WE’VE had some memorable Remembrance Sundays down through the years in the city of Belfast, but this year’s promises to be the most divisive, strange and confusing of the lot.
That nationalists and republicans for long years turned their back on the Cenotaph was no surprise to anyone – least of all those unionists who pretended to be scandalised and disgusted by the decision of the SDLP and Sinn Féin to stay away from the bugle’s blast and the martial tramp of feet. Poppy season is not just about the young men fed into the mincer of the Great War or the conscripts who liberated Europe, it encompasses every aspect and every branch of the British armed services, including those who perpetrated atrocities on the streets and fields of the North. The main unionist parties reminded us at every turn with their flags and their exclusionary rhetoric that this was ‘their’ time of year; the loyalist paramilitaries, who ensure that there are poppies in profusion on their wreaths and breasts and murals, send out an even stronger message.
There has been a welcome rapprochement in recent years that has seen the two main nationalist parties turn up at memorial events, notably the premier act of remembrance at the Cenotaph in the grounds of City Hall. This has come about thanks to two main drivers: i) an increasing recognition that those many Catholics, nationalists and republicans who died in the two World Wars are deserving of tribute and not convenient amnesia; and ii) a desire by Sinn Féin and the SDLP to reach out to the unionist community despite the obstacles, in the knowledge that Remembrance Sunday is a precious and sacred aspect of unionist and Protestant culture. That progress is something to be treasured and encouraged. Old enmities have travelled across the decades to become modern dividers, but the idea that the Cenotaph can be turned from contested ground into a space of courageous if fragile harmony is one that’s worth fighting like hell for – without regiments and tanks.
The DUP disagrees. The DUP has decided that the value of increasing cross-community outreach at the Cenotaph lies not in the hope it hands us for the future, but in its utility as a greasy bargaining chip. In order to ban Michelle O’Neill from appearing at the Cenotaph as First Minister on Sunday morning, the DUP have banned their own deputy First Minister from paying tribute to the fallen.
It’s hard to think of anything more cynical – or more desperate. But it’s entirely of a piece with the startling ineptitude that has marked the largest unionist party’s handling of this manufactured new Drumcree crisis. Do senior party figures think ordinary voters who cherish Remembrance Sunday as a chance to pay off part of a solemn debt of life and honour will be impressed by their decision to ‘punish’ Michelle O’Neill by insulting the war dead? We don’t think they will.
Why?
Because honour is non-negotiable.
