I read An Phoblacht/Republican News faithfully, but as it is very hard going, I can rarely manage more than a page or so at a time. Yesterday, wading listlessly through the programme of events planned by Sinn Fein to commemorate the hunger strikes of 1981, I investigated my emails in the hope of light relief. And there was an article forwarded by an American friend which sent me back to An Phoblacht with my interest rekindled.
My friend - a keen monitor of the wilder shores of political correctness - had found in the US-published Irish Echo newspaper a gem of a report on the Boston Housing Authority's request to its residents to avoid public displays of such "bias indicators" as swastikas, Confederate flags and shamrocks - all deemed to be offensive to some minority residents. The Echo had nothing to say about how Nazis or Southerners felt about the banning of their indicators, but Irish-Americans seemed mightily upset and clear about whom to blame.
According to the president of the Boston City Council, James Kelly, the authority is administered almost exclusively by blacks and Hispanics: "Believe me," he added, "the `no Irish need apply' mentality is very much alive and well at the BHA." A residents' spokesman observed: "We're supposed to give up our symbols and traditions because somebody's offended. Give me a break!"
It was with a new eye that I looked back at the programme of hunger strike events. We now have tough equality legislation north and south to stop people being offended: as Orangemen and members of the RUC know, at the request of nationalists, much work has been done to eradicate any indicators supposedly smacking of unionist bias. Yet here the foremost denouncers of other people's bias indicators - our own Hiberno-Cromwellians - who want every offensive symbol stripped from public places, are busy spreading a whole new raft of republican indicators north, south, east and west.
The posters are already on the lamp-posts, the black flags have been unfurled, the murals are being painted and many people - especially relatives and friends of those murdered by some of those same hunger strikers and those who are extolling their sacrifice - will be deeply offended.
You can't complain that Sinn Fein is not traditionalist. With a few exceptions (the odd video or photo-exhibition), a similar programme of events could have been staged more than a century ago by Fenian sympathisers.
Here are a few you've already missed: the erection of a replica H-Block cell in Castlewellan Square, south Down; candlelit vigil at GPO; torchlight procession from Greencastle crossroads to the Greencastle community centre; candlelit vigil through the Belfast estates of Twinbrook, Poleglass and Lagmore followed by a 48-hour fast "in makeshift H-Block cell" at a republican monument. And, in our own dear, daft Kerry, blanket marches in Ballyseedy and Kilflynn Cross (who said the civil war was over?).
There are many more indicators to be viewed in the coming months. For instance, in Derry next Wednesday (now known as Francis Hughes Day), you can honour this famous hunger striker, one of the IRA's foremost assassins, by parading to the site where he was "captured by crown forces" after murdering a soldier: "a memorial stone will be unveiled at this historic location".
In April, Cork city will host a fundraising race night for a monument to the hunger strikers, Dublin a benefit night in aid of the Women's History Project 1981 Committee and Tyrone a football match of ex-POWs against the Jim Lynagh cumann. That redoubtable republican activist, Martin Meehan, is offering a touring 15-minute play about the hunger strike (warning: I've seen one of Martin's productions and I wouldn't expect subtlety). And, on May 5th in Manhattan, a mural with the theme "the '81 hunger strike and what role Americans played during this period. This mural, measuring 30ft by 30ft, will be on a main motorway used by 250,000 vehicles daily".
Clearly, New York lags behind Boston in its sensitivity to bias indicators.
My conclusion from years of observing Northern Ireland is that the main result of attempts to remove other people's bias indicators is to cause uproar and bloody-mindedness. As opposition to Orange marches swelled parades, so, in Boston, people who have never sported shamrocks are pinning them up. I would not therefore urge the banning of the republican "bias indicators" as long as those engaged in the carry-on behave themselves. Left without interference, I doubt if they'll attract enough participants to create a public nuisance.
I would, however, hope the Irish Government and the rest of the pan-nationalist front might point out gently that the green should not flaunt their bias indicators unless they are prepared to extend the same tolerance to the orange.