(The Nationalist, c. September 2001)
A few years ago I was in Saint Petersburg in Russia. I bought a copy of a local English-language newspaper, the Saint Petersburg Times. Opening up the pages, I saw a familiar picture before me, a photo of the church in Drumcree with Orangemen parading outside.
With the picture was an article by a Russian journalist who had travelled to Ireland to cover the annual event of the attempt by Orangemen to march down the Garvaghy Road. He described how he had seen a young man, decorated with rings, studs and tattoos, muscles bulging out of a tight tee-shirt, wearing heavy black boots and leather trousers and sporting a shaven head, throw a petrol bomb at a line of police.
The journalist asked him what the whole thing was about. The man replied that he was defending his Protestant and British heritage. The journalist went on to explore this by asking him about his religious faith. Was he a regular member of a Protestant church? The man replied that, as far as he could remember, he had never been in a church in his life. The journalist may have been bemused by this reply, but went on to ask him about the second part of his statement, how someone who claimed to be defending his British heritage could throw a petrol bomb at the RUC who were, after all, the police force of the British crown. The man thought about it for a while, saw the irony of the situation, and then, laughing, replied to the effect that he and his friends were just there for a bit of fun.
I felt ashamed that this was the image of Ireland that was being portrayed to Russians. What could they think of us? Would they think we were mad or just barbarians? The young man’s first statement didn’t make any sense; his second one did in its own strange way, even if his idea of fun might cost a policeman his health or possibly his life. He was a skinhead, like those who accompany English football teams to matches abroad and create mayhem and sometimes murder, as in the Heysel stadium in Belgium.
It struck me then that there was more to the problem in Northern Ireland than just the political dimension of nationalism and unionism. There is a social and cultural dimension as well. The social dimension was represented by the young skinhead whose politics made no sense and for whom violence was a form of entertainment. The cultural dimension is represented by those who resist change, are unable to think for themselves, substituting clichés and slogans for thinking, and who are unwilling or unable to learn from experience. Surely such people must not be allowed to set the direction for the future.