Top Issue 1-2024

17 December 1998 Edition

Resize: A A A Print

Importing bigotry

Deaglan O'Coileain knows who was responsible for the trouble when the Apprentice Boys marched through Derry last Saturday

``Jesus, see the young fellas these days - they haven't a bloody clue how to organise a riot!'' That was the verdict of one Derry veteran (long since retired) about the events in Derry last Saturday. It was this `rioting' which formed the focus of nearly all the news bulletins on Saturday evening.

In fact, an uninvolved person could have been forgiven for believing the well-rehearsed media tit-bits about how `nothing changes'.

Throughout the twenty-four hours before and after the Apprentice Boys marches, there are elements of bizarre predictability.

For example, you can always depend on RUC personnel investing large amounts of testosterone in `sterilising' nationalists from the city centre. And while their grunts are using sledgehammers to crack nuts (sometimes literally), the top brass are huddled-up trying to figure out why things always go wrong when they are in charge.

Meanwhile, you can always depend on the Apprentice Boys performing their quaint pre-Christmas extravaganza - a full afternoon sectarian jamboree around that sacred monument, the cenotaph, in the Diamond. Colourfully uniformed bands, bedecked with flags and banners celebrating that great Unionist culture of support for the UDA and UVF, regale the assembled media (there's no one else there!) with such appropriate melodies as No Surrender and The Sash. They are cheerily followed by thousands of public-minded, sash-clad, sword-wielding gentlemen who generously give of their own time to come from places as far away as Belfast, Glasgow and Liverpool.

And yes, you can always depend on young people who live in Derry to be deeply offended at these two other certainties. So it was that I dandered into the city centre on Saturday afternoon.

The Bogside Residents' Group had stated a week previously that they would not be holding a protest, and the Parades Commission had made a ruling to re-route one section of the Apprentice Boys march, but I was still mindful of the media-inspired notion of `nothing ever changing'.

The predictably mundane tension of early in the day was broken by the laughter of onlookers as one hapless peeler had the humiliation of circumnavigating the Diamond in a landrover that looked more like an ice-cream van. It was hand-painted with white gloss with the word Crimestoppers - or was it Gobstoppers - sprayed on top.

But as the thunderous march began to shudder down Bishop Street it became clear that neither the RUC nor the Apprentice Boys were going to disappoint me with any displays of unpredictable imagination.

An altercation across landrovers between local youths and marchers was the only excuse needed for the RUC to commence the bulldozing of nationalists down Shipquay Street with batons, in spite of the calming influence of a number of local people.

This led to a series of half-hearted spats throughout the afternoon between youngsters armed with bottles and bricks, and the RUC armed with batons and shields, which the media later coined a `mob riot'. A number of commercial vehicles were stolen and one was burned.

As with last year, the town's business community have been quick to lament their loss of trade on Saturday. Pub tycoon Garvan O'Doherty is fond of describing this situation as one where the marchers march, the police and the rioters riot, while the business community are left to pick up the pieces.

Nice soundbite, but I couldn't help wondering as Mr O'Doherty stood outside the Richmond Centre fixated at the sight of a few young people throwing bottles at the RUC, that he was looking in the wrong direction. The business community claims to want a `win-win' situation in the interest of the whole city, yet no political party (other than Sinn Fein) and no business person, has yet explained how nationalists can get a `win' from an organisation who import thousands to Derry twice a year, and then refuse to talk to local groups about the appalling conduct of these interlopers.

It's just as well that the Bogside Residents Group didn't have a presence in the city centre on Saturday. No doubt they - and spokesperson Donncha MacNiallais in particular - would have borne the ritual condemnation of all the `good' people of Derry, and Alistair Simpson too.

In the end, this proved to be the one unpredictable and imaginative element of Saturday's events which made me reassess the media view that `nothing ever changes'. The BRG spent a month working to establish a mutual accommodation with the Apprentice Boys. Some people tried to isolate them; some tried to vilify them; and others, as late as last Friday night, tried to pressurise them. The aim of all these actions was simply to let the Apprentice Boys have their way.

The BRG ensured by their absence that the blame for Saturday's predictable events rests with those who know - the blind-bigots in the RUC and the Apprentice Boys, and those self-interested, short-sighted people in Derry's political and civic world.

The Apprentice Boys next cultural outing takes place in Portadown just a few days after Christmas where they will be taking lessons from those great Orange defenders of equality and respect - Portadown District No.1. For those who want to know the long-term solution in that town, it is the same as the one outlined by Donncha MacNiallais in his home town last Friday - it's called `meaningful dialogue based on mutual respect'.

An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland