One of the most controversial events in Scottish civic life, annual Orange Marches by members of the Protestant Orange Order have acted as touchpapers for violence. Journalist J. R. Allan looked on with some amusement as events took a predictable turn one night in Glasgow.
Once on a November afternoon I was walking along Buchanan Street about half-past four o’clock. It was a busy day: hundreds of fashionable women were trafficking among the shops and the business men were returning from or going to the coffee-rooms. There was an atmosphere of money and well-being, the sort of thing that makes you feel pleased with yourself as long as you have a few shillings in your own pocket. Then a procession came up the street, with blood-red banners, that swayed menacingly under the misty lights. These should have driven the women screaming into the basements of the shops for they bore legends in praise of Moscow, warnings about the wrath to come. ‘Communists,’ the word flew along the pavements. But no-one screamed. The men that carried the flags were broken beyond violence by the prolonged misery of unemployment and could not sustain the menace of the legends. The ladies in the fur coats could look without fear on the procession, for it was not the first stroke of revolt but another triumph of law and order. A dozen constables were shepherding the marchers, and they were such fine big men and stepped along with such manly dignity that they themselves were the procession. The unemployed seemed to have no community with such defiant banners, such splendid constables, and they may have known it, for they walked without any spirit, as if they realized they had no place in society, not even in their demonstrations against it. The procession turned into George Square. The unemployed dismissed and went home wearily to their bread and margarine. The constables eased their uniform pants and went off to the station with property and privilege resting securely on their broad shoulders. It was just another Glasgow afternoon.
Then some months later I was looking out from the window of a coffee-house in Argyle Street about seven o’clock of a Saturday evening. I heard fife music; then a procession came out from St Enoch’s Square. It was a company of Orangemen, or some such Protestants, in full uniform, back from an excursion in the country. They passed, an army terrible with banners, and comic, as men that have a good excuse for dressing up. They had just gone by when a new music came up to us and a new procession appeared, coming from Queen Street Station. They were Hibernians, or some other Catholic order, also returning from a day in the country; terrible and comic also, after the fashion of their kind. Orangemen and Hibernians! we said to ourselves. What will happen if they forgather? Being wise youths and having some pleasure on hand, we did not follow to see. But we met a man some time later that night who swore he had been present. The Hibernians, he said, discovered that the Orangemen were in front, so they quickened their pace. The Orangemen, hearing also, slackened theirs. Some resourceful and sporting policemen diverted both parties into a side street and left them to fight it out. After half an hour, when all the fighters had thoroughly disorganized each other, bodies of police arrived, sorted the wounded from the winded and despatched them to their proper destinations in ambulances and plain vans. That is the story as it was told to me and I cannot swear that it is true in every detail; but it might have happened in Glasgow that way, and I doubt if it could have happened in any other town. Such incidents give Glasgow afternoons and evenings their distinctive flavour.