IT doesn't take a Hercule Poirot to deduce why St Patrick's Day is not a public holiday in the North while for the Twelfth – celebrated by a minority of the populace and from one community only – there are TWO public holidays.
The reason for this anomaly, oversight, bias (take your pick) is that in the eyes of the former majority, St Patrick was for Papists and therefore not to be encouraged.
Such a belief is nonsensical, of course. St Patrick predates the schism between Catholics and Protestants by a thousand years.
Nevertheless, under Stormont rule, St Patrick's Day was simply erased from the holiday calendar. True, public servants, were given the day off – even in the one-party Stormont and City Hall of old – but any events associated with saluting the Patron Saint of Ireland were to be strictly avoided.
During the dark days of conflict there was one exception to the ban on St Patrick's Day celebrations: The UDR were lined out with obligatory wolfhound by the powers-that-be to receive sprigs of shamrock from a visiting royal. Indeed, that quaint custom endures to this day – witness the gushing coverage on the BBC website this week: 'Kate drinks Guinness at St Patrick's Day event'. The Irish Guards stood in for the late and unlamented UDR, but the sentiment was the same.
Apart from the UDR knees-up when unionists were in the driving seat, St Patrick's was a day when nervous nationalists were reminded of their second-class citizenship. And the blame didn't fall solely with the governing authorities. In workplaces, the culture of discrimination stretched beyond Orange arches in the shipyard and the Sirocco Works to preventing Catholics from taking a day off — even on their own time. Last week we reported on a seminal civil rights case from 1983 when ten brave Catholic workers at the Ford Autolite plant in West Belfast were denied leave on March 17 to celebrate the Saint's Day while their Protestant colleagues were granted time off on the same day to attend the opening of a new lounge at Balmoral Golf Club.
Thankfully, time has marched on. Gone are the days when the West Belfast community had to organise its own St Patrick's Day parade, complete with Mickey Marley's roundabout, along the Falls. In its place came a city centre parade which overcame pushback from the crumbling unionist majority in City Hall to morph into the day-long carnival we enjoy today.
Old wrongs have been righted and in Belfast today, St Patrick's Day is celebated across the community. On the Shankill, there's a festival and a parade, on the peaceline there's a cross-community fest, and the city centre is chock-a-block with fun-filled activities for locals and visitors alike.
Indeed, the only thing missing is that St Patrick's remains a bank holiday and not a public holiday. Thus state schools remain open (at the discretion of the principal) as do some integrated schools and many places of business, from the Port of Belfast to car dealerships.
If St Patrick's was to be designated a public holiday, the growing acceptance of Naomh Pádraig across traditional divides would only be accelerated. In short, it would fit perfectly with the Executive's mission of 'Together Building a United Community'.
Why none of our elected representatives have championed the demand for St Patrick's Day to be made a public holiday is beyond us, but we have no doubt such a move would receive a hearty céad míle fáilte from workers and schoolchildren from across the community.
After all, if St Patrick's Day can be a public holiday on the Other Emerald Isle in the Caribbean, the tiny island of Monserrat with its 4,300 populace, and can be a public holiday for the longshoremen of New York and New Jersey who close the port to celebrate the Saint's Day, then why can't it be a full holiday in the part of the island where St Patrick lived and is buried?
