I’ve a healthy distrust of tradition. Ironically, my suspicion was bred deep, from my formative years.

It’s hard to respect tradition when you’ve seen it fuelling bloody mayhem around you as a child. 

Regular readers will know I grew up during what I’ve come to call the Northern Ireland Civil War. I refuse to use the term ‘The Troubles’ any longer. 

It’s a disgraceful euphemism which obscures the reality of murder gangs, torture, extrajudicial executions and pogroms. The term ‘The Troubles’ is one tradition we could do without.

Until I left - escaped - Northern Ireland in my 20s, I saw tradition as an engine of killing. If daddy was a bigot, it seemed to determine that you’d become a bigot. 

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If daddy hated Catholics, you’d hate Catholics. If daddy hated Protestants, you’d hate Protestants. If daddy wore a sash, you wore a sash; and on it went.

To hell with them all. That was my opinion. So the Stiff Little Fingers song Alternative Ulster seemed to speak directly to me, as I’m sure it did to thousands of other kids of my generation in Northern Ireland. 

‘They say they’re a part of you

And that’s not true, you know.

They say they’ve got control of you

And that’s a lie, you know.

They say you will never be free’

Freedom often means smashing tradition to smithereens. Though nothing in human existence is easy, so it’s equally true that a life without........

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