Loyalist Feuding, IRA Disarming, What
Difference Does It Make?
Difference Does It Make?
Part 1 - Soaked In Pessimism
Couple youngsters stood at the bus-shelter, battering biro pens
‘gainst the steel for to raise some rhythm of some sort,
hollerin along to a song somebody wrote way back when, but who
the fuck knows the identity of this elusive songsmith? It
weren't Dylan, far as I can tell, weren’t Porter, but still, no
matter nevermind, it belongs to these fellas now.
“We are!
We are!
We are the Billy Boys!
We are!
We are!
We are the Billy Boys!
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood
Surrender or you’ll die!
For we are the Billy Boys!”
Some sort of allegiance being professed by these fellas yet to
see the far side of a wank. Ten years old, I’d wager, although
granted, kids grow up quicker these days, so I’m told. Chances
are these tearaway hellions have three cars and a mortgage, a
job at the DHSS, a wife they can’t be bothered talking to.
On the TV a couple hours ago, kids in Belfast firing petrol
bombs and blast bombs and bricks at riot police, 40 officers
wounded, fire and blood and teeth every which way. The
authorities been making inroads with regards the individuals
involved in the ongoing Loyalist Feud, all these factions
splitting off from one another, all these letters scrawled
cross the fences, all these territorial piss-marks.
The UVF, the LVF, the UDA, all snarling at each other from the
sidelines, all keeping jealous guard of their own hookers and
heroin and bootleg porn. Maybe they still got banners waving,
declarations relating to “The Cause” and “No Surrender” but
that’s got fuck all to do with these recent skirmishes.
Nowadays the model seems to be some sort of half-arsed mafia,
all kindsa Corleone fantasies running wild, a whole new
generation of knuckle-scraping thugs linked with every
cretinous Neo-Nazi collective from here to Wisconsin, and all
in pursuit of The Green, as opposed to the orange.
So whilst the orange marches are passing through the streets in
the name of A British Northern Ireland, the folks who
supposedly defend the idea to the death are blowing fuck out
one another on account of The Smack Trade.
The police, the PSNI who sat back and watched the estates get
buggered blind by these rabid hounds, now they decide a few
token arrests are in order, and shock and awe when it turns out
the folks aren’t so keen on the idea.
These riots, the ones who know enough to be worth listening to,
they say it’s all a diversion. No way or no how the filth can
make an arrest, can pass a doorway on the damn street when the
pavings crack ‘neath the thunder of barbaric dementia.
Sitting in a café, I asked a friend about it all, a fella who
ain’t never made no secret of his affiliations, least to those
unlikely for to whip out an AK. Used to have a print hanging
‘bove his bed, LVF leader Billy Wright, dead and lain out in an
open-top casket. Dotted round about, slogans long the lines of
White Power, Only Good Nigger Is A Dead Nigger, these sortsa
things. Sortsa things would cause a man no end of anxiety if he
didn’t know that A- this fella had more desire to shock than to
necessarily offer any sort of worthwhile services to the
organisations in question, and B- if I didn’t see it in this
room, I just had to walk two doors down the street, just had to
note the graffiti on the alleyway walls.
So I had “Beat The Bastards” and “Stamp Out Sectarianism” and
“Nazi Punks Fuck Off” etched onto my bedroom door, and a number
of friends had the polar opposite, that’s how it went, that’s
how it goes.
So I’m asking this fella, “What the fuck’s with all this in-
fighting, anyroad?”
He sighs and wipes his nose. “Fucking arseholes have turned on
each other, and all the while the IRA are sweeping up left and
right.”
Thinking goes that the loyalist paramilitaries are so busy
shooting each other outside pubs that they fail to notice the
continuing advances of the republican variants. Thinking goes
that one day these loyalist cats are gonna be waking up
hungover and blinking teeth out their eyes and seeing an Irish
Government in Belfast.
If he don’t watch himself, a fella can start believing that it
all Means Something.
But these kids at the bus-shelter, far as they know, there’s no
rivalry amongst the protestants. Don’t be fucking stupid. The
loyalist paramilitaries are One Entity striving to keep
Northern Ireland free of Irish Rule. That’s the idea, the
reality is irrelevant.
Yet the papers say all about they ain’t got a bullet to spare
for anyone but a fellow protestant hell-bent on selling crack
on the wrong street.
Still, these young uns sing away, gloriously ignorant of the
ever-slipping façade.
“I was walkin’ down the Falls with a fuckin Tommy Gun,
I saw a Fenian coming, said nobody could stop ‘im,
So I shot ‘im,
And I watched that bastard die.”
These fellas at the bus-stop, they assume the riots are on
account of “Somethin to do with the IRA.”
Maybe the inner circles are running rings round one another,
but the further out you get, the more diminished the effect
becomes, until out here, hundred miles from those petrol bombs,
it’s still No Surrender, it’s still US versus THEM, not tiny
groups of US versus the rest.
It doesn’t matter to these fellas that the UVF and the LVF are
at each others throats, far as they’re concerned those groups
are one and the same, Loyal Ulster united gainst the advances
of Fenian Ireland.
A man can get accused of all sortsa cynicism and pessimism, but
this shrugging with regards Loyalist Feuds, it’s the same shrug
you see when politicians talk about Great Progress, the same
shrug when “The IRA” decided to disarm a couple days ago.
For 89% of the population, it don’t matter a fuck. What happens
in newspapers and TV bulletins and press conferences happens in
newspapers and TV bulletins and press conferences. These kids
aren’t in any organisation, these folks yacking about disarming
aren’t talking to anyone round here. When it stops being
official, it stops meaning a damn thing.
This is why, sitting in a bar on a Saturday night, a man feels
not one iota safer on account of its ok, some politician says
we’re moving forward. This is why the tension’s enough to break
a man’s spine, regardless of the Official Statements.
The most dangerous fuckers of either stripe are the ones that
don’t belong to any group whatsoever. The ones out of the reach
of any word on high.
The ones who’ll sit in the bar, and no-one knows what song to
put on the jukebox for fear of a knife fight resulting. The
ones who serve as Weekend Terrorists, the ones who ain’t got a
care in the world till 6pm on a Friday night, then suddenly
every remark is a Statement, every joke is a Threat.
These people don’t care that the UVF and the LVF aren’t friends
anymore, these folks don’t care that the IRA aren’t violent
anymore. All that is, is bureaucratic wank that ain’t got a
damn thing to do with how this fucker in the Celtic top or the
Rangers jacket just asked me for a fucking light. Ain’t got no
bearing on how I’m stood in the toilets and some cunt with a
London accent starts talking bout how beautiful “Ireland” is.
You’re not in Ireland, is what the sneer suggests.
Does a man good to sit in these pubs of an occasion, does the
memory a fine service. Just like the drunkard who sobers up and
starts forgetting all those times lain arse-naked in the far
corner of a car-park, a man far enough away from the day-to-day
can start feeling all sortsa optimistic with regards the
Political Climate.
Passing by in the train, looking out on those union jacks and
tricolours hung ragged on the top a lampposts, at murals that
ain’t been touched up in years, the guns looking all shoddy and
cracked, a geographical tattoo that’s been fading under work-
shirts for decades, a man gets to thinking something long the
lines of Well, it’s finally happening. Folks are finally saying
fuck it, it’s too much work keeping these prejudices in tow,
this bitterness needs more TLC than I can afford at this
junction.
Then it’s a stop-off in a town near the border with the kerbs
painted green, white and gold, with bunches a youths stood
outside taverns, now and again they burst into a song all about
the IRA or “Come out you Black an Tans!”
That one, at least, we can credit to Dominic Behan.
“Come out you Black and Tans, come out an fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell her how the IRA
Made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.”
Stay round long enough, it’s easy to predict when blood’s gonna
spill. It’s not gonna be a shoot-out, it’s not gonna be a
wildly dramatic affair, just gonna be the same as any bar fight
a man might encounter in any pub in the country at this time on
a Saturday evening.
In Antrim, maybe someone’s gonna make an ill-judged remark
about his boyfriend.
In Derry, maybe someone’s gonna knock a woman’s drink out of
her hand, purely accidental, and yet he’s not gonna apologize
in any way that pleases the lady’s husband.
And so, here, at some point, the joking in the far corner of
the back room is gonna get all shadesa ugly, someone’s gonna be
too far gone for to realize that the laughs stopped an hour
ago, it’s gonna be a stupid remark and an “Orange bastard” and
a pint-glass in the face.
Ant then it’s over, the folks get thrown out, the fella gets
stitches, everyone falls asleep after dawn.
No need for the TV cameras. No need for anyone but the local
reporters who’ll write a couple words about “Man Injured In Bar
Brawl”, no need for any patronizing voices talking about “A
conflict no-one understands” or some such wank.
No need for anyone to assume we ain’t Moving Forward.
And at half three in the morning, the toilets of the bar empty
save for two fellas rolling a joint and another fella poking
chunks of sick down the sink, conversation takes a couple
shuffles in the direction of The Politics.
“Have the IRA disarmed?”
“They say they have. Who the fuck’s the IRA, anyway? Fucking
Adams and McGuinness and a buncha cunts in suits throwing
quotes at reporters?”
A torrent of cheap cider and boiled rice flies out his face,
some of it missing the sink and now clinging to the wall-tiles.
“Have you disarmed?”
“I’m not in the IRA.”
He wipes his chin with the back of his hand.
If you got your ear close enough to the flare of the lighter,
you can hear a man’s optimism tumble to the back of the arse
afresh.
Out here, the Loyalist Feud means less than fuck. Out here, the
IRA Disarming means less again. Out in the sticks where the
organizations aren’t so organized, where it’s all too casual,
where a news camera’s never seen cause a lot of the time it
never gets so far as to result in a knife in the throat, out
here it’s still 1988. Tracy Chapman just released her debut
record. What’s that lyric?
“Don’t you know?
Talkin’ about a revolution sounds like a whisper.”
Yeah, that’s the one.
Let that banter raise the roofs in the student’s union bars and
the ministerial offices, but here you gotta strain really,
really fucking hard for to even catch the basic jist of it.
“One day it’ll disappear altogether.”
“Aye, or it might get louder.”
A man needs some hope of some kind.
Thanks folks.
Click Here For Part 2 - An Unexpected Optimism
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
‘gainst the steel for to raise some rhythm of some sort,
hollerin along to a song somebody wrote way back when, but who
the fuck knows the identity of this elusive songsmith? It
weren't Dylan, far as I can tell, weren’t Porter, but still, no
matter nevermind, it belongs to these fellas now.
“We are!
We are!
We are the Billy Boys!
We are!
We are!
We are the Billy Boys!
We’re up to our knees in Fenian blood
Surrender or you’ll die!
For we are the Billy Boys!”
Some sort of allegiance being professed by these fellas yet to
see the far side of a wank. Ten years old, I’d wager, although
granted, kids grow up quicker these days, so I’m told. Chances
are these tearaway hellions have three cars and a mortgage, a
job at the DHSS, a wife they can’t be bothered talking to.
On the TV a couple hours ago, kids in Belfast firing petrol
bombs and blast bombs and bricks at riot police, 40 officers
wounded, fire and blood and teeth every which way. The
authorities been making inroads with regards the individuals
involved in the ongoing Loyalist Feud, all these factions
splitting off from one another, all these letters scrawled
cross the fences, all these territorial piss-marks.
The UVF, the LVF, the UDA, all snarling at each other from the
sidelines, all keeping jealous guard of their own hookers and
heroin and bootleg porn. Maybe they still got banners waving,
declarations relating to “The Cause” and “No Surrender” but
that’s got fuck all to do with these recent skirmishes.
Nowadays the model seems to be some sort of half-arsed mafia,
all kindsa Corleone fantasies running wild, a whole new
generation of knuckle-scraping thugs linked with every
cretinous Neo-Nazi collective from here to Wisconsin, and all
in pursuit of The Green, as opposed to the orange.
So whilst the orange marches are passing through the streets in
the name of A British Northern Ireland, the folks who
supposedly defend the idea to the death are blowing fuck out
one another on account of The Smack Trade.
The police, the PSNI who sat back and watched the estates get
buggered blind by these rabid hounds, now they decide a few
token arrests are in order, and shock and awe when it turns out
the folks aren’t so keen on the idea.
These riots, the ones who know enough to be worth listening to,
they say it’s all a diversion. No way or no how the filth can
make an arrest, can pass a doorway on the damn street when the
pavings crack ‘neath the thunder of barbaric dementia.
Sitting in a café, I asked a friend about it all, a fella who
ain’t never made no secret of his affiliations, least to those
unlikely for to whip out an AK. Used to have a print hanging
‘bove his bed, LVF leader Billy Wright, dead and lain out in an
open-top casket. Dotted round about, slogans long the lines of
White Power, Only Good Nigger Is A Dead Nigger, these sortsa
things. Sortsa things would cause a man no end of anxiety if he
didn’t know that A- this fella had more desire to shock than to
necessarily offer any sort of worthwhile services to the
organisations in question, and B- if I didn’t see it in this
room, I just had to walk two doors down the street, just had to
note the graffiti on the alleyway walls.
So I had “Beat The Bastards” and “Stamp Out Sectarianism” and
“Nazi Punks Fuck Off” etched onto my bedroom door, and a number
of friends had the polar opposite, that’s how it went, that’s
how it goes.
So I’m asking this fella, “What the fuck’s with all this in-
fighting, anyroad?”
He sighs and wipes his nose. “Fucking arseholes have turned on
each other, and all the while the IRA are sweeping up left and
right.”
Thinking goes that the loyalist paramilitaries are so busy
shooting each other outside pubs that they fail to notice the
continuing advances of the republican variants. Thinking goes
that one day these loyalist cats are gonna be waking up
hungover and blinking teeth out their eyes and seeing an Irish
Government in Belfast.
If he don’t watch himself, a fella can start believing that it
all Means Something.
But these kids at the bus-shelter, far as they know, there’s no
rivalry amongst the protestants. Don’t be fucking stupid. The
loyalist paramilitaries are One Entity striving to keep
Northern Ireland free of Irish Rule. That’s the idea, the
reality is irrelevant.
Yet the papers say all about they ain’t got a bullet to spare
for anyone but a fellow protestant hell-bent on selling crack
on the wrong street.
Still, these young uns sing away, gloriously ignorant of the
ever-slipping façade.
“I was walkin’ down the Falls with a fuckin Tommy Gun,
I saw a Fenian coming, said nobody could stop ‘im,
So I shot ‘im,
And I watched that bastard die.”
These fellas at the bus-stop, they assume the riots are on
account of “Somethin to do with the IRA.”
Maybe the inner circles are running rings round one another,
but the further out you get, the more diminished the effect
becomes, until out here, hundred miles from those petrol bombs,
it’s still No Surrender, it’s still US versus THEM, not tiny
groups of US versus the rest.
It doesn’t matter to these fellas that the UVF and the LVF are
at each others throats, far as they’re concerned those groups
are one and the same, Loyal Ulster united gainst the advances
of Fenian Ireland.
A man can get accused of all sortsa cynicism and pessimism, but
this shrugging with regards Loyalist Feuds, it’s the same shrug
you see when politicians talk about Great Progress, the same
shrug when “The IRA” decided to disarm a couple days ago.
For 89% of the population, it don’t matter a fuck. What happens
in newspapers and TV bulletins and press conferences happens in
newspapers and TV bulletins and press conferences. These kids
aren’t in any organisation, these folks yacking about disarming
aren’t talking to anyone round here. When it stops being
official, it stops meaning a damn thing.
This is why, sitting in a bar on a Saturday night, a man feels
not one iota safer on account of its ok, some politician says
we’re moving forward. This is why the tension’s enough to break
a man’s spine, regardless of the Official Statements.
The most dangerous fuckers of either stripe are the ones that
don’t belong to any group whatsoever. The ones out of the reach
of any word on high.
The ones who’ll sit in the bar, and no-one knows what song to
put on the jukebox for fear of a knife fight resulting. The
ones who serve as Weekend Terrorists, the ones who ain’t got a
care in the world till 6pm on a Friday night, then suddenly
every remark is a Statement, every joke is a Threat.
These people don’t care that the UVF and the LVF aren’t friends
anymore, these folks don’t care that the IRA aren’t violent
anymore. All that is, is bureaucratic wank that ain’t got a
damn thing to do with how this fucker in the Celtic top or the
Rangers jacket just asked me for a fucking light. Ain’t got no
bearing on how I’m stood in the toilets and some cunt with a
London accent starts talking bout how beautiful “Ireland” is.
You’re not in Ireland, is what the sneer suggests.
Does a man good to sit in these pubs of an occasion, does the
memory a fine service. Just like the drunkard who sobers up and
starts forgetting all those times lain arse-naked in the far
corner of a car-park, a man far enough away from the day-to-day
can start feeling all sortsa optimistic with regards the
Political Climate.
Passing by in the train, looking out on those union jacks and
tricolours hung ragged on the top a lampposts, at murals that
ain’t been touched up in years, the guns looking all shoddy and
cracked, a geographical tattoo that’s been fading under work-
shirts for decades, a man gets to thinking something long the
lines of Well, it’s finally happening. Folks are finally saying
fuck it, it’s too much work keeping these prejudices in tow,
this bitterness needs more TLC than I can afford at this
junction.
Then it’s a stop-off in a town near the border with the kerbs
painted green, white and gold, with bunches a youths stood
outside taverns, now and again they burst into a song all about
the IRA or “Come out you Black an Tans!”
That one, at least, we can credit to Dominic Behan.
“Come out you Black and Tans, come out an fight me like a man,
Show your wife how you won medals down in Flanders,
Tell her how the IRA
Made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes of Killashandra.”
Stay round long enough, it’s easy to predict when blood’s gonna
spill. It’s not gonna be a shoot-out, it’s not gonna be a
wildly dramatic affair, just gonna be the same as any bar fight
a man might encounter in any pub in the country at this time on
a Saturday evening.
In Antrim, maybe someone’s gonna make an ill-judged remark
about his boyfriend.
In Derry, maybe someone’s gonna knock a woman’s drink out of
her hand, purely accidental, and yet he’s not gonna apologize
in any way that pleases the lady’s husband.
And so, here, at some point, the joking in the far corner of
the back room is gonna get all shadesa ugly, someone’s gonna be
too far gone for to realize that the laughs stopped an hour
ago, it’s gonna be a stupid remark and an “Orange bastard” and
a pint-glass in the face.
Ant then it’s over, the folks get thrown out, the fella gets
stitches, everyone falls asleep after dawn.
No need for the TV cameras. No need for anyone but the local
reporters who’ll write a couple words about “Man Injured In Bar
Brawl”, no need for any patronizing voices talking about “A
conflict no-one understands” or some such wank.
No need for anyone to assume we ain’t Moving Forward.
And at half three in the morning, the toilets of the bar empty
save for two fellas rolling a joint and another fella poking
chunks of sick down the sink, conversation takes a couple
shuffles in the direction of The Politics.
“Have the IRA disarmed?”
“They say they have. Who the fuck’s the IRA, anyway? Fucking
Adams and McGuinness and a buncha cunts in suits throwing
quotes at reporters?”
A torrent of cheap cider and boiled rice flies out his face,
some of it missing the sink and now clinging to the wall-tiles.
“Have you disarmed?”
“I’m not in the IRA.”
He wipes his chin with the back of his hand.
If you got your ear close enough to the flare of the lighter,
you can hear a man’s optimism tumble to the back of the arse
afresh.
Out here, the Loyalist Feud means less than fuck. Out here, the
IRA Disarming means less again. Out in the sticks where the
organizations aren’t so organized, where it’s all too casual,
where a news camera’s never seen cause a lot of the time it
never gets so far as to result in a knife in the throat, out
here it’s still 1988. Tracy Chapman just released her debut
record. What’s that lyric?
“Don’t you know?
Talkin’ about a revolution sounds like a whisper.”
Yeah, that’s the one.
Let that banter raise the roofs in the student’s union bars and
the ministerial offices, but here you gotta strain really,
really fucking hard for to even catch the basic jist of it.
“One day it’ll disappear altogether.”
“Aye, or it might get louder.”
A man needs some hope of some kind.
Thanks folks.
Click Here For Part 2 - An Unexpected Optimism
Fling The Duke An Email or Leave A Message
