Tourism NI right to link future Feile funding to good relations

A west Belfast rap trio called Kneecap, after unveiling a mural depicting a burning police vehicle, performed on stage before a large crowd Falls Park. At that concert, the Wolfe Tones once again led the audience in a republican chant of ‘ooh, ahh, up the Ra’.

It comes a fortnight after children sang that IRA chorus, at an event during, but not officially part of, the Ulster Fleadh.

It comes less than a month after Belfast City Council, assisted by the Victims and Survivors Commission, held a 50th memorial for Bloody Friday that used wording that pretended the massacre had nothing to do with IRA terror – a whitewash about which no-one said a word until the News Letter did.

It comes days after Michelle O’Neill said there was no alternative to IRA violence. And it comes amid a Larne FC player wearing a top with the republican slogan ‘tiochfaidh ar la’.

Celebrations of the IRA are becoming the norm, helped by factors ranging from a new anglophobic culture in the Republic, where Sinn Fein are poised to take power, to the Troubles legacy focus on UK state forces who prevented civil war.

With the endless civil actions against the security forces, ombudsman probes against the RUC, legacy inquests into state killings, and massive public inquiries from Bloody Sunday to Ballymurphy, all lavishly funded by the UK state, who can be surprised that young people even from non nationalist backgrounds are emerging with no awareness of either past IRA carnage or of what Britain patiently did to outwit them?

But after the abject failure of state and private organisations to help celebrate Northern Ireland’s centenary, it is good that Tourism NI, which generously supported Feile an Phobail, has linked future funding to good relations (why has an even bigger benefactor, the Arts Council, not said same?).

Meanwhile, given that the ‘Up the Ra’ is becoming a traditional end to Feile, the TUV is right to urge participants in the festival to reflect on the respectability they give to it.