The ‘culture wars’ ceasefire has broken down – with woke republicans in the thick of it

Anyone looking at the scenes in London these last two weekends will realise that the culture wars cease-fire has most definitely been called off.

Locally, our sectarian version of the culture wars has resurfaced in relation to Linfield FC’s new away-kit launched last Wednesday.

It is alleged that the brightly coloured purple top, with a bold orange diagonal emblazoned across its front, is based upon the 1912 flag of the original Ulster Volunteer Force.

Needless to say, very little light is being generated in the online twitter spats, and interventions by politicians who should know better, which have since ensued.

The thing about taking offence is that it is a choice, and there are always other choices.

This is a club which has gone out of its way to go beyond its comfort zone in recent years — establishing good relations with supporters from southern clubs in the days of the Setanta Cup and on at least one occasion lending its facilities to a womens’ GAA team temporarily at a loss for somewhere to play.

That it could have consciously chosen to base the design of its new away-kit upon that of a flag now associated with the murderers and drug dealers of the modern day UVF is a ludicrous notion.

That it may have subliminally chosen the colours of purple and orange as emblematic of Protestant and unionist/loyalist cultural identity in Ireland is less so.

Orange is one of the national colours of Ireland, and more particularly the rich combination of orange and purple is one associated for centuries with the Protestant and unionist tradition on this island.

In his second letter to the ‘Protestant farmers, labourers and artisans of the North of Ireland’ (published in the pamphlet ‘An Ulsterman for Ireland’) the 19th century Presbyterian Irish nationalist John Mitchel excoriated the treatment of Ulster Protestants by the then imperial parliament at Westminster thus:

“While you had the spirit even to celebrate the exploits of your fathers by flaunting an orange and purple banner on the 12th of July, these great patrons of yours in their landlord parliament got what they called a ‘law’ made to forbid you to hold your customary processions — a thing that would be forbidden in no other land in Europe — but when the famine came the ‘law’ was allowed to expire and you may walk now if you have the heart.”

Mitchel’s nationalism, like that of the Young Ireland movement he helped found, was based upon the idea of the “hands of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic [being] clasped in generous and heroic brotherhood” as his great friend Thomas Francis Meagher put it.

Those who cry offence at Linfield’s bold new colours could choose to cherish them as Mitchel did.

Instead local iconoclasts are keen for the statue commemorating him in Newry to be taken down.

They are of course right that his unfortunate support for slavery is profoundly to be regretted; they do not seem so keen however on changing the name of a playground in the same town named after an Irish ‘republican’ who, when arrested, was found in possession of a rifle used in the Kingsmill massacre of 1976.

Woke rhetoric from republicans in relation to being offended by football colours or the sins of historical figures like Mitchel is nothing but one-sided special pleading when they themselves so consistently fail to show any love or respect for their Protestant and unionist countrymen; or any remorse for the lives they have stolen, lives which they make clear do not matter a damn to them.

One cannot help but suspect that Mitchel’s support for slavery is not the only reason they would like to see his memory erased.