Cultural Journal 10 - Bubble Bubble, Toil And . . .

When Dr. Chown told us that we should go to Belfast our first weekend because of marching season, it seemed like good advice, but perhaps a bit overwrought. Although we’d learned something about the Troubles, and gotten a crash course from Dr. Chown as he was suggesting this to us, I knew that the peace process had been going on for decades, and figured that there might be some bad sentiment, but that things couldn’t still be all that bad. After all, some preliminary research I’d done made clear that things had improved, that Orange Order marches had been less intrusive on Catholic neighborhoods, and in general the Marching Season had become a far tamer affair. Although we took Dr. Chown’s advice, I felt at the time that it was overkill.
Good grief was I wrong. The violence during Marching Season this year was staggering, with news reports of casualties and daily footage of the violence. It was shocking to see an individual on tape throwing Molotov cocktails at a line of police trucks and realize that not only was it happening on the same landmass I was on, it was happening in a place I myself had visited not two weeks previously. Shocked as I was, I’ll admit that I half expected the people of the Republic of Ireland to be supportive of the spirit, if not the violence, of the reaction to marching season, but when Keith and I spoke to our house mother about it she quickly condemned the whole affair. Having a son in the Garda, I’m sure she’s generally against any kind of violence towards the police, but her reaction made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with what was happening up there. As more news reached us of the violence, we heard reporters claiming that the violence was no longer about marching season, but instead anger about economic and social issues finding a convenient excuse to be vented. It took me awhile to wrap my head around the idea that this kind of violence in Northern Ireland might not actually be about religious or governmental loyalties, but that these loyalties were being used as a starting point for larger issues that might damn well cross those lines. Looking back on a time when I thought that I supported the struggle of the IRA in Northern Ireland for “freedom”, it makes me feel kind of dumb for thinking anything was ever that simple, and for sometimes falling into that same trap.