“I still have no doubt that there’s a republican agenda within a lot of the broadcast media that came to the fore and had a field day in the five days after the Twelfth, and I must say that I’ve been disappointed by their attitude to it.” – Drew Nelson, Grand Secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland.
As the bonfire material begins to seriously accumulate, it’s apt that we consider the words of the Grand Secretary. In the above quotation, Mr Nelson is referring to the fact that a few years back, the media showed an Orange band march in a circle outside St Patrick’s Church in Belfast, playing ‘The Famine Song’. Mr Nelson figured if there had been a murder, it wouldn’t have been shown more than two consecutive nights.
Is he right? Is the media biased against Orangeism? It could seem that way, if you compare the past with the present. There are those in the BBC who speak of a time when the BBC’s top man in Belfast lunched with the top man in the Orange Order while both gazed fondly on the marchers passing below. Certainly for decades the Orange parades in Belfast were covered live, the commentary focused on happy faces, the word ‘tradition’ was repeated again and again, the cameras sought out the oldest and youngest members of the march to underscore their ‘tradition’ attribute. When bands were shown it was invariably ‘respectable’ bands, not the blood-and-thunder/Kick-the-Pope type. Nor did the camera lens seek out alcohol of any kind.
People like Grand Secretary Nelson probably saw the rot set in over twenty years ago. In 1994, BBC radio interviewed two young lads in the Donegal Pass area and asked what the Twelfth meant to them. It meant, they were told, getting drunk, having a good time and throwing stones at the taigs. The speakers at the field were appalled:
“That may be the voice of pagan Protestantism (sic), but it’s not the voice of Orangeism. The voice of Orangeism is here to proclaim the truth of the reality of the living Christ and if the BBC want to hear what we stand for and what we are about, let them come with us to the central cross and find in Christ the Way, the Truth and the Life”
There is no record as to how many BBC reporters accepted this invitation.
However, it true that BBC coverage of the Twelfth is less extensive than it was, so that could be seen as a republican bias. At the same time, the commentary on the marchers is still respectful, avoids showing the consumption of alcohol, still leans heavily on the ‘tradition’ word and would rather vanish up its own lens aperture than use the word ‘anti-Catholic’.
I don’t know how long the reporter in 1994 searched before s/he found those two young lads in the Donegall Pass area, but I’ll bet he/she would need a lot longer to find a republican who’d recognise Drew Nelson’s description of the BBC or any other broadcast media as having a ‘republican bias’.
I’ve scanned the honours list and I don’t see your name. Passed over again.
Damn. Someone in there must have a grudge against me. Can’t think why…
Lets not beat around the bush here…From its inception with ” The Peep o’ Day Boys ” in 1795 right through to the present day this ” Religious Organisation ” has been a sanctuary for some of the most anti-catholic racist thugs these islands could produce. Yearly they demand more and more marches in their quest to demonstrate their perceived supremacy.In this corner of Ireland we have almost 2 million people yet a sectarian society of around 30,000 members can hold us all to ransom for months at a time. People are restricted in their movements,barricaded in their homes etc etc…Illegal.bonfires are constructed ,built with tyres that spew out their carcinogenic toxins topped with either someones national flag (for added insult ) ,an effigy or a religious icon…..all without fear of prosecution Personally I believe that if they must march, then they must march where they are wanted and with the consent of the local residents. I am also of the opinion that they should foot the bill for policing and the clean up afterwards, and that every single member should have a mandatory course in respect ,manners and civility
That requirement would seriously limit the membership. Jude you omitted the KAT slogans of the faces of children. These guys give God a bad reputation
Seamus O Neill just said it all no further comment needed !!!!!
memories of orange order abuse coming flooding back
Jude
He presents precisely the same evidence as you do when you complain of anti republican bias in the media,i.e.bugger all.
I beg to differ, gio – I seem to remember offering MONEY to neill if he fished out a few pro-republican (not to be confused with anti-republican) articles from the Irish mainstream press over the past couple of months. On t’other hand, if you haven’t read any anti-republican articles in the mainstream press over the last couple of months, you haven’t been reading your newspapers. So don’t give me any of this lazy ‘one-side-is-as-bad-as-t’other’ – anything but that.
Jude
I know you have issued that challenge routinely. i take it by pro republican you mean pro Sinn Fein rather than any other party with republican ideology?
But really I find the media don’t as a rule do many pieces that are pro any party,unless written by party supporters or at election time. I presume Jim Gibney still writes for the Irish News does he?
Do you see many pro SDLP articles in the media? I don’t. Maybe give me an example of a few as a comparison.
Even the pro union papers tend to print pieces exhorting parties to do better rather than simply endorsing their policies.
Gio couldn’t have said it better myself!
It’s getting near that time of year again but I don’t really want to go over the whole Orange marching thing again…We solved that one long ago but nobody listened,… remember?. Has the Beeb a bias against the Orange Order? Well if you listened to the paranoid rantings and ramblings on the discussion shows , you’d think that the dear old Beeb was doing down the whole loyalist and unionist community with its every broadcast. Then again nationalists think the same thing too.Generally the media appear intent on doing down Sinn Fein at every turn too.I’ve a notion they alternate stories to attempt to keep a bit of balance. After all they’ll let everyone phone in and have a rant …green or orange.
Of course they don’t subject us to a day’s worth of reportage of marching, marching, marching, marching ,marching ad infinitum on the 12th of July anymore , but I think that’s really only because they now realise that most people are bored rigid by this kind of thing ….certainly at least half the population came to that collective conclusion long ago and there are probably plenty in the unionist community who feel the same.It’s a bit like watching somebody playing darts all day…..i mean, who needs hours of that?As for portraying the Orange Order in an unfavourable light …well they do that to themselves at times.It’s only now that the technology is available in everyone’s pocket to capture the silliness and broadcast it on youtube .Stuff like that is bound to filter down to the main news broadcasters somewhere along the line.Then there’s all that nonsense about flags, muslims , gays and languages……the list goes on.
As far as their religious ethos is concerned , well that seems to be stitched onto all the marching and walking like a badly made jacket.What any of it has to do with Christianity is anyone’s guess.How did Jesus sneak into all these bowler hats ,lambeg drums , fluttering banners and union jack flags….is this the same sandal-wearing, bearded, hippy, anarchist Jesus who kicked over the traces and was a friend to prostitutes and lepers? Where is the connection coming from with all these conservative -minded stick in the muds? Where’s the turning the other cheek?
The irony of the orange tree, Esteemed Blogmeister, is that it is an, erm, evergreen tree.
Or, perhaps, not so ironic should one take time out to sit oneself down and adopt the Rodin pose: that of the thinker. And should one happen to be a male, this would involve being naked of over-life size and sitting on a rock with one’s chin resting on one’s right hand, with one’s right elbow in turn resting on one’s left knee.
And if one should choose to give the outer world the benefit of one’s inner cogitations, and if one should happen to be a citizen of the Free Southern Stateen one would assume that the colour of one’s thoughts would be bathed in an evergreen penumbra.
In fact any number of penumbra,provided they were all green. Which shade is statutorily restricted to Forty, of course.
Which of course includes the orange tree (see above).
And which kosher fact is italicized in – gasp! – The Unionist Times of this very day, no less. Specifically, in the interview given to that august organ of record by the distinguished and critically-acclaimed Druidess of the Druid Theatre herself: Gary Hynes, Bachelor of Arts.
Gary being short / gearr for Gearoidin as distinct from Gerard. Neither does she hail from Gary, Indiana or indeed of South Bend, Indiana itself..
Nothing she had to emote in an anguished outpouring of her inner tribulations as a child would prevent the sage membership of the Orange Order, from the Mandarins all the way up to the blood-red bonfire blazers, from nodding in agreement. And vigorously so in the manner of a bobblehead dog in the back window of a Delorean burning tyre rubber through the roads of Dunmurry.
More of the Rodin than the Ballyboden about the same outpourings, one might suggest.
She recalled the early childhood challenge of being reared through Irish in the English-speaking environment of Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon.
-I have a memory of standing outside the gate of our house and of not being able to talk to other kids who were passing up and down the road.
Wisheroo, God love the poor craytur.
One almost felt she, at any moment, was going to break into a rendition of Maurya’s caterwauling and ullagowning and keening from ‘Riders to the Sea’ by J. Millington Synge, whose Hiberno-English drama the Druid Theatre was destined to make its very own. Quel surprise.
-Some of that story is part of the narrative I have made in my own head.
You said it, baby. And resulted in the cleansing of the Gaelic Panto nonsense from the boards of the Abbey during her tenure of office and – ultimately – in its replacement by the thespian triumph of Panti Bliss.
(‘An extraordinary event’ is how the thinking thespian’s thinker described the recent rainbow referendum, elsewhere in the three-hanky interview).
It is a story which has already been milked to profit (as distinct from flogged to debt) by the self-pitying likes of Hugo Hamilton whose wretched experiences of being brought up in a tri-lingual household made a mint for the Gate Theatre as ‘The Speckled People’..
(The tri-linguall Hamilton household consisted of – l to r – English, Irish and German. Spot the bad man out there).
So, in Hynes sight, as it were, there was not such a long way from her own garden gate in Ballaghaderreen to the Gate Theatre on Parnell Square in Dublin.
Just what is it about Ballaghaderreen which seems to be so prolific in prouducing such critically-acclaimed Bachelors of Arts from Gary Hynes to Archdeacon Patsy McGarry, Rel Corr of (whatdyaknow) The Unionist Times.?
A conflicted town in itself: while politcally it is located in County Roscommon its GAA clubs play in the Mayo championship.
Ballaghaderreen / Bealach an Doirin / The Way of the Little Oak Wood.
What is it exactly that the Druidess of Doctorates is on about here?
(Her personal collection of the honorary variety is such that it has been described as the type which grows on trees,, particularly the evergreen type known as the, erm, orange tree).
Is she suggesting that the Bealach bit in the first part of her home town be given a kick in same and be replaced with an altogether more civilised prefix. Is she hinting she would like to take an oak-leaf out of another similar-sized city, north of the Black Sow’s Dyke…..?
-Londonderreen, perhaps?
(Rule it out not, a chairde: for there is a neat way to stymie the predictable fusillade of vituperation which would issue from the usual leprechaun-sized but vocal sources).
-The London bit could be passed off as Hiberno-English for Lon Dubh which, of course, is leprechaun for Blackbird.And shur, isn’t there a fine and grand DruidSynge-song sound to The Blackbird of the Little Oak Wood, entirely?
(Collapse all round of Inclusive Establishment types in a melt down of mirth).
The curious thing here is that only the only as recently as last week the same august paper of record had an item on the number of languages spoken in the new, all inclusive, rainbow-coloured Free Southern Stateen. And in not a derogatory tone of voice neither.
A true cricket score: 182 not out.
So, what message is one expected to take home with one even as one hurriedly heads for the last bus, from the cathartic interview/ overview with the Druidess.?
That the speaking of any other language than either of he two official ones – English, both the Queen’s and the Hiberno version,- in the homes of the FSS be outlawed? And flushed out by means of attaching say – a coloured star – orange, perhaps – to the front door of any house not complying with this liberal and all-inclusive policy?
A Britvic solution to an Oirish problem, perhaps?
Alternatively, allow the current 182 languages to multiply and grow and so, in the fullness of time, letting loose on an unsuspecting stateen a whole theatreful of Druidesses, some even wearing (gasp) hijabs ?
Perkie’s,inner supermarket shelf-stocking self is in two minds (bi-mindual?) on this matter.
Where,however he has no doubts is in response to the advice proferred by The Unionist Times to those seeking to discover what languages are spoken and where:
-Use our tool to find out.
Er, no thanks: one Fintan is quite enough.
GRMA.
.
Speaking of broadcast media, RTE are showing this documentary on Monday
http://www.rte.ie/tv/programmes/collusion.html
I wonder if the day will ever come when the high heid yins of Unionism/Orangeism/Loyalism and the British State hold their hands up and say ‘Yes, we did some very, very, very bad things’. Pigs may fly.
Unionism is as toxic an ideology now as it was 100 years ago. The Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act (Northern Ireland) 1922 was fascism by any other name.
Thanks for the tip, my planner is set. I`ve always said if the free staters had experienced the same oppression as the northern nationalists they would have joined the IRA in their thousands.
I often wonder how (why?) Seamus McKee landed that gig, eulogising about the wonderful tradition of the twelfth of July parades? I mean come on, `Seamus`? Surely he has to be a tai….sorry, member of the Catholic `minority`. Ah, those were the days. I often wonder why the BBC didn`t show live feeds of the eleventh night `mad band` that used to gather up every year on the eve of the twelfth and march through the town shouting sectarian obscenities about the Pope and the Blessed Virgin Mary? The situation is ludicrous. Every year we have to watch our very own version of The Wicker Man, paganistic ritualistic hatred masquerading as tradition. Orange leaders complained for decades about the Church of Rome having a say in their government and they don`t see the contradiction in their obsequious loyalty to a British parliament that allows unelected Anglican Bishops a say in the running of the state. Go figure as the yanks say.
PSNI officers are being trained to identify cows and sheep. Perhaps it is time for audiology and ophthalmology tests. It would appear that PSNI officers in Bangor have not heard that a group applied for a grant to build a bonfire in this age of austerity, however, the application was rejected because of complaints from residents. Neither did the police see cars arriving to prepare an unwanted bonfire or to erect paramilitary flags. What will it be next, a cash prize for the individual who spots the first cherry picker in the Spring season? I guess the Chief Constable just hopes they will go away. His words appear to be falling on deaf ears also. Will July be just another ‘trip’ for the boys on the Sloop John B?
I have the great honour on the 12th day of July, most years of busing these traditionalists to their parades and I have to say I have never in my life heard as much hatred from a human being than I hear from Orange men, their supporting bands and the bands supporters. Usually its the usual rendition of ‘The Sash My Father Wore’ but you do get them singing ‘The Famine Song’ and the other really ‘hardcore’ songs.
They don’t really seem to mind that their driver is a Catholic never mind a republican never mind Irish but then they didn’t ask and I suppose the real question is….do they care? Do they really care if they offend anyone by shouting “fuck all taigs” while passing Divis Street on the West Link. Do they really care that flying the flag of a proscribed organisation is illegal? I’d say not as they do it anyway and get away with it I might add.
The Orange Order try to portray the 12th ‘celebrations’ as a family day which includes something for all (except Catholics because sure they’re Catholics). I believe they even tried one year to get Catholics involved but I’m pretty sure no one took them up on that offer due to the copious amounts of anti-Catholic bigotry and offensive tunes the bands play as well as UDA, UVF, YCV, UYM and various other paramilitary flags flown by bands on that day. Did I mention there is also copious amounts of alcohol drunk on said day and alcohol and politics, especially in Norn Iron don’t mix, at all, ever……EVER…or is it NEVER.
The 12th of July, no matter how the Orange Order or Protestantism may try to portray it is a day when Catholics find it necessary to stay indoors due to the loud mouth bigots which follow in the wake of bands and the Orange Order in general. Nelson can say what he wants, I’m long enough in the tooth to know how it feels to be spat at by bands men because they know I’m Catholic and to be jeered at by Orange Order brethren because I was spat at. I will never trust the Orange Order as far as I could throw them because they are as shady as the special branch in the collusion bombshell.
The real 12th of July is a day when Loyalists celebrate the fact that they can walk about on our streets openly drinking, singing sectarian songs and pretty much doing things which on any other day of the year they would be arrested for.
The Beeb on the 12th….I’d have to say there’s definitely discrimination there in bucket loads. Not only is the Belfast march, as well as others in snippets televised but it is shown over and over and over and zzzzZZZZZ on ever news bulletin for the next couple of days. When has the Easter Rising commemoration on the Falls Road ever been televised? Personally I can’t remember a time when I’ve ever seen it on TV. In fact, I don’t think there has ever been a Republican commemoration televised.
To Orange men anything that is critical of the Orange Order is “pro-republican” or “anti-Orange”
To Unionists anything that conflicts with their narrative of the past is “rewriting history”, yes even if its facts that counter the Unionist narrative.
The people aggressively demanding respect for “Orange Culture” are the same people marching around in a circle outside St Patricks Chapel playing sectarian tunes then attacking the man who was recording their sectarian public display. The Orange Order even after had the cheek to come out and dispute the sectarian display even though it was all caught on camera and was clear as daylight.
Then you have the Twaddell camp that is stationed at a sectarian interface solely to raise tension and isn’t even at the place where the Orange men want to have their return parade.
From their deep rooted anti-Catholic ethos, their antics at Drumcree (which ultimately cost the lives of the 3 Quinn children) and more recently at Twaddell, its hard to see how there can be an accurate, positive portrayal of the Orange Order by the likes of the BBC, UTV, etc. I suppose CNN in the USA would have a similar problem reporting the KKK in the media, to draw a comparison….
Point I’m making is any journalist that wants to portray the Orange Order in a bad light isn’t exactly going to find It difficult, the Orange Order and their bandsmen make it very easy all by themselves…..
Is it time to remove the orange third from the Irish tricolour?
William, the coffee has been brewing for quite a while….can you not smell it , no-one wants to alienate any section of the population of Ireland . By their actions and deeds ,the “Orange ” have managed to achieve this all by themselves. If one believes,( and one uses religion as a cover ) that one human is superior to another ….then that delusion is of ones owns making. I am a proud Irishman and in being such ,carry no malice towards any other Irishman…..I know my history….I cannot change the last 845 years , the last 50 years ,the last 20 years……but I have ardently tried to change the way we perceive each other and no ,, I don”t think the Orange should be removed from our national flag , you are a vital part of our nation……and we can grow together to make this a proper country for both the Orange and the Green
Hold on a minute. I was being provocative, of course, but even as a non-Catholic, non-Nationalist, I wouldn’t want to be categorised as “orange,” I’m not part of some amorphous mass, I’m quite capable of thinking for myself. In any case the Orange Order is dying, it has lost its raison d’etre, I’m frankly amazed that it generates such hysteria, given that it is now down to around 30,000 members, out of a total Protestant population of almost a million.