A Bonfire That Changes Everything

One of the Most Militant Places in Ulster Choses to End the Brothers' War

“Since you’re so dismissive of parliamentary elections, why did you put so much effort into fighting them in the BNP?” It’s an obvious question, and one which deserves a proper answer.

So much so that it’s taking me some hours to write. It’s important, because an understanding of the things the British National Party tried to do twenty-odd years ago should be helpful to the new generation of nationalist should-be activists as they try to work out effective strategies for today.

While I finish it, though, here’s a piece of very important news for you. It’s also something on which I intend to expand further shortly, so I’ll keep this short and sweet.

The Moygashel Bonfire has now hit the headlines in the UK two years running. Moygashel is a small village of about 1,000, just south of the largely Catholic town in Dungannon.

Moygashel itself is 92% Protestant, a tiny loyalist enclave in largely Republican Co. Tyrone. As such its population have lived for decades with a siege mentality and ferociously sectarian attitudes. It’s a sort of microcosm of loyalist Ulster, on communal steroids.

Every 12^th July in living memory, the village lads have put together a huge bonfire to burn in celebration of the defeat of Catholic James II by the forces of William of Orange in 1690. And, every year, it has been topped with an Irish tricolour flag, in a display of deliberate defiance and provocation of their Catholic neighbours.

During the Troubles, Moygashel lost two young men shot dead by the IRA, on account of their own membership of the UVF. As far as the vast majority of its inhabitants are concerned, the Ulster Volunteer Force were heroes, without whom local Protestant would have been sitting ducks for the IRA’s relentless sectarian murders and ethnic cleansing campaigns.

To Catholics around the village, the UVF were themselves sectarian murderers. The old hatreds ran as deep in rural Tyrone as anywhere in Northern Ireland.

The bonfire has always been topped with an effigy of a detested but topical opponent. In the past it would have been the Pope, Gerry Adams, Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair or some similar hate figure. And above whoever they chose would always be the green-white-and-gold flag of Ireland.

Last year, however, half of that changed. The bonfire team topped off their huge pile of pallets with a full-sized inflatable boat, containing the figures of asylum-seeker who, according to the accompanying banners, were ‘Not Welcome’.

The display caused predictable outrage among liberals, who also complained about the sectarian burning of the tricolour.

This year, the shift from the old anti-Catholic sectarianism was complete. The effigy was a mosque, complete with minaret and crescent moon. Above it flew the black and white flags of ISIS, and the banners matched the symbolism.

Asked why they were not burning the Irish flag, a spokesman for the Moygashel Bonfire Committee told the press that “We will never burn a tricolour again”.

As with the recent cross-community rioting into East and North Belfast, the liberals’ policy of mass immigration, together with the bad behaviour of members of certain of the incoming groups, has managed to do what decades of lectures and condemnation have failed to do:

Persuade young men from both sides of the old divide that their ancestral quarrel is far less important than the new dangers from mass immigration and Islamisation which threaten both their communities. The old Brothers’ War is dead!

In its place, the young men from the Orange and the Green have found a new, common enemy.

The end of the old sectarian division is self-evidently a good thing, but there is more to it than that. This is not just of great significance to the Six Counties of Northern Ireland; it is also of enormous importance for the struggle to keep the Republic of Ireland Irish, and has the potential to become a major factor in the future history of the British mainland. Perhaps even further afield than that.

Exactly why is another subject to which I will return here on Substack shortly. In the meantime, just be grateful for this piece of good news. “No more Brothers’ Wars!”

PS Take a second look at the size of those bonfires. Remember, this one is from, and for, a village of just 900 loyalists. Just as with their band culture and willingness to stand up for their communities, they put the rest of us to shame. The Province always has many hundreds of others, some of them even bigger. These people are at present a minority in their land, but the idea that they are in any way defeated, depressed or ‘doomed’ is nonsense. They are organised, They are united. They are militant. And they will NEVER Surrender!