The marching season – when a section of Northern Ireland’s unionist community take to the streets to commemorate the triumph of William of Orange against James II – has always been a useful barometer of the Ulster loyalist mood.
Is the bonfire in bad taste? Yes. But should the people who erected it have to endure insufferable opprobrium from those who justify Kneecap telling their audience to ‘kill your MP’? Certainly not
From the 1960s, when Ulster Unionist MPs were barracked for their leadership’s dalliances with ecumenism, all the way to the 1980s and 90s when the right to march in certain areas came to the fore, Orange gatherings have given a sense of what the rank and file feel about Northern Ireland.
The 2025 bonfires – which traditionally start the Orange festivities – have kept up with the broader UK zeitgeist. Deep in County Tyrone, the bonfire in the town of Moygashel included an effigy of several figures in a boat above a banner which proclaimed, ‘Stop the Boats’. The flag of the Republic of Ireland soon joined it.
Outside of England, Northern Ireland has seen the biggest disturbances about demographic change in the past year. After Southport, Belfast saw protests and rioting, while in June there was violence in Ballymena, after two boys who required a Romanian interpreter in court were charged in connection with an alleged serious sexual assault.
South Belfast snobs and Irish nationalists view the effigy and all that goes with it as yet another ghastly example of poorly educated working-class Protestant thuggery and bad taste. The same people who in recent months were solemnly intoning about Kneecap’s right to artistic expression, were swift to condemn the pallet stackers of Moygashel. Police Service Northern Ireland are now investigating the ‘hate incident’.
This is classic Northern Irish whataboutery writ large. Is the bonfire in bad taste? Certainly yes. But should the people who erected it have to endure a police investigation and insufferable opprobrium from those who have bent backwards to justify Kneecap telling their audience to ‘kill your MP’? Certainly not.
Much of Orange pageantry can undoubtedly be crass. In South Belfast, a bonfire was lit on an asbestos riven site close to the energy infrastructure which powers two hospitals. The PSNI ignored a Belfast City Council vote to take it down after paramilitaries threatened disorder if it was removed. What cause this serves the Union is anyone’s guess.
Beyond the outrage about the banner, however, the most interesting thing about it is that it demonstrates the increasing prevalence of the backlash against illegal migration in the Northern Irish social and political firmament.
South of the border, the liberal world view of painless assimilation has been rocked to its core by increased immigration. Now the thorny issue of migration, ethnicity and demographics has been layered on top of Northern Ireland’s existing divisions.
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