MUCH has been done by a great deal of people to rid our society of sectarianism and bigotry.
But anyone who believed it was gone to a place from which it wouldn’t return will have had their eyes opened over the past week.
A function at the social club of Coleraine Football Club featured songs from the stage about the UVF while a loyalist flute band from Scotland, in town to attend the Apprentice Boys of Derry parade, struck up from the floor and ran through its repertoire.
While most people will already be familiar with the words to ‘The Billy Boys’ and the clear meaning behind those, the ‘performance’ also included other songs plainly sectarian in their nature with lyrics such as ‘f**k the Pope and the Virgin Mary’.
Among the lyrics to the tune played by the Pride of the North Flute Band were “No Pope of Rome, no chapels to sadden my eyes, no nuns and no priests, no Rosary beads, every day is the Twelfth of July”.
Moreover, the pre-booked singer on stage can be heard singing “say it loud, say it clear, I’m a soldier, an Ulster Volunteer, proud to be, a YCV” – a reference to the UVF’s youth wing, the Young Citizen Volunteers.
No doubt there will be many people associated with Coleraine FC who were deeply disappointed by what they heard on the club’s premises. A brief statement insisted the club was investigating but offered little more.
Meanwhile, a live BBC NI news item from the Dublin homecoming of Ireland’s Olympics heroes saw young children launch into ‘ooh, aah, up the ra’ before the correspondent was able to abruptly hand back to the studio in Belfast.
And, of course, much has again been said about the Féile concerts where the Wolfe Tones were the headliners but some of their - and the support acts’ - songs could fairly be described as offensive to the protestant community and those who have lost loved ones to the IRA down the dark years of the Troubles.
Played on the night was The Sam Song, which contains the lyrics: “Well I have been a Provo now for 15 years or more” and references to the Loughgall massacre and shooting helicopters out of the sky.
Some of those who sang along will describe the songs as harmless and insist doing so isn’t to be construed as support for the IRA.
However, if we are to progress as a tolerant, progressive and inclusive society then constantly singing about the past won’t help to achieve that.
Sectarianism shouldn’t have a place in our present or future, nor those people who seek to constantly perpetuate divisive symbols of the past.
