Orange Is The New Orange

Fáilte roimh cách!

Every year the Twelfth comes around and every year it passes me by, over the years it has just become boring, Orangemen marching up to a barricade, tattooed, balding men hurling stones and insults at the PSNI, before shuffling off to the pub to enjoy the rest of the bank holiday weekend. When it's covered on the news I just think to myself, 'Bless, at least they got nice weather.'

It's easy to become detached though, driving through the Six Counties last week en route to Donegal was a reminder of the stark difference between North and South, it really is a different world, and it's instantly noticeable once you cross the border. Many a time when I was travelling with my family as a child in the 80's & 90's we were pulled over by British Army soldiers, sometimes guided into one of their corrugated sheds to check for suspicious devices, and I also recall in the early 90's on a school trip to the Planetarium in Armagh soldiers boarding our school coach and searching through our school bags, only to find hang-sandwiches and a few Yops. Thankfully, those days seem to be a thing of the past and you can travel freely throughout the North without feeling like a criminal. 

British Troops pose for a photo in front of a wall mural celebrating Loyalist terror gangs in the north-east of Ireland, 1990s

It did get me thinking though, when seeing all of the bunting and flags and archways especially erected for marching season, how it's still easy to feel unwelcome and a little intimidated only 70 miles from home, and how you subconsciously revert to 'us and them' all over again. It would be very difficult to explain to a tourist what it's all about, and not have them reaching conclusions of bigotry and exclusivity masked as culture. 

It's hard to see things changing any time soon, when you have a situation (sorry!) like in the North, or Israel-Palastine, there constantly has to be a bogey man, the other, and a perceived injustice, without which there is no fight. Your safety or culture has to be under constant attack, real or imagined, and the leaders realise their role of riling up the masses is critical if they are to retain their positions of power. Just watch The Nolan Show on BBC whenever it's on and you'll see all of these on display, sometimes at a jaw-dropping level that would leave you depressed trying to think of a brighter future for our fellow islanders. 

The still, intensely strong, attachment to all things British has become more and more of a curio over the last 20 years or so as a sizeable chunk of the British (mainland) public seem indifferent to Northern Ireland, though some (see below clip) do have quite strong feelings about it! On the other hand, from a nationalist perspective, a 2013 poll conducted by The Belfast Telegraph provides an uncomfortable truth for Sinn Féin with only 3.8% of Northern Irish people wanting a united Ireland, unionists fretting over the Scottish Independence referendum needn't be worried at all it would seem. 

For me, a comment on The Irish Times website yesterday under an excellent article by Donald Clarke sums the present day situation (!) up perfectly;

'The answer, in my view is relatively straightforward - the erosion of barriers is anathema to the vast majority of loyalists and to many unionists. In order to nurture sectarian division they must raise sectarian tensions on a seasonal basis. 

That's why they display such a mania for triumphalist marching. Just imagine Northern Ireland without 3,000 annual displays of militant loyalism. Far better for so many people, but a hellish loss of the lifeblood that keeps mainly working class protestants from engaging with their non-protestant neighbours, or, horror of horrors, falling in love with and marrying them. 

The strategy is to keep the pot boiling, year in, year out, fanning the flames of conflict, while working unceasingly to bring an end to the Good Friday Agreement and its out-workings, such as the hated Parades Commission. 

A return to protestant domination is the goal, and nobody should underestimate the willingness of the DUP and the UUP to out-do each other in mimicking the TUV. Nor should anyone underestimate the willingness of British Tories to play the old Orange Card if the need arises following the next UK election in less than a year.'

NextGen in Belfast

And so the cycle continues, again and again, every year. Although by all accounts yesterday's parades appear to have passed off without incident, we've still had the unsavoury issue of antagonistic effigies hanging from bonfires along with election posters of Sinn Féin candidates and Alliance Party MLA, Anna Lo, as well as racist comments on tricolours and rumours of photos of dead 5-year-old cancer victim Oscar Knox. 

When a society is so segregated, especially in education, it only requires one side to be entrenched in their views of hatred, persecution and suspicion. The fear of a world changing around you merely makes you beat your Lambeg harder and louder, but the greater fear is that one day, nobody will be listening.