We are Unsatisfied..

antrim | anti-war / imperialism | opinion/analysis Saturday November 06, 2004 19:55 by Fuse

Has there ever been anything to vote for ?

I just don’t understand it. I’ve never understood it. I’ve been raised in Belfast. As a nipper I was raised to pray that God would bring ‘peace’. Back then I actually believed he would – if you prayed really hard. At 15 I was rebelling, as you do. Smoking a fag by the side of the house I heard a car full pull up and drag a man out who they systematically beat with baseball bats & iron pipes until his yelping and weeping stopped. I’d never heard a man cry out like that. I’m still ashamed that I slid down the side of our terraced street wall and crawled on hands and feet back inside my house. My heart pumping through my chest incase they’d seen me. That’s when I lost my faith in the church.

It’s such a small thing. It wasn’t the beatings my mother took by our affiliated alcoholic father. Nor the bigoted chants in the estate because my friends were mixed religions. It wasn’t the men collecting with their tins in our faces, ordering the kids to paint the streets and put up the flags. It wasn’t the riots, the blockades, the bombs-scares or the bombs with grey confetti all over Bridge Street. It wasn’t the masked men pulling up and telling us we were next. Nor was it the RUC beatings and intimidations, puling guns out on mates up alleys and laughing as they pissed themselves. It wasn’t dodging the plastic bullets on the way to school and soldiers pissing on us when we were five. Or trying to walk safely up York Street across the bottom of the Shankill, or up to the Royal by cutting through the Village. It was one stupid beating up the back road of a council estate.

Loads of us began to exodus when we reached that Irish-exodus age. For a while it was great craic to come home and catch up on the holidays. But one by one most of us returned, especially after Good Friday. A new peace; even Bono showed up for fucks sake! And then they took another mate and smashed his head in with a breeze block until he was only identified by a signet ring. Dead in a ditch. That was a defining moment too. They said they had their reasons. Don’t they always? But I remember him building tree huts and playing hunts on our BMX’s. And that was who I cried for in that coffin.

And they let all these men out of jail. Say they’re political. Still fight to have them freed. They gave them suits and summer courses on how to be a government. They talked and argued and had a laugh up there in Stormont. Davey says he doesn’t mind the Easter lilies and just wishes there were more of them to remember. Gerry laughs off camera and they both go for another tax paid free lunch. It’s all a laugh now. While kids are still stuck down sewers for hours and the BNP invade for racist recruits.

Freedom fighters. Bold men. Ready for Peace, Prepared for War. Votes in Dublin. Community project funds in the North. Armani suits and plots of land. Independent 50 million quid enquiries and riots on the 12th. New divisions on estate lines as the burning out continues, now including Chinese and Pilipino.

I just don’t understand this war that’s not a war anymore. I don’t understand how political motivations make murder better and ok. I thought peace meant I could live without politics if I chose to. But I have no choice but to watch the spinning and lying and stealing and visions of a new this and a better that. Well, I don’t see it. I see Orwell’s definition: Power is an End, not a Means. It’s craved but never satisfied. And I still can’t make rent or educate myself on these wages. But I'm still living in peace, inspite of all you hairy handed better dressed thugs.