I’m sitting here on my birthday morning, wondering about the organisation that, like me, celebrates this day.
Let’s see if we can get a logical grip on the whole thing.
Why won’t the Ardoyne residents let six minutes and some Orangemen pass in peace? Because they see no reason why the Orangemen can’t confine their marching to other places and times that don’t annoy people. This happens on some 4,000 occasions annually.
Are the Orange Order going to inflict physical harm on the Ardoyne residents? No, except called on to defend themselves, presumably. But you don’t have to physically attack people to damage them.
What kind of organisation is the Orange Order? Ah, here we get to the crux of the matter. According to their website, the Orange Order is “a fraternal organisation”.
“In 1795, following the culmination of attacks on Protestants in County Armagh at the Battle of the Diamond, in which Protestants routed those who had attacked them and attempted to burn properties, it was decided to form an organisation which would protect Protestants. This body, drawing on existing Orange Clubs in the neighbourhood, was named the Loyal Orange Institution.
In modern times the Loyal Orange Institution continues to function, with thousands of members in Ireland many others across the world. Today defending Protestantism is not so literal as it was in 1795, but it requires us to take a stand for truth in an age of secularism and in order to defend our culture and traditions.”
So the Orange Order exists essentially to protect Protestants. Not as literally today, but to defend its “culture and traditions”.
There are a few problems there. The website doesn’t mention that following the sectarian clash, up to thirty unarmed Catholics were killed in 1795. As to defending your culture and traditions, that depends on what the culture and traditions are. Huge bonfires, with inevitably the flag of the Irish republic on it – that’s a tradition. Adding posters of political opponents – that’s a tradition. Playing sectarian tunes – that’s a tradition. The idea of protecting a tradition requires scrutiny before you give it the thumbs up. And these traditions, by any standards, are bad traditions – just as slavery was a bad tradition and depriving women of the vote was a bad tradition and sending 10-year-old boys up chimneys in Victorian times was a bad tradition, .
Any thoughtful organisation looks at how the world has changed or is changing and adapts accordingly. The Orange Order, unfortunately, finds this hard if not impossible to do. It cannot bring itself to acknowledge the full truth of its own origins, or its history of sectarianism and violence in the nineteenth and twentieth and now twenty-first century. Its Grand Secretary says the Twaddell Avenue affair is not the only matter that needs redressing – there’s Drumcree and Dungiven and Strabane and other places.
In short, the Orange Order fails to see that the world is a different place today. Drumcree is over. So too is Twaddell and Dungiven and all the rest. If they were wise they would quietly accept that an organisation which refuses membership to any Catholic or anyone married to a Catholic or who attends an act of Popish worship (that’s the Mass, the central act of liturgy of the Catholic Church) – they would accept that it is indeed a generous community that accepts without protest some 4,000 of these marches annually.
I’m sometimes accused of being unquestioningly pro-Sinn Féin. I’m not in this matter. Sinn Féin accepts that the Orange Order is free to conduct its marches in 99% of instances. I disagree. I think all marches, and especially those of the Orange Order, should be abolished. What the Order’s members would put in its place would be a matter for negotiation. But what emerges from those negotiations should not contain the anti-Catholic precepts and triumphalism at the heart of the Orang Order today. It’s a new world, guys. Time for a new Order.
Right, now where’s that birthday cake laced with marijuana?
Happy Birthday Jude! Keep up the good work and lang may your pen keep writing!
Change the record Jude its boring and trite
One could say the same about your comments on Jude’s blog. I came back on this week for a look after not reading the blog for several weeks and you haven’t changed your tune a bit and you still engage in personal insults toward Jude rather than engage in the subject matter which he is writing about.
This is the best line of Jude’s article in my opinion which you need to hear again ”they (Orange Order) would accept that it is indeed a generous community that accepts without protest some 4,000 of these marches annually.” You should remember that while Unionists politicians threaten to pull out of Stormont because half a dozen parades by the Anti-Catholic Order have minor restrictions placed on them.
Breithlá shona duit!An amusing irony that your birthday should fall on this of all days…As a southerner,I wish earnestly that our politicians would engage more with the “fourth green field” instead of the prevailing laissez-faireism-it’s a shame Lynch “stood idly by” and a disgrace that FG/Labour wound up their Dublin-Monaghan Bombing investigations so prematurely all those years ago.
Anyhow,I’m in my early 30s,I hope most fervently by the time of my eventual demise this land will be unified politically,socially and economically.I’m far from being in a minority-there are many passive irredentists among the southern population and the “deefer” establishment donot represent our views.Once the economy improves significantly,coupled with improving the education of working class PULs an inclusive,secular new republic can be achieved.
Happy birthday Jude as usual you hit the nail on the head. What annoys me as a BBC license payer is that they show these parades live on television with all the solemnity of a state wedding/funeral, when the world and his granny know that they are coat trailing Neanderthals. By the way you share a birthday with ny son Francis so happy birthday to both of you.
A very happy Birthday Jude. I take ir you aren’t out with the walking boots enjoying the victory celebrations? Thats right, you aren’t welcone. Nor me. In fact if we were, then there would be absolutey No point whatsoever in having these spectacular grim triumphs, as there would be no-one for the Loyal Orders to compare themselves to…Or define themselves as, in thier tetminally conflictual and divisive insecurity. No Fenians, No need for Pishfest…ahem….will not engage the passions too much in reflecting on their disaffection with Reason and Harmony. I, like you, think the KKK, I mean the Orange Order should not ever be legitimised or accomodated….this is not unreasonable a German Student friend of mine recently concurred….hooray for the Enlightenment. Anyway, have a great day Jude. Am away off shortly for a good walk with my youngest who recently turned seven…..across the Glen….love is much, much stronger than hate mo chara….have a great day
This was intended to be a Loud and Proud piece (cf the Unionist Times of Liffeyside) on the fun-filled fest that is the wee Twalfth on Laganside but, alas, the best laid plans of men and mice, both Mickeys and Minnies. Thus, due to endless rerouting one is compelled to adopt, first Plan B, and then, because one refused to remove one’s T-Shirt, the one bearing the slogan ‘Have a Laffa Jaffa Day’, one is forced to resort to Plan C.
That is, C for Comparison.
Now, as is generally accepted, comparisons are odorous this but serves as an incentive to the legendary Warbeckian nose to sniff around in places with which he is normally not familiar.
Let this comparison, so, be between two parishes of Dublin, Ballsbridge and Ballybough. Let it be entitled: A Tale of Two Parishes, one City.
(Incidentally, it is not o.t.t. so it’s not, to describe the Warbeckian nose as ‘legendary’, having won the Karl Malden Perpetual Annual Trophy ten years on the trot. Thus, it is a nose not to be sniffed at, so it’s not. Indeed, ladies of a certain age and social standing who drive around the streets broad and n of Dublin’s fair c. in their SUV’s – as a career choice – are known to play a game, a dame game called ‘Honk if you like the Warbeckian honk’. Whatever can they mean? One thing is doggone sure, there’s a heap mighty amount of honky tonking going down in Dublin these days, or not, as they case may be.
Speaking of meanings: subh, pronounced, suv is the Leprechaun for ‘jam’. Hence, the reason why the traffic jams of Dublin are also legendary, with all those SUVs on the go.
One must here duly acknowledge the due dilligence of young Professor Diarmaid Ferriter for ferreting out this eminently spreadable item of information from the dark soil of d’Archives. GRMA, a Ollaimh oig).
Ballsbridge is located on the banks of the oddly named and odiferous Dodder which suggests that there is a geriatric cohort in residence.. Indeed many of that cohort will recall the shameful times when the Germanic rather than the geriatric dominated the skyline of the area. For it was there that a disgracefully named business had its H.Q.: the Bells and Swastika Laundry. Not only did its dugeon-high chimney stack have the contemptible name painted vertically down its entire length but the very vans of the wretched outfit with the loathsome logo on their sides could be seen being driven around the district with the same gay abandon as the SUVs, mentioned above, luv.
But – to the eternal credit of the local ladies and gentry this foul monument to marble-hearted genocide was in the fullness of time, demolished, the stain on the district’s reputation duly erased. No more dirty linen here, only the clean Laganside variety. (Perhaps, even at this late stage, a belated OBE for the community, might still be in order?)
Ballsbridge is also, a mere grubber kick away, the location of RDS, where the Leinster Lions play their brave and pure and manly game of egg-and-wooden-spoon. Which comes as little surprise, as the Ball in the Bridge of Ball was of the shape ovoid. (Again, GRMA, a Ollaimh oig).
Ballybough, on the other hand and on the other side of the sniffy Liffey, is located on the banks of the malodorous Tolka. Which Tolkien name is particularly apt as the hobbits who huddle in their holes on L’Avenue de Lockdown and Boulevard de Bellyache will tell you, compelled as they are under the tyranous shadow of Croke Park, which hosts more heil fellows ill met and Nurembourg Rallies in a season than you could shake a court injunction at.
The hobbits….? OMG, one can hear one’s discerning readership say…..not the GMO !
Yes, indeed, one is indeed referring to the Genetically Modified Orangemen. Alas, so risky have the times become that a normally outspoken outspan like P. Warbeck is compelled to resort to the code name, hobbit.
Ballybough is derived from the Leprechaun lingo: Baile Bocht meaning Poor Town. (Aris, GRMA, a Ollaimh oig). Which is not unapt, having just had itself deprived of 50 million BIG ONES by the greed of the GAA, the Grab All Association. (Was ever an organisation more appropriately named?).
Greedy, and genocidial too. For while all the local hobbits wanted was to see Wee Sommy of the Somme march down their Cul de Sac de Crab Apple, the GAA insists on enforcing the compulsory strains of their Nazi-like anthem down their ears, ‘Play it again, Sam, for the Men behind Maguire’ the last notorious line of which is: ‘Shoving Connie around the GREEN’. This is invariably played at full volume after the competing teams of bogball/stickfighting have goose stepped around the Paddock.
Was it for this the Wild Geese spread their wings? Alas, yes. For a mere puck of a sliotar away stands the statue of the Wildest Goose himself, Sean Russell who died if not drowned in a German U-boat. It stands in Fairview Park .This is appropriate as this park was itself reclaimed from the sea. (Don triu uair ar maidin, GRMA, a Ollaimh oig).
Unlike the Bells and Swastika Laundry this eye-sore has YET to be demolished. The same applies to that monument to Money Laundering, Croke Park. Shame, for shame, I say.
And now one would like to return across the Liffey and in time too, to thirty five years ago when P. Warbeck was smaller in years but not in nose, to a Press Conference he attended in the RDS, involving the Queen of Country Music, Ireland’s only white Jim Aiken and the music critic of the Unionist Times.
(Hold it there ! Hold it right there, cowpoke !)
Oh, dear, it is the Esteemed but All-Powerful Blogmeister who has just reminded me that one has not been granted license for a return trip across the Liffey.
What to do?
Perhaps if one wishes him a birthday greeting: La breithe sona, a Mhaistir Urramaigh Blog?
Will it work? Will Amarach every come?
One awaits with b. breath.
Happy birthday Jude
Food for thought
It was interesting to read that the Better Together campaign, which is the largest unionist organisation designed to keep Scotland within the UK, describe the Orange Order as “an unsavoury organisation.”
Like I said Jude
….I’m offside….but happy birthday anyway…..
Happy Birthday Jude, your my favourite blogger and I hope you enjoy your day.
Don’t eat too much cake!
Excellent piece, Jude. Happy Birthday!
Marijuana laced birthday cake in the post.
Are you moving to Washington State?
Jude, I really am having a problem with your extreme republican views, as you state you have a problem with all OO parades, I actually think you have a problem with anything unionist, maybe it would be best if all unionists left Northern Ireland, eh Jude. It really is a pity that all the good people of the Ardoyne have to come out to be offended, maybe next year they will be offended by Orange music in the distance and get that banned too. But if not, I’m sure they can have a good riot and shoot at the police instead.
Now let’s revisit 1795, and the good ol times in mid Ulster. The ongoing feuds between the Peep o’Day boys and the Defenders resulted in the Defenders attacking the Peep o’Days at the Diamond and the Defenders were thoroughly routed. What followed was hardly a glorious period of Orangeism, neither was the massacre of Protestants at the Bann Bridge in Portadown a particular romantic incident in republican folklore.. We could go on all day with who did what to who, a turbulent time in our history that left few saints.
Moving into modern times, the demon OO lives on, as does the Republican Clubs, the 1916 Societies, the AOH, etc. Yes, the OO will have to move on with society, and so will Irish Republicanism. Over forty Orange halls have been attacked in the last three years alone, most of these halls in rural border areas that are not just Orange halls, they are meeting places for minority rural communities that still feel isolated and abandoned. Maybe this year when the IRA bands pass through Dungiven they will show some respect outside Dungiven CoI, or will they stop once more and play republican tunes. You are correct Jude, it is a new world order, time for all to move on and that includes all shades of republicanism. The OO does not accept catholics, well that’s breaking news Jude, now you will be telling me that the the republican fraternities will be welcoming prods with open arms, and the GAA will no longer be a cold house for unionists.
I do wish you a happy birthday Jude, but forgive me for failing to laud you like the rest of the lemmings on this site.
Thank you William as ever, and esp for the birthday wishes. You’re right – terrible things have been done over history. I was pointing out one thing that was terrible and that attended the birth of the Orange Order. I agree everyone must move with changing times but you’re wrong to say with irony that ” the republican fraternities will be welcoming prods with open arms, and the GAA will no longer be a cold house for unionists”. I don’t doubt there might be bigots within republican fraternities and the GAA, but for the most part – and I know this from personal experience – Protestants ARE welcomed with open arms. See the response of republicans to those Protestants learning the Irish language as one example. The hard truth is, there is no equivalent organisation to the OO. I know there are thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of decent, salt-of-the-earth Orangemen, but they need to realise the tenets which their organisation holds dear and they’re not pretty. Finally (dammit William, you’re like the trouble-maker in the back seat, I spend more time with you than I can afford (at my age) – because many people have come on, on my birthday, and expressed good wishes and agreed with me doesn’t mean they’re lemmings, any more than a thoughtful unionist is a lemming if s/he supports the union. Abuse gets us nowhere. But again, thanks for coming on. I always like to hear your views.
Blessings on your birthday, a bit late apologies. An intelligent year, Virginia.