IN the end, everything is political. While it might be nice to think that the turf-scented notes from a box accordion or the other-worldly strains of the uileann pipes are immune to infection from the diurnal and the dreary, the fact is that Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann was never going to be beyond the reach of those addicted to confrontation.
The biggest and most successful event in the tumultuous 400-year history of our city will forever be a where-were-you? moment for Belfast. Given the amount of time off being booked in people’s heads already, August 2027 looks like it might even outdo the week just gone in terms of notes hit, songs sung, beer drunk and reels reeled. More welcome than any of these things, though, would be another heave to push unionism’s bitterest elements further towards the sidelines.
The Fleadh wasn’t just big enough to overwhelm the public transport system and push the hospitality sector beyond the limits of its capacity, it was big enough not to be dictated to by the political weather. It was, in fact, big enough to create its own political weather.
That’s why Loyal Ulster, which has been enthusiastically doing battle with the Irish language – the single most important aspect of Irish culture – was quickly forced to make a choice as the immensity of the week to come became evident in the days leading up to Sunday’s opening: Get on board this juggernaut or be run over by it. Let’s be completely honest about this: Those peope in the DUP and the UUP who have decided that the Irish language is their Stalingrad are no better disposed towards people dancing Tonnta Thoraí in Royal Avenue than they are towards Fáilte on the front door of a leisure centre. They are no more charmed by a set of Connemara reels in Madden’s Bar than they are by a Bunrang in the Felons. But while they can engage in a battle a day with the Irish language with little or no blowback, taking a dog-in-the-manger attitude when the city blasted by the already mammoth projection of 800,000 visits just halfway into the week and ended up with 1.6 million is just not going to fly. The numbers were simply too vast to be pigeonholed as ‘themmuns’.
So smart unionists reached an accommodation with the Fleadh. They either kept quiet about it, or they attended band performances, whether on the thronged streets, at the Titanic Slipway or the City Hall Gig Rig. Granted, some of them seemed more like captured pilots than happy punters, but the very effort to join in – no matter the motivation and no matter the enthusiasm – was in itself a significant act of outreach. As the Council and Comhaltas hangovers cleared on Tuesday morning and the work recommenced on Fleadh 2027, that unionist buy-in will have been noted and banked and ways of broadening and hardening that buy-in will have been slapped on the table.
As important as the buy-in of thoughtful unionists has been the sidelining of the Stauncherati. There was more chance of the TUV carrying the Virgin at a Marian Procession than there was of the party keeping quiet about the Fleadh, much less taking part in it. And Moore Holmes and Jamie Bryson, the chronically unelected, self-appointed Mayor and Deputy Mayor of Staunch City, were reliably hysterical enough to underline once again the lack of sophistication that underpins their raucous, media-friendly tribalism. While they were on their phones posting spittle-flecked diatribes and Grandpa Simpson-style warnings, the almost impossible numbers of people flooding into town from all quarters contained many of the very people Moore and Jamie were attempting to inflame. The failure to regulate their hostility in recognition of that simple fact, let alone switch it off, cast them as a distinctly pitiful pair.
The TUV’s and Tweedledum and Tweedledee’s failure to acknowledge, much less react to, the simple truth that significant numbers of ‘their people’ were at the Fleadh, either watching the bands or – perish the thought – skulling pints at a session, has edged them to the sidelines. Not among their uncompromising base, but among a unionist mass that has been left perhaps not enthused by the Fleadh, but certainly curious. And the problem for the hardliners is that we do it all again next year, bigger and better, by which time unionists not in thrall to victory over compromise – which is to say, the majority – will hopefully have figured out a way to bend the Fleadh even further to their needs and wants.
Moore and Jamie are no longer young, and Jim Allister is the only party leader whose birth certificate is in Latin; but even so, they should know that for young Protestants these d ays, when their city is en fête and their phones are buzzing like wet pylons, FOMO is a lot more important that WATP or GSTK.
The DUP generally played a canny hand, the sure-footed and generous opening day speech of Deputy First Minister Emma Little-Pengelly being the single most important act in ensuring that the Fleadh can genuinely be described in hindsight as a cross-community success. Yes, the decision of Speaker Edwin Poots to write to the Chief Constable about a chip van Tannoy was a mean-spirited and ultimately embarrassing hissy fit that will have damaged the reputation he has built for solid if uncharismatic dependability. But that comically silly decision came relatively early in the week – certainly before the eyewatering attendance figures were known – and an effective damage limitation exercise was launched which saw the combative Phillip Brett and Jonathan Buckley throw themselves headlong into the city centre fun. That will have resonated much more powerfully and memorably with younger unionists than the bad-tempered harrumphing of an ageing veteran seeing out his final years in politics waving a gavel in the comfiest of the comfy Stormont seats.
