Violence in Palestine...Street

It is believed St Patrick returned to Ireland from Wales even after years of slavery here due to a vision. As written in his self-penned Confessio, he read a letter given to him by ‘Ireland’ and came back to ‘the Voice of the Irish.’

If yesterdays scenes in the Holylands are anything to go by, it might have been better if he stayed away.

12 arrested and 5 charged with various misdemeanours including riotous behaviour, the sight of riot vans in Carmel Street and drunken young people in leprechaun hats cavorting senselessly in front of PSNI officers was simply an ‘Unholy Mess,’ as the Belfast Telegraph punned this morning. It was also an embarrassment, and about as far away from a celebration of our patron saint as you can get.

The usual righteous indignation has appeared from political representatives and calls for the universities and colleges to take severe action – the same calls as the last time things got out of hand in this student area. This year was clearly different however, and saw the worst student trouble in Belfast ever seen on St. Patrick’s Day.

I say student trouble because none of the 5 charged are from Belfast – leading credence to the opinion that most of the trouble was caused by students.

After years of increasing trouble on March 17th it seemed last year had seen a solution to the problem, and a balance had been struck, with wardens on the streets and a highly publicised universities campaign about acting responsibly.

The scenes on Tuesday rightly aroused anger in residents and politicians but also from students from Belfast who are associated with the behaviour. After last year there was a sense that students from far and wide who came to live in the Holylands had finally wised up and stopped treating the place where they spent term time as a dumping ground.

It seems these students are far away from home in Belfast where no-one knows them, or their families, and are simply treating the novelty of anonymity as a licence to wreck the place that some of us call our home.

However, I’m not hear to ‘bate’ culchie students - there were clearly people involved in the incidents who were not students and didn’t even live in the Holyland area.

You know you’ve a good riot on your hands when the peculiar Norn Iron species of ‘recreational rioter’ pulls himself away from Jeremy Kyle or his knock-off Playstation to see what the craic is with the cops.

Maybe it was the non-student element this year which tipped the revelry into something decidedly more sinister…or maybe it was the good weather bringing more people out onto the street. Whatever the reason, one thing is for sure, March 17th will never be the same again in these student areas.

Long gone will be the freedom to sit out on the street and enjoy one of the highlights of the year, or the freedom to have music or mix freely on the street.

One of the unique features of Belfast universities and colleges is the sense of community that exists within this famous student area – the events on Tuesday have permanently tarnished such an image and sense of community and have set back carefully fostered student-resident relations tenfold.

I hate to sound like a pissed-off parent but you have no-one to blame but yourselves.