I’m just trying to get this straight in my own head. Celebrating a mural of a burning police vehicle is right, but physically burning a police vehicle in real life is wrong?
Celebrating singing a song about the IRA is right when it’s in a big concert venue, but it’s wrong when celebrating an Olympic medal-winner coming home and there are any less than 10,000 people around you singing it too?
Thinking any of these things are in any way negative and damaging is also wrong. Did I get all of that right?
If I’m confused by the Northern Irish Right and Wrong Bingo. Is it any wonder our young people are confused.
At the weekend a BBC journalist, reporting from the triumphant return of Kellie Harrington to Dublin, had to hand quickly back to the studio when a bunch of little girls behind her started to chant the line from Celtic Symphony – ‘Ooh, ah, up the ’RA’ – in celebration of her Olympic medal.
And what was worse than that was the cheerleading on social media that went on for such behaviour over kids that have no idea what the words mean, but just know it as a catchy little tune they heard others sing.
On the very same night, those who penned the Celtic Symphony, Irish rebel music band The Wolfe Tones – with a combined age of 237 years – were headlining the west Belfast Féile with an array of classic hits reflecting back on the Troubles era and beyond in front of thousands upon thousands of cheering young people.
In recent days young people have been flocking to the cinemas to watch the hugely successful Kneecap film. Young people idolise the Irish punk-rap band. Their concerts are sold out. They are doing incredibly well.
The band regularly arrive at events on a police vehicle, giving the impression that it was commandeered, Kneecap sprayed on the side, the lads hanging out the windows with flares blazing. Punks be punking, I suppose.
A few years back they unveiled a mural in west Belfast featuring a PSNI Land Rover in flames accompanied by the writing “Níl fáilte roimh an RUC”, Irish for “The RUC aren’t welcome”.
There’s no doubt their PR machine is designed to provoke reaction and conversation around their music and Irish language. I wouldn’t be 100 per cent sure that that precise message is landing fully with the young people.
I’m old – I’m definitely not their target audience. The sight of balaclavas – regardless of how bright and colourful they are – reminds me of violence, death and utter grimness. What I see when I see some of the burning vehicle antics is a dehumanisation of the police that only complements other players in the field. And I don’t like it. And I’m allowed to not like it, this being a free society and all.
I remember writing about the PSNI mural at the time. I was told to shut up, stop whinging, that I had zero sense of humour, no taste in music, that I hated the Irish language, republicans, rap music and was trying to curb the creativity of these young men. None of which is true.
Perhaps it’s a utopian state I’m after, or even a relatively normal society. Or perhaps it’s just years of covering the underbelly of this place, covering courts, covering the devastation left in the wake of paramilitarism, covering poverty, severe social issues and working with hundreds of young people in schools, that I’m more acutely aware of how some of our youth can be sucked into an abyss they can never hope to crawl out of.
And I’ve seen how dehumanising other people can make up part of that negative jigsaw.
Some of the same people who cheered on the singing of the ‘up the ’RA’ or images depicting burning police vehicles were condemning the young people throwing actual petrol bombs at the police in Derry last weekend.
One of the kids attacking the police with petrol bombs looked to be primary school age, the other boys were in the early teens. Over the last few days teenagers, one as young as 11, were arrested over disorder in Belfast.
As long as everyone here keeps celebrating and glorifying their ‘own side’s’ unique history and quirks, sticking two fingers up to the ‘other side’s’ hurts, we’ll stay where we are. Maybe that’s what we want. Never to move on from the glory days when the streets were ceaselessly on fire.
Maybe at this stage we’re not capable of anything more.
As long as everyone here keeps celebrating and glorifying their ‘own side’s’ unique history and quirks, sticking two fingers up to the ‘other side’s’ hurts, we’ll stay where we are
