Rotten Oranges in a bad basket
by Meadbh Gallagher
Whenever a bit of scheming led to a hollow victory in the fields
where I come from, the schemers would always emerge from whatever
field it was with whispered sniggers of ``We've bested them now,
for sure''. In that moment, besting them now meant besting them
forever, and there was no talk of an end to it at all.
The victory stood as long as it stayed secret; by claiming it you
lost it; by sharing in it, your prize was to be a co-conspirator
next time round.
It must have been with a similar sense of self-delusion that
Orangemen, and women who support Orangemen, and media and
politicians who have rejoiced in the little territorial victories
of Orangemen, entered into in the last fortnight. A kind of
hushed Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go for the bowler hat
brigade.
By last Wednesday night, the Orange Order's David MacNarry felt
sufficiently secure to strut his stuff from a studio in Belfast,
from where he talked down to RTÉ and Breandán Mac Cionnaith on
the Garvaghy Road. It was then he compared Garvaghy Road
residents to animals that had to be caged.
He also admitted that the Order had set up a strategy group to
oversee their promised victory in Drumcree `98. It took another
day before he issued the threat to bring the place to a
standstill ``within hours'' unless they got their way.
But McNarry's loose cannnon fire was nothing to the deliberate
obfuscation by the Portadown Lodge press spokesperson Mr David
Jones, nor the practised, soft spoken bigotry of Mr Joel Patton.
There they were, notching up yet more credits, as each reasonable
RTÉ reporter or press journalist let them get away with each
`reasoned' reply.
By the end of the week, without the murders that inevitably
followed, the population of RTÉ land were getting their best
education in years on just where the problems lay and how weak
the media is in separating the wood from the trees.
For while the Irish and international media were busy taking
their usual softly, softly approach to Orange terror, the
avalanche of incidents meant news was filtering through of roads
being blocked, homes burnt out, and people intimidated and
scared.
By the time the heartache of Sunday morning came, we all must
have known it was going to happen.
Self-delusion did not end on Sunday morning for David Jones or
David McNarry, but it might well have ended for all those
co-conspirators who, whether they wanted to or not, shared the
scent of fenian blood with those who brought us Ballymoney.
d it might have ended also for a southern population whose
calculated ignorance on all things northern has brought them this
nightmare.
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