It’s hard to avoid images and scenes that provoke disgust these days, but the burning of effigies of people in a boat atop a bonfire in Moygashel in Co Tyrone last week is an especially grotesque brand of racism.
Stormont’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill referred to “openly racist displays that are sickening and deplorable” and called for political leadership. Where is that leadership? And how can it effectively tackle these annual expressions of unhinged hate?
Where is the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Hilary Benn, on this? Keir Starmer found the time to speak about an Irish band playing Glastonbury, making interventions that exerted huge political pressure on the festival. Why did he not have anything to say about the premeditated, explicit and threatening racism on display in Moygashel last week?
In June Starmer condemned the racist violence in Ballymena. In May Starmer made his Enoch Powell-esque “island of strangers” speech. Note the singular “island”. Starmer is especially well-placed to speak on the North given that he was a human rights adviser to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, yet he said nothing.
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Yvette Cooper declared Palestine Action a “proscribed” group, turning a bunch of people protesting against genocide into “terrorists” in the eyes of the law (and rhetoric) overnight. Expressing support for Palestine Action is now illegal in the UK – a ludicrous, dangerous situation that frames those desiring peace and an end to war crimes and mass murder as the enemy. There was not a peep from her on Moygashel either. Kemi Badenoch accused the BBC of “rewarding extremism” by broadcasting Kneecap’s Glastonbury set. On Moygashel’s spectacle of actual extremism, however, she has been silent.
Those who have called it out for what it is deserve credit. They include John McDowell, the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. He described it as “racist, threatening and offensive. It certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity or with Protestant culture and is in fact inhuman and deeply sub-Christian”.
Sinn Féin’s Colm Gildernew labelled it a “clear incitement to hatred”.
UUP leader Mike Nesbitt described it as “sickening, deplorable and entirely out of step with what is supposed to be a cultural celebration”.
Amnesty International’s Patrick Corrigan called it a “vile, dehumanising act that fuels hatred and racism”.
Claire Hanna, the leader of the SDLP, called it “disgusting” and “a deeply dehumanising provocation”.
On Friday, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said he “was dismayed” by the display. “Archbishop McDowell made a strong comment on it and he’s right – it’s racist, threatening, and offensive and it’s unChristian and lacking in any appreciation of human dignity.”
The PSNI eventually said they were investigating the “material placed upon a bonfire” as a “hate incident”. The PSNI did not dismantle another bonfire in Belfast when a city council committee voted that such action should be taken, and asked the PSNI to assist contractors in doing so. The request to have it removed was rooted in concerns that the electricity supply to Belfast City Hospital and Royal Victoria Hospital was at risk due to the proximity of that bonfire to a substation, and because there is asbestos at the bonfire site.
The decision to let it burn regardless was driven by the potential for violence. The decision is understandable in operational terms – had the PSNI set about dismantling it, riots were inevitable, and everyone knows that threat of violence ultimately emanates from the UDA and the UVF. Northern Ireland’s Environment Minister and Alliance Party MLA Andrew Muir also told the BBC that “the removal of asbestos is very complex and delicate. It requires the site to be completely vacated.” He asked people “not to light this bonfire if they could.”
Year in, year out, the burning of effigies, hate slogans and flags is accepted. Were it not, effective action would be taken to end it. The reluctance to interfere – by politicians and police – is unacceptable when there are lives at risk, both from direct racist violence and the incitement of it.
This is a tired cycle, the playing out of a pathetic desire for negative attention. Perhaps there is even a subconscious – or a tacit – understanding that the Britain those making such effigies are loyal to barely thinks about them. This reality may be so painful that it produces a desire to burn something. Anything. Anyone. Boats, mannequins, effigies, flags.
I take no issue with bonfires as spectacle and community events celebrating culture. In a pluralist society, expressions of identity, community, and the rituals and traditions that accompany them are important. But there is something rotten about leveraging what is supposed to be an expression of long-standing culture and tradition for contemporary expressions of racist hate, with phraseology borrowed from the likes of Nigel Farage (a man who once got paid a few quid to say “up the Ra” during his pathetic hustle selling personalised video clip messages via Cameo).
It’s a pity the imagery of this bonfire did not make the front pages the world over. Maybe then, the blind eye could open to confront a spectacle of festering racism and red hot hate.
