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A MOCK POLICE car was burned on top of a bonfire in Co Tyrone last night, something the Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie described as “absolutely disgraceful”.
While most bonfires will be lit tonight ahead of The Twelfth, some were set alight last night.
One of the close to 300 bonfires that will be lit tonight includes one in Craigyhill in Larne.
It measures over 62 metres and is said to be the world’s largest bonfire.
Last night, a bonfire in Moygashel, near Dungannon in Co Tyrone was set alight with a mock police car on top.
On Tuesday, images appeared on social media of a car decorated in police livery on top of the bonfire.
Hundreds of people gathered last night to watch as the unstable structure quickly toppled over into trees.
UUP leader Doug Beattie said this act was “absolutely disgraceful and truly pathetic”.
He added that “those responsible undermine their own cries for cultural respect”.
However, loyalist commentator and activist Jamie Bryson claimed it was a “bit of edgy artistic expression” and said it resembled stunts performed by Belfast rap group Kneecap.
The liberal elite will be salivating over this edgy artistic effort, the way they do with Kneecap. Surely there won’t be a different standard applied, will there? https://t.co/uZ6vp5MWRd
— Jamie Bryson (@JamieBrysonCPNI) July 9, 2024
An Ireland flag and a banner reading Saoirse don Phalaistín, meaning Freedom for Palestine, was also placed on the bonfire.
Bryson was present at last year’s bonfire in Moygashel and addressed the crowd.
The mock police car is known as a “topper”, and last year’s topper in Moygashel was a boat which carried a banner reading: “Good Friday Agreement? That ship has sailed.”
A picture of then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was also placed on the boat.
An effigy of Sinn Féin vice president Michelle O’Neill was also placed on a bonfire in Dungannon last year.
In 2023, the PSNI received 68 reported incidents, including 21 alleged hate crimes involving the burning of election posters or effigies, and 47 alleged hate-related incidents, including the burning of flags.
DUP leader Gavin Robinson today described the traditions around the Twelfth as “spanning the generations” and as being “intrinsic to who we are”.
“It is about publicly expressing our faith, our culture, our heritage. It is about celebrating, respectfully, our identity,” he said.
“In an increasingly diverse Northern Ireland, it is important that the Orange culture is celebrated positively, and afforded respect by all as we build a truly shared, tolerant society.”
The fires are traditionally ignited on the eve of July 12 – before thousands of members of the Orange Order and accompanying marching bands take to the streets at 18 locations across Northern Ireland to commemorate the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
The battle at the Boyne river saw King William of Orange defeat Catholic King James II to secure a Protestant line of succession to the British crown.
11-12 July are among the busiest days of the year for the PSNI, who are expecting to deploy 4,000 officers and staff – around two thirds of the force – in a public safety operation.
The cost of the policing operation is expected to be around £4.5 million (€5.3m).
-With additional reporting from Press Association
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Did William of Orange actually sail to Ireland with the wooden pallets?
Just wondering where this piece of history, tradition and culture came from?
@George Vladisavljevic: How else did he and his army get here unless they could walk on water, and let not forget the Pope of day held a celebration mass in his honour
@George Vladisavljevic:
Perhaps the pallets transported oranges.
@Joseph Brady: still wondering where the history, tradition and culture comes from then.
@Eoin .h: The pope of the day who would have been Catholic celebrates a prostants victory over Catholic. If that is not a historical fact then I’m confused
@George Vladisavljevic: ahhh they’re great crack. Really . . . . . . . .
@George Vladisavljevic: no he was just a deadly pallet collector …imagine having him in your estate for halloween he would have been bleedin rapah
@Joseph Brady: At the time Louis XIV and his allies were at war with the Papal States which was part of the League of Augsburg.
Pope Innocent XI ordered that a Te Deum in celebration of William’s victory over James.
@Paddy Whelan: A Catholic pope celebrating a prostant victory over Catholic, which in turn led to prostant taking charge of the throne of England and what happened to the Catholic for hundreds of years that followed, history class over OK.
@George Vladisavljevic: are you legit looking an explanation? All will become clear when it is a 32 county Republic BTW. This happens annually and will be funded by Irish taxpayers in the event of ‘re’unification.
@Joseph Brady: Whether it is timekeeping, astronomy or the politics of that era, our society today pays dearly for not appreciating the transition from the monarchies and papacies to a secular society, with the Battle of the Boyne being a European rather than a local event in those respects.
https://beardyhistory.com/2023/07/09/battle-of-the-boyne-pope-backed-king-billy/
Only the police car is absolutely disgraceful? Never the effigys and pictures of people, or flags etc? They’re all okay yeah?
@JC:
One of many reasons why no one in the Republic has any desire to amalgamate.
@Mary.E.: Ehm – speak for yourself. You don’t get to speak for everyone in the 26 counties. The desire of the majority of Irish people is to see a united Ireland in the near future, so jog along with yourself there.
@Ray Dunne: no it wouldn’t – what a ridiculous argument.
@Mary.E.: Orange troll
@Ann Reddin: I’m not sure that many really care anymore.
@Eoghan: if they ever really did. Not everybodys priority
@Ann Reddin:
A referendum would clear that up.
Jog along
@Sean Sean:
No just a realistic
@Mary.E.:
A realist
These bonfires are excellent at winding up shinners, long may it continue :)
@Mary.E.: Exactly right, Mary. Careful what you wish for.
“It is about publicly expressing our faith, our culture, our heritage. It is about celebrating, respectfully, our identity,” – Your “identity” seems to be made up of a LOT of Hate.
@Tricia G28: respectfully
@Tricia G28: A sick sad culture.
An unlikeable lot
A certain kkkohort of kulture warrior arsonists on this side of the border, that you support, would have us like them sectarianists in trying to inflame and incite kulture war nonsense.
Backward shower of gobdaws.
The Unionists only hold the same prejudiced conception about the Irish and their culture as the Victorian academics. As descendants of the Scottish settlers, why shouldn’t they celebrate the same traditions of natural selection that many do here?
” The careless, squalid, unaspiring ‘Irishman, fed on potatoes, living in a pig-stye, doting on a superstition, multiplies like rabbits or ephemera: -the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him”
http://onala.free.fr/greg1868fac.pdf
If the unionists burn the Irish flag as representative of Irish culture, then many of you burn it along with them.
@ecrowley ecrowley: Sorry Gerald, your comment is coming up empty as I have you muted.
@ecrowley ecrowley: I do not know why people apologise; there is no obligation to read or not read, so I shrug when I see it.
As the unionists are burning flags representative of an island culture, I see it as an opportunity to remove prejudice Very few have the courage to identify natural selection as an attempt to reduce the higher human faculties to the same status as carnivore animals.
“The views you have acquired about Darwinism, evolution and the struggle for existence won’t explain to you the meaning of your life and won’t give you guidance in your actions, and a life without an explanation of its meaning and importance, and without the unfailing guidance that stems from it is a pitiful existence.” Tolstoy’s last letter
That is as true today as it ever was.
@Gerald Kelleher: You on drugs?
Funny old tradition, a bunch of semi scots, celebrating a gay dutch man, defeating an englishman, in order to rule the british establishment who primarily were german ????
@Michael James Brennan: you couldn’t make it up Michael
@Michael James Brennan: and same gay protestant Dutchman had the support of most of the European Catholic establishment (Spain, the Habsburgs, the Pope) with France the only major power on the Jacobite side.
The 62 metre one in Larne will be a great help to the ozone layer.I suppose there will be more of them on Sunday if England win the Euros.
Why can’t the climate change gurus shut this down? Surly this cannot be good for the environment? Further, all of the Queens University, highly educated, canines that recently received their higher degrees, will be under the bed all night fearing for their lives. Where is the RSPCA?
@Oh Mammy: Culture! They have been burning pallets and tyres for hundreds of years!
@Oh Mammy: Not allowed in the 26 under health and safety laws. Same should apply up north. I’ve no doubt the trees went up in flames when the tower of hatred fell and that alone should be reason enough to stop them, as it would appear that burning effigies of dead children isn’t a good enough reason to put a stop to it. Neanderthal man is alive and well in the six counties.
There are many Royal Society rednecks here who celebrate that organisation and would feel right at home with their Northern counterparts.
The Battle of the Boyne happened on July 1st local time, as the enlightenment-engendered society refused to accept the calendar correction, which requires the calendar to closely follow the Earth’s position around the Sun using the Solstice and Equinox alignments as milestones. The Catholic Church had corrected this about 100 years earlier by removing ten days.
By the 18th century, it had amounted to 11 days, so when the English eventually caved in and adjusted, the Battle of the Boyne became the Twelfth of July. So, when you all hail Sir Isaac and his clockwork solar system, remember how intransigent these people were with basic research.
@Gerald Kelleher: was just about to write that myself
The Church’s correction is due to an observation that was unknown at the time yet existed at the time of the Neolithic builders of Newgrange and the framework of our current 365/366-day calendar system. I do not project interpretation into the ancient symbols; however, if the commenter appreciates the dynamics and references used, the symbolism makes sense, like the 5,200-year-old sundial stone of Knowth.
https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/kerbstone-15-knowth-91f39cf29b564991a6ceb810a10afdb9
I appreciate that not all commenters are crude and cruel, so this represents a restoration of astronomy and timekeeping from the misadventures of academics around the time of the Battle of the Boyne.
@Gerald Kelleher: great post.
And we have to breathe in that pollution.
Some of the bonfires were lit last night as the thick see you next Tuesdays are incapable of understanding a calendar.
Tut tut. Them with a picture of their first minister on the bonfire. They do realise how moronic and dumb all of this makes them look year after year. Grown adults trying to build the biggest bonfire. lol. One message they should put up there is that nobody in Britain cares or thinks about NI in any way which is not something that will ever change. That is their biggest problem.
Don’t feed the trolls! Publishing all this and the political outcry is giving them exactly what they want. They don’t care if the commentary is negative – they know people won’t like it, that’s why they’re doing it!
@Colm de Cleir: Very true. They’re like a dog eating its own vomit.
The media like to portray the North as having Bonfires on every street this time of year. It suits Unionists and those Irish opposed to reunification to have people in the south believe this narrative. I would really have to go out of my way to see a bonfire tonight, and im in East Belfast. It’s a working class loyalist thing and only really in their estates and villages. All the Protestants from the leafy parts are all in their holiday homes in Antrim and Donegal. It’s more about drinking and meat headed paramilitary posturing to themselves than history.
@Ewe Nuts: it’s always the simplest people, that behavior is of the savages of early men,.
Pity it didn’t fall down on top of them
@Jb Walshe: why?
that place Moygashel seems to be a lawless kind of a spot, a do whatever you want kind of a place
Can we have a border poll now please? I want it back.
Just more of the same backward looking pranks by extremes. It is sad that the Orange Order is peppered with these kinds of people. It takes away from their celebrations and respected culture.
@Camio 55: a small insular genetic pool has left them lacking more and more as each generation spawns
@Mr “JonnieBoy” Johnson: it’s a wonder the invaders actually want to leave the womb
What ever you come from education in life will give your tools to jull
The British government to which they claim aligence is complicit by their inaction.
they on the way out we on the way in UP THE RA forever whoo hoo i have lived up there just a shower of uneducated rats on a sinking ship
Would be handy if a few of those Just Stop Oil guys glued themselves to the pallets.
have your say