Last evening at Victoria Coach Station in London I caught myself doing it again – scanning people’s faces to determine their religion. The Northern Irish way of life had already reclaimed me.
Three motor coaches were leaving for Belfast, via Stranraer–Larne, and Protestants were herding into the front two leaving the last for an English family going to Carlisle, half-a-dozen homing Taigs and myself. A plump granny from Newry sat in front of me and turned round to observe. ‘Thanks be to God we’ve our own bus! They’d ate you, so they would, when they’ve drink taken comin’ up to the Twalfth!’ The raven-haired young man beside me was from Strabane where unemployment figures often reach 20 per cent. He had been in London for a week, unsuccessfully hunting a job that would enable him to house his wife and four children in Britain.
I slept fitfully on the floor and at 2.45 sat up to watch the dawn. The crescent moon and the morning star were close together, luminously defying the midsummer sun. A Belfast mother travelling with four small children remarked that she’d sooner die than do the journey again. She had been to visit a sister who was ailing in Birmingham and took the wains to let them see a bit of normal life. The baby and the two eldest had been left back home in Andersonstown with the Daddy. That’s why she had to get home before the Twelfth; the Daddy mightn’t be able to hold them back from seeing the march. ‘Not that I’d mind them watchin’,’ she emphasised, ‘but there’s others wouldn’t hold with it.’ She glanced around swiftly and lowered her voice. ‘It’s terrible hard to explain to the wains that they’d be got if they watched nowadays. And not by the Oranges, either.’ Her expression, as she spoke, was familiar to me. Belfast women’s faces wear a certain indescribable look – made up of fear, contempt, furtiveness and sulkiness – when they are alluding to intimidation by the respective paramilitaries.
On Stranraer pier at 5.30 the sun was already warm and brilliant. Beyond the glassy, duck-egg-blue harbour-water the little town straggled along its promontory to merge with woodlands near the tip. Oddly, there was not even an attempt at a security check as we boarded. The half-empty boat had no holiday feeling and few children or tourists were visible.
Watching the shadowy Antrim Hills appearing along the horizon I felt confused. This was my first approach to Northern Ireland from Britain and of course I felt that I was going back to my own island. Yet I was not going home … All rather disconcerting. As the coastline of Ireland’s most industrialised corner became clearer I remembered Macaulay’s reference to William III’s rendezvous with Schomberg at Belfast: ‘The meeting took place close to a white house, the only human dwelling then visible, in the space of many miles, on the dreary strand of the estuary of the Lagan.’ Absurd and inconvenient as it may seem, there are two distinct Irish traditions within this minute island inhabited by scarcely four and a half million people. And the creation of Belfast, on the dreary estuary of the Lagan, is the work of only one of them.
At 9.30 we docked and at 10.00 sweat was dripping off me as the bus sped along a new stretch of motorway. Past Ballylumford – across the bay – with its so-politically-important power-station; past Kilroot where Jonathan Swift had his first living; through Northern Ireland’s oldest town, Carrickfergus, where William landed in 1690 and Ireland’s last witchcraft trial took place in 1771; past hideous, huge factories; past Cave Hill which looks like a giant’s profile and is said locally to have inspired Gulliver – and then I could see those other, man-made Belfast landmarks, Samson and Goliath. I felt a rush of delight and affection. Strange that two cranes, of all things, have come to seem friendly objects, symbolic of Belfast’s more admirable characteristics. When first constructed Samson and Goliath were the biggest cranes in the world and for all I know they may still be.
Belfast was very quiet today. The annual holidays have begun and most of those not wishing to participate in the Twelfth, and with enough money to get away, have departed – the majority, it seems, to Donegal. In Protestant districts countless men and women were out painting hall-doors, window-frames, garden gates. Round almost every corner gay arches – this year usually incorporating the Queen and Prince Philip as well as King Billy – span narrow streets of terraced brick houses. And Union Jacks, Ulster flags, and red, white and blue bunting are everywhere aflutter. I counted nine gable-walls on which murals of King Billy had been skilfully painted from eaves to ground. The Orangeman is so industriously loyal. It’s impossible to imagine even the most fervent Irish Republican going to such lengths every year to celebrate 1916. Not only because he is lazier than the Orangeman; he is also less adolescent.
On scores of streets enormous bonfires, fifteen or even twenty feet high, had been carefully constructed for tonight’s ritual. As I passed one I was proudly told that it contained over 200 old tyres. These edifices are of great significance to their builders. For the past few nights, in certain areas, youths have been sleeping out to guard them from the depredations of Taigs or rival Oranges. An amateur social historian met on the boat this morning told me that he has traced the Eleventh bonfires back to London’s seventeenth-century Apprentice Boys who at the Restoration dragged effigies of Popes and Cardinals through the City to the stakes at Smithfield. I myself have heard none of the notorious chanting that accompanies Orange bonfire building and burning but I am assured the tradition is being maintained with such variations as ‘Yippy, yippy, yippy, the Pope’s a bloody hippy.’ In 1977 the outsider tends to be amused rather than shocked on hearing this sort of thing. It’s hard for us to realise how provocative such chanting can still be within earshot of conventionally devout Northern Catholics. Tonight I can appreciate the value, at this season, of a British Peace-Keeping Force. Whatever disquiet may be felt about the Brits’ everyday role, they almost certainly save lives during the month of July. For the past eighty years or more, ferocious anti-Catholic rioting has frequently accompanied the Orange celebrations. Indeed, the Orange Order has been involved, directly or indirectly, in almost every major riot in Northern Ireland since 1830.
At 8.00 p.m. I began my bonfire walkabout – along the Ballysillan Road, then down the Crumlin Road into the heart of the Shankill. Crowds of men and youths had collected around every waiting pyramid of wood, rubber and old clothes. In places empty beer cans and broken wine bottles were ankle-deep while anti-Papish ballads were being indistinctly sung to the music of flutes, pipes and accordions. It was a windless, cloudless, very hot evening. A gloomy RUC man on duty at the top of the Woodvale Road told me that all day he’d been praying for rain; I was soon to see why. Halfway down the Shankill Road I turned off into a narrow street of dingy terraced houses, several of which had been bombed or burned and then bricked-up. Here a massive mountain of planks, crates, roof-beams, doors, tyres, carpets and old mattresses had been created at the junction of four little streets; its base extended from kerb to kerb and its summit was directly below and almost touching a line of telegraph wires. Groups of women stood on the pavements, leaning against door-jambs or window-sills and looking apprehensive rather than festive. I joined three at a corner house, near the pyramid, and on opening my Southern mouth was greeted with much astonishment but no hostility. When I commented on the perilous location of the bonfire one woman smiled sourly. ‘That’s what they want – to do as much damage as they can. More vandalism is all it is now. It used to be a happy night out for the kids but these times it’s plain destruction.’
Her neighbour nudged her then and muttered, ‘Here they come!’ Together we stared towards the Shankill Road and saw about thirty youngsters in their early teens turning off the main road and strolling up the centre of our street. Four other women moved along the pavement to join us and exclamations of horror came from every tongue. At first I was puzzled. The youngsters were quietly eating chips out of sheets of greasy paper and doing no harm to anyone. When I saw them swaying and heard them mumbling I assumed they were having a game – pretending to be drunk. Most of them were fourteen or fifteen; two of them were twelve. Then as they passed us one girl staggered, flung away her chips, grabbed her boyfriend’s arm to steady herself and vomited a great deal of red wine all over his flared jeans. And so it went on. A few others also vomited; some passed out and lay still; several collapsed in pairs on the pavement and fumbled ineffectually with each other’s zips. Two couples embraced lingeringly and then disappeared round a corner to an old bomb-site overgrown with long grass. One girl stumbled, fell into the gutter on to a broken bottle and became hysterical at the sight of her own blood.
I felt then the blackest despair I have known in Northern Ireland. The scales are weighted so heavily against these children – and against their children, and their children’s children. Those self-righteous, self-centred politicians who wrecked the Northern Ireland Executive and have allowed Northern Irish society to fall apart should have been down the Shankill tonight.
‘I’m ashamed any stranger should see it!’ said the elderly woman on my right. Her hands were twisting in powerless rage and she was crying. ‘One o’ them wee girls is me own granddaughter – what good to deny it? Doesn’t the whole street know? Sixty-five years I’m living on this street and never thought to have such humiliation. Look at her – me own flesh and blood – lying there in a stupor. And if I went near her the boyfriend’d hit me. Fifteen she is. But the neighbours know there’s no blame on me. Her father was reared decent and sober and God-fearing and away to St Andrew’s twice every Sunday. And so he stayed till this curse of easy money and drinking-clubs came in on us.’
‘It’s only these few days,’ said I, feebly attempting to console her. ‘They’ll be OK again next week.’
She blew her nose and shook her head. ‘Don’t you believe it! We see this carry-on every weekend regular. Twalfth or no Twalfth.’
‘But where do all these children get the money?’ I asked. ‘Even in the clubs alcohol isn’t free.’
‘They earns it, some of ’em, working behind the scenes after hours in supermarkets and suchlike. More of ’em steals. A few of ’em helps the paras and gets good pay. And it don’t take too much to make wains drunk.’
At that moment a neatly dressed small boy with well-brushed hair came up the street and disappeared round the corner to where the pyramid-builders were having their pre-fire carousal. My friend nodded after him. ‘See that wee lad? Eleven, he is, and the smartest shoplifter in Belfast. His mother taught him. He could lift the coat off your back and you wouldn’t ever be the wiser.’
I lowered my voice. ‘What would happen if you told the police about him?’
My friend looked away. ‘You can’t do things like that in Belfast nowadays. We all mind our own business, so we do.’
Two of the four corner houses near the pyramid were bricked-up ruins but clearly the other two needed protection. I had just remarked on this when three surprisingly good-humoured policemen came up the street on foot carrying a long ladder, a saw, lengths of chipboard and several sacks. They spent twenty minutes boarding up all the endangered windows before draping wet sacks over the boards. The elderly, flustered householders were advised to keep on pouring water over the sacking while the bonfire raged. Then, still looking good-humoured, the police departed. I couldn’t help wondering how they would have reacted to a similarly placed bonfire in a Catholic area.
A frail, lame woman, leaning on a walking-stick, had meanwhile joined us. Her face was very lined and her mouth thin-lipped. ‘Wouldn’t you think them poor peelers have enough to do, without all this commotion,’ she observed to no one in particular.
‘But why on earth do they allow such huge bonfires to be built here in the first place?’ I asked in genuine bewilderment.
The frail woman stared at me expressionlessly for a moment but said nothing. Then a youngish red-head to whom I’d been talking earlier leant forward and whispered in my ear, ‘’Tis a UDA bonfire we have here.’
By then it was 10.15. As the light began to fade huge columns of smoke, soon turning golden-pink and glittering with swift sparks, rose above the roofs in every Protestant direction. But somehow – though I have always loved bonfires – I couldn’t see this orgy of burning as entertainment. I have watched too many columns of smoke rising over Belfast in the past twelve months. Here fires are no longer fun-things.
For some reason our own bonfire had not yet been lit so I peered round the corner to see what was happening. Another mountain of supplementary fuel lay in the middle of the street and a score of young men were sprawling against walls, still drinking and singing. Nearby, groups of very small children – girls and boys, none of whom could have been more than eight – were fighting and playing and cursing as they waited for the fun to start. ‘ ’Tis a scandal!’ muttered the frail woman. ‘These wains shoulda been asleep two hours ago. There’s some there won’t be in bed at all tonight. I could show them to you. Their mothers and fathers will be too drunk to shove a key in the door.’
A few minutes later three men suddenly appeared with burning brands and thrust them into the heart of the pyramid. Kerosene or petrol must have been involved; the whole thing took off with a roar. Then a shaven-headed youth came racing towards us out of the dusk. He climbed the pyre as the flames flared faster and higher and around me the women gasped with fear. Reaching the summit he clung to the topmost tyre for a moment, waving a clenched fist, his head thrown back as he shouted a message of hate. On the far side flames were already rising above the summit and on our side they were shooting up between planks to touch the youth’s trouser-legs. Briefly he was silhouetted against the blaze – reckless, fanatical, primitive – calling on all his tribe to destroy their Papish enemy; thus he exposed the evil at the core of Orangeism. Consolingly, however, his melodramatic belligerence aroused no enthusiasm amongst any section of the small crowd. And it angered the local UDA leader, a burly man of about forty. When the youth had nimbly leaped through the flames to the ground he was seized by the shoulders, thrown against a wall and punched hard in the face. With blood streaming from his nose he slunk away.
Everybody was retreating farther and farther from the increasing heat, backing down the street and looking anxiously at their little homes. The telegraph wires had long since caught fire and soon the telegraph pole nearest the pyre was ablaze. It looked very beautiful – a giant torch sparking and flaring – but also slightly frightening. Fire out of control scares us at a very deep level. Clouds of steam were billowing from those windows where unfortunate householders were trying to keep sacks wet. Their task had a distinctly mythological flavour; puny humans desperately defying Xiuheuctli the Fire-God. And of course it was a hopeless task. Soon the window-frames and doors of the corner houses were burning and the fire-brigade arrived. ‘At least they’re lettin’ ’em up the street this year,’ said the sad grandmother. ‘Last year they stoned ’em so hard they couldn’t use the hoses and them three houses below there was burnt out.’
As I walked home up the Shankill and Crumlin Roads fire-engines were racing and wailing all over the city like demented monsters. And now, as I write, I can see the many columns of smoke merging into one gigantic cloud above Belfast. It seems, appropriately, to have an orange tinge.
At 9.10 a.m. I was introduced to the Loyal Orange Lodge that had adopted me for the day. It was a Primary – as distinct from District, County and Grand – Lodge in rather a ‘deprived’ area. Around the Orange Hall little tables were laden with beer bottles and whiskey glasses, and scrubbed-looking Orangemen, in their Sabbath suits, were drinking and smoking and quietly chatting. Each had his sash to hand, carefully wrapped in brown paper or a plastic bag, and at the back of the Hall the first relay of banner-bearers were adjusting their leather harness and fixing bouquets of Sweet William and orange gladioli to the banner poles. I had scarcely crossed the threshold when I was being offered ‘a wee one’. At the risk of seeming effete I chose beer. It was, as I have said, 9.10 a.m.
A year ago I would have felt a little uneasy at this gathering but by now I have reached a certain understanding of the Orange psyche. However much the Orange leaders may rave and rant against Papists and Southern Irish knaves, your average Orangeman is prepared to be a good host to everybody. If the Pope himself had appeared on the Field today I do believe he would at once have been offered ‘a wee one’ by men who last evening were kicking his effigy down Sandy Row. The Orangeman’s ferocity is in the main a herd thing; given the wrong sort of leadership (which he always has been given) he can be very dangerous indeed. Left to himself he is as friendly and generous as any other Irishman.
Tony Gray tells a splendid story to illustrate the Orangeman’s defective historical sense. A bewildered Englishman, finding himself caught up in Belfast’s Boyne Anniversary celebrations, asked the spectator beside him, ‘What’s going on?’ ‘It’s the Twalfth,’ he was told curtly. ‘Yes I know it is,’ said the Englishman, ‘but what’s all this about?’ With a gesture of impatient disgust the Belfastman dismissed him: ‘Och away home and read your Bible, man!’ Even Mr Paisley’s Bible fails to describe King William’s victory over King James at the Battle of the Boyne on 1 July (OS) 1690. But it is true that many Orangemen have transposed the origins of their Order to biblical times, though they are vividly aware that the Twelfth festivities commemorate the victory at the Boyne of some 40,000 Protestants (mostly Dutch, Danes, Germans, Scots and English) over some 30,000 Catholics (mostly French).
There are two ways of approaching the Twelfth. It can be taken either as a super-de-luxe, hyper-Bank-Holiday-cum-Folk Festival or as a militant demonstration of Northern Irish Protestant power and the Orange Order’s determination to retain that power at the expense of the democratic rights of one-third of the population. I thoroughly enjoyed myself today because I resolved to take it on the entertainment level, as many Northern Catholics used to do in the fifties and sixties when community relations were gradually mellowing. This of course is the more superficial level – though it is perfectly genuine – and inevitably I also caught a few ugly glimpses of the deeper level. Yet it cannot be said that Belfast’s mood today was anything but good-humoured, happy and relaxed. Astonishingly relaxed, considering Northern Ireland’s present state. It did one good to see laughing teenage boys, and fat beaming ladies wearing Union Jack overalls and carrying Union Jack parasols, dancing together in the streets of their devastated city. And to see wide-eyed young soldiers laying down their weapons for long enough to take photographs of the banners and the bands.
At 10.00 a.m. our Lodge moved off from the Hall having had some trouble awakening two young men who had fallen asleep where they sat; no doubt they were up all night with their bonfire. Since nine o’clock the air had been full of music and marching as Lodges from all over the city made their way to Carlisle Circus, the starting point for the procession of 299 Lodges and innumerable bands – including thirty from Scotland. At this stage I temporarily left ‘my’ Lodge, whose appointed place was near the end of the parade; I wanted to hurry ahead to reach a vantage point from which I could see the whole procession passing. For over an hour I walked fast through city-centre streets lined with thousands upon thousands of cheerful citizens; and I found that even on pavements it is oddly untiring to walk to the beating of drums. Then the intense noon heat slowed up the proceedings and at a few points halts were called for ten minutes or so to give musicians and banner-bearers – not to mention all the aged stalwarts involved – a chance to refresh themselves with fizzy drinks or beer, depending on their devotion to Temperance. (Apart from the banners of many Temperance Lodges, I saw very little evidence at any time in Northern Ireland of leanings towards temperance.) These halts gave me a chance to overtake the leaders and by 1.30 I was sitting on a not-too-crowded pavement on the Upper Malone Road next to a four-man UDR patrol who were lounging against their Land-Rover looking as though they wished that they too were marching.
Only then did I notice that the honour of leading the parade had been granted to the Dublin and Wicklow Loyal Orange Lodge. And so confused have all my emotional reactions become by now that I felt quite proud to see my fellow-Southerners in this position – though I know very well their Orangeism may mean a somewhat lukewarm loyalty to the country of their residence. Most of the Dublin and Wicklow Orangemen were elderly if not downright ancient and their attire was impeccably traditional. They wore dark city suits, white shirts, bowler hats, Orange Order cuffs, white gloves and orange collarettes (The Sash) decorated with war medals and esoteric badges denoting the wearer’s precise status within this semi-secret society. Many carried tightly rolled umbrellas as though they were bearing ceremonial swords and a few were solemnly shouldering silver-tipped pikes – perhaps in memory of the good old days before the Brits stood between them and the Papists. For the next hour and a half I watched hundreds of Loyal Orange Lodges passing; few were as correctly dressed as the Republic’s representatives. (There were Lodges too from Leitrim, Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan, some with a surprising number of young members.) Nowadays the Belfast working classes have little time for formal dressing-up and within the past ten or fifteen years quite a number of professional men and businessmen, to whom dark suits and bowlers would come naturally, have quietly dropped out of the Order. Certainly since Direct Rule was imposed there have been fewer practical reasons for joining. When it comes to appointments and promotions the British Government is not impressed (possibly even the reverse) by Orange membership cards.
Each Lodge is ritually preceded by its banner and sometimes four strong men and a few small boys are required to cope with one banner – the boys holding its tasselled ‘stays’ lest the wind might take control. The gaily coloured hand-painted pictures are often, I gather, of immense significance, yet many Loyal Orangemen are unable to explain why their particular banner depicts this or that. The most startling banner today showed a map of Ireland (unpartitioned) with the main cities marked. The map was surmounted by an inscription in Irish which I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t translate; underneath were the words ‘Ireland’s Heritage’ and a quotation from St Luke: ‘Occupy till I come.’ Possibly this Lodge is dominated by the illegal Tara paramilitaries who are rumoured to advocate the conquest of the Republic by Orangemen as the only sensible solution to Ireland’s problems. My favourite banner, however, depicted Queen Victoria and Prince Albert graciously receiving homage – and an overflowing casket of jewels – from a dark-skinned gentleman wearing a turban. The inscription read: ‘The Secret of England’s Greatness’ – an accurate indication of the place in the groove where Orangeism has stuck. Many inscriptions, on both banners and drums, betrayed the Northern Protestant’s much-discussed ‘siege-mentality’: ‘Whiterock – Save the Covenant!’, ‘Ulster Defenders’ Temperance’, ‘Naval Lodge – No Surrender!’, ‘Donegal Pass Defenders’, ‘Sandy Row Defenders’, ‘UVF Flute – For the Throne is Established by Right!’ ‘Ravenhill Road Volunteers’, ‘Cootes’ Defenders’, ‘Banbridge Bible and Crown Defenders’, ‘Victory Total Abstinence’, ‘Templemore True Blues – If God be with us who can be against us?’, ‘Co. Cavan Defenders’, ‘Duke of Manchester Invincibles’, ‘Woodvale Park Church Defenders’, ‘Shankill Heroes’, ‘Young Men Faith Defenders’, ‘Glenavy Chosen Few’, ‘Armagh True Blues – Trust in God and Keep Your Powder Dry!’, ‘Falls Road Methodist Church Defenders’, ‘Sons of Conquerors’, ‘Christian Crusaders’, ‘Rising Sons of Portadown’ – and so on and on. That last Portadown Lodge had the only openly provocative banner; it depicted Catholics drowning Protestants in the Bann in 1641. Which indeed they did do – and as many as possible – but to call attention to that fact in Northern Ireland 336 years later seems unhelpful.
The North supports more bands per head of the population than anywhere else in the UK (perhaps than anywhere else, period). On the Twelfth they are all out vying with one another in putting up the best performance but they have recently had to narrow their repertoire. Such popular tunes as ‘Croppies [Catholics] Lie Down’ and ‘Kick the Pope’ are no longer publicly played. And the fearsome Lambeg drums are not now carried in the Belfast parade because their enormous weight slowed up the proceedings too much. At least, this is the official explanation for their absence. A plausible rumour has it that the organisers of the march were advised to confine them to rural areas for the future because of their power to arouse aggression.
Even without the Lambegs, there are hundreds of bass drums, kettle-drums, pipes, flutes, accordions, fifes, cymbals, trumpets – and the musicians are as varied as the instruments. I saw every type, age and size of person playing, from eight-year-old girls in thick blue woollen cardigans, white shirts and red skirts to seventy-five-year-old veterans in gorgeous scarlet uniforms with gold braiding. Incidentally, the only unnerving touch today was provided by the Sandy Row Girls’ Band; these musicians were scarcely in their teens but a tougher-looking group of human beings I have never seen. I would far prefer to meet an Orange Volunteer unit armed with machine guns than just one of those maidens wielding a feather-broom.
To give a full description of this extraordinary spectacle would take up more pages than I have left at my disposal. It has often been called Europe’s greatest folk-festival and today I could see why. I could also understand the grudging admiration and veiled pride with which many Northern Catholics refer to this essentially anti-Catholic demonstration. It is a magnificent event, unique to Northern Ireland, and they would hate to see it suppressed.
Every Orange march goes to a suitable field where most of the marchers collapse forthwith on the grass. The local leaders of the Order then make inflammatory speeches, which reassuringly few listen to, and after an interval for rest, refreshment and relaxation the Lodges and bands reconstitute themselves and march back to their Orange Halls. Nowadays, for security reasons, the Belfast Lodges all have to march back together at about 6.00 p.m. and this has marred the Twelfth, according to three old-timers to whom I spoke on the Field. Previously the festivities used to continue for many hours and as dusk fell neither Temperance nor Chastity remained the prevailing ideal.
Also for security reasons, the location of Belfast’s Field has recently been changed from Finaghy to Edenderry and by the time we felt the blessed grass beneath our feet most of us had walked at least eight miles. Edenderry is aptly named – an enormous, sloping field surrounded by well-wooded rolling countryside. The atmosphere was very Bank Holiday this afternoon with litter knee-deep and the smell of deep-fried chips wafting from mobile cafés inscribed EEZI SNAX. An RUC inspector told me that the army reckoned there were some 40,000 on the Field – about 25,000 marchers and the rest enthusiastic followers like myself. In one wired-off corner the Brits had set up a discreet observation post but this was a mere formality; over today’s proceedings there was no shadow of even the possibility of Trouble.
To end my account of the Twelfth on this note would be agreeable but not, alas! realistic. One can’t all the time overlook the deeper implications of the Orangemen’s festival because what is said from the platforms on the various Fields can be of crucial importance for Northern Ireland. True, I counted only 118 people out of some 40,000 listening to the speeches at Edenderry today. But the thousands who were not listening are, by the mere fact of being Orangemen, more or less amenable to the influence of their leaders when political crises arise. And today’s speakers had the sort of minds that make even the Roman Curia seem progressive.
The guest speaker was Mr Thomas Orr, the Scottish Grand Master, who made predictable noises about a recent rumour that Prince Charles was contemplating marriage with a Roman Catholic. Should any such unlikely thing happen, said Mr Orr, the Prince would have to abdicate. There could be no question of constitutional changes to allow a Roman Catholic to sit on the throne of England. The Orange Order would not permit it. But Mr Orr added that he didn’t think it likely the Queen would ever agree to such a marriage; the whole thing was probably no more than sly kite-flying on the part of the Vatican.
Mr Thomas Passmore, County Grand Master for Belfast, stood up next. He reminded us of the Orangeman’s Christian duties, and his obligation to uphold civil and religious liberty for all, and then we were told that the Order is just as determined as in 1912 not to have anything to do with Home Rule. ‘British we are!’ cried Mr Passmore. ‘And British we stay!’ He added that without Ulster the UK would cease to exist and the Union Jack would become ‘a useless rag’.
Mr Passmore was followed by Sir George Clark, Past Grand Master of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland and once a powerful member of the Unionist Party Standing Committee. His cultivated voice contrasted sharply with the previous speakers’ tones but his sentiments were True Blue. He began by referring to ‘another country’ (guess where!) which is organising a campaign to destroy Ulster and which only a few days ago claimed jurisdiction over Northern Ireland because its constitution claims ownership of the whole island. Then he warned us about the present administration’s dangerous tendency to placate enemies of the state by giving them the opportunity to pursue their objectives freely in other, ‘more civilian’ ways. (A curious turn of phrase.) He emphasised that it is not enough to defeat the IRA. Their supporters (i.e. Catholics) must be prevented from gaining any foothold in administrative bodies, in housing, in hospitals, in building contracts, in planning, in grasping and monopolising jobs and fringe benefits and positions of influence and power. I can quote the exact words with which Sir George concluded this typical Orange oration: ‘We want to see the enemies of Britain defeated, not only in a military sense but in all their efforts to forward their greedy, destructive and immoral policies.’ In brief, however many Offices of Fair Employment the misguided British may set up there must be ‘No Surrender!’ on the point of job discrimination.
Eighteen years ago, in 1959, the Young Unionists organised a political school at Portstewart. Sir Clarence Graham, chairman of the Standing Committee, then said that he would like to see Roman Catholics not only joining the Unionist Party but being selected as candidates for Parliament. He was vigorously supported by the Attorney-General, Mr Brian Maginess, but within a week Sir George Clark had made it very clear that the Orange Order would never agree to Roman Catholics being accepted as members of the Unionist Party much less as parliamentary candidates. He was backed by Lord Brookeborough and many other Unionist/Orange leaders; none of them could see the wisdom of drawing into the Unionist Party that new generation of educated, moderate young Catholics who were no longer dreaming of a United Ireland. Nor could the Order see – they still can’t – how hypocritical they look in the eyes of the world when they demand ‘democratic’ rule for Ulster, and claim to be ‘British’, while excluding, on religious grounds, more than one-third of the population from membership of the only political party that could ever win an election in Northern Ireland.
The North might be a much happier place today had Clarence Graham and Brian Maginess been victorious in 1959. And the Unionist Party, too, might be in a healthier state. Now it has split into five parties, each of which deeply distrusts the others, and it seems unlikely ever to be reunited. But this is probably a good thing. John Harbinson, one of the North’s most astute political commentators, has remarked that it may only be through the destruction of the Unionist Party that the Ulster problem can be permanently solved. He might have added – ‘and the Orange Order’. But in fact the Party and the Order have been so closely intertwined for so long that the disintegration of the former must inevitably – and perhaps quite soon – bring about the collapse of the latter as a political force. But not, I hope, as a folk-tradition. No one could wish for the Orange drums to be silenced and the banners forever folded. Our world has little enough left of colour and pageantry. We can’t afford to lose the Twelfth.
Last night, while having supper (and several not-so-wee-ones) with ‘my’ Lodge, I mentioned that I was going to Scarva today. ‘Nobody bothers with that,’ was the immediate reaction. ‘It’ll seem terrible dull after the Twalfth.’ I had been told the same thing by several on the Edenderry Field; no one I met yesterday had ever been to Scarva, or wished to go, and I sensed an undercurrent of rivalry. To the Belfast Orangeman there is only one March and he argues that to draw the crowds Scarva’s ‘imitation’ has to be reinforced by a sham fight. This, however, is not true. Scarva is an Event in its own right and musically much more impressive than the Twelfth. But it is also far less pleasant. The sham fight sets the tone and the sectarian basis of the festivities is not so easy to ignore. Perhaps The Troubles have accentuated this; Scarva village is on the edge of the Murder Triangle where so many members of the security forces have been killed by Provos and so many Catholics have been killed by Protestants.
The Twelfth is the Orangemen’s day but the Thirteenth is the Blackmen’s. For an analysis of the Blackmen’s position within the Orange Order see Tony Gray’s The Orange Order; the Order is such a curious and complex institution that my readers could only be further confused were I to try to disentangle Black from Orange in a paragraph. So I shall confine myself to saying that between 50 per cent and 60 per cent of Orangemen belong to the Imperial Grand Black Chapter of the British Commonwealth. (This does not mean that they originated south of the Sahara, though in fact the Orange Order does have fifteen Loyal Orange Lodges in Ghana with not a white man among them. These were founded by nineteenth-century Ulster missionaries and there is something very piquant about the notion of innocent Ghanaians having been drawn into this weirdly primitive white man’s cult.) You can’t become Black unless you are already Orange and when Tony Gray asked a prominent Blackman why 13 July is the Blackmen’s day he was told, ‘Well, in the streets of Belfast there’s a saying that on the Twalfth the Orangemen goes out and kills the Papishes and on the Thirteenth the Blacks ates them.’ A funny joke – unless you happen to be a Northern Catholic when the humour of it somehow eludes you.
Beside me in the bus from Belfast sat a middle-aged County Cavan Orangeman who has been working in Belfast for the past twenty years and never misses Scarva because ‘The bands are so good.’ They are, too. The cream of Northern Ireland’s musicians go to Scarva because there they do not have to compete with brass bands from every corner of every Protestant ghetto in Belfast.
Scarva village – population 240 – practically disappears on 13 July. Today an estimated 30,000 men, women and children swarmed all over it as they made their way to and from the Field in front of Scarva House; and all around, in recently cut hay meadows, thousands of parked cars glinted in the sun. King Billy is said to have camped under an old oak tree in the grounds of Scarva House, on his way from Carrickfergus to the Boyne, and in the courtyard the famous sham fight takes place. Uncertainty surrounds its origins. The official Orange historian insists that it commemorates a faction fight which took place in 1672; many Scarva people believe it commemorates a skirmish at nearby Lisnagade in 1783 between Protestant Peep o’ Day Boys and Catholic Hearts of Steel; others say it commemorates a fight between Protestants who were celebrating the victory of the Boyne on its first anniversary in 1691 and Catholics who attacked them. All that really matters, however, is that it commemorates another victory of Orange over Green. During the nineteenth century similar annual sham fights were staged in several Northern towns and villages; there was even one in Bandon, Co. Cork, which then had an exceptionally numerous Protestant population.
For thirty years Charles Whitten, a publican (King James), and Charles Dillon, a motor mechanic (King William), have been acting in the pageant. Both are Scarva born and bred and the four horses come from the stable of a Scarva farmer. Almost everybody involved belongs to the local Sir Alfred Buller Memorial Royal Black Preceptory No. 1000 (including perhaps the horses: by now nothing would surprise me about the Orange Order) and this RBP is responsible for many of the Thirteenth arrangements – which annually become more complicated as the Scarva festival grows in popularity. The bands are the real attraction; although the sham fight is given so much publicity it is not in fact great entertainment.
Today the throngs crowding around the courtyard made it hard to see exactly what went on but I glimpsed enough of the half-heartedly scuffling ‘armies’, brandishing wooden ‘swords’, to realise that this ritual, marking the humiliation of Catholics, is a dying tradition – and one for which there will be few mourners outside the Orange Order. William and Schomberg, wearing orange-red uniforms, and James and Sarsfield, wearing emerald green, duelled on horseback while their infantry fired at the flags taking care never to damage William’s. After some forty-five boring minutes the Jacobean flag was shot to bits and James was led from the courtyard, his head hanging with shame, by the proudly triumphant William.
The Blackmen seemed to be even better organisers than the Orangemen. On the Field today numerous marquees had been set up by various Preceptories and sit-down luncheons or light refreshments were being served at non-profit-making prices. Many tents, stalls and side-shows added to the carnival air while evangelical literature and impassioned open-air preaching were freely available every hundred yards. Some picnicking families had crates of beer beside them; when I enviously inquired about its source I was offered a bottle and told that outside Scarva House grounds several marquees were selling every sort of booze.
Officially the Blackmen disapprove of alcohol but the first pub-marquee I entered was jam-packed with dehydrated marchers all looking frightfully respectable in dark suits, bowler hats, black cuffs, black collarettes decorated with elaborate silver emblems and Masonic aprons suitably embellished. The Blackmen who march at Scarva seem much more middle-class than the average Belfast Orangeman and the majority still dress very formally.
While fighting my way towards the bar I got into conversation with a member of one of the RBPs and outside the ‘pub’ we sat on the grass together to put the world to rights over our beer. Sam was about my own age, with three teenage children, and we discussed Child Rearing in the Modern World and found ourselves in perfect agreement on the subject. Then we considered the not unrelated topic of security in Northern Ireland and Sam said, ‘I’d bring back hanging; it’s the only way to get rid of terrorists. D’you know it costs £80 a week to keep a prisoner? Why should we spend that on murderers and bombers and thugs when there’s good folk going hungry in Ulster? If I knew for certain sure a man was a murderer I’d go out myself with my own gun and shoot him dead – because I know we haven’t a decent God-fearing government with enough guts to string him up. And the Lord wouldn’t blame me for doing the right thing. When two soldiers was murdered and the RUC couldn’t prove cases against certain chaps they told the UVF who those chaps were and that got them looked after. When you’ve a rotten weak government like them fellas at Westminster you have to defend your own community.’
Sam was not afraid to speak out thus to a stranger because he believed he was right. He had a kindly, honest, strong face; clearly he was not a vicious man but an affectionate, responsible husband and father; a solid citizen who would always pay his bills, tell the truth, be kind to his neighbours and never injure an innocent person. Yet I can easily believe that in certain circumstances he would indeed go out and kill a Provo who had himself killed. And the papers would report the deed as ‘another sectarian murder’ though Sam would see it as ‘doing his duty’. I looked at him in silence – and for a wild moment wondered if he was right. Have we become too soft, too swayed by sentimental considerations of people’s exonerating motives, too concerned with the letter rather than the spirit of the law? Certainly I can feel more respect for Sam’s attitude than for the attitude of policemen who reckon it’s a good idea to keep the conviction figures up by forcing people to confess to crimes they never committed.
This conversation was yet another example of how temperamentally akin are Northern Ireland’s Protestants and Catholics on certain fundamental points. Both have a marked tendency to make their own rules when the Powers That Be seem to them unjust or inadequate. Dissatisfied Catholics maintain that they must fight the Brits because the Northern minority is being oppressed – even though it is being oppressed not by Britain but by the Northern majority. And dissatisfied Protestants argue themselves into believing it right to assist the inept security forces by personally eliminating individuals known to be a threat to law and order. The longer I spend in Northern Ireland the more topsy-turvy it seems.