‘Bonfires are Culture’ by John O’Neill

Are bonfires a cultural activity? That seems to be the persistent defence offered by unionists. Annually, at least half a million pounds is spent cleaning up the mess created by the Eleventh night bonfires. That is on top of the cost of the emergency services, as the PSNI and Ambulance Service tend to be busy, while the Fire Service typically get 45-55 calls outs due to bonfires. If that was being billed, someone would be getting a £40-50,000 bill for the Fire Service alone. However, no-one admits ownership or responsibility for the bonfires, not the Loyal Orders, not the DUP or UUP, nor are there any groups with a formal or legal standing that manage the bonfires. Even where grants are allocated for bonfire management, they are effectively grants to community groups to manage the public space that gets used for a bonfire within their district.

That’s just part of the financial cost. The majority of bonfires are constructed of pallets, stockpiled for a period of weeks or months in advance of the Eleventh night at the intended bonfire location. Although this is usually a public space, it gets increasingly obstructed by the start of July. Supply chain companies, like Chep, have identified their property among the wood dumped at such locations but been unable to retrieve it, even when local councils have removed, stored, then returned the material to the bonfire site. The ridiculousness of siting bonfires where they knowingly destroy road surfaces, play parks, damage houses is painfully obvious.

The broader public failing here is extraordinary. Since no-one officially claims ownership of bonfires or their management, basically, no-one can be held accountable for them. To some extent this amounts to having perpetrator-less crimes (certainly the relevant regulatory authorities, such as the PSNI, Fire Service and local councils take this approach). If the limitation on the problems at bonfires was confined to environmental problems, stolen property and some other public order issues, this sense of perpetrator-less crimes would just represent a failing of civic governance, albeit a significant one. However, the visible political dimension to the bonfires transforms that anonymity into something much more sinister. This is perhaps the most contentious aspect of bonfires. Typically, flags are burnt on the bonfires, mainly Irish tricolours although occasionally other flags have been added, often of those countries whose immigrants have been on the receiving end of racially-motivated attacks. Election posters are a favourite, mainly Sinn Féin, but sometimes including SDLP and Alliance posters. Other things added to bonfires in recent years are banners with messages and slogans (some racist, some sectarian), stolen religious statues, effigies, and, soccer and GAA flags, shirts and symbols. If you unfamiliar with these, there is more on this in a longer post here – https://storify.com/jjconeill/a-quick-reprise-bonfires16.

Some people are quick to diminish the symbolism of all this or its potential impact. People Before Profit’s Eamonn McCann has dismissed burning similar material on bonfires as an ‘act of defiance’. But the main defence given is that this is unionist culture and assume that somehow by designating it as ‘culture’, it should now therefore be beyond any reproach. In fact, paradoxically, the implication is often that to criticise this ‘culture’ is somehow, in itself, a dreadfully revealing act of prejudice.

There shouldn’t really be an issue with anyone who wants to define this as ‘culture’. Trainspotting can be described as a culture. Heroin use, and the activities connected to it, can be described as a culture. So can the antisocial behaviours around joyriding. Basically, any set of shared activities and values can be defined as a culture. That doesn’t tell us much about the culture itself. That comes from looking at the activities and values evidenced by that culture.

But there are clear echoes here with other activities that are offered a blanket defence of representing unionist (and often misrepresented as ‘Protestant’) culture, such as Loyal Order marches. Many of the issues around Loyal Order marches can be identified with bands or crowds watching the parade, and the Loyal Orders repeatedly deny any responsibility for the behaviour of either (echoing the refusal by anyone to take ownership of bonfires). The semantics here are important. What is intended to be communicated is that bonfires, like much of the activity around Loyal Order parades, is not subject to normal laws, rules or regulations. Hence the vitriol directed at the Parades Commission.

This sends a clear message. Those whose symbols, property or facilities are being deliberately and publicly destroyed at bonfires are not to be considered, in the eyes of society or the law, as equal to those responsible for that destruction. Much in the same way it is insisted that legal and social norms should not be applied to Loyal Order parades. This seems to be a defining element of bonfires (and to some extent Loyal Order marches) – to not just be above the law, but to very publicly display that supremacy.