There is not a bandwagon in the country that could bear the weight of those boys parading in Derry
OUR PARAMILITARIES are getting very fat. I’m afraid this is the message that some of us took from that demonstration in Derry City Graveyard this day last week.
Without in any way minimising or excusing their murderous tendencies, or indeed their hatred of the modern world, it has to be said that these last remaining proponents of physical force nationalism were on the porky side.
On a personal level, I sympathise. As a country we are united under adipose tissue. But it was peculiar to see so many of those canvas belts under strain.
Even the lady who was holding the script of the speech for the masked speaker – and what is all that about? – was a big girl. And I say that as a girl who’s getting bigger all the time.
Getting fat requires a whole new wardrobe. Balaclavas are going to have to be knitted on bigger needles.
The ribbed green sweaters are going to have to jump up a whole lot of sizes. Those combat trousers are going to have to give at the waist. Because these days it is only the paramilitary organisations that are getting thinner.
Looking at those boys parading in Derry City Graveyard, the troubling thought occurred that there is not a bandwagon in the country that could bear them.
The mind also turned, inexorably, to the Fat Cops in an old comedy programme, The Fast Show.
The Fat Cops were a pair of plain-clothes detectives who were always eating cream buns, always chasing criminals and always getting stuck in lifts, jammed in doorways, caught in revolving doors, and so on.
They were the male version of The Fat Slags, who had amused the readers of the comic Viz. (It is true that both The Fast Show and Viz were produced in England, by English people. But what can I tell you, I’m from Dublin: these are my cultural references.)
The fat joke is one of the oldest jokes of all, as any fat person knows. Both the Fat Cops and The Fat Slags worked it for all it was worth.
It is a sad fact that being fat makes you ridiculous, no matter how much you are trying to frighten people.
It is something new in Ireland to have a group of paramilitaries who would be physically threatened not so much by Operation Motorman, or its modern equivalent, but by Operation Transformation.
The body of the modern Irish paramilitary makes an interesting study. The muscle-bound torso of Johnny Adair, proudly displayed in an extraordinarily revealing vest, and ostentatiously worked for by lifting weights, was not a sight for the faint-hearted.
Of course, it was not meant to be. Johnny’s look, of which heavy gold jewellery was an integral part, seemed to be influenced by black American prisoners in television programmes and films: or Mr T from The A Team, before he started doing the Snickers advertisements.
Presumably this image was meant to send out the signal “Tough, tough, tough.” But instead it just said “Gay, gay, gay.”
And then there was Michael Stone, who fancied himself as something of a ladies’ man. In the 1990s, he wore his hair in a waist-length plait, at a time that he was having an exhibition of the paintings he had executed whilst he was in prison for murdering, and attempting to murder, people at Milltown cemetery. So not a good look.
In the 1970s, the IRA terrorists were as slim as girls, and wore their hair in fetching bobs. It was a strange moment. Everyone was thinner then. Of course, everyone smoked; but everyone ate less as well. The food was pretty terrible.
And then there was the hunger strike. Bobby Sands died 30 years ago this Thursday, which is election day in the North.
In David Beresford’s book Ten Men Dead, Sands is described as “slight”, even before he started to starve himself to death. He went blind in the process. Here was the body of the male republican as battleground, and not for the first time. The sight of Bobby Sands’s mother, the August after he died, is not one that is easily forgotten. Poor woman. There is no telling what she, and the families of the other hunger strikers, endured as their fit and healthy sons destroyed their own bodies – for nothing.
And now we are left with paramilitary paraders who are more Pie For Ireland than Die For Ireland. They want to present themselves as a lean, mean, fighting machine, but you know, they just can’t.
Unfortunately for the country, they will persist in trying to prove themselves. This probably means that they will continue to murder and cause innocent people grief.
Their fatness does show that they are, physically if not mentally, modern Irish people, addicted to both the motor car and to the television – they have that much, at least, in common with the rest of us. But it also makes them look foolish.
This is the unjust consequence of being fat. Their fatness makes them look as if their ideas have ground to a halt and have solidified around them.
In a strange way, their fatness makes them look old. And that’s not a good look either.