The old divides are closing, but the flags in Derry show that some unionists are in no mood to move on
The road I grew up on in Drumahoe, on the outskirts of Derry, has been on the news lately, and not in a way that makes me proud. Journalists stand at its junction with the main road from Belfast, pointing up at the purple flag of the Parachute Regiment fluttering high on a lamp-post. They explain its significance at this time of year: it was paratroopers who killed 13 unarmed civil rights marchers in the city on Bloody Sunday in January 1972. Family members of those killed have talked about the pain the flying of these flags causes them. Politicians, including some unionists, and even the Parachute Regiment itself have called it “unacceptable”.
The flag flies because there are some in the unionist community who want to show that not everybody is mourning the dead of Bloody Sunday as its 50th anniversary is marked in Derry this weekend. It is a show of disrespect. Drumahoe has been flying this flag for years, as has the village of Newbuildings on the main road into Derry from Dublin. I saw one that had a sign pinned underneath it featuring the crosshairs of a gun – a warning to anyone tempted to remove it. In Drumahoe there are always union flags and Ulster flags flying, and sometimes there are also Scottish, Israeli and paramilitary flags. They stand like a weird forest. After the Anglo-Irish agreement in 1985, “Drumahoe Says No” was daubed on a wall along the main road behind our house, the white ghosts of its letters lingering on the red brick for years after it was painted over.
Susan McKay is an Irish writer and journalist whose books include Northern Protestants: On Shifting Ground
