NO SURRENDER
Before the six counties of Northern Island
had civil rights, when some subjects had two votes
and some had none, and our constitution
permitted such injustice, I was woken,
in my third floor student digs on Newsham Drive,
Liverpool, early one summer Saturday
by pipes and drums and accordions.
The city’s Orange Lodges were having
their family day out in Newsham Park –
more than ninety Lodges each with a band
of swagger and lilt: ‘The Sash My Father Wore’,
‘The Orange Maid Of Sligo’. By mid-day
children and wives were picnicking round the Parks’
two boating lakes – the bandsmen aleing
in and outside pubs along West Derby Road.
Through the afternoon there were intermittent
outbreaks of song: ‘…the shutting of the gates…’,
‘…when you’re marching down the Shankill…’. Later
the soft night swooned with swaying revels, stray notes,
oaths, and the hollow noise of empty bottles
rolling on pavements.
Alan Horne
November 27, 2021No British person who isn’t personally involved in this conflict tries to understand it, so thanks for this poem, David. I recall my dad making jokes about the left-footers and the proddydogs (he was one of the latter) fighting each other during his childhood in Liverpool in the 1920s. People usually quote the figure of 3000 deaths during the thirty years of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, and since the Good Friday Agreement there have been less than 200. So progress is possible, even if very difficult.
David Selzer
November 27, 2021I became a supporter of Irish independence or, perhaps, more accurately I came to understand and therefore condemn British Imperialism whenever and wherever it operated, when I was studying O level history.
Jeff Teasdale
July 13, 2026Partisan ‘lines of faith’ have always intrigued me, David, going right back to when I was drafted in to walk in new clothes on something called ‘The Whit Marches’ (spell-check has just added an ‘e’ to the ‘Whit’, as my own seven-year-old head did then, 70 years ago) in South Manchester. ‘Catholic’ one day, ‘Protestant’ the next, thus splitting my extended family, religion wise, if only for a weekend.
They still have these walks in Thameside, but only now for brass bands, where our two granddaughters have a very jolly time in the Macclesfield Youth Brass Band, trying to play in as many venues as possible in one evening. Next year the band members’ fathers intend to hire a minibus to match venues with pubs, and I have been invited (hopefully only to be the driver, as the record stands at 12 venues, I think))!
Contrast that with the menace you mention emanating from across The Celtic Sea….which I witnessed (again, I think) in Liverpool (Anglican) Cathedral last year…. A Sunday service to mark the end of the tenure of a very popular young minister – and also witnessed by two very stern old men sitting behind me, black suited, orange-sashed, glaring faced, harrumphing quietly under their breaths. I should have asked them why, but their gaze never seemed to meet mine, and it might have spoiled my take on an otherwise very joyous occasion….
‘Faith’, like ‘feelings’, can be interpreted and misinterpreted … it depends on which end of the trombone you are, and for whom your drum conveniently beats…
I like this poem very much… again, very nuanced and evocative (uncomfortable memories of new itchy clothes, hot days, and wishing I was playing out football instead with my friends of no-known (to me) faith at all).