I THINK the following is a reasonable and accurate statement: I know more about loyalist parades than most non-loyalists.
I mean the usual suspects can dispute that if they want, but then the usual suspects would have something to say if I claimed to know quite a bit about bets and beer after 40-plus years of them being absolutely central to my social existence.
But for anyone not given to argument for the sake of it, the evidence is there in spades in decades of reporting and commentary. I’d guess I’ve been to 15 or 20 Twelfth of July parades, most in Belfast. I know for a fact how many Scarva Sham Fights I’ve been to because the number is much smaller: three. Not a lot, granted, but it’s still three more than most of us who grew up steeped in the smell of candles and incense have experienced. Throw in various band competitions and tribute events and I’m sure the notches on my notebook are heading up towards a hundred.
The highlight? Signing the Ulster Covenant at Stormont on the 100th anniversary of that landmark event. Not in blood and not on parchment. On a photocopied copy of the Covenant with a leaky wooden fountain pen.
So having presented my credentials I’m going to tell you what anyone who attends an Orange march, a Black march, an Apprentice Boys march or a mere band parade knows and won’t tell you: There are not occasional outbreaks of loyalist paramilitary fandom – the veneration of the UDA/UVF and a host of connected smaller groups is endemic to the loyalist marching and band scene.
When I say I attended parades, I mean I attended them. I didn’t sit in my car and wait for them to pass. I didn’t sit with my backside on the windowsill of a terraced house and listen to the music. I walked with the crowd to the Field, to the mural, to the statue, to the war memorial or wherever the Parades Commission had been told was the destination.
And if the event wasn’t literally an event celebrating loyalist paramilitaries, it was replete with bands who either have loyalist killers on their uniforms or instruments or knock out tunes paying tributes to said killers; or who knock out tunes about killing Catholics, demanding that they go home, or demeaning their Popes, priests, nuns, rosary beads or indeed anything with the vaguest whiff of Mass about it.
Thankfully, the age of Spotify and Apple Music has had consequences not just for the Taylor Swifts and Harry Styleses of this world. The disappearance of hard-copy music means that there are no stalls selling ‘Soldier of the UVF’ and ‘The Night We Burned Ardoyne’ CDs.
I bring this up because the Department for Communities and the Arts Council at the weekend put out a call for bands to apply for funding from the musical instruments scheme. For some time now the Andytown News has been to-ing and fro-ing with the Arts Council over its decision to buy shiny new flutes and drums for bands which regularly take part in the biggest loyalist paramilitary parade we’ve got: The September Brian Robinson memorial, which pays tribute to a UVF sectarian thug who in 1989 shot dead an innocent Catholic in Ardoyne and was then shot dead himself by undercover British soldiers.
The Arts Council churned out a Homeric amount of guff on an arc curving from ‘Those bands kept their UVF links a secret from us’ to the classic surrender line ‘We’d rather not say any more, thanks.’ Against that background I thought this year’s scheme would have been the Caesar’s wife of music funding schemes; but no. In a weekend Department for Communities press release tagging the Arts Council, there’s that East Belfast band ‘The Loyal’ again. They gained a modicum fame, or notoriety, in the summer when they took part in the Fleadh’s Titanic Slipways loyalist band display, an event which pleased Loyal Ulster no end. But within minutes of images of the event appearing, it was pointed out that The Loyal have pictures on their big drum of two men claimed as ‘UVF volunteers’ by the East Belfast Memorial Committee – the foremost recognition body for dead loyalist paramilitaries. That got a bit of a pass at the time because everybody was in a great mood and keen to keep unionists and loyalists onside with the Fleadh.
And yet not only are The Loyal entitled to claim money despite their connection to the UVF, they’ve been made the poster boys of the Arts Council scheme.
Which means one of two things: The Department of Communities and the Arts Council are gloriously and uniquely unaware of the band’s ethos; or they are aware that the band pays tribute to an illegal sectarian killer gang on its drum and it doesn’t matter to them.
I’m leaning towards the it-doesn’t-matter explanation simply because if the loyalist band scene is to be accepted as a legitimate part of the wider arts and culture landscape, then very serious moral compromises will have to be made by those public bodies tasked with encouraging, funding and enabling the bands. I made my pitch earlier in this piece about the essential nature of the loyalist marching and band world, but Communities Department and Arts Council staff tasked with overseeing the musical instruments scheme don’t have to take my word for it. Go along and see for yourself. View the bands. Read their names and their banners. Look closely at their polo shirts and cap badges. Listen to the music.
Let me now apprise you of where I am after four decades of attending loyalist band events. I say let the Arts Council give them the money, whether they sneak in pictures of ‘UVF volunteers’ on their drums or whether they’re called ‘Lenny Murphy was Magic’ and play ‘Yabba Dabba Doo Any Taig’ll Do’ while passing chapels. If they’re going to paint pictures of killers on their new drums or toot their thirst for Fenian blood on their new flutes, as long as they do it where they’re wanted or tolerated I’m happy to be painting my hair or washing my radiators when they do.
But please. Please. Cut out the nonsense. Stop pretending the band instrument scheme is a driver of inclusive and creative talent when it’s a cynical ploy to placate the bands and the unionist political parties which support them.
And all of them do.
