Kate Rice ✍ On another day in the city, I accidentally wandered into the remains of an Orange march, with another one promised on the horizon.
I didn’t see the actual march. I didn’t want to. I had no desire to witness more of the spectacle that had made my dad so passionate, and ultimately, so small-minded. The march that had passed through earlier had left urban chaos in its wake - the street choked with rubbish and empty plastic bottles. Despite it, the air was tense with anticipation for the next. People lined the pavements, settling into folding camping chairs like they were preparing for Glastonbury.
I watched a crowd dressed in bright orange t-shirts, the Red Hand of Ulster plastered boldly across their chests. One woman stood out, completely smothered in the Union Jack - right down to a sparkling red white and blue bowler hat.
I know I am supposed to be here to learn. I know I am supposed to lean away from my inherent biases and view every side of this fractured city with an open mind. But as I looked at them, I realized my capacity for open-mindedness had a strict and painful boundary. I cannot look at the culture my dad came from with the same generous, seeking eyes I gave to West Belfast.
To me, Loyalism isn’t an abstract political identity or a different perspective on history. It is inextricably linked to my father’s alcoholism. It is the quiet backdrop to the violence of my childhood. The flags and the far away pattering of drums didn't feel like a cultural celebration, but the visual language of the beast that had lived in my own home. Standing on that littered street, trying to force myself to understand a culture that hurt me felt less like learning, and more like rubbing salt an old wound I had long thought healed. I had to walk away.
It makes me feel bad to write this down. I came here wanting to learn, wanting to be entirely equal and fair, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels selfish, in a way, to wilfully look away from an entire half of this city's culture.
But how can I look at a celebration of his identity and not see him? All I have ever learned or heard from my dad is bigoted rhetoric and pure, unadulterated hatefulness. When I see their flags and hear their songs, I don't see a community. I see my dad’s pride in being a British soldier, I hear his visceral hatred toward Republicanism, towards immigrants, towards Other.
My mind instantly flashes back to my developmental years - years spent in a perpetual state of terror, walking on eggshells just to appease a volatile man. I did everything I could to make sure he wouldn't abandon me, or worse, raise a hand to me the way he so easily did to my mum. The people lining the streets for the march might see a proud tradition, but to me, that pride is stained. It is the language of the man whose born history ruled my childhood. To ask myself to look at Loyalism with open, objective eyes isn't just a historical exercise, it's asking myself to forgive the violence in my own history before I am ready. For now, my open eyes are reserved for the places that don't look like him - though I hope with time, I can view the North in its entirety without my personal feelings covering my eyes.
Following Charlie’s advice, I dropped into the Rock Bar. The moment I crossed the threshold, the bartender caught my eye and smiled. The immediate ease of the place washed over me. I ordered a Coke and asked him where else I should visit. Without hesitation, he suggested the Felons Club. He told me it was a place where people who had lived right through the heart of the conflict gathered, and that many of them, on occasion, were happy to share a few words of their own personal history.
Buoyed by the welcome, I walked back to the house to collect my partner. I asked the woman at the bar if there was anyone who might be kind enough to talk me through the history of the photos dotted around the place. A man named Gerard, wearing a Celtic shirt, generously offered to show me the history lining the walls. He walked us through a gallery of memory and respect. There were pictures of famous rebels, the hunger strikers, the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and the tragic story of Tom Williams, a young man executed in prison whose body was later secured by the IRA just so he could be buried alongside his mammy, as he had wished. There was art depicting the coffin boats of the Great Famine, and then, upstairs, the most delicate testament to human endurance: harps, crosses, and chairs painstakingly carved and crafted by the prisoners of Long Kesh.
I’ll confess, I got a bit teary eyed. The woman behind the bar caught sight of my tears and looked genuinely surprised by my emotion. I realized then the vast distance between us. To her, this raw, heavy history was an everyday reality she had long learned to respect and live beside. To me, stepping into it with fresh eyes, the visual evidence of so much collective grief was a visceral, overwhelming shock to the system.
The ideas I’d had about it being a conflict of ideals and politics was sort of slapped straight out of my head. Just crosses and harps, carved by the hands of ordinary men in cells, often dressed only with a blanket as part of their humanitarian protest to be treated as prisoners of war.
On another day, I visited the Falls exhibit at an old primary school and listened to an audio archive of the curfew implemented on the Falls. How Belfast had started as a small town, the linen mills, and the inequality in job and housing allocation between the Catholic and Protestant communities. Inevitably, I cried again. There’s this bit where they show you a ten minute film of footage from the curfew, and other events including when police broke into a Sinn Fein office in 1964 and confiscated the tricolour from the window, and the burning of homes in the area. You can see families just carrying their furniture through the street while these great big orange flames burst through window frames and lick up the brick sides.
On the 15th, we travelled to Drogheda by train and met with Christopher Owens and TPQ’s patriarch himself, Anthony McIntyre. We sat in a gorgeous little pub garden and spoke the world. I gave my thoughts on some things but it was an honour to sit back and listen to these two men who had both experienced the conflict in some regard speak of their personal history - and their taste in music, books, and drinking spirits. For this I must give my thanks to both gentlemen for their welcoming hospitality, their endless patience for my naive questions, and Christopher’s suggestion of a pre-pub Dominoes.
I fly home on the 17th, and already the thought of leaving is saddening me. There’s still so much I wish to see and hear and listen to. I am both pleased and embarrassed to say that my naive optimism and view of a complicated history remains intact - I hold hope for a United Ireland, a peaceful future, and many more such naked conversations about the burden of heritage. Belfast, you have been a dream to me. No longer will I imagine a shadowed beast and whispered history, inaccessible to those who didn’t live through the days of gunfire and fear. Thank you for your patience with me. One day I will come back with both eyes open, unburdened by personal history so that I might properly appreciate yours.
I watched a crowd dressed in bright orange t-shirts, the Red Hand of Ulster plastered boldly across their chests. One woman stood out, completely smothered in the Union Jack - right down to a sparkling red white and blue bowler hat.
I know I am supposed to be here to learn. I know I am supposed to lean away from my inherent biases and view every side of this fractured city with an open mind. But as I looked at them, I realized my capacity for open-mindedness had a strict and painful boundary. I cannot look at the culture my dad came from with the same generous, seeking eyes I gave to West Belfast.
To me, Loyalism isn’t an abstract political identity or a different perspective on history. It is inextricably linked to my father’s alcoholism. It is the quiet backdrop to the violence of my childhood. The flags and the far away pattering of drums didn't feel like a cultural celebration, but the visual language of the beast that had lived in my own home. Standing on that littered street, trying to force myself to understand a culture that hurt me felt less like learning, and more like rubbing salt an old wound I had long thought healed. I had to walk away.
It makes me feel bad to write this down. I came here wanting to learn, wanting to be entirely equal and fair, but I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels selfish, in a way, to wilfully look away from an entire half of this city's culture.
But how can I look at a celebration of his identity and not see him? All I have ever learned or heard from my dad is bigoted rhetoric and pure, unadulterated hatefulness. When I see their flags and hear their songs, I don't see a community. I see my dad’s pride in being a British soldier, I hear his visceral hatred toward Republicanism, towards immigrants, towards Other.
My mind instantly flashes back to my developmental years - years spent in a perpetual state of terror, walking on eggshells just to appease a volatile man. I did everything I could to make sure he wouldn't abandon me, or worse, raise a hand to me the way he so easily did to my mum. The people lining the streets for the march might see a proud tradition, but to me, that pride is stained. It is the language of the man whose born history ruled my childhood. To ask myself to look at Loyalism with open, objective eyes isn't just a historical exercise, it's asking myself to forgive the violence in my own history before I am ready. For now, my open eyes are reserved for the places that don't look like him - though I hope with time, I can view the North in its entirety without my personal feelings covering my eyes.
Following Charlie’s advice, I dropped into the Rock Bar. The moment I crossed the threshold, the bartender caught my eye and smiled. The immediate ease of the place washed over me. I ordered a Coke and asked him where else I should visit. Without hesitation, he suggested the Felons Club. He told me it was a place where people who had lived right through the heart of the conflict gathered, and that many of them, on occasion, were happy to share a few words of their own personal history.
Buoyed by the welcome, I walked back to the house to collect my partner. I asked the woman at the bar if there was anyone who might be kind enough to talk me through the history of the photos dotted around the place. A man named Gerard, wearing a Celtic shirt, generously offered to show me the history lining the walls. He walked us through a gallery of memory and respect. There were pictures of famous rebels, the hunger strikers, the leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising, and the tragic story of Tom Williams, a young man executed in prison whose body was later secured by the IRA just so he could be buried alongside his mammy, as he had wished. There was art depicting the coffin boats of the Great Famine, and then, upstairs, the most delicate testament to human endurance: harps, crosses, and chairs painstakingly carved and crafted by the prisoners of Long Kesh.
I’ll confess, I got a bit teary eyed. The woman behind the bar caught sight of my tears and looked genuinely surprised by my emotion. I realized then the vast distance between us. To her, this raw, heavy history was an everyday reality she had long learned to respect and live beside. To me, stepping into it with fresh eyes, the visual evidence of so much collective grief was a visceral, overwhelming shock to the system.
The ideas I’d had about it being a conflict of ideals and politics was sort of slapped straight out of my head. Just crosses and harps, carved by the hands of ordinary men in cells, often dressed only with a blanket as part of their humanitarian protest to be treated as prisoners of war.
On another day, I visited the Falls exhibit at an old primary school and listened to an audio archive of the curfew implemented on the Falls. How Belfast had started as a small town, the linen mills, and the inequality in job and housing allocation between the Catholic and Protestant communities. Inevitably, I cried again. There’s this bit where they show you a ten minute film of footage from the curfew, and other events including when police broke into a Sinn Fein office in 1964 and confiscated the tricolour from the window, and the burning of homes in the area. You can see families just carrying their furniture through the street while these great big orange flames burst through window frames and lick up the brick sides.
On the 15th, we travelled to Drogheda by train and met with Christopher Owens and TPQ’s patriarch himself, Anthony McIntyre. We sat in a gorgeous little pub garden and spoke the world. I gave my thoughts on some things but it was an honour to sit back and listen to these two men who had both experienced the conflict in some regard speak of their personal history - and their taste in music, books, and drinking spirits. For this I must give my thanks to both gentlemen for their welcoming hospitality, their endless patience for my naive questions, and Christopher’s suggestion of a pre-pub Dominoes.
I fly home on the 17th, and already the thought of leaving is saddening me. There’s still so much I wish to see and hear and listen to. I am both pleased and embarrassed to say that my naive optimism and view of a complicated history remains intact - I hold hope for a United Ireland, a peaceful future, and many more such naked conversations about the burden of heritage. Belfast, you have been a dream to me. No longer will I imagine a shadowed beast and whispered history, inaccessible to those who didn’t live through the days of gunfire and fear. Thank you for your patience with me. One day I will come back with both eyes open, unburdened by personal history so that I might properly appreciate yours.
⏩Kate Rice is a peace baby.
2020
