“This is a choice between right and wrong, between oppression and solidarity. This is not the time to be neutral in Drumcree.”
By Geoff Bell
The Orange Order is a product of the British plantations/invasions in Ireland. In particular, the colonial land seizure of Ulster in the 17th century. Those given land there were from Scotland and England and were Protestant. They occupied areas once occupied by Catholics. This mattered in an era of European religious wars. The purpose of the settlers was to establish a colony in Ireland loyal to the English Crown.
The Orange Order was founded in the late eighteenth century by an anti-Catholic group of lower-class rural Protestants who were contesting for land with the natives. Its birthplace was not far away from Drumcree, the centre of the recent dispute. The “Orange” came from William III, a Protestant king who had defeated a Catholic king for the British crown. Rich landlords, leaders of the Anglican Church and other members of the Protestant “Ascendancy” soon took over the leadership of the Orange Order. They needed cannon fodder against the revolution then threatening British control of Ireland.
This was the 1798 Rising of the United Irishmen (UI). Their leadership was also Protestant, but Presbyterians, whom the Ascendancy also discriminated against, although not to the degree Catholics suffered. The rank and file of the UI were mainly, but not exclusively, Catholic. The Orange Order provided a counter-revolutionary army for the British government. A leader of the Order, Colonel Knox, one of Co. Tyrone’s biggest landowners, wrote to General Lake, then commander of the British army in Ulster: “I hope to increase the animosity between the Orangemen and the United Irishmen.” This policy of divide and rule the Orange Order has followed ever since.
Ironically, the Orange Order was split over the Act of Union of1801, which, after the defeat of the UI, abolished Ireland’s devolved parliament and established direct British rule. Some in the Orange leadership believed a British parliament might give the Irish Catholics more rights than would a Protestant-controlled one in Ireland.
When these fears were not realised, the Orange Order became the Union’s biggest fan. It allowed Presbyterians to join its ranks, as they were now moving away from their radical roots. It thus became an organisation of the wider Protestant community, but still led by the landlords, and still supported by the upper class in Britain, including, on occasion, members of the Royal family and especially the Tories. The marches were the highlights of Orange life, allowing both members and supporters to march through Catholic areas. Such was the violence that took place during these marches that even the British government occasionally banned the Order.
The Orange Order maintained its reactionary traditions throughout the nineteenth century, for instance campaigning against electoral reform in Ireland – fearful of a nationalist majority – and supporting landlords in their battles against tenants. The links with the Tories continued. When the Conservative Party opposed Irish Home Rule in the late nineteenth century, one of its most prominent members, Randolph Churchill, went to a rally in Belfast to, he said, “play the Orange card.” An anti-Catholic riot followed that rally.
The Order helped to form the Tory-dominated Unionist Party in the late 19th century. When a wing of that party came to power in Northern Ireland after partition in 1921, the Order was allocated a third of the membership of its leadership body. It became fully embedded in the discriminatory system which gave political and economic privileges to the Protestant working class. The Order was so powerful that, until recently, every unionist MP from Northern Ireland was a member, as was every unionist Northern Ireland Prime Minister, up to and including David Trimble.
During the Troubles, Orange marches through or near Catholic areas often produced physical conflict between the two communities. Yet the Orange Order declined as the loyalist paramilitaries grew, offering an even more violent response to what was seen as the nationalist rebellion. The Orange Order became minor players, but the marches remained.
Peter Berresford Ellis, the Irish historian, has written, “The Orange marches, which have always been purposely routed through Catholic areas, are symbolic of a dog marking its territory. The message is not folkloric; it is one that states ‘we are the conquerors; you are the conquered. The message is deeply sectarian.”
The Peace Process sought to contest this “message” by, among other things, setting up the Parades Commission, an institution regularly lambasted by the Orange Order as it objected on principle to any restriction on its marching. That constant criticism may be what is behind the Commission’s recent capitulation to the Order when agreeing to allow it to march through a Catholic area of Drumcree. But it is still a decision that is difficult to understand. More so as, in the 1990s, Orange marches in Drumcree set off anti-Catholic attacks throughout Northern Ireland, which directly resulted in 21 deaths, including those of three small boys in a loyalist firebomb.
The peace process and Good Friday Agreement, with its support for power sharing and its talk of reconciliation, were meant to stop all this. But the Orange Order opposed the GFA, which went against its supremacist traditions and practices. It has continued to serve as a beacon for traditional unionism and anti-/catholic sectarianism.
Yet the Orange Order is declining. It has. now has approximately 30,000 to 40,000 members, but at the start of the Troubles it had 3000,000. While the main unionist parties, the Democratic Unionist Party and Traditional Unionist Voice, rushed to endorse their actions in Drumcree, their old allies in the Ulster Unionist Party were less supportive. A group of 150 Protestants issued a statement saying the Order should pull back. The rally organised in nearby Portadown to support the Order was sparsely attended. The loyalist paramilitaries have not sent their supporters onto the streets to support the Orangemen.
Chris Bryant, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State, foolishly said that he was “between a rock and a hard place” over Drumcree, posing as the nice liberal Englishman umpiring two crazy Irish tribes. Yes, the whole history of the Orange Order is one of sectarianism and supremacism, especially at Drumcree. But the history of the Catholic residents there is simply to ask to be free from this. This is not a choice between a rock and a hard place. This is a choice between right and wrong, between oppression and solidarity. This is not the time to be neutral in Drumcree.
- Geoff Bell is an author and executive member of Labour Movement for Irish Unity. His most recent book is The Twilight of Unionism (Verso). You can follow Labour Movement for Irish Unity on Facebook and Twitter/X.
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