I THINK those who erected the Bobby Sands statue in Belfast should have applied for planning permission. Why they didn’t is anybody’s guess. Perhaps they were concerned about it being knocked back by City Hall, although I can’t see that having happened.
It's equally possible that the thought just didn’t occur to them, because in a city where ad-hoc memorials to dead paramilitaries are to be found on every other street corner, it has long been accepted practice that you can just stick what you want where you want and not a word will be said about it.
Until now, that is.
Like a lot of other people, while the Belfast City Council imbroglio over the Sands statue continues I’ve been pondering the teeth-grinding hypocrisy of Loyal Ulster, whose elected represent-atives passionately denounce the new Twinbrook memorial while surrounded by UDA and UVF memorials which are equally unburdened by official paperwork – and for a much longer time. The comparison is a penalty kick, of course, but as spring turns into summer and the marching/bonfire season gathers pace, I humbly submit for your consideration the idea that while the bricks, mortar and paint of loyalist paramilitary shrines do indeed underline the bottomless cant of political unionism in relation to the Sands statue, a more apt, concerning and sinister comparison is about to hove into view as the mercury rises to the blatter of the bass drum and the toot of the flute.
Nobody’s going to be physically hurt at a redbrick UVF or UDA memorial in East Belfast any more than they are by a Provie or Sticky one in West Belfast. Unless a gust of wind blows a wreath into somebody’s face or a tea light in a glass jar falls on somebody’s toe. The Sands statue row is fuelled not by a passionate commitment to planning protocols, which exist to protect the interests of the people living next to a suggested project, rather it is another tawdry skirmish in an escalating unionist commitment to the culture wars that has led Gormless Gordon Lyons to do a Líofa with an Irish placenames project, with as-yet unknown consequences for the political piñata that we call Stormont.
The most startling and snort-inducing proof that philanthropy plays no part in unionist thinking on the Twinbrook tribute to Bobby Sands is to be found in those grim and otherwise forsaken corners of these six counties where this very evening the serious business of stealing pallets is under way ahead of the Eleventh Night ritual of Protestant substantiation: The turning of sofa foam, pishy mattresses and baldy tyres into cancer smoke.
I’d say that if love of and concern for humanity was the pilot light on the unionist fury boiler then the rather more alarming problem of summer bonfires would command their attention more than a piece of carved stone on the other side of the city, particularly since the bonfires lie well within their realm of influence.
Unasked amidst the sturm und drang of the statue row is the simple question: What is planning for? A scan of the websites of a selection of the larger councils across Ireland and Britain reveals a primary consensus that planning protocols exist to manage and develop the future sustainability of a city or district in a way that prioritises not only the present-day residents, but future generations too. And central to the realisation of that mission is the essential but rather nebulous concept of ‘amenity’, a catch-all word that encapsulates a dizzying range of factors that impact on quality of life, from the coldly technical to the theoretically utopian. Amenity in planning terms can be crudely but effectively reduced to two subsections: Residential and visual.
In residential terms, is the DUP really motivated by a burning desire to ensure that the Bobby Sands statue does not impinge on the ability of nearby residents to enjoy their homes in comfort and privacy, unbothered by the intrusion of noise or smell and unthreatened by the loss of natural light? In visual terms, is the UUP animated by a determination to protect the view that Twinbrook residents have from their window and to guard the same people from the ugly and the dispiriting?
It would be nice to think that they are, but they’re not. The first duty of a councillor is to the people of their district electoral area and not to people two Glider rides and a camel caravan away, lovely and all as those people may be. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that public service is at the core of unionist objection to a Twinbrook memorial, that they will henceforth take up the shining sword of justice wherever and whenever planning integrity is under attack, though the heavens fall. If that is the case then look! With almost supernatural synchronicity here comes a 24-carat, ocean-going, museum-quality chance for unionist councillors to prove their mettle.
If the Bobby Sands statue is a slap in the face of City Hall process, then the bonfires under construction across the city are a single aimed gunshot to its temple. And as Protestant Belfast prepares once more to put the planning system to death, those same unionist councillors who draw the back of their hand across their brow and collapse on to a fainting couch at the very thought of a statue in Twinbrook have a golden chance to convince us that their concern is not in fact cynically and calculatedly divisive. Unlike the Bobby Sands statue, the 200-feet monstrosity in Councillor X’s constituency is affecting the natural light; in fact it’s eliminating it. Unlike the Bobby Sands statue, the towering hollow edifice of purloined pallets and assorted fly-tipped bits and bobs in Councillor Y’s street will when lit will bring issues with noise and smell.
Will Cllrs X and Y this summer take a few hours off from their tireless work on the Bobby Sands statue to issue even a mild rebuke to those piling the tyres up outside their office? Will they crouch and enter the boney hut to tell its youthful inhabitants that they can offer help with filling in the planning application form? Will they whack out a press release gently suggesting that it’s not a great idea to light a boney outside a hospital?
With a degree of confidence only before felt by the manager of Bayern Munich ahead of their pre-season friendly with Chimney Corner Seconds, I can tell you they will not. The asbestos boney will be lit again. People at boneys will be hurt again; some might die again. And not only will those shouting loudest about the Twinbrook statue say nothing about the planning atrocities being committed in their own backyard, they’ll put up evidence of the crimes on their Facebook pages on the Eleventh Night with smiley face, thumbs-up and big bicep emojis. And maybe a middle finger too.
