The people behind the wire
by Laura Friel
obscure country churchyard under the scrutiny of the
international media. A procession commemorating the 80th
anniversary of the Somme entrenched behind ditches and barbed
wire. Ex-servicemen confronting the British army. `Law abiding'
citizens breaking the law. Defiant Loyal Orders.
It has been a week of contradiction, even pathos, for Orangemen
at Drumcree. You can see it in the faces of the elderly men
fronting the parade, their expressions almost as impenetrable as
the security cordon thwarting them.
The media image is seductive. Orangemen, beleaguered, betrayed.
But it is only an image, a fleeting photo opportunity.
Despite their protestations, Orangemen at Drumcree are not
surrounded, cordoned off, hemmed in, they are free to come and go
at will. There is one small restriction, they cannot go down the
Garvaghy Road without negotiating an accommodation with local
residents. It is this that the Orange Order claim strikes at the
very heart of their cultural tradition.
``This is make or break year for us,'' says a Portadown Orangeman.
``If we lose this one the Protestant community in Northern Ireland
is finished.'' ``To allow marches to be re routed,'' says Joel
Patton of the Spirit of Drumcree, ``is to surrender a piece of the
United Kingdom to the enemy.''
Arriving at the dead of night, ``This is a battle that has to be
won,'' Ian Paisley told Orangemen camped out in Drumcree field.
``If we don't, we will have the Mac Cionnaiths of this world
dictating our everyday life and that is something we are not
prepared to do.''
In what James Kelly of the Irish News described as ``the chess
game of incitement'', Orange leaders and unionist politicians have
been fanning the flames of loyalist reaction while side-stepping
their responsibility for the ensuing violence. In one 24 hour
period alone there were 384 outbreaks of disorder, 115 attacks on
the RUC and British army, 96 petrol bombing incidents, 57 homes
and businesses damaged and 116 vehicles hijacked and damaged, and
a number of gun attacks. Predictably, much of the violence has
been sectarian, from arson attacks on Catholic churches, to
petrol bomb attacks on the homes, businesses and schools of
Catholic communities across the North. As each night falls,
nationalist estates throughout the Six Counties brace themselves
for renewed sectarian incursions by loyalist mobs. ``I would
hope,'' says DUP Assembly member Gregory Campbell, ``the situation
remains peaceful.... but the longer it goes on without the
Orangemen completing their walk the greater the likelihood of
violence.''
At this year's stand-off, a number of known loyalist
paramiliatries appeared to be in charge of `security'. In the
churchyard they survey the surrounding fields through binoculars,
appearing to pass messages to men filtering to and fro through
the main crowd. Mark Fulton, rumoured to have succeeded Billy
Wright as LVF leader, also briefly joined the ranks of Orangemen
at Drumcree.
The Orange lodge came to Drumcree on the auspices of
commemorating the 36th Ulster Division of the original UVF who
perished on the Somme in 1916. Yes they fought bravely and died
tragically but this is nothing to do with the Somme. The Orange
Order began as a sectarian supremacist organisation to counteract
growing unity between Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter. Many of
those early tenets remain at the core of the organisation today.
It is not Northern nationalists who need to come to terms with
the `heritage' of Orangeism, but the Orangemen themselves. The
days of posturing and pantomime are over. The Orange Order will
need to take a long hard look at itself if we are to move into a
new era of mutual tolerance and respect. It is very difficult to
comprehend all this has happened because a small group of
Orangemen in Portadown have refused to talk to their neighbours.
![[An Phoblacht]](http://republican-news.org/graphics/title_gifs/aprn.gif)