Does anyone outside Northern Ireland have any understanding of what goes on in the brains of so many people there? Has anyone beyond the magnetic malevolence of ghetto culture any real empathy with the people who marked the first anniversary of the Omagh bombing with rioting and destruction? Would not most of us have endured almost any public insult in silence in order that media coverage of Omagh commemorating its dead would be unaccompanied by images of violence, that those who grieve would know that their suffering was uppermost in our minds?
But we know this was not the case. Instead of silence, we have heard the voices of naked tribalism; and what voices have been quite so loud as the wretched, self-exculpatory whines from "community leaders" justifying the breaking of the law and the desecration of the most awesomely terrible anniversary of them all?
"Callous indifference"
There are other voices which beg to be heard - voices such as this one: "It needs to be said that the violence and destruction witnessed [in Derry] . . .was a disgrace. Those who planned and perpetrated it displayed a callous indifference to the memory of the innocent victims of Omagh. There was also very little respect for either the living or the dead to be found on the Ormeau Road.
"The disturbances which broke out there were highly predictable and could easily have been avoided. A series of errors of judgement were involved, the first and most basic of which was on the part of the nationalist demonstrators. . .Nevertheless, the primary responsibility for the confrontation lay with the leaders of the Ormeau residents. They could have simply ignored the parade without surrendering any principles, because of the Omagh anniversary.Instead, in an action which was morally and tactically wrong, as well as illegal, they urged supporters to physically block the parade by sitting down in the middle of the road. It was telling that, despite strident appeals for backing from nationalists across Belfast, less than 200 people answered the call."
Thus the Irish News, the morning newspaper of Northern nationalists, after last weekend's shameful violence in Derry and Belfast, unequivocally laying responsibility at the door of "nationalist" leaders (it was also critical of the RUC). What is worrying, and which should make us all deeply pessimistic, is how unrepresentative puppet-masters in their ghettos can still get Dublin politicians to mouth the right responses to situations which they have created. How pleased the organisers of an action that the Irish News described as illegal and morally and tactically wrong must have been when from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Chris Flood TD criticised the RUC for not exercising restraint on the Ormeau Road.
Physical force
Is there a way the RUC can ever win such confrontations? It is bound by the rule of law to uphold the decisions of the Parades Commission. It has no choice in the matter. If demonstrators block the road, and link arms to prevent passive removal, there is no alternative to physical force. No doubt the police were not gentlemanly.
Find me the police force which warbles lullabies to clear a road of linked protesters who are resisting removal by the liberal distribution of saliva, and I'll show you proof that my name is really Karol Wojtyla.
"If this happened in Tiananmen Square, there would be an international outcry," said that lovely man Gerard Rice of the police behaviour. It is, admittedly, 10 years since the Tiananmen Square incident to which he alludes, and memories can get just a little rusty. Let us refresh the old noodle here. In Tiananmen Square, 100,000 people had gathered, not 200. The security forces in Tiananmen Square did not lift the demonstrators away, nor even clobber them with truncheons in retaliation for being spat upon, as happened on the Ormeau Road. They machine-gunned them, killing hundreds. Thousands vanished into prison, where many remain to this day. But otherwise, yes, if you belong to MOPE - the group which believes Northern Catholics are the Most Oppressed People Ever - it was just like Tiananmen Square; identical, actually, just as the Maze, with its open-access accommodation, self-catering, work-free rule, is indistinguishable from Auschwitz. (And no, that is not whimsical hyperbole on my part: I have heard MOPERS say just that.)
Mayhem and rioting
What it comes down to is this: a couple of well organised groups in Belfast and Derry are able, on the most morally delicate weekend of the year, to bring appalling mayhem and rioting to Northern Ireland's two main cities. The general tenor of the response from the Republic has been to blame the unionists (Albert Reynolds) or the RUC (Chris Flood), even while IRA guns arrive courtesy of US Mail and the broken body of poor Charlie Bennett lies in his grave.
And worst of all, Sinn Fein-IRA, whose members have apparently to be kept quiet on a diet of just occasional killings, is being tribally outflanked within the ghettos it controls.
Steeples. Dreary. Fermanagh. Tyrone. Et cetera.