For those of us who lived through the Drumcree stand-offs of the 1990s, along with the fear and the tension of those days, there was also the base comedy of it all, the sheer ridiculousness of a society brought to a standstill by this little local difficulty.
Much of the mirth stemmed from the obvious mismatch between the slick PR of republicans against the clumsy, inarticulate bumbling of the Orange order. More than anything, Drumcree demonstrated the order’s pig-headed determination to stumble into a trap laid by its ideological enemies. By insisting so vehemently on marching where they were not wanted, Orangemen showed themselves to the outside world to be mindless bigots, intent on rubbing their long gone victory in the faces of their communal opponents.
Ten years on, it seems that loyalists have learnt the lesson. Now it is they who set the traps and republicans who stumble into them. Saturday’s riot in Dublin in reaction to a loyalist parade did nothing but serve the interests of the march organisers. The Neanderthals who turned out to prevent a Union flag flying on O’Connell Street have done republicanism a great disservice by portraying the ideology as intolerant of any tradition other than its own.
For once, the outside world will see loyalists as the good guys, prevented from holding a peaceful march in memory of their dead. The reality is more complex than this of course, but in this visual, ignorant age such nuances will be lost.
More important than the damage done to republicanism abroad, is the harm done to it at home. Looking at the pictures of the weekend’s rioting, it is easy to believe that the day of Irish unity has been pushed back yet further.
Since the early 1990s, some of us northern nationalists have argued that southern society has become more open to different cultures. We pointed to the Celtic Tiger and the decline of the church’s power as evidence of a new, more inclusive Ireland which could appeal to unionists and Protestants. This is a hard argument to make right now.
Many Protestants will conclude that the weekend’s violence shows little has changed in the south; that beneath the secularism and the prosperity, lurks the spectre of de Valera. For Republican Sinn Fein and their ilk, all this will matter little. Never ones to think things through, they have always elevated fighting for a united Ireland above actually achieving one. Theirs is a sad, insecure little nationalism that most of us would rather do without. Their day has come – and gone.