20. Protest march in Sandy Row, 6 July 1998. (Belfast Telegraph)
21. Funeral of Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn, July 1998. (Pacemaker)
22. Harold Gracey in his caravan at Drumcree, January 1999. (Martin McCullough)
When I go to Northern Ireland, I’m looking back to my youth in the 1950s. I remember in Sheffield on Whit Monday when Protestant Sunday schools used to parade to a service and Boys’ Brigade, sea scouts, boy scouts, cubs, brownies, girl guides – scores of children walking past behind a banner carried by some adult. And we all used to go along and the preachers used to preach and everybody used to walk around talking to people you’d not seen for a year. I remember that from my boyhood and see a resonance of it in Northern Ireland. They are to some extent recreating the old virtues of family, sobriety, self-reliance, hard work and thrift.
It’s the Blue Remembered Hills: you can’t go back. We can all see that community and experience a sense of loss – because we know where we’ve come from. But it makes me feel angry that an entire community should be demonized for no greater crime than being out of fashion.
English Orangeman
AT AN ANGLO-IRISH CONFERENCE in 1996, I was standing in the bar with two Northern Irish Orangemen when a third came up and said: ‘I spent an hour last night explaining to X and Y [two intelligent and sophisticated members of the Dáil, the Irish parliament] why I’m an Orangeman. One of them has just bounced over to me and said: “We’ve been talking about you, and we’ve all decided that you can’t be an Orangeman. You’re too nice.” ‘ To which the second Orangeman replied: ‘I was in Dublin a while ago when someone in the group I was with who knew me quite well said: “Why don’t you tell those awful Orangemen to stop those parades?” When I explained that I was an Orangeman, they all said, “You’re not.” I said, “I am,” and they said, “You’re not.” “But I am.” “You’re not. You’re not. You’re not.” So I said, “OK. Have it your way. Obviously when I think I parade through Belfast in a collarette on the Twelfth of July I’m suffering from delusions.” ‘ And the third Orangeman, who had always believed the southern Irish mind was so closed it was a waste of time trying to explain anything, said, ‘There you are! What did I tell you?’
I spring from a southern Roman Catholic, nationalist tradition myself, but over the decades, I have become aware of my tribe’s effrontery and laziness of mind where Northern Protestants, particularly Orangemen, are concerned. ‘Why doesn’t the British government stop those dreadful bigots from strutting through nationalist areas?’ is the cry from people who’ve never met an ordinary Orangeman. And with the next breath they say that unionists have no culture worth talking about.
During the past few years, as I researched this book, I have met hundreds of members of the loyal institutions: the Apprentice Boys, the Orange Order and the Royal Black Institution. I have never known a community as misrepresented and traduced. In their pride and inflexibility, though, they have certainly given plenty of ammunition to their enemies. But then the qualities that enable people to endure a life under siege are not those that make for intellectual nimble-footedness and a talent for public relations.
Most members of the loyal institutions are ordinary, decent people, many of whom have endured extraordinary fear and suffering without becoming bitter. Many are among the finest people I have ever met and live lives that are an inspiring witness to their faith. And others, of course, are very bigoted and nasty.
Along the way I’ve asked Orangemen here and there what they hoped might emerge from my book. I enjoyed most the suggestion from the English Orangeman Mike Phelan, (who gave me the run of his library and his unpublished work on English Orangeism) that it should prove conclusively that compared to Orangemen the Knights of the Round Table were cornerboys. I’ve failed to do that, I’m afraid, but I hope I may have made some headway in satisfying some of my other advisers, like Henry Reid, who told me my job was to give an idea of the spirit of the ordinary Orangeman. Graham Montgomery elaborated: ‘I’d like it to show that Orangemen are just men and Orangewomen just women – just people. And that they can be terribly cultured people who go to the opera or holiday abroad or can be terribly pedestrian and watch the football and eat chips and watch Coronation Street and go to Newcastle for a short break. That they can be ministers or businessmen or lawyers or teachers or farmers or factory-workers – or, like Dr Barnardo, be philanthropists. That they cover the whole gamut of life in any society. That there’s something about the Orange that everybody, even outsiders, can identify with in some way. And that the Orange Order is something we’re involved in in our leisure time – something important enough for us to actually create leisure time for it.’
The Reverend Brian Kennaway added that he’d want the book to show that the Orange Order ‘is about more than parades; the perception in England and abroad is Orange Order equals parade. We are a people with our own identity and our own moral values, and we express those values within our institution. But we are also a people with a tradition and with rights and we are in the forefront of civil rights. Every Orange banner is a civil rights banner.’
Along the way, in trying to understand why members of the loyal institutions think as they do, I’ve had to acquire an understanding of the differences within Protestantism, get a grip on several centuries of European religious wars, look at Irish history from the perspective of besieged settlers rather than of the angry dispossessed and at British history from the perspective of the Puritan rather than the Cavalier. I’ve come to appreciate the virtues of a way of life that would never suit me. To anyone who believes that I am looking at Orangeism from too positive a perspective, I can say only that that is what I do in all my books: my biography of James Connolly, for instance, is sympathetic too, and I am neither republican nor socialist.
I have been much enriched by the whole experience. But I now know without a shadow of doubt that what we have on the island of Ireland are two tribes who might be from two different planets and that no amount of rhetoric will change that reality, however unpalatable it may be to wishful thinkers. It is not until men of violence give them the chance to learn mutual trust that the tribal mentality can be overcome and people can let go of the hatreds of the past.
For the most part, the tribes can be defined as being Protestant/unionist or Catholic/nationalist, though there are significant numbers of Catholics who are happy to remain part of the British state and a handful of Protestants who have become Irish nationalists.
I’ve interviewed many of the leaders of the loyal institutions, but I’ve been just as interested in hearing the views of innumerable foot-soldiers and their spouses. I can’t mention all those who helped me and there are, sadly, others, particularly in the border areas, who do not wish to be acknowledged in case they or their families are in consequence put at greater risk from thugs and terrorists from either side. But since they are readily identifiable anyway, I will mention the Reverend William Bingham and Janet, Edwin and Gail Boyd, Harrison and Beryl Boyd, Eric Brown, Bertie Campbell, the Charlton family, George Chittick, Johnny Cowan, Tony Crowe, Richard Dallas, Gerry Douglas, Tommy Doyle, Sammy Foster, Jackie Hewitt, Jack Hunter, Roy Kells, the Reverend Brian Kennaway and Liz, Alfred and Charlie Kenwell, Cecil Kilpatrick, Warren Loan, Gordon Lucy, Jim McBride, John McCrea, Lexie McFeeter, Chris and Joyce McGimpsey, Derek Miller, Lord Molyneaux, Gordon, Graham and Heather Montgomery, the late Jack Moore, Billy Moore, Noel Mulligan, Dave Packer, George Patten, Mike and Sue Phelan, the Reverend Warren Porter, Tom and Louie Reid, Bobby Saulters, Alistair Simpson, the Reverend Martin Smyth, David and Daphne Trimble, Denis Watson, Richard Whitten, Ian Wiggins and James Wilson. I am grateful also to Ian Black, Charles Fenton, David Griffin, the Reverend Gordon McMullan, Ian Wilson, Frederick and Betty Stewart, Cephas