matthew's; marking out their territory is as important to loyalists as hating Catholics.

So, as dogs urinate on lampposts, loyalists hang out their paramilitary flags. The flags issue is big for loyalists, so no bonfire is complete without its numerous Tricolours and the East Belfast fire was topped with a huge pair.

This year, though, given the feuding within loyalism, there was also a UDA flag awaiting incineration.

As the clock ticked towards midnight, the loyalists began to gather at the bonfire. They had a disco and a band playing live.

Sinn Féin Councillor Joe O'Donnell is pictured with New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne at St Matthew's Chapel; (right) The top of the bonfire is bedecked with Tricolour and a UDA flag

The tune of the old republican ballad The Boys of the Old Brigade was commandeered and changed to suit the occasion. So instead of joining the IRA, they were joining the Young Citizen Volunteers.

Most songs had a liberal sprinkling of 'fenian' and 'taig' in them, so I wondered how David Ervine and Billy Hutchinson would reconcile their stated desire to see 'Northern Ireland' a welcoming place for Catholics and nationalists with the rampant anti-Catholicism that was on display.

When the fire was eventually lit, after midnight, it was to resounding cheers. The moment arrived and within minutes the flames were leaping into the air and lighting up the chapel and spewing its poisonous fumes over the Short Strand.

As we sat in the bushes watching, drunken loyalists staggered over to the line of British Army and PSNI that were blocking off the Bryson Street junction to abuse them over "protecting that fucking scum" in the Short Strand.

So it isn't just the fire that spews poison.

The reality is that the sectarian abuse is like the fires and the coattrailing, all part of the Orange Tradition.