SATURDAY sees the annual Brian Robinson Memorial Parade celebration on the Shankill. And celebration it most certainly is, going by the past footage, which shows the event to be rambunctious and supremacist in nature, with many bands giving it their kick-the-Pope best.
The sound of the bands can be heard loud and clear in Ardoyne, where the UVF man being celebrated shot dead innocent Catholic Paddy McKenna before himself being shot dead by British undercover troops in September 1989.
That can’t be easy for the Ardoyne community, and it especially can’t be easy for the family and friends of Mr McKenna. Nevertheless, the parade can be said to be either welcomed or tolerated by the majority of people in the Shankill and Woodvale area, and since that area is entirely loyalist, we say that community has a right to remember its dead, regardless of what others might think of the nature of the event or the man and the organisation being feted.
If we all took this sanguine, if difficult, position then things would be a lot easier when it comes to the vexed issue of remembrance and the past. The vast majority of the community of West Belfast admires and supports the hunger strikers, for instance, and that is reflected in the public esteem in which they are held. But across the city entirely different views of Bobby Sands and his comrades are held. The difference, of course, is that those who are loudest in their condemnation of republicans fall silent when it comes to displays of support for loyalist paramilitaries.
Every single one of the bands which will parade on the Shankill on Sunday in support of the UVF have featured in so-called loyal order parades – July 1, July 12th, August 12th, the last Saturday of August and so on. And every single one of these events will have been publicised and positively flagged up by the overwhelmingly unionist media, who show an utter lack of curiosity about the nature of the bands which make up the musical aspect of the loyalist marching season which they annually promote.
The joyous colour pull-outs in the newspapers and the happy-clappy evening TV round-ups all feature the same bands which this Saturday will switch from celebrating the reformed faith to celebrating a murderous gang of sectarian killers and drug dealers still extremely active and leeching off the communities they claim to serve.
The Jekyll and Hyde nature of the loyalist band scene is enabled and empowered by the ambiguous attitude taken towards them by the unionist media. The same newspapers and radio and television stations which run shock-horror stories about Sinn Féin reps attending IRA commemorations are content to promote bands which they know full well divide their time between official loyal order events and UVF and UDA celebrations and commemorations.
Let them crack on – heaven knows we’re used to it now. But let’s have less of the thundering hypocrisy.
