Letter: We need fairness and respect for our cultural rights, not more commissions

This time, his solution is a so-called ‘bonfire commission’, no doubt to be stuffed with the usual handpicked appointees who neither understand nor respect the cultural traditions of the unionist community.

Mr Carton, a retired teacher, recalls teenage pupils expressing excitement at defending their heritage during the Drumcree protests, and he appears to find this horrifying.

Most would instead reflect on the deep sense of alienation those young people felt, not caused by the Orange tradition itself, but by a political and media class determined to label every expression of unionist culture as dangerous or backward.

He gushes with praise for the Parades Commission, an unelected body that has entrenched division, rewarded threats of violence, and undermined peaceful procession.

It is loathed by vast swathes of the unionist community, not because it applies fairness, but because it institutionalised surrender to mob rule in places like Garvaghy Road and Ardoyne.

Now Mr Carton wants the same model applied to bonfires. The argument runs: because public bodies have failed to manage the issue, we should hand over all authority to an unelected panel.

This is not democracy. It is bureaucratic authoritarianism.

If there are legitimate concerns about public safety or the environment, let existing laws be applied fairly. But let’s not pretend this is just about fire regulations. This is part of a wider agenda to sanitise, suppress, and ultimately erase expressions of working-class loyalist identity.

Mr Carton may have spent his summers in the 1990s wringing his hands at Radio Ulster, but the rest of us know that the real problem was never parades or bonfires. It was the double standards of those in power.

We don’t need more commissions. We need fairness, respect for cultural rights, and an end to the relentless demonisation of one side of the community.

W J Craig, Belfast BT5