Celebrating the Twelfth

This week I thought I would talk about the 12th in this podcast. When I mentioned a few days ago to some friends that I was going to do this podcast about the 12th and asked them what they thought if I sang a few Orange songs, the answer was no. And that’s understandable. Some of these songs are very sectarian, are about hatred and are not acceptable. I first came across Orange songs way back in the day when I came across the writings of Richard Hayward. He wrote a number of books about Ireland, about Irish folklore, about Ulster – its nine counties – and I still remain very fond of his writings. 

And that’s where I came across The Sash.

It is old but it is beautiful, and its colours they are fine
 It was worn at Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne.
My father wore it as a youth in bygone days of yore,
And on the Twelfth, I love to wear the sash my father wore.

Anyone offended by that, either by my singing or my singing this song? Apologies in advance.

The Orange marches have to have a place in the Ireland of the future. The Orange is one of our national colours – the tradition of Orangeism is not one that many of us will appreciate but it’s there none the less and on the basis of equality we have to make space for all of this. At the same time there can be no space for hatred or incitement to hatred.

But let’s just look at some of the facts around the 12 July. The Battle of the Boyne was actually held on 1 July 1690. It was part of a wider European war. They just used Ireland – King Billy and the Pope on the one side and King James and the King of France – as one of the sites of their war. The Pope, Innocent X1 supported the Dutchman King William after the English parliament sacked King James and invited William to take his job. The Pope paid part of King Billy’s expenses and when news of his victory at the Boyne reached Rome a Te Deum was sung in the Vatican in celebration.

The twelfth celebrations have little to do with religion though many Orange men and women are both religious and decent. Others infamously are not. They know the Twelfth is about power and domination. 

In its day the Orange Order was the backbone of unionism. Most business people, almost every unionist politician, Judges and senior RUC officers were members one of the Loyal Orders – The Orange Order – the largest - the Apprentice Boys, or the Royal Black Preceptory. It was essential in the control of the political system, the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, and the domination by the Ulster Unionist Party of the North for over 50 years. The Orange Order was essential to the control that party exerted. It facilitated structured sectarian political and economic discrimination against nationalists and Catholics. It’s not for nothing that the North of Ireland is known by nationalists as the Orange State.

And even to this day, and I have spoken to many Orangemen over the years and had good relationships with them, and enjoy those relationships yet, it’s still a matter of deep regret that the leadership of the Orange Order will not meet with the President of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald in the same way that they refused to meet with me. 

The Orange Order was founded by the English and Protestant ascendancy in Ireland in the 1790s as a counter to the United Irish Society which was seeking independence from England. Its purpose was to defend England’s colonial presence and interests in Ireland and to divide people. Its fortunes waned through much of the early part of the 19th century and it was banned for a time by the English. However, the growth of the Home Rule campaign for Ireland in the second part of the 19th century there was a resurgence of the Order. It was encouraged by those who wished to maintain the union with Britain, and who saw the sectarian violence of the Orange Order as a way to stop Home Rule.

Since then the trumphalist marches of the Orange Order have frequently been a source of sectarian strife. In August 1969 it was a march by the Apprentice Boys on the walls of Derry which led to the Battle of the Bogside and the pogroms in Belfast. The following year, 1970, in my home place, it was an orange march on the Springfield Road in west Belfast which led to the first serious confrontation between nationalists and the British Army. 

This year the Covid-19 pandemic forced the Loyal Orders to cancel their large annual July 12th demonstrations. However, one tradition that was maintained was the lighting of bonfires on the 11th night. Some of these are huge. It is totally and absolutely unacceptable that the Orange washes their hands of them, that most unionist politicians wash their hands of them, that some unionist politicians are photographed in front of these bonfires. It is also usual for such bonfires to carry anti-Catholic and sectarian slogans and banners, the election posters of nationalist – mainly Sinn Féin – politicians and effigies of people the Orange see as the enemy. 

The Irish National flag is burned regularly and the slogan KAT which stands for ‘Kill all Taigs’ (all Catholics) is regularly displayed on bonfires. This 11th night in one incident in Newtownabbey a children’s bonfire – a children’s bonfire! -  had KAT - ‘Kill all Taigs’ burned on it.

In Bangor an anti-Black Lives Matters slogan was burned on a bonfire.

On others slogans and provocative messages about the recent death of republican leader Bobby Storey were erected.

Not only are these bonfires environmentally damaging; not only do they disrupt life for the people in the community but I just couldn’t image anywhere else that on a public thoroughfare people could or would erect huge bonfires. I couldn’t image it happening in Grafton Street or the Malone Road or O’Connell Street or even any of the great thoroughfares of London and other places.

So there is a job of work to be done about making a stand. Thankfully those Orange marches that used to parade into neighbourhoods where they were most unwelcome have more or less ceased because local people stood up against them. We equally have to stand up against sectarianism – in all its forms. The status that the Orange used to have, where it gave unionists a sense of superiority, of cohesion and of being in charge; that is all changing. 

With social, political and demographics changes in the North the sectarian certainties and domination of the past have gone. 

We have seen the future and it’s not Orange but the Orange do have a part and a place in the future.

Thankfully the 12th passed this year without serious incident. So let’s continue to try to talk – to listen to the Orange – to stand against sectarianism – let’s seek to break down the prejudices, and to recognise that this is one of the biggest challenges facing our society today.