I DON’T think anyone calling anybody an “Orange bastard” is acceptable.
I shouldn’t have to stop at that ethical roadblock and show my bona fides before I continue writing, but speeding past and hoping people understand the obvious is likely to be misinterpreted by those who consider it their life’s work to misinterpret. So I’ll say it again in a different way: I think calling someone an “Orange bastard” is a bigoted, thick, objectionable thing to do and those who do it should stop.
What I don’t think is that Heather Humphreys being called an Orange bastard online means that the new Ireland project is dead in the water, as some of the more sensitive souls in unionist politics are claiming. If it were the case that the spittle-flecked online ranting of nationalist and republican imbeciles was a bar to constitutional change then it should also be the case that those fine gentlemen of the reformed faith who spend their online leisure hours dismissing Sinn Féin, Alliance and the SDLP as “Fenian c**ts” have signed the death warrant of the union. But nobody ever suggests that. The now familiar ‘Welcome to the New Ireland’ posts in the wake of every ‘Ooh, ah, up the Ra’ chant do not have their mirror image in ‘Welcome to the Old Northern Ireland’ every time a loyalist aversion to the smell of Mass and the clack of rosary beads finds its expression.
This latest entertainingly bonkers and surprisingly snowflakey fit of religious and cultural sensitivity only came about because Heather Humphreys made a complete balls of answering a question about her family connections to the Orange Order. The resultant uninhibited language in the permanent 3am pub lock-in that is social media has, now that Catherine Connolly is measuring up the Áras for Che Guevara wallpaper, become emblematic of what the poor Prods can expect when the leasehold of these two-thirds of the fourth green field expires.
Since the weekend I’ve heard, read and watched numerous discussions north and south about how Heather Humphreys getting called an Orange bastard online has given unionists a terrifying glimpse of what lies ahead for them if and when the border disappears. In none of these mentions of sectarian abuse was a name, an organisation or a political party attached. It was stated only that Mrs Humphreys had been the target of bigots and the listener, watcher and reader was left to work out for themselves just who it was that was bandying about this repellent and hateful language.
The truth is that these things were said by nobody that matters. They were said by terminally online wastrels with more interest in upsetting and hurting other humans than in effecting political change. And when these things were said by people with a political agenda, those people were more likely to be spending their offline time picketing a migrant centre than attending a Gaza demonstration.
Here's another thing: I listen to and watch a fair bit of British news, politics and current affairs on the BBC. But I can’t ever remember a London- or Salford-based newsreader or presenter during or after an election remarking on what it means for the future of British democracy when @SpitfireStan or @EnochWasRight call candidates “Commie f***ers” and “Libtard w***ers”. In other words, we appear to be unique on this archipelago in reading the political runes throught the anonymous rantings of ne’er-do-wells on CeX laptops and grease-smeared mobiles. And, what’s more, the Irish media utilises that novel form of political science only in assessing the prospects for constitutional change – never in diagnosing the status quo. The advisability or otherwise of maintaining the Precious Union© is never to be measured by, or discussed in relation to, the amount of Fenian bastard insults floating about on Facebook.
Those senior members of the DUP who were this year at a loyal order parade where ‘No Pope of Rome’ was sung the day after the Pope died may be genuinely concerned about @GPOGeorge1916 hurling anti-Orange invective at Heather Humphreys. They may well think that internet randomers chucking around sectarian insults while full of Buckfast bravado are more of a disincentive to constitutional change than their own parading habits are to the status quo. But I doubt it. I suspect they know full well the limits of their credibility on these matters. Just as I suspect those who fall back on to a fainting couch with the back of a hand to their forehead at the suggestion of northerners voting in a Presidential election know their argument is as thin as Jim Allister’s lips on St Patrick’s day.
Our estimable deputy First Minister, the occasionally electable Emma Little-Pengelly, says allowing me a vote in the next Presidential election would be to “overstep the mark”. She went on: “In relation to presidential voting rights, Northern Ireland has a head of state, and that head of state reflects the political reality. It's the difference between a political reality and a political aspiration.”
Not surprisingly, Emma didn’t elaborate on the nature of our political reality, which is that while anyone with an Irish passport can become the Irish head of state, not everyone can become the British head of state. The first bar excludes half the people in these six counties, as the monarch can’t be a Catholic. Sorry, a Roman Catholic. The second exclusionary requirement is that the monarch must be a blood relative of a fat bloke who 600 years ago liked to have it off with foreign women and then chop their heads off.
That’s the political reality which Emma says I’m bound by – and the ticklish fact of the matter is that she’s right. But Catherine Connolly came from a family of 14 and was raised in rural poverty in the west of Ireland. Charles Windsor was delivered with golden forceps by royal surgeons who then walked backwards at a 90-degree crouch out of his mother’s chamber into one of the 500 other rooms in the palace.
The political reality that Emma didn’t mention is that most English people are still fairly happy with that political reality, even if Prince Andrew’s exploits make the Borgias look like the Waltons. At least half the people here – considerably more if we count non-Catholic republicans and Protestants not well-disposed towards towards the trafficking of minors – get sick in their mouths at the very thought of it. And if you think that’s bad, you want to see what anonymous randomers on the internet are saying about it.
