I note where Derry and Strabane District Council have decided that at the St Patrick’s Day parade, there will be no flags or emblems.
There are a number of ways you could react to this.
You could say that the celebration of the feast of our national saint should not be rolled together with politics, and good for Derry and Strabane District Council.
Or you could take the line that, knowing politics inevitably will be part of the celebration of St Patrick’s Day, it makes sense to keep the event as open as possible so that all sides of the community can participate – in this case, the unionist side of the community.
Or you could take the line that to celebrate the feast of Ireland’s national saint, it’s hardly overstepping the boundaries for some display of the Irish flag. It’s not as if there’s some sort of mismatch: Ireland’s patron saint, Ireland’s national flag.
Or you could take the line that there should be parity of esteem and mutual respect in our NEN. Except my eyes have been deceiving me for many years, there are between 2,000 and 4,000 marches by loyal orders in our NEN each year. At none of these parades, to the best of my knowledge, is the Union flag proscribed. Nationalists and republicans may have objected to marches through particular areas but I can’t recall any petition that the Union flag be removed from these parades, so that the whole community might feel welcome to watch and enjoy the various parades.
In fact, it’s hard not to see this as another example of how symbols of Britishness (to which people here have a right) are displayed again and again and again and again, while symbols of Irishness are to be suppressed where possible.
Quite a few years ago, there was a debate in Queen’s University over whether signage in the Student Union building should be in Irish as well as English. As I remember, the claim was that Irish signage would produce a chill factor for unionist students. I wonder how many unionist students felt inhibited from using, say, the toilets, because there was a sign in Irish as well as English?
In a similar way, it might be that Irish tricolours would act as a chill factor for those unionists wishing to observe and/or enjoy the St Patrick’s Day parades. We might be able to gauge that better when we see how many unionists, once the national flag has been eliminated, will gladly attend the St Patrick’s Day parade in Strabane.
Or will that be insufficient? Will it be necessary for nationalists/republicans to accept the insistence of one unionist historian (in the loosest sense) that St Patrick was a Protestant?
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