Picture by gp fender
Ah yes. The old familiar things. The band that’s limited to a single drum-beat passing down Donegal Street and begod aren’t they the clever boys. They do make eejits of the Parade Commission by hefting their instruments on their shoulders and doing an odd bouncing on the stop with great glee for a minute or so. Caught, you’ll be happy to know, on video. They may well be indulging in high animal spirits. Or they may well be replaying with glee the actions of the thugs who kicked to death Robert Hamill in 1997, while a police landcover sat and watched. And it’s not even 1.00 pm yet. Isn’t it great to have a tradition you can depend on?
I was talking to a friend who’d visited the Boyne site that’s been created on or rather just off the road to Dublin. Apparently it’s done with impeccable taste, there’ s a big house that opens out, as they say, on 500 acres. You stand at the front door and there they are, spread handsomely and invitingly before you. So here’s the thing: since the Twelfth is all about the Battle of the Boyne, in which are-uns bate your-uns, and here is this splendid made to measure site – why doesn’t the Orange Order celebrate its big day there? I’m sure public transport could be provided for all who’d wish to come, there’d be no more need for the tedious, foot-sore marching, and they’d have the added delight of knowing all this was provided by the Free Staters. What more could the heart desire?
Except, that is, your core reason for marching is to annoy your neighbours….
Culture, what culture?
The proconsul was busy apportioning blame for prevarication on welfare reform recently. She has been characteristically quiet about the cost of bonfires, Fire and Policing costs and the cost of the clean up operation. She has been equally silent about religious icons, tyres and election posters being burned on bonfires. No comment has been her stern reply in relation to the use of crosses with associated death threats to Catholics.
What would the heir to the throne make of the juvenile behaviour of individuals purporting to play sacred music while passing a place of worship? Once again the difference between Belfast and Finchley is open to public scrutiny. The worthies concerned have some explaining to do in relation to their public contempt for the Parades Commission. They will probably cite visual and hearing deficits, as will the proconsul, given she continues to play her fiddle while parts of Belfast burn.
Hey Jude …Do you imagine that some of them have actually forgotten what they are marching about or might only have the vaguest notion anyway?.. I remember my father talking of a conversation where the Boyne was being discussed with some horny -handed workmates and the realisation that the Boyne was actually south of the border was something unsettling to behold……..even the fact that a river might flow right across the border and maintain the very same name as it wound southwards …There are stranger things….
I just saw the video of the Loyalist bands dancing and singing with glee and I think its obvious to everyone this dance they call the “bouncey” is in reference to Robert Hamill, an innocent Catholic who was battered to death by a Loyalist mob while the RUC sat by and watched.
Whats the point of having a Parades Commission if the determinations are not being abided by or when the PC just simply allow sectarian Loyalist bands to continue marching by a Catholic Chapel which time and time again the Loyalist bands have made clear they have absolutely no respect for, quite the opposite in fact, they want to make clear they DISRESPECT the Catholic Chapel.
What more proof and evidence do you need to show that these Loyalist Bands have no intention of abiding by the PC determinations and have no respect? Its time they were banned completely from going by St Patricks Chapel or along Ardoyne. But I forgot, they were filmed 3 years ago going around in a circle playing the famine song outside St Patricks Chapel (and those involved later convicted in a court of law) but yet they were STILL allowed to walk by St Patricks Chapel with more determinations which everyone knows wont be abided by anyway. What do they have to do to get banned from parading by the chapel? attempt to burn it down? Well we know that actually was “culture and tradition” once upon a time to them…..
II just saw the video of the Loyalist bands dancing and singing with glee and I think its obvious to everyone this dance they call the “bouncey” is in reference to Robert Hamill, an innocent Catholic who was battered to death by a Loyalist mob while the RUC sat by and watched.
That is a complete and utter lie it has nothing to do with Robert Hamill in fact it started in the 80`s at Ibrox at least attempt to get your facts right it always helps.
Yeah probably in some other reference to a ‘Taig’ having head trampled on until he died. Nice comeback Neill, you thinly veil your vile views. Do you also claim that the orange Nazi salute is also about Ulster and not meant to be linked to fascism? Give us a break for God’s sake. No can justify this ‘culture’, the world knows how disgusting this group of ‘humans’ are. Bands should be banned from all parades as their presence is an affront to human decency. The Orange men should now be told to march in their. own areas if the are welcome. If they want to live in a society with no tolerance we should designate areas where they congregate to live free of Catholics and Protestants who have had an education, Trade Unionists, Poles, Women with jobs, anyone with liberal views….
You claim to be an intelligent human being Emmet (I have my reservations about that) and then come out with that hate filled bile.
So unless you have liberal views you have to be sent to the corners of society ie ghettos unless I am very much mistaken that doesn’t strike me as being very liberal at all does it?
No not sent. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see the option to ‘congregate’ and live does not mean sent to, I would never condone the forced movement of people. I never claimed to be an intelligent human being, I believe you must have made that assumption yourself, so thanks for the compliment;)
I am sorry if you really thought I suggested ‘sending’ people anywhere (although I have my doubts that you truly thought I meant that, as you too seem fairly intelligent). There was however some hatred that would have come across, because I am genuinely disgusted by sectarianism from/against anyone.
If someone burns effigies of things, I assume they don’t like them. If you hate Catholics I assume you don’t want to live near them. I think the Orange ‘culture’ that I have seen is calling for the apartheid state not me, I am just saying give them that option but let sane people the option of getting away from it. I don’t think it is a real solution to the problem but I despair that I can see no compromise between normal society and a ‘culture’ that celebrates/exists by attacking others.
Just noticed I did have a typo as well, I wrote ” If they want to live in a society with no tolerance we should designate areas where they congregate to live free of Catholics and… ” it should read “where they CAN congregate”. The omission of the word ‘can’ should make no difference as congregate would imply gathering by choice anyway. So maybe you were truly offended Neill, as that would take slightly higher comprehension skills to work out.
Emmet
I seldom see eye to eye with Neil but he is perfectly correct in this instance, ‘The Bouncey’ started in the late 80’s in Ibrox.
Limerick FC also have their own bouncy of sorts.
There is plenty wrong with the 12th, so why doggedly attack a part that is not at fault (per se)?
I used to work at some games in Ibrox (and Parkhead) as well as in a private business within Ibrox park in the early and mid-noughties, I had never heard of this association between the bouncy and Mr Hammil before the News of the World article in 2007.
There is an awful lot of nonsense spouted in the pubs along the Gallowgate, Duke street and Paisley Road West and the spewers of said untruths are utterly convinced of what they speak.
I would bet heavily that this story is one of the many falsehoods conceived in Old Firm folklore/nonsense.
AG – you may well be right. Or then again, wrong. The fact that something had one association at one time doesn’t mean it doesn’t have a different one later. After all, I used to sing ‘The Sloop John B’ myself (rather badly) in the 1950s. It’s found a rather less healthy home more recently. Same could apply to the bouncy thing. It does seem an odd thing for bandsmen to break into at a highly controversial spot – especially if they’re saying they just suddenly felt cheerful….?
Sorry to say but I have seen the ‘bouncy bouncy’ thing twice. Once by a group of loyalists in Portadown who were shouting f##k Hamill. The group where attacking anyone they thought was nationalist. I am from Derry and I had never seen sectarianism before that day. The second was by a group of Belfast loyalists in Liverpool for a weekend. They where also referring to Robert Hamill’s death. They were doing it in an Irish bar they had been drinking in all day. Eventually they were told to leave. I had a friend who was in the Orange Order at the time and he said he didn’t like it but the people who did it where gloating about the murder of a Catholic. It comes back to the Swastika and Confederate flag argument, once it is dragged through the mud it becomes forever stained. That whole incident was aimed at offending, I can see no other reason for that band to do it there. Sorry saying it was created for that purpose doesn’t really forgive it.
Dr C
I accept your point that the meanings of things can change over time, Irish history is a wonderful collection of examples of such things.
However, the only people who ever claim (in my experience anyway) that the bouncy is to do with Mr Hamil’s murder are people of a nationalist background.
It’s seemingly becoming a case of ‘say it often enough and it will become the truth’, is this what people want?
Do they WANT the two to be linked so that they can criticise yet another aspect of parading culture?
Surely there’s enough to criticise at present without inventing more targets?.
I can look into this further if you’d like.
As for the oddity of bandsmen embracing it so, it alas is representative of the increasingly blurred lines between unionist culture and Rangers fandom.
It’s enough to make me weep….
The first time I seen it was about 1 year after Robert Hamill’s death. I didn’t know who Hamill was but I found out later and I really felt sick and wanted to leave Portadown that day and never step foot in the place again. It was when the Garvaghy Road ‘issue’ was becoming really really bad. We were in a group of 6, 2 Catholics, a English man, and 3 Protestants who knew the area. Even the 3 Protestants wanted to get out of the centre, they said the loyalist group were ‘nuts’.
Maybe the news of the world article started the fad of using the ‘bouncy bouncy’ dance to refer to that terrible incident. Maybe a small number used it in that way after the idea was sewn by the News of the World? I know there are some people that if you told them this would really hurt someone’s feeling they would definitely use it if they had enough hatred.
The sound of an Opportunity knocking and being left unanswered, Esteemed Blogmeister, came to one’s inner ear on reading your tip top topographical suggestion today.
And in the immortal Yeatsian phrase of the late, grating Hughie Orange: ‘I mean that most sincerely, folks’.
For if the LOLs had chosen today to loll on the green grassy slopes of the Boyne it would have been on a day not without a particular propitiousness. The Boyne, located as it is, in the newly branded Ancient East Ireland. An area which is blessedly devoid of the Leprechaun L-plates.
As a cursory glance at the local Royal Meath motor cars would reveal. Today, An Post / The Postal Service of the Free Southern Stateen tailgated the nameplate policy of the Local Authorities by launching their shiny new leprechaun-free Postal Code.
This is a postal code which is based solely on the Second Official Language, aka, the Q’s English. (HIberno-English is currently being promoted by the DruidUnionist Times to replace Lephrechaun as the First Official Langue of the FTT. No gain without pain, no promotion without demotion).
Thus, we get postal abbreviations based on warped placenames like D for Dublin (rather than BAC for Baile Atha Cliath).
In most normal bilingual countries around the globe the post code consists solely of neutral numbers.But, ar ndoigh/ of course, number crunching is not a forte of the, erm, abnormal Free Southern Stateen (cf Troika ). The blame for which is entirely laid (and not unjustifiably so) at the door of leprechaun.
It was the lunatic insistence of putting the BAC into the Abacus, which has replaced the harp as the symbol of the FSS, and the attendant pouring of millions into this futile policy, that we never got beyond the counting frame as a calculating O’Toole, oops, tool.
Ah, the Abacus. Bamboo frames with beads sliding on wires. Not unlike, come to think of it, the facile face of Hughie Orange (see above). Those eyes ! Those beady eyes !
To take just one other county abbreviation at random – say, Wexford which appears as W in the new sunny south eastern postal code. Not, for sure, LG which is giorruchan/ abbreviation for Loch Garman.
Which begs the ceist: why the silence / cen fath an tost of (gasp) Colm O Gorman, Wexican by birth and postal address, on this subvERSEsive decision by An Post?
Could it be that Amnesty’s advocate in chief of rights, smiter of slights, flyer of kites, tireless purveyor of sound bights, the last man to sit tight, the first one to wax an incandescent light, the scatterer of sweetness and light, the flasher of brake lights, the jumper of red lights, the white knight and noble fighter of the proxy fight, could it be.
Could it be that there has been – perish the v. thought ! – an outbreak of the dreaded tse tse fly south of the border down Wexico Way? Which dreaded pest spreads sleeping sickness and an atendant (gulp) Amnesia?
To conclude with the devoutly to be desired vision of the LOLs and they to be lolling on the green grassy slopes of the Boyne. Near the top of their generous bucket list is the ‘limination of leprehcaun. A wish they belt out on their bucket sounding Lambegs.
A bucket list in lilting harmony with the post bag list of An Post, oops, The Postal Service of the Free Southern Stateen.
Failte romhainbh go dti ar staitin / Welcome to our world, south of the Black Sow’s Dyke, the world of Wells Farrago.
It’s your vote that counts, folks !
Tá siad ag coscairt na logainmneacha na hÉireann. Níl na cosa tugtha leo fós acu, slán a bheimid/They are chopping Irish placenames. They are not out of the woods yet, touch wood.
Both languages, Perkie, are official; but some languages are more official than others. Next stop, those pesky number-plates….
Never mind the Tall ships, Giro D’Italia etc they only serve to camouflage what this place really is a bigoted, reactionary, misbegotten, gerrymandered entity.
Of course the local BBC tends to treat the Twelth as some sort of Mardi Gras concentrating on old ladies and babies having a lovely day out. Just as people used to have lovely days out in the southern states of America at KKK meetings.
Very little mention on the BBC of effigies on bonfires and of course the Nazi flags in Nuremfergus, but sure isn’t the province a great wee place!
Except, that is, your core reason for marching is to annoy your neighbours….
And in your case Jude you get very annoyed very easily you would almost guess you like being annoyed perhaps one day you will give some latitude to Loyalists in exactly the same way you have done for republicans and their armed wing….
Neill – mind your metaphorical tongue or take yourself off. I don’t like libel and neither will you if you’re not careful. As to annoyed – that’s not the word I’d use for the annual paradeathon.Despairing, maybe. Finally, are you suggesting that there are no Orange marchers who set out to annoy their neighbours?
Oh I love it when you get feisty Jude!
Did you partake in drinking to much buckfast whilst watching the parades today?
No, you can be sure that nearly all of NI’s stock of Buckfast tonic wine was consumed by underage kids and teenagers in Belfast city centre enjoying the 12th Neill, as is the case every year.
Such a great family environment….
Very much like St Patricks day Parade in Belfast then isn’t it Ryan?
Here’s a live broadcast from Ardoyne
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_DmZFwSLbbI
Can you imagine Stormont building and maintaining a monument to the Easter Rising or the Long Kesh hunger strikes? Of course not yet that is the ludicrous situation pertaining to the site of the Boyne, where a battle took place hundreds of years ago, the result of which condemned the native Irish to yet more bigotry and oppression. People in high places in Dublin and elsewhere can hold out the hand of friendship and respect to the Orange Order for as long as they want but elements within that nefarious group will always detest them for being Irish or Catholic. Their influence is, thank God, diminishing from the bad old days and in many cases they are rather pathetic, but so long as British law forbids Catholics from being head of State these wannabes will always bang their drums and burn effigies, like modern day Wicker men types.
Thanks RJC
Here’s a video of the moment loyalists started to riot, storming police lines at Woodvale.
Some members of the Orange Order can be seen openly egging them on.
http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/regional/video-the-moment-woodvale-riot-began-with-attempt-to-storm-barricade-1-6848252
RJC Do you have a live link this morning as I can’t acces from yesterdays link.
Angela, I think that live feed was only running yesterday. That YouTube link above still works for me, but is now just a recording of yesterday’s eh, ‘cultural event’.
I’ve attended many cultural happenings in my time, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever been trailed by riot vans and water cannons. Each to their own though, eh?
RJC
I’ve thought about why I sat last night and watched that link for maybe 4 hours. I was feeling ashamed and excited at the same time.Crazy isn’t it?
I hope I wouldn’t be that person who just goes to “see whats going on”. But when I watched that scum it just reinforced my belief that we will always have an underclass.
All that hatred and sheer bigotry. There is no excuse.
PS thank you for that link.
After all, I used to sing ‘The Sloop John B’ myself (rather badly) in the 1950s.
Don’t wish to sound pedantic but wasn’t that song written in the 60`s?
Well you are being pedantic, neill – and possibly right. I remember singing it in June 1960. I’m a slow learner. So I assume it took me more than six months to get the words and tune half-right…
The first time I seen it was about 1 year after Robert Hamill’s death. I didn’t know who Hamill was but I found out later and I really felt sick and wanted to leave Portadown that day and never step foot in the place again. It was when the Garvaghy Road ‘issue’ was becoming really really bad. We were in a group of 6, 2 Catholics, a English man, and 3 Protestants who knew the area. Even the 3 Protestants wanted to get out of the centre, they said the loyalist group were ‘nuts’.
Maybe the news of the world article started the fad of using the ‘bouncy bouncy’ dance to refer to that terrible incident. Maybe a small number used it in that way after the idea was sewn by the News of the World? I know there are some people that if you told them this would really hurt someone’s feeling they would definitely use it if they had enough hatred.
It was a truly shameful murder and what was more shameful was that nobody got charged for it I believe.
Its a same that you believe that Orangemen don’t want to live besides Catholics far from it indeed
I think you’re partly right in your last sentence, neill. But holding the Twelfth and the hundreds/thousands/whatever of marches every bloody year with the usual effect isn’t exactly bringing the day of harmonious living nearer.