Rioting

I hate the Northern Ireland ‘thing’. To be honest, I don’t care if there is a United Ireland, econmically it is probably better that there isn’t. I am a Catholic but not a Nationalist or Republican and I do not differentiate between people according to religion. I just don’t care, I know about politics, I have a degree in law and politics so it is not that I am unaware of all the problems that Nationalists have suffered, I just think it is time to move on.

So, this is how I knew things were bad in Belfast today. I was around North Queen Street and wasn’t sure if it was ‘green’ or ‘orange’, then I saw a few blokes with Celtic tops and I relaxed palpably. I felt so much tension in the air that the traditional symbols of division comforted me. I know logically that the guys I saw in these tops, at other times would be a threat, but I felt relieved.

The Orange Order is a disgrace, they have caused all this tension and public unrest for no reason. How can they proclaim to be a Christian organisation while calling people onto the street to fight and indeed fighting themselves? It baffles me that the things people can justify for their own side will be absolutely unjustifiable when the ‘other side’ do the same thing next year.

The Order have the cheek to say that the police were heavy handed, so would I be with a petrol bomb being thrown at me, and what do they think the police did to Nationalists for many years, ask politely “can we intern you without trial and without any real evidence that you have comitted a crime, please sir?” Did they accept heavy handed police methods as excuses for Republican violence? Don’t make me laugh. And the police and army used methods latter classified as torture on Nationalists, slightly more serious than what happened in Belfast on Saturday 10th September.

The worst thing is, as in most riots in NI, the people that really suffer are those in the rioting community. I saw a woman today who must have been about 80, at 8 o’clock this morning on the Crumlin Road clearing up debris from her front garden, while those who were rioting the night before were no doubt sleeping off their hangovers.

They may feel marginalised but things were so discriminatory for so long that they have to give things up to make things equal, this is expected and only fair. They should have a bit of compassion and common sense, they are harming no one but themselves fighting over a petty insignificant little walk, they are pathetic and the international community is seeing them for what they are, thugs.