Loyalist bonfires and blind spots in Belfast

Irish Post

01-08-2025

MY apologies to Jim Wilson.
Jim is a truculent and argumentative champion of loyalist bonfires in Belfast but I shouldn't have called him a madman.
BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback presenter, William Crawley had turned to me in the final seconds of his programme on July 11th, where we had been discussing loyalist plans for a bonfire that night on a site officially declared as toxic.
Every year on the eve of July Twelfth, Northern Ireland loyalists, pledging their fealty to Britain, light enormous pyres, marking the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne and the glorious revolution which established a Protestant succession in the British monarchy.
In recent years those fires have roused both ire and fear. It is not unusual for the fire service to attend the fires to hose down private homes jeopardised by the flames but never to extinguish the fires.
Because these bonfires are protected by loyalist paramilitary groups capable of generating mayhem.
The police briefly considered dismantling the bonfire on the toxic site, off the Donegall Road, and decided that that would simply be too dangerous.
Not only might they be confronted with rioting they couldn't control but they might expose themselves to that asbestos too.
Jim Wilson, a prominent loyalist sees every criticism of the annual bonfires as part of an Irish Catholic nationalist effort to demean and expunge his culture.
Dr Alan Stout was on the programme and he presented a bleak account of the danger of gathering round a bonfire on a site known to be contaminated with asbestos.
A child breathing in asbestos dust might suffer cancer in the lungs twenty years or more after exposure.
William Crawley asked his various guests if they would permit their own children to attend the bonfire and most said they wouldn't.
It was towards the end of the programme that Jim Wilson phoned in.
He said that he would be happy to go to the bonfire on the toxic site and to bring his wife.
He also insisted that he understood the dangers of asbestos because his own brother-in-law had died of asbestosis.
But his chief concern was that all this fuss about the toxin on the site was being whipped up by nationalists to get at loyalists and he wasn't going to stand for that.
And I don't doubt that some nationalists were gloating at loyalists making eejits of themselves once again.
I had said on the programme that in a divided society like ours, a public health warning coming from one side of the community and focused on the other side, was less likely to be taken seriously.
Hadn't we seen republicans similarly ignore public health advice during the pandemic to turn out in huge numbers for the funeral of IRA gunman Bobby Storey?
To assure loyalists that the threat they were toying with was genuine, that message had to come from other loyalists and unionists, people they respected.
But that message wasn't coming from those sources. The Orange Order urged local loyalists to enjoy their bonfire.
Loyalists wondered why, if the site was so toxic, nothing had been done about it years ago. Why intervene only when the bonfire is about to be lit?
It could only be that the interference had more to do with the bonfire than with the danger.
So there was some rationale to Jim Wilson's suspicion that loyalists were being played.
If the site was as dangerous as the council and the Northern Ireland Environment Agency said, then those people that his own community looked up to and respected would be affirming that message, and they weren't.
So it was unfair of me to call him a madman.
If madness is, as George Orwell defined it, a minority of one, then Jim was far from being that.
Right enough, his logic, as he expressed it seemed a bit skewed.
It was more important to him to preserve the dignity of loyalism at this crucial moment, than to concede a point to the republicans and nationalists, medical officials and the environment agency who were showing more concern for the safety of Protestant children than were the leadership of Unionism and the Orange order.
But we are living in a time of scepticism about public health advice. You don't have to scroll down far in your favourite social media account to find people sneering about the 'scamdemic' and vaccinations.
And don't we all ignore some health advice anyway, whether in smoking or drinking, eating processed meat or not having five pieces of fruit or veg a day?
But now it is clear that the health hazard we face in Northern Ireland is our divided society. Each side puts its own cultural self-esteem above the general well being and is ready to ignore health and safety advice if it isn't accompanied by a sound and dependable stand for or against the Union.
That's what's mad.
Malachi O'Doherty's novel on the Northern Irish Troubles, Terry Brankin Has a Gun, is published by Merrion
See More: Belfast, Bonfires, Northern Ireland, Troubles