With the nominal end of the Orange Supremacist marching season occurring just a few weeks ago  Irish Catholics in the North of Ireland can breath a collective sigh of relief ! This years 'marching season' saw one Catholic lynched in a Unionist pogram, dozens seriously injured by Loyalists in and out of uniform, Catholic premises and churches burnt to the ground and communities traumatised by agressive Nuremburg-type loyalist rallies being forced through districts by the stormtroopers of the RUC/PSNI.

Spare a thought then for those Irish Catholics aka Nationalists who live 'behind enemy lines' in majority Unionist areas where quite literally 'everyday
is the 12th of July!' Bernadette McAliskey nee Devlin's metaphorical quip that they had to 'lie as low as a Larne Catholic' was based very much in the practicalities of life in an environment where the jackboot of Unionism hovvers monolithically over every facet of everyday life.
Incidentally, a Larne Republican told me that one of his earliest memories was of getting punched in the face by a 'brave' Loyalist adult & being told it was because ' he was a Fenian!' (used as a derogatory term by pro-British Unionists.) It is also my understanding that this man's family paid a very heavy price for 'daring' to resist Orange fascism within one of the most bigotted towns in the North of Ireland.

Writing from the relative safety of one of the best known Republican areas in Belfast I can empathise with Republicans who must live with the daily pressure of residing within a Unionist area. A close friend grew up in a very similar area , where 'Croppies' were expected to remain prostrated at all times. Mere technicalities like Loyalist ceasefires count for not a fig if you live within their catchment areas & there are constant reminders just in
case you forget, for example, wee 'memos' like petrol bombs, pipe bombs are issued frequently to 'forgetful' Fenians who dare to offend against the dominant 'caste.!'

Harsh penalties are meted out to Catholics who have the temerity to wear a Glasgow Celtic / Gaelic Athletic Association sports top or dare to utter a Republican opinion within Unionist fiefdoms. Openly displaying an Irish tricolour even if
it was on a bedroom wall can lead to your home being firebombed or much worse ! And if you or your family happen to be murdered by these 'Herrenvolk', then you better not dare to grieve publicly as it will be met with Loyalist scorn; my friend told me of the time when 4 catholic working men were slaughtered by a state sponsored Loyalist death squad as they repaired a Housing estate in the Unionist seaside town of Castlerock
in the 1990's , despite the fact that these men were actually repairing Protestant homes, not a single flower was left at the scene of carnage , not a local inhabitant could be found by the TV crews to condemn the machine-gun murder of 4 workers! A little later , a relative of one of the victims left a flower and a card unobtrusively on the street where his relative was slain, only to be physically threatened by the gloating residents & the small floral tribute scattered in full view of the RUC ! One of the murdered workers was a member of a Republican organisation and a local resident was quoted in the local Unionist rag the following week telling of her shock that 'such people' could have been permitted to be working in 'her loyalist town!' The fact that they had been murdered was not mentioned! Unfortunately, in the North of ireland slain catholics get afforded less recognition in Unionist areas than when they were alive!

Any Republican/Nationalist/Catholic who has lived 'behind enemy lines' will be familiar with the collective coldshouldering and intensification of personal abuse that occurs in the weeks leading up to that ultimate Orange Unionist hate-fest aka the 12th of July! Many will be familiar with the long nightly defensive vigils, the barricading of entrances & windows in homes, the self-imposed curfews , the search for simple blunt weapons of self-defence that lead up to that maximum Nuremburg on July 12th (in the North of Ireland very few Catholics are allowed firearm permits even for agricultural use- reminiscent of the Penal Laws that among other repressive measures forebade Catholics to own weapons.) And if the regular Orange triumphalist marches that deliberately play outside isolated catholic homes, chapels & pubs were not enough then there is always the most feared night for catholics - the 11th night of July! Quite simply, the '11th Night' is the Orange state's 'Kristalnacht' - only in the North of Ireland it is on an annual basis! Orange mobs often with compliant RUC escorts are given free reign to roam the night after their bonfires to terrorise Catholics; pensioners are considered as fair game as teenagers! Windows are annually 'put in', Catholic property burnt and Catholics still foolhardy enough to be about the streets are assaulted - and that, would be an example of a relatively 'quiet' 11th 'Kristalnacht'. In Ballymoney we saw the 3 Quinn children burnt to death during the annual 11th of July night pogroms! 2009's so-called orange marching season , which saw the murder of Kevin Mcdaid in an earlier pogrom, was no different for the Catholics/Nationalists of Coleraine, Mr McDaid's family & home was again attacked on the 11th night .
The list is nearly endless, put simply , if you are a Catholic/Nationalist/Republican living in a Unionist area , then the 11th night is the most traumatic of the year as it is the night you are most likely to be burnt out, murdered or attacked . You can bet your life that the RUC/PSNI will be at best looking the other way, like they did in Portadown when a Loyalist mob literally kicked Robert Hamill to death while the heavily armed RUC sat in their armoured jeeps and watched a mob of loyalists in true Klan fashion lynch the man in the most brutal and blatant way possible!

Therefore I always spare a thought for our friends and comrades 'behind enemy lines' in Unionist dominated areas from my relatively 'safe' Republican area especially during the Loyalist supremacist marching season. I dont say this lightly, but if you want to authentically experience something of what it must have been like for Jewish people under the Third Reich, try living as a Republican/Nationalist/Catholic in a Unionist area during the Loyalist Orange marching season.......