The Twelfth Fortnight is well underway in Northern Ireland. It reached its climax today when thousands of Orangemen paraded up and down wearing white gloves and bowler hats to a cacophony of marching bands blaring out The Protestant Boys, Scotland the Brave and The Sash My Father Wore. On the Eleventh Night, to get participants in the mood, Irish flags and effigies of the Pope were burned on massive, out-of-control bonfires, some of them more than 100 feet high, made out of car tyres and wooden pallets.
Temperance was preached by the clergy, but not to the exclusion of drunkeness. All in all, a splendid celebration of Britishness.
Northern Ireland is a place apart. Half its population refuse to admit they are Irish; the other half deny they are British. The fourth “nation” of the UK, comprising two-thirds of the ancient province of Ulster, is connected to the rest of Ireland by a border that has been invisible since 1998, when Tony Blair and Bill Clinton put an end to The Troubles, but has been brought back into sharp relief amid the chaos of Brexit.
