LIVING in Belfast isn’t great for a bloke like me. Over my long decades at the coalface of local weekly journalism, I’ve reported on and experienced so much violence and bad news in this city that there’s barely a corner I can walk round without being reminded of some part of it. And I don’t like this city much because of it.
I think it’s a mean place that bears the fading scars of its past with a wince and a snarl. An ugly place that wears its glumly striking and vainglorious industrial age architecture heavily, awkwardly and literally. A place woefully short of the playful irony and sense of mischief that makes similar cities elsewhere bearable to generations who knew nothing of their cities’ past prosperity and instead live among the debris of its collapse. I don’t feel – and never have felt – a part of this city. It’s always felt to me more of a theatre set than a home and the play that’s been on stage longer than The Mousetrap is an unendingly bleak and monochrome production.
I suspect my difficult relationship with the city of my birth might be PTSD. I’m reluctant to put that out there because self-diagnosis is never a good idea. You don’t need me to tell you that if Mr Google is your consultant he’ll take you on a rollercoaster ride of relief, fear, hope and despair after which all that remains is to decide i) when to tell your loved ones the bad news and ii) whether it might be a good idea to start putting your affairs in order.
But if auto-contracting your physical healthcare is a bad idea, lying on an imaginary couch and inquiring after your own mental health in a bad east European accent is a terrible one. Nevertheless, I don’t think yer average shrink would snort in derision if I suggested to them that the reason I don’t much like my own city is because it’s full of dark and unsettling stories and memories.
But more even than the people and the families and their stories and their memories, it’s the still-daily visual determiners of a city that’s pickled in self-pity and sense of uniquely unbearable grievance that leads me to give my city a no-bubble TripAdvisor review. The flags, the murals, the bonfires, the songs and the marches are a constant reminder of a reminder and I can’t stand it. But here’s the kicker: I can’t stand any of it.
If I know five words of the Irish national anthem – as Gaeilge nó Béarla – I’d be surprised; and what’s more I’m never going to learn it. In the occasional and heated debates about the flag of a new Ireland, I’m on the side not of keeping or replacing the tricolour, I’m on the side of can we talk about painting radiators instead? Statues leave me cold as the marble and granite they’re made of, regardless of who’s holding the gun or sword; murals make me glaze over, no matter the stance of the subject on the national question. Not only am I most assuredly not a patriot, I’m not sure why humans are so proprietorial about the geographical throw of a dice which is their place of birth. The symbols in which I’m supposed to find sanctuary and solace in a city that’s a life-size diorama of loyalty and Britishness don’t draw me to them. And while my aversion to what I suppose we should call for handiness’ sake ‘flags and stuff’ is likely PTSD connected too, it might well be that my Livingstone ancestry, about which only a pitiful amount is known, let it be said, also plays a significant part.
So when Deputy Chief Constable Bobby Singleton announced that he’s drawing a line in the sand when it comes to flags and displays and that he intends from here on in to intervene decisively where paramilitary displays are imposed on or around buildings, houses, streets and communities, I was less than impressed. Not because the prospect of fewer flags and stuff wouldn’t give me a lift on the dullest of Mondays – it most assuredly would; I was less than impressed because we’ve been here before; many times. I’m sick hearing cops down through the years on the radio telling me they’ll act on flags and stuff when and where it is safe and proportionate to do so. And guess what: Bobby and the lads aren’t going to do a damn thing about flags and stuff unless it’s safe and proportionate to do so, because it would be horrible policing practice to do anything else. Which is to say that Bobby’s vow – like the vows of countless senior Trevors before him – means nothing and will mean nothing. If the boys in green go in to remove a loyalist flag from a lamppost outside a special needs school they will only do it if the inevitable result isn’t more flags. In other words, if the area is sufficiently mixed to ensure that those who would like to respond by putting up scores more flags to replace the one removed would find it impossible to do so without significant scrutiny of their persons, movements and actions. The group behind the disastrous loyalist flag protests has launched a ‘Raise the Flags’ campaign in response to the prospect of the PSNI removing their god-given right to remind children with multiple complex needs of the sacrifice the Shankill Butchers made on their behalf, so the question is, does loyal Ulster Whack-a-Mole on a grand scale lie ahead?
Failing to act, say Bobby and the boys, is no longer an option. Okay, gimme a second here… I’m just marking the date and time of writing before I say what I’m going to say. Let’s see now… 11.27pm, Tuesday, February 18. That’s it. Mark it and here goes:
Bobby and the boys are going to continue to fail to act on flags and stuff in the vast majority of instances and failing to act on flags and stuff will not only remain an option, it will remain the policy. And the memory of Bobby’s heroic press conference will be stored away with the other heroic PSNI press conferences in a file marked ‘Let’s hope they bought it. Again.’
As for my tricolour, if Bobby and the boys make a token effort to do the right thing, then in a place where the flag problem is overwhelmingly a loyal one, tricolours are going to be mere collateral damage. 95 per cent of deliberately inflammatory flags are in places where the scent of encroaching incense hangs in the air to a backdrop of the gentle click of rosary beads. But if you think only 5 per cent of the flag jobs carried out by Bobby and the boys will be against Papist displays, then I’ve a Child of Prague to sell you. And if Bobby and the boys by their actions suggest that flags in this little corner of Paradise are a 50-50, tit-for-tat-type deal then perhaps I’m going to have to learn – finally – to love the trickler.
