King Billy's on The Wall

'I love rioting'

The ‘effigy’ of the boat in Moygashel, the bonfire situated metres from an electric substation that powers two of Belfast’s largest hospitals. The message is loud and clear, loyalism has its foot on our neck still. The Police service of Northern Ireland say they want us all to feel safe. They can’t make us feel safe if they are literally not safe themselves. I’m angry yet apathetic as I am every year. The same story, the same reaction. Businesses shut and people flee their homes and we just let them burn the place to the ground and come back two weeks later as if nothing happened.

Loyalist paramilitaries have said that they will cause widespread unrest if their precious bonfire is taken down in South Belfast. They have explicitly said they will stretch the police force so thin that they physically won’t be able to cope with the strain of retaliation from loyalists at the Donegal Road site. And of course the DUP are standing firm with these scum. The conversation I’m seeing is, ‘Let’s make sure calm heads prevail’. As in, please don’t riot. Pleeeease!!! I’m going to throw a spanner in the works here, what if, and hear me out, what if all of these people actually love rioting. Like LOVE it. Like it’s what they wait for every year. Like it’s how they get their buzz. The time of the year when their sectarian racist ideology can be let loose without fear of retribution because if they’re all rioting together then they’re all safe. Mob Rule. Don’t underestimate humans. They can be much worse than you give them credit for.

But what do we do if this really is the case. If rioting is in their bones? If it really is ‘Our Culture’? Great question. And the answer is to get to the root of the problem. That is to face up to the fact that our colonial past hasn’t just lingered in our collective psyche, it’s rotting us to the core with every 12th of July that passes. The coloniser comes to annihilate a people, they strip them of everything and put in place their own people. See, Plantation of Ulster 1609. These people now occupy a land that isn’t theirs, but because the state has provided them this land under the auspices that it is their God given right, the occupying settlers are forced to deal with their human guilt by sweeping it under a celestial rug. If it isn’t clear already, humans are fallible and actually can’t deal with this kind of paradox, it almost always ends badly. So a few hundred years later and you have a people, ‘Loyalists’ who, by their own admission, are fighting for their right to exist (See, Israel) proving that no one can reconcile that paradox of settler guilt and divine providence. So until there is diplomatic reconciliation and compromise, the occupied AND the occupier, will never be truly free.

Until then, buckle up. Sun’s out guns out. Probably literally.

P.S King Billy was backed by the Pope and he actually couldn’t stand Irish Protestants. He put the interests of the bourgeoisie in Europe over those on our wee island. Stick that in your sash and smoke it.