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Showing posts with label Clifford Peeples. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Clifford Peeples. Show all posts
Anthony McIntyre  ☠ Last month, writing in TPQ, Brian Trainor described the rise of racism in Newry and the challenge to it from the local community and the trade union movement. 

That piece leapt immediately to mind upon reading of the attack on the Sinn Fein office in the city where 'a viable explosive device' was used. This came a month after racist protests were staged, and Sinn Fein had lent its name to a proposal allowing Newry to join the City of Sanctuary network.

A few miles south of Newry and extending throughout the remainder of the twenty six counties is a particular loathing for Sinn Fein by the far right. Part of the reason lies in it wishing to claim Sinn Fein's clothing as its own so that it might bulk out its uber nationalist credentials. The far right longs to clear the field of competitors to ownership of the national flag and displace Sinn Fein as the shrillest voice on the nationalist stage. A further not insignificant element in the racist loathing of Sinn Fein is that the party's activists have been involved in anti-racist networks, even if the leadership has toned down its welcome for immigrants. 

The Sinn Fein First Minister in the North, Michelle O'Neill, described the Newry incident as an attack on democracy. This has allowed the TUV to flag up Sinn Fein's past and wave the banner of hypocrisy in its face, Timothy Gaston seeming to gloat in his comment that "Sinn Féin is feeling today what it inflicted on many people during the years of terror in Northern Ireland". 

Most will likely regard TUV concerns as not being concerns at all, just whataboutery. When the DUP's Trevor Clarke also referred to the incident as an attack on democracy nothing was heard from the TUV about the DUP's past association with the Turd Force or Ulster Resistance. The ham fisted silencing of Gaston at Stormont - when he should have been allowed to continue with his rant, and dig an even deeper hole - will unfortunately get him more air time for hot air which fortunately he will use to generate more heat than light. 

I am not enamoured to either Sinn Fein's view of the world or that of Clifford Peeples. Nevertheless, if Peeples can rightly object to his home being firebombed without his previous association with explosives being rubbed in his face then Sinn Fein should be treated no differently.

Racism is a plague and no one should be subjected to the blight of its violence. If the TUV insists on ringing up targets of far right thuggery to complain about their past, let it go to voicemail. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

Newry Attack

Anthony McIntyre  ☠  At the weekend, someone attempted to murder Clifford Peeples, the loyalist activist and pastor. 

While he slept at his North Belfast home a petrol bomb was tossed into his living room. The PSNI is reported to be treating the attack as arson with an intent to endanger life.

Mr Peeples has led a highly charged life, often to the fore of contentious issues. He was sentenced to ten years imprisonment in 2001 after his arrest two years earlier for possession of pipe bombs.  Having twice served alongside the Ukrainian military in its battle against Russia's expansionist ubernationalism, he is no stranger to the world of headlines, to this day remaining a controversial figure. Earlier this year he was involved in failed legal action against the kakistocracy in Stormont that suffers from delusions of governance. Last year the PSNI arrested him on foot of allegations that he was posting 'hate material' online, something he described as politically motivated harassment, the work of 'PSNI boot boys' who vandalised his library. Few will accuse the force of being book boys. His account of the reasons behind his detention was detailed to the Sunday World.

I had posted a piece about the Southport attacks expressing concern for the safety of police officers and my solicitor demanded to know how it could be construed as hateful. They then asked I was influenced by a well-known right-wing political philosopher. I refused to talk about that because my post hadn’t broken any Facebook rule or regulations. And they then asked me about anti-Semitism. The police appeared to imply I actually hated everyone. It was truly bizarre . . . It was clear to me the PSNI wanted to know if I was working for the Israelis by compiling photo-files of Muslim extremists. It was nonsense and I told them that.

While his political and religious opinions would be a universe removed from my own, there is absolutely no justification for trying to inflict on him the fate that befell Michael Servetus at the hands of hate theologians. In 2009 when the Derry home of Mitchel McLaughlin was petrol bombed I described it as a hate crime, commenting:

The torching of political opponents is a practice we associate with the middle ages when people could be described as witches and burned at the stake. It is not the type of thing we expect from something that describes itself as republicanism in the 21st century.

While there seems to be a snowball's chance in hell of any republican strand being behind this attack, the standard applies across the board. It is as wrong to seek to burn Mr Peeples to death as it was to attempt the same with Mr McLaughlin. 

As is usual there is much scuttlebutt flowing from the rumour mill as to who might be responsible, with a rare unanimity of opinion on display suggesting a strange variant of cross community collusion. But speculation and hard facts run on different tracks, and to slightly rework an apt Kipling observation, the twain do not always meet. 

Like Jamie Bryson, Clifford Peeples, given his talent for writing coupled with a Masters degree in law, would better serve loyalism and the community on whose back it sits like a distended hump if he was to reflect on it rather than reflect it. Even if he has used incendiary language, trying to incinerate him serves only murderous hatred. 

⏩Follow on Twitter @AnthonyMcIntyre.

A Burning Hatred

Clifford Peeples discusses loyalist bonfire culture in the context of a cultural war. 
 Bonfire Night
Gandhi related that “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the souls of its people.” It is the life force that feeds through cohesive society, drawing a sense of purpose, identity, and belonging. It establishes a set of shared traditions and morals, that act as the adhesive which bonds a collective beyond gender, class, and generation. Culture, in essence, should be upstream from politics. However, in disputes, this is seldom the case and culture can become a mere tool of ideology. This aspect of what has been termed a “cultural war” can best be seen in a global context in the Cold War.

While many see ideology and culture as detached fields, during the Cold War the two would converge as the political direction of the juxtaposing opponents forged out cultures and then used modern mediums to project these to each other as proxy weapons. An understanding of the parameters of what is termed “culture” can be found in Marwick’s definition that it can be viewed as two concepts: the traditional view is that culture relates to expressions of art and forms of tradition and the second concept of culture, that it is “the network, or totality, of attitudes, values and practices of a particular group of human beings.”

While culture and ideology are looked upon as two distinct and separate entities, both can intertwine and in certain cases, ideological restructuring can take place and a new culture can emerge or surpass the old. This has led some to conclude that “Ideology is the intellectual dimension of culture.” This restructuring or manufacturing of a culture, to suit ideological beliefs, can be observed in a dramatic form within Germany of the 1930s. It is also found within Soviet states. Culture and ideology also morphed and became a weapon of the cultural Cold War. Professor Gienow-Hecht states that by 1947 the enmity between the West and the Soviet Union had moved “cultural life” and “cultural institutions” from “the sidelines to the centre of political confrontation.”

The use of culture as a weapon in the developing Cold War could be seen as competing ideologies constructing aspects of culture to suit each other’s emerging political programmes. While cultural and ideology are often seen as two very separate spheres, the two would merge in the Cold War. Shibusawa would conclude the follow on the intertwined nature of both:

Dominant ideologies, then, are a subset of culture, or a discursive system. This culture or discursive system shifts as a small number of counter-hegemonic narratives succeed in challenging the veracity and “common sense” of dominant ideologies.

Vladimir Baranovsky observes that Russia has been on a cultural journey of “self-identification” for the last millennia and, as such, there are those who argue that Russia is European and descended from the Western Christian tradition. This is countered by those who believe Russia is in essence Asian in its cultural outlook, having split with the Western Christian tradition in the 11th Century with Byzantium, forming a distinct cultural form of its own that would develop in parallel to the West. These cultural differences would be made more profound by Russia’s stunted growth compared to the West, both politically and economically. The failure to modernise facilitated, first revolution, then dictatorship. This, Branovsky states, gave “…a strong link between Russia’s culture, mentality, and historical legacy.” The Soviet State from its foundation used culture as a form of external projectionism. In this, culture became the expression of ideology. Rossen Djagalov would write:


From very early on in this state’s existence, it projected in its dealings with foreign countries a belief in literature’s capacity to change society; thus, it tried to organize ‘the progressive forces’ of world literature through international writers’ organizations, writers’ congresses, frequent bilateral visits, multilingual literary magazines and massive translation initiatives.

This view: that the state could use culture as a form of weapon in the transition of outside cultures, which in the Soviets’ view was interchangeable with ideology, was to transcend from written format to transmitted media. Thus, the main culture expression of Cold War Russia was formulated as a manifestation of ideology, this would be given its own genre: socialist realism, which would cover architecture, literature, and art. The linking of ideology and culture in such a fashion and its subsequent export to the rest of the Eastern bloc mimicked the cultural imperialism of the late 19th and early 20th Centuries.

Most culture, in what we term the West, is less than 150 years old and most nationalities formulated a structure at about the same time. Some ancient traditions have survived and embedded themselves in popular culture: Puck, Halloween, Morris dance, Step dancing, Wassailing, Mummers, and fire celebrations. These remnants are intermixed with the greater Anglo-American culture that dominates the British Isles. Except for a few regional variants, the people of these islands are culturally indistinguishable: they follow the same sports, most of the time, they watch and read the same material; soaps, papers, and films. Yet there are elements that cause extreme views to overshadow some of the oldest cultural expressions on these islands. Expressions that are mirrored in in each community. Historical and religious orders, marching bands, and bonfires are all present in the divergent communities, nor are they exclusive to Ireland or the United Kingdom. However, every year bonfires become an issue.

Fire Festivals are present in every area and culture on the globe. They have been recorded as celebrations, sacrifices, and communal rites of passage. Bonfires in Northern Ireland fit two of the criteria, acting as celebrations and a rite of passage to those who participate. These fire festivals take many forms and are not without controversy. But to understand the significant cultural value to those who practice this form of celebration and to understand how we have got to this point they need to be explored.

Most Bonfires are small affairs, mostly made up of extended family and friends. They, in rural areas, consist of gathering that can be entertained by small groups of drummers and fifers. They are child-friendly and act as a cultural adhesive that bonds those taking part. Stories, mostly about family, music, and rural life permeate the air, along with the aroma of cut grass and smouldering wood. The music and patois swirl with the flames and embers into the night air. Nothing sinister, no gowns, just families under the stars, in front of a fire listening to music and sharing stories. The scene is timeless.

The mega bonfires or ones that have been looked upon as controversial, are urban and tend to take place in areas that acted as overflows from the sectarian violence and the redevelopment that drove tens of thousands from the streets of Belfast, to working-class suburbs of east Antrim and north Down. These mass pyres have resulted from a number of complex issues. They are not a traditional form of loyalist bonfire but are the result of external forces. Up until the 1980s, most loyalist areas had small street bonfires, similar in their nature to their rural counterparts. Redevelopment’s disruption of the century-old street structure brought new considerations. Belfast City Council took the decision that these small, but numerous, activities would be better contained as larger communal events. This attempt, at a form of regulation, had a number of effects: it brought in rivalry and took control away from parental scrutiny. Paramilitary structures replaced the community in a lot of occasions.

The difference between rural and urban bonfires can be understood in class. While urban bonfires are exclusively working-class their counterparts are made up of all sections on class. This, indeed, is indicative of loyalism. Urban loyalism's link with the middle-class has been broken; this has increased its sense of societal alienation. As such, it has become its own subculture, developing and responding to other cultures around it. It has taken on dance music and a festival that was, in preparation for a few weeks, has now become several months long. The process of preparation has also changed: it gives adherents a prolonged sense of comradery, community, connection, and belonging in a community that believes it has been abandoned. This hothousing forms groups and friendships that most in society today cannot understand. They have as little regard for those who tell them that they are “polluting and destroying the environment”, while driving 4x4 and taking four holidays a year, as the accusers have for them. This alienation can be seen in the tyre issue. Some see this as a rage against those who are seen as the, would be, destroyers of their culture. The burning of tyres by a handful is an act of rebellion against regulation, the same regulation that brought about the conditions that gave rise to giant structures that cry out “we are here and we won’t be forgotten”.

The ideological war on loyalist cultural is reminiscent of aspects of 20th Century European extremism. It is portrayed as having no value, in any of its manifestations. It is sneered upon as squalid by those who live a few postcodes away. Nationalism and republicanism have debased themselves by demonising and continually attacking parts of the oldest cultural manifestations in Europe, due to their ideological differences with those who cherish it. While there are those who would destroy loyalist cultural expression, many are fascinated with it. I have a friend, a French linguist, who spends every July in Northern Ireland. Last year I worked with a sociologist who believed loyalism is the biggest working-class structure in the UK. There are social anthropologists, studying urban loyalism and its traditions. Social documentary programs are chronicling loyalist communities. What do all these have in common? They are the work of outsiders. The Cold War against loyalist communities has left the area of culture that toxic, that no local study of the views, motives, or aspirations of these groups is viable. John Abbott said “Every man's ability may be strengthened or increased by culture” Whether that culture is of our taste is irrelevant, it is still upstream from the political ideologies which oppose it. A cultural war makes for a hard anvil, that will wear out many hammers.

* Anyone interested in the cultural aspects of loyalist bonfires should visit, Polish Photographer, Mariusz Smiejek’s South Belfast Bonnies 2019, Exhibition of documentary and portraits photography, Belfast South Community Resources Centre, 127-145 Sandy Row, Belfast, BT12 5ET. Which runs from 31 Jul at 09:00 – 1 Aug at 16:00.

Clifford Peeples  is a writer and former loyalist prisoner.

The Cultural Cold War

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