By RICHARD GALLAGHER

Journeying around Belfast in the run up to the biggest day in the loyalist calendar, the 12th of July, you can’t help but notice the monstrous leaning tower of Pisa’s made from wooden pallets, tyres and in some cases, effigies of local republican politicians.

For those who aren’t aware, “The Twelfth” as it is affectionately known is a day when Ulster Protestants celebrate the victory of Protestant King Billy over the Catholic King James the II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. On the night before it is tradition to celebrate by setting bonfires alight. This glorification of the deaths of an untold amount of Catholics means the continuation of this annual celebration, at best, cannot be thought of as very considerate given it’s context in a post conflict Northern Ireland. However the participants in the celebrations call it culture so I guess that must make it okay.

What is also apparent is that these bonfires appear to be getting bigger. Noticeably bigger even than what I recall when I first came to live in Belfast only five years ago and I believe that the explanation for this is the same as the explanation for the Union flags getting so big that their size restricts their majesty of blowing in the wind.

Unlike the increase in the size of flags however, the maximisation of the size of bonfires also increases the harm done to the environment as the burning of tyres and wooden pallets emit a toxic soup of pollutants into the atmosphere which I doubt would be permitted anywhere else in the western world.

As well as this, it increases the dangers involved in setting these structures on fire. This past July, these dangers came to the fore when a giant bonfire was built a mere thirty feet from terraced houses in Chobham Street in east Belfast. This resulted in families living in the area being advised to move out by the Fire and Rescue Service such was the danger to their lives and property. On the 11th night, 35 firefighters worked for more than two hours keeping people and property safe in the area.

Ulster Unionist councillor Jim Rodgers, speaking of the Chobham Street bonfire described it as the biggest that he “could ever recall”.

This isn’t an isolated case as in total, 52 bonfires across Northern Ireland required assistance from Fire and Rescue Service teams with nineteen requiring intervention by crews. One can only imagine the strain that this puts on the Fire and Rescue Service at this time of year, not to mention the cost at the expense of the tax payer.

With the inevitable reopening of the debate about regulating bonfires that happens after “The Twelfth” every year, I find myself asking why for the first time in Belfast’s history, a bonfire is so big that it causes so much concern? Why have previous generations of loyalists been content with burning bonfires that didn’t result in local residents evacuating their homes? After all, this is a post conflict society where people are believed to have taken a step away from the antagonising of the past. Yet one look at the bonfires throughout Northern Ireland, covered in Irish, Polish and numerous other national flags as they are would give you the impression that sectarian hatred was as alive and well as it has ever been. So is sectarianism increasing with the size of the bonfires and Union flags? Well, no. It’s not, and this goes someway to explaining the matter.

Now it goes without saying that spite plays an important role in constructing bonfires of this magnitude. There is definitely something to be said for the fact that they are bigger than they used to be merely to spite a post Good Friday Agreement, power-sharing government who refuse to afford Unionists the consideration they once had. There is also something to be said for wide spread unemployment freeing people to spend their time sourcing materials and constructing bonfires in order to rebel against a government that has been unsuccessful in getting them a job. However I believe there is more at play than just this.

To understand the desire to build as big a bonfire as possible is to understand the mentality of a people who consider every inch they are asked to acquiesce as being a monumental defeat, just as their predecessors notoriously considered any attempted inclusion of any other religious denominations, races or sexual persuasions within Northern Irish society as a defeat. So what we see around this time of year is a case of overcompensation.

These massive bonfires are overcompensating for the fact that the Loyalist community find themselves constantly being threatened by, among other things, modernity. These bonfires exist because they are a manifestation of this need to overcompensate for something lost and they are a response to a threat that no previous generation of loyalists have had to contend with.

Unlike the republican threat in the past, today they face a different animal, a modern, progressive society, embarrassed by this culture and hell bent on the destruction of its very existence.

The bonfire builders and the flag erecters may think that by constructing these symbols of loyalism and making them bigger than ever before they are giving the impression that their culture is alive, well and prosperous. However the truth is, it is restricted more than it has ever been.

More importantly, just like the removal of the Union flag at Belfast City Hall, the restrictions are as a direct result of public demand.

So contrary to what might first be thought when viewing these 12th of July bonfires of symbolic unionism, they are not a manifestation of loyalist power or of growing sectarianism within Northern Ireland but rather a manifestation of how vulnerable this culture is in the face of an increasingly modern, secular Northern Ireland. In this way, the giant bonfires can be seen as an example of a culture that’s existence within a progressive world is on borrowed time and which few will mourn.

What compounds matters and what encourages the pushing of the boundaries is that these bonfire builders know this all too well.