Breathing with a Limp: MOYGASHEL BURNING

This year saw themes and actions from the 1988 Hollywood crime film Mississippi Burning echo in events at Moygashel, a suburban village on the edge of Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, Northern Ireland. Moygashel’s Bonfire Community Association erected a huge bonfire of wooden palettes to mark 12^th of July commemoration events. They placed a model of a mosque on top, intending to burn it along with the bonfire. The Association uses FaceBook effectively to advertise its activities and plans. Messages of support and images of other bonfires are shown. Lamp posts in Moygashel carry flags of the United Kingdom and other flags of Unionism and British culture. Google Maps show a well-constructed and visually interesting 12^th of July arch at Grove Place in the village.

The police called the Moygashel bonfire a ‘hate display’.

Mississippi Burning features the story of man who killed a mule that belonged to a black neighbour.

I looked over at my daddy's face. I knew he done it. He saw that I knew. He was ashamed. I guess he was ashamed. He looked at me and said, If you ain't better than a nigger, son, who are you better than?

You think that's an excuse?

My old man was just so full of hate that he didn't know that bein' poor was what was killing him.

The burning of effigies and models is a feature of the Moygashel and some other bonfires. It is not the same as burning and lynching people. However, burning people out of their homes happened in Belfast and Antrim a month ago. Both activities have the effect of intimidating and frightening people.

Such human actions arise from social structures of poverty, deprivation and manipulation: material poverty; poverty of information; poverty of empathy; deprivation of educational and employment opportunities; manipulation by rich and powerful social media and press magnates, often well-outside Moygashel. These sorts of actions are seen across the world. Because of their connection with Moygashel’s 12^th of July commemorations, there is a distinctly British dimension to them in this instance.

The bonfire, effigies, statements and signs seek to make political points about radical Islam and immigration. There is no mass illegal immigration into Northern Ireland by any group of people, least of all Muslims. Moygashel is not a centre for radical Islamists. Small boats with refugees never land in Moygashel.

No one in a mosque decides upon and implements immigration policy in Northern Ireland. Such decisions are made by parliamentarians in London, who meet in The Palace of Westminster. Might a model of that place, with its famous clock tower, be a better symbol of discontent with immigration policy?

The Moygashel Bonfire Association asserts that their symbols and actions are not aimed at any individuals, but at an ideology. These sentences, also, are not aimed at individuals, but at ideologies: the ideologies of exceptionalism, racism, and supremacism. However, ideologies are not abstractions in books, blogs, bonfire models, or people’s heads. They exist in the thoughts, words and lived actions of individuals and groups, such as burning models of places of religious worship on top of a triumphalist bonfire that, ironically, marks a military victory for religious freedom.

Another ideological action would be to put a Christian Church on top of another bonfire.

This would simply compound the human tragedy.

You can tell your bosses - people got the wrong idea about the South. You know what I'm talkin' about. Everybody runnin around ragged, backwards, illiterate, eatin' sow-belly and corn pone three times a day. The simple fact is, Anderson, we got two cultures down here: a white culture - and a coloured culture. Now, that's the way it always has been - and that's the way it always will be.

The rest of America don't see it that way, Mr. Mayor.

Rest of America don't mean jack shit. You in Mississippi now.

Some people, notably business promoters and leaders, find this bonfire embarrassing and distasteful. They react by distancing themselves from the people of Moygashel. Chamber of Commerce leaders worry about the impact of coverage of such symbolic acts on Northern Ireland’s reputation abroad and its effect on inward investment. Currently Northern Ireland is said by economists to be experiencing full-employment (sic!), though there is considerable economic non-activity in sections of the population, when viewed by age and by geography. Back-office data-handling jobs in financial services in Belfast are of limited use to many people in Moygashel.

I told you, I'm a businessman. I'm also a Mississippian, and an American! And I'm getting SICK and TIRED of the way us Mississippians are getting our views distorted by you newsmen and on the TV. So let's get this straight. We do NOT accept Jews, because they REJECT Christ! And their control over the International Banking Cartels are at the root of what we call Communism today. We do not accept Papists, because they bow to a Roman dictator! We do not accept Turks, Mongrels, Tartars, Orientals nor Negroes because we are here to protect Anglo-Saxon Democracy, and the American way!

Some people in Moygashel feel their identity is under threat from the British political powers to which they give allegiance in Belfast and London. They feel their version of the Imagined Community (as written about by Benedict Anderson and others) of Britishness is under threat. This threat manifests as distancing, being ignored, feeling condescended to, being unable to assert their power as they used to and as they feel entitled to.

Many people in Moygashel base their sense of identity on events in The Williamite Wars and on The 1689 Siege of Derry, where the catchphrase ‘No Surrender’ was first used. A further layer was added to this base when over 5 000 soldiers of the British Army’s Ulster Division lost their lives in two days killing at The Somme in 1916.

Refusal to give in or compromise and willingness to accept sacrifice: these are core ethics likely to be strongly-felt among the Moygashel bonfire builders and the hundreds of people who attended its ignition ahead of police intervention.

The bonfire at Moygashel is a tragedy.

Other incidents at bonfires add to the list of tragedies during this year’s festivities. Two houses and a garage were burned down, with adjacent bonfires implicated. Neighbours are made homeless, including an elderly couple in Greenisland. A man fell to his death from a bonfire in Braniel, East Belfast. Another man, now homeless, said the worst impact was the loss of his family history.

There’s opportunity in all tragedies. One religious/faith community feels threatened, following a period of threats and physical violence. There is an opportunity for other religious/faith communities in Northern Ireland to stand with people in Moygashel, in a spirit of support for religious freedom, including for Muslims. While they have been absent from the public media on this matter, the hope is that they are active on the ground among their clergy, believers and neighbours.

The Orange Order distances itself from bonfire builders, though they draw from a common source: the Williamite success in the war of rival British monarchs in 1689-1691 in Ireland. When this year’s Orange festivities are over senior members of The Orange Order and faith leaders of Christian Churches can present themselves to the people of Moygashel.

And listen.

They can attend to the people of Moygashel’s attempts to be heard and to create other options for making political statements, including fires in the tradition of the beach beacons used in the Williamite Wars.

One measure of a society, an imagined community, at peace with itself is its manner of dealing with its minorities of race, colour, religion and sexual orientation.

You must know how we all feel down here. We don't take to outsiders telling us how to live our lives. And I'm here to tell ya, our nigras were happy, till those beatnik college kids came down here stirrin' things up. Before that, there wasn't anybody complainin'.

Nobody dared.

Bonfires are a form of boundary marking. You gather round this fire and you are ‘us’.

Further away from the bonfire? You are ‘not us’.

Mississippi burning. Moygashel burning.

This can of worms only opens from the inside.

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Clips of dialogue, in Courier New Bold, edited from Mississippi Burning, (film, Alan Parker, 1988)