Ian Parsley, the politician, businessman and linguist who was previously a member of the Alliance Party and the UCNUCFCPF and is now back with Alliance…all since 2009….makes a fair point when he blogs that loyalists and republicans get more out of their parades when the other side actually opposes it.
Mr Parsley draws attention to the “innately sectarian” commemorations such as the annual Easter Rising (nationalist) and Centenary of the Ulster Covenant (unionist). He is of course right (as a LetsGetAlongerist would see it). But seemingly he blogs this in the context of “UVF 1913″ flags going up along the route of proposed parade celebrating the centenary of the paramilitary organisation. This parade will be in East Belfast, where it will antagonise very very few nationalists. But it will keep the pot boiling in East Belfast where the Alliance Party (of which he is currently a member) is coming under pressure since the Flegs Dispute erupted under the Alliance Party in December 2012.
In this particular case, Loyalism and LetsGetAlongerism are in confrontation” and Mr Parsleys sense of wonder that there will be no commemoration of the 72nd anniversary of the Belfast Blitz by the Germans in 1941…is perhaps LetsGetAlongerists reaching out for their “own” event.
In fact …in wondering why there IIs no commemoration…Mr Parsley answers his own question. It is the SEVENTY SECOND anniversary…72nd….#72. It carries no more import than the 71st or the 73rd. And it doesn’t really match up to the UVF Centenary.
However as Historians scrape the bottom of the barrel to help LetsGetAlongerists and their friends in Conflict Resolution to find “shared history”, it is fair to say that the Belfast Blitz of 1941 is actually authentic.
Like all shared History….World War Two ….has two versions.
The Irish were shamefully neutral is the unionist version while noble Netherlands, Norway, Belgium and plucky little Luxembourg rallied to the anti-fascist cause. Well not quite true. They were all as neutral as Ireland, until the Germans invaded them. But the United States rallied to the British cause…well no …they SOLD or LEASED Aid Ansd kept out of the War until December 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.
The British would happily have invaded the Republic to get its hands on the Irish ports which they had had to hand back to Ireland before War broke out.
More “Irishmen” actually fought for Britain than “loyal”Ulster types but don’t mention that to Unionists. There was no conscription in Norn Iron …the only part of the DisUnited Kingdom where it did not apply. Whole West Belfast Catholics would have been hard to round up, East Belfast Protestants were no more enthusiastic…..after all their fathers, uncles and big brothers had already paid the ultimate price in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. F@@k that for a Game of Soldiers.
Ah but Unionists will claim they were helping the war effort by building ships….well yes but they don’t builds many ships in inland towns like Ballymena and Portadown. Ah but there was the “enemy within” all those disloyal Catholics who could rise up and kill ….so an army of B Specials was required to ride bikes thru the Norn Iron countryside looking out for German Paras aided and abetted by IRA people. And of course there was all that Fire Watching….standing around on the roof at Mackies Foundary looking out for German incendiaries….which never came after May 1941.
Yet for all the Mythology of Norn Irons War Effort, the Belfast Blitz of April-May 1941 was a very real thseries and a tragic series of nights which killed over one thousand people.
In April 1941, Belfast despitn being a major shipbuilding centre was in fact an extremely easy target for the GermanLuftwaffe. The city was poorly protected and all the German bombers had to do was fly from France and follow the course of Belfast Lough, drop their bombs and go home. People…Catholics and Protestants took to the hills…literally people from the Falls Road and Shankill Road camped up on Divis Mountain. The Dublin Fire Service went north to help put out the inferno.
Of course a NUETRAL country sending its fire service into a war zone is a pretty average breach of neutrality. Indeed the Irish Government warned the Nazis that an attack on Belfast was an attack on IRISH territory….and the odd thing is that the Germans never bombed Belfast after May 1941. The Germans hardly feared the might of the Irish Army but they DID fear Britain getting access to the Irish ports to fight the U Boat threat.
Now you might think that having the de facto protection of the Irish nation ….that unionists might be grateful that after a few nights of the blitz….Belfast was unmolested.
Sadly…no. Predictably…no.
Unionists prefer to talk about Irish betrayal of the Mother Country…Britain. They prefer to talk about Irish compliance with neutrality long after it was necessary for the protection of Ireland, including the North. De Valera was criticised for visiting the German Embassy in Dublin to express condolences at the death of Hitler in April 1945. But that is surely as honourable as neutral Latin American countries declaring war on Germany when the war was already won.
The Belfast Blitz is very much part of Belfast History and indeed it’s folklore but inventing a commemoration around its 72nd anniversary just to promote LetsGetAlongerism is not appropriate…not even to take the heat off the Alliance Party in East Belfast.
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