Ugly, dated, divisive... why bonfires on both sides are a sad race to the bottom

Loyalists won a clear legal victory when the high court refused to order the PSNI to help remove the pyre. But is lighting fires in public places really what we should be defending in 2021 — and it doesn’t matter to me which side of the sectarian divide they’re on.

There are completely conflicting narratives around the Adam Street bonfire. Unionists say they can’t see any problem with it. They insist it’s sufficiently far back from the interface and that others are going out of their way to be offended.

They accuse Sinn Fein of deliberately ramping up the pressure and  the SDLP of being scared not to follow its electoral rival in case it loses votes in North Belfast next May.

Nationalists maintain their objections are legitimate. They say that the site is a magnet for anti-social activity, and that there’s a lengthy list of complaints from local residents and businesses.

They point to footage showing a man driving golf balls from the top of the bonfire into the New Lodge, and claim cars and homes have been damaged.

Tigers Bay boxing champion Carl Frampton says it is a “positive move forward” that flags, effigies and posters haven’t been placed on the pyre. Community activists must work to ensure it stays that way on Sunday night.

There is a shameful history of hateful images on bonfires on both sides of the political divide.

Last year, a sign saying ‘KAT’ — Kill All Taigs — appeared on the children’s bonfire in Rathcoole in Newtownabbey. Let that sink in. A genocidal message at an event organised for youngsters.

An effigy of Martin McGuinness in his coffin was placed on an east Belfast bonfire just three months after his death.

You can be a stringent critic of the ex-IRA leader and his political party, yet find the idea of his face stuck on a mock casket going up in flames crude, ugly and crass.

Sinn Fein has strenuously opposed August bonfires in republican areas, but not always successfully.

In recent years, we have seen the placing of the names of murdered prison and police officers on a pyre in the Bogside.

Mindless morons thought it fitting to gloat about the deaths of David Black, Adrian Ismay, Stephen Carroll and Ronan Kerr.

In Newry, a bonfire was bedecked with offensive messages including ‘KAH’ — Kill All Huns.

Other signs celebrated the death of 18 soldiers in Narrow Water — “18 Brits blown to bits”. One mocked the late IRA victims’ campaigner Willie Frazer — ‘Join your da in hell, Willie’.

If the attitude is ‘them’uns do it so us’uns will do it too’, then we are all doomed.

Even without offensive emblems, I see very little positive in bonfires. There is nothing liberating about inflicting an eyesore on your own neighbours which all too often can become a hive of anti-social activity for weeks before it’s lit.

Real leadership on both sides of the divide must involve trying to move communities on from assembling around pyres in July or August. Too often in the summer, common sense and civility go up in smoke.

Ivana’s Dublin triumph

While all eyes up north have focused on Sinn Fein’s rise in the Republic, Labour’s Ivana Bacik secured a big win in last week’s Dublin Bay South by-election.

I first met her 18 years ago when I worked in Dublin, where she was involved in nearly every progressive campaign going.

Sinn Fein was always going to struggle in a constituency which houses many of the city’s poshest suburbs.

The smart money was on Bacik. Choosing the wrong candidate backfired on Fine Gael, and Fianna Fail flopped.

But the woman who hit the headlines along with the new TD was independent candidate Dolores Cahill, who created a scene outside the count centre after she was refused entry for not wearing a mask.

The result was very clear-cut for her. Cahill secured just 169 first-preference votes.

A spoilt, selfish schemer

“Age 19 I became one half of the Peru Two and owner of the world’s most famous up-do,” jokes Michaella McCollum about how she wore her hair in a bun at the time of her 2013 arrest.

A new BBC documentary, High: Confessions of an Ibiza Drug Mule, is based on her memoir.

I’ve no sympathy for her. She played the victim and tried to play us. We were to believe a grave miscarriage of justice had occurred with an innocent Irish girl. She’s a spoilt, selfish manipulative little minx.