This is the Orange marching season. It is a traditionally a time of heightened inter-community tensions in Northern Ireland, when tens of thousands of Catholics and middle-class Protestants flee the province in order to avoid the ‘Twelfth’ and its accompanying displays of sectarian triumphalism. In the late-1990s the Portadown Orangemen’s insistence on marching from Drumcree church through the Catholic Garvaghy Road area brought the North to the edge of widespread communal conflict. The political scientist Dr Duncan Morrow, now the head of the Community Relations Council, writing at the height of the Drumcree crisis, reported Catholics in Armagh talking about “civil relationships which were terminated for the month of July, during which there was no contact except public exchange of insults.”
We can only hope that Drumcree is a scar that will heal with time. The Orange Order has certainly been scarred by it. Some longstanding Orangemen, such as Rev Brian Kennaway, chairman of the cross-border Irish Association, believe the Order is now facing irreversible decline in urban areas like Belfast and Portadown, as many traditional members become disillusioned because of its connections with loyalist paramilitarism. The elderly besuited gentlemen marching in their lodges in the main Belfast parade on 12th July are now invariably followed by ‘Kick the Pope’ loyalist bands, made up of shaven-headed young men who make little secret of their bloodcurdling anti-Catholic attitudes and paramilitary affiliations.
This is reflected in a sharply falling membership. The unionist News Letter recently reported a decline in Orange Order membership during the years of the Northern ‘Troubles’ from over 93,000 in 1968 to less than 36,000 in 2006. Orange leaders like Grand Secretary Drew Nelson blame this on the general decrease in traditional religious observance and the new “ethos of the state” in Northern Ireland, so that, for example, policemen now have to notify their superiors if they are members. But the bigotry and violence of so many of its manifestations must also be playing its part. One senior Orangeman estimates that there are now a mere 2,500 Orangemen ‘on the books’ in the Belfast area.
In rural areas the picture is somewhat different. There the anti-Catholic bigotry may still be under the surface, but it is more controlled and less obvious. The Order is seen as a unifying force that brings all elements of the Protestant community together for peaceful religious and social gatherings every summer. Ironically, one of the regions where this is most true is in the Southern border counties of Donegal, Cavan and Monaghan, where there may be only around 700 Orangemen, but they manage to bring the community together for five enormous ‘picnics’ every summer. At these events crowds of up to 2,000 people gather to hear bands, visit stalls, sample the ladies’ marvellous home baking (one of the North’s great untold stories), engage in children’s activities like face-painting and bouncing castles, and generally have an enjoyable ‘day out’.
Now yet another face of the Orange Order is beginning to emerge: the Orange marching season as cultural festival and tourist attraction. The leadership’s attempts to rebrand the 12th July parade as an ‘Orangefest’ may be derided by some who believe the old anti-Catholic leopard will never change its spots, but unusual alliances are being forged to try to build on these faltering first steps.
In July 2005 a senior official of the all-island tourism marketing body, Tourism Ireland, boarded an empty northbound train on the morning of the ‘Twelfth’ to watch the Belfast parade and begin talking to Orange leaders about how they might begin to sell their flagship event. He and his colleagues argued that economic development as well as heritage were involved here. Whereas July in most European countries is one of the two biggest months for tourism, hotel occupancy in Northern Ireland in that month was deeply depressed. And the sine qua non of bringing in tourists was guaranteeing their safety and security.
In 2006 it was decided to focus efforts on four ‘flagship festival’ parades, and Orangefest was initiated at the largest of these in Belfast. Stewards were trained to welcome visitors. The Grand Orange Lodge visited Dublin and – last month – New York to see how the parades could be marketed in places like the Southern states of the US and Canada where there are strong Ulster-Scots connections. Tourist chiefs point to shops now staying open and more people booking into hotels in Belfast around the ‘Twelfth’ as evidence that their efforts are starting slowly to have an effect.
There are many who will continue to scoff at this initiative. They will say that the Orange Order has a huge – and maybe endless – distance to travel before its ancient triumphalism and bigotry can be transformed into the kind of ‘feel good’ atmosphere that makes for a successful cultural, religious or folk festival.
Maybe they’re right. But as long ago as 1983, in the midst of the ‘Troubles’, the editor of the Irish Times, Douglas Gageby, himself a Belfast Protestant (although of a nationalist persuasion), argued : “In what we now call a pluralist Ireland, the Orange Order would become purely a celebratory social organisation making a strong contribution to the life of the whole country.” It may be an impossible dream – but we’re allowed to dream, aren’t we?
Andy Pollak
Will the Orange Order bring the tourists to Ardoyne and show them its contribution to politically motivated violence due to its insistence in exercising triumphalism over a community which does not want them in the streets where they live. Is this the level of leadership that will encourage the Order to be accepted by all? Will the tourists be reminded of the fact that Portadown LOL apply to the Parades Commission for a march every Sunday to take place on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown and have done for a considerable number of years even on Christmas Day in 2005, during the season of peace and goodwill to all. Any organisation from whatever side should never be rewarded for making no contribution to peace and reconciliation least of all one with such a history of abject sectarianism.
I personally feel that a good first step in this regard would be for the Orange Order, for the next generation or so, to organize marches such that they are routed though substantially unionist areas. I don’t believe anyone (or, anyone sensible) would object to the 12th on that basis. That is to say, I don’t object to my neighbour practicing his boxing in our common garden… what I object to his him dancing up and practicing his swings and jabs within a few inches of my face, and then claiming he has ever right to do so since it’s common space. He’s technically right, but there’s no getting around that in every practical sense this is NOT a respectful or neutral act. It’s unquestionably intended to be a provocation. And it’s hard to dress up a deliberate invitation to riot as a big tourist draw, I’m afraid.
When I was a boy growing up on the shankill Road in the fifties and sixties every adult male member of my extended family was in the Orange Order. Today, I literally do not know anyone who’s a member. It’s a really shrunken thing. The irony is that resistance to its ludicrous obsession with public displays gives it an inflated view of itself when it reality it’s a minority interest.
Another good one Andy, thanks!
I have often compared in my mind the “Escalade” celebrations in Geneva (annually 11-12 December) which commemorate the successful defence of the Calvinist walled city against the attack led by the house of (Catholic) Savoy in 1602. It is the major annual event for the city of Geneva in terms of indigenous cultural and historical significance. There are fife bands and drums, cannon fire, marches, bonfires, songs, speeches, horses parades, re-enactments, all led by the descendants of the same families who were defending in 1602, but also involving all the “new” inhabitants of Geneva, most of whom are certainly not Calvinist and who now vastly outnumber the “old” inhabitants. The fife bands even play some of the same tunes as in the North (which we would recognize as the Protestant Boys, etc – an interesting piece of musico-cultural research for somebody to undertake…). And the main thing for children is the ubiquitous miniature chocolate cauldrons which all the chocolatiers produce, filled with marzipan vegetables, in commemoration of the cauldron of soup which an old grandmother is supposed to have poured out of her bedroom window on top of a Savoy soldier caught trying to scale her bit of the walls…
Anyhow, the tourists flock in from other (non-calvinist) parts of Switzerland, neighbouring France, even from Italy for this annual pre-Christmas event, usually under a starry sky, with all the stands and knickknacks one would associate with a fair of this sort. The weekend (usually the event is moved to the closest weekend) is filled out with a cross-city running race, a marathon race from beyond the current French border to the city walls along the route of the original night march of the Savoy forces, concerts, special exhibitions, a winter lake swim, etc etc.
Some ideas maybe for our cousins in the North….
I welcome attempts to rebrand the 12th but like other contributors i am sceptical about the reality of this. i wonder if the order faces a fundemental issue in that they were founded as an anti catholic orgnaisation (or at least as a defender of protestantism) and the 12th is still a celebration of victory of one side over the other. It may be possible to turn it into an event that attracts foreign tourists but will it be acceptable to the catholic/nationalist community. Whilst the 12th remains a festival of one community it will always be a contentious event with all the problems that this entails.