The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions

2. Belfast, 12 July 1994

It was seven years before I went back, this time as a journalist with guinea-pigs in tow: Priscilla, an American Protestant, and, from Dublin, Bridget and Emily Hourican, Catholic university students. In Belfast, on the eve of the Twelfth, we were briefed by academic and political friends over dinner. The mood was sombre to begin with. In the hope of provoking retaliation, the IRA had murdered a prominent loyalist and riddled with bullets the house of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP, the Reverend Willie McCrae. Later we cheered up. I was a great deal less ignorant about Northern Ireland now, yet I was amazed to hear from the McGimpseys, Orangeman Chris and Orangewoman Joyce, that they saw the Order as predominantly a social organization; Joyce waxed eloquent about the socials and dances.

We repaired late to a couple of massive bonfires, built communally in Protestant areas over several days with anything from cardboard to obsolete refrigerators; large numbers of people stood around drinking and making amiable chat. My contingent were in merry form by then and disappointed that there was insufficient carousing. They learned the words of ‘No Pope of Rome’, which was being played in the background and is an old favourite of mine. It is elegiac, a kind of Orange aisling,

(#ulink_641edb7a-c0bf-5250-8ea4-2c782d9241a0) a vision of what life might be in a Utopian Northern Ireland, though, like most modern hard-line sectarian songs, it was composed in Scotland. Sung to the tune of ‘Home on the Range’, the chorus runs:

No, no Pope of Rome,

No chapels

(#ulink_a4585ad6-424c-51e1-9980-c9bc6a24a589) to sadden my eye, No nuns and no priests, No rosary beads, Every day’s like the Twelfth of July. I wrote afterwards:

When I last saw the parade, it was in blazing sunshine. This time it poured with rain. We collected our beer from the Sandy Row off-licence and settled on a stone wall nearby, now augmented by Gus Legge, a University College Dublin engineering student and Hourican friend who had been fired by their example to come up from Dublin independently. The first differences emerged over the paraphernalia. Priscilla, Emily and I were happy as a gesture of courtesy to wear King Billy or Ulster Flag hats and wave Union Jacks; Bridget balked at the flag but wore a hat and carried a baton decorated in red, white and blue. Gus eschewed all insignia; he felt they had political overtones and would not have waved their republican equivalents. However, he did graciously accept from me the present of a keyring which on one side said ‘Keep Ulster Tidy’ and on the other ‘Throw your litter in the Irish Republic’.

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I love the parade. I love the music; if you’ve never heard the Eton Boating Song played by fife and drum, you haven’t lived. I love the daftness of some of the decorations. Ferociously muscly chaps bash drums adorned with politically-chosen flowers – orange tiger lilies or sweet william. I love trying to work out why in several groups just a few will have red or white carnations in their bowler hats. Are they office-holders in the lodge? Are some of the bowlers rounder than some of the others for significant reasons, or has a hatter gone out of business? Why was one bowler sporting a fern and another a sprig of heather? And why were not more of them sprouting the tiny plastic Union Jacks?

I love the banners – the pictures, the variety, the often baffling biblical, Irish and Scottish historical references. I love the eclecticism of a parade that includes lodges called Ark of Freedom, Rev. W. Maguire Memorial Total Abstinence, Prince Albert Temperance, Prince of Orange, Mountbatten, Martyrs of the Grassmarket – Edinburgh, True Blues of the Boyne, Martyrs Memorial (the name of Ian Paisley’s church, though he is in fact in the Independent Orange Order

(#ulink_f43e9f3c-e981-55e9-a559-1b0628e60eb5)), the Queen Elizabeth Accordion Band, the Rising Sons of India, the Defenders, the Protestant Boys and the Loyal Sons of County Donegal. Contemporary politics was occasionally in evidence, with a clip-on ‘NO DUBLIN INTERFERENCE’ attached to a handful of banners. ‘I didn’t know there were that many Prods in Ireland,’ observed Priscilla.

I love the taxis. They arrived at infrequent intervals, decorated according to the enthusiasm of the proprietor with anything from a single Union Jack to full regalia – King Billy banners, large flags, bunting and a multiplicity of political flowers. Their purpose was threefold: to transport Orangemen too old or frail to march with their lodges, drums too heavy for anyone to carry for five miles and also to pick up those who faltered along the route. I loved the moment when a dogged aged marcher dropped out, still smiling bravely, hailed an oncoming taxi uncertainly and was eventually assisted by a functionary who stopped the cab and the entire procession and helped him in. The fact that such a disciplined parade would stop unexpectedly to accommodate a falterer was typical of the humanity of the whole event. There was even a wheelchair.

I love the daft mix of clothes. From the ultra-disciplined – flute bands in vulgar brightly-coloured uniforms which depending on your perception were quasi-military, ocean-liner steward or cinema usher, complete with little caps with tassels, epaulettes and the lot – through kilts, trews, tam o’shanters, Californian drum majorettes’ uniforms, complete with short skirts, white socks and white shoes, older women in sensible skirts and stout shoes, chaps with ponytails, chaps in shirt-sleeves, one man in a dinner-jacket, to the most familiar image – the men in suits and bowlers with the sashes. There were people carrying pikes, staves, batons, drums, pipes, flutes, tin whistles and umbrellas. Then there were the kids who ranged from five-year-olds of both sexes in full uniform at the head of a lodge to various tracksuited individuals or toddlers in dresses and waterproof jackets holding on to banner-cords. A few people had their faces painted red, white and blue; several others opted for coloured hair, which in a surprising number of instances ended up green.

I love the lack of ageism. The fact that, apparently unselfconsciously, lodges could accommodate marchers from toddlers to totterers.

I love the fact that they are terrifically disciplined for the first mile or so, while the TV cameras are on them; in fact, when they catch sight of them, there is extra special twirling of batons, straighter shoulders and even more histrionics on the drums.

I love the signs of fraying of tempers when they got to the third mile and were soaked through. In one accordion band the girls got stroppy with their male leaders and a full-scale rebellion about what was to be played next had to be resolved. In mixed bands like this you could especially see the social importance of the Orange Order. Joining the Sandy Row Prince of Orange Accordion Band must be the local equivalent of joining the Young Conservatives in Surrey.

I love the fact that there was much chatting with the crowd once the heat was off, that people like us were intent on locating those we knew and shouting and waving at them – it was an important form of recognition. We swelled with pride when we spotted a McGimpsey and received a wave.

I love their dogged varieties of stoicism in the face of the cruel weather. Some sported umbrellas; accordion-players perforce had to wear plastic cloaks to protect their instruments; other defiantly wore shirt-sleeves in downpours that had my contingent whingeing and fighting over our golf umbrella. Not only did they finish the march, but most of them stayed in Edenderry, with little to amuse but hamburger and fish-and-chip stalls, and a platform of dignitaries. When we left, the officiating clergyman had attracted an audience of only about thirty-five. Everyone else was hanging around hoping that the rain would stop, the mud would dry up and they could do what they normally did – sit on the grass, play music, drink beer and sing, until it was time to regroup and march back the five miles to Belfast city centre.

I love marching along with the parade, which we did after an hour or so in order to get warm. My choice was the Unthank Road Flute Band. And when you get into the rhythm, you understand the importance of military music.

Priscilla and Emily enjoyed themselves in the same way as I did, but Bridget and Gus did not. Bridget hates parades anyway and, like Gus, thought this one militaristic. Neither likes fife-and-drum music. There was some wistful longing for Spanish fiestas or West Indian carnivals. Priscilla caused a rethink by pointing out that this event was greatly similar to the Ancient Order of Hibernians’ St Patrick’s Day parade in New York, with the pipe bands, the IRA veterans and the marching Irish police in Sam Browne belts. It was agreed that because the South was unused to military trappings, it was possible to see militarism where it was not intended. What received general agreement in the end was that the parade was an expression of pride in the community and that is no bad thing.

Tiny signs of tribalism were accentuated by walking down the Falls and the Shankill. The very secular Priscilla suddenly went seriously Protestant in the Shankill Road. Here, she said, were the besieged, not the besiegers; it was a clenched-teeth community. It was a reversion to family type. ‘If there have been Catholics in the family, it has never been mentioned,’ she explained.

Bridget and Emily went slightly the other way, mainly because of their shock at the World Cup-related graffiti. Having been actively involved in World Cup mania in Dublin and having adored the carnival atmosphere, it passed their understanding that anyone in Northern Ireland would not have been on the side of the Ireland team. The comments on the Ireland-Holland match were bad enough: 1690 ORANGEMEN 1–0; 1994 ORANGEMEN 2–0’; ‘PACKIE BUTTERFINGERS LET IT IN THE NET’. ‘But we’d have supported Northern Ireland if they’d got through,’ said the Houricans. ‘Not the point,’ said the newly politicized Priscilla. ‘Being besieged leads to aggression.’ And that was before we saw the comment on the Ireland – Italy match and the Loghlinisland public-house massacre: ‘HOUGHTON HIT THE NET 1–0; UVF HIT THE BAR 6–0’.

Gus felt no tribal signals. He felt more at ease in the Falls simply because there a southern accent would be an advantage, but he was depressed by both roads and the multiplicity of ‘For Sale’ signs, suggesting hopeless attempts to get out.

Everyone loved the people they met from both communities and their great friendliness and were delighted when a Protestant taxi-driver said with pleasure, ‘I wouldn’t have expected youse people from Dublin to come up and wave on the parade.’ Bridget was particularly pleased at the elderly Orangemen who said to her in the field, ‘Wish you were the leader of my lodge.’

A detour on the way home via Crossmaglen yielded an impressive tribute to the British passion for freedom of speech, for signs which I had seen a year ago were still in place: ‘BRITISH TERRORISTS GO HOME’ and, surrounding a sketch of a chap in a balaclava, ‘2ND BATTALION – VICTORY TO THE PROVOS’.

Priscilla has returned to America determined to recommend the event to her Irish acquaintances, and the Dublin contingent is evangelical. A coachload can be expected next year.

3. Aughnacloy, 23 August 1995

As a result of that and other articles about Northern Ireland, I received an invitation out of the blue from a County Tyrone farmer the following year to come to the Clogher Valley, stay at his house and attend ‘the Last Saturday in August demonstration with RBP No. 800’. I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I was so stunned at being invited to anything by an unknown Ulster Protestant that I cut short a highly convivial holiday in Clare. ‘I’m going to some kind of Orange march in the country,’ I said to a Southern Irish friend who worked for peace and reconcilation in Northern Ireland. ‘You must be mad,’ she said. ‘I’d rather cut my throat than go to an Orange march.’

Henry, my host, had decided that it was time – post-Drumcree One – for at least one journalist to attend an ordinary rural parade as a guest of what turned out to be a preceptory of the Royal Black Institution. Determined I should see it for myself and make up my own mind about it, he gave me little briefing the night before. At around nine the following morning, after his mother had provided us with a vast Ulster fry,

(#ulink_721a4424-ef4b-5784-824e-af40cda00804) we drove to the little village of Clogher, six miles from the border. It was cold and intermittently showery: Ulster’s is a cruel climate for a culture whose big festival days occur in the open air.

I was led first into the Orange Hall which was shared by what I now knew to be the Royal Black Preceptory and Henry showed me around. A two-storey house, it was dingy, plain and furnished in a decidedly spartan fashion with hard seats and rough trestle-tables. There was a picture of the Queen downstairs and another upstairs, a ceremonial sword and a plush seat for the Worshipful Master. The lavatory and kitchen were tiny and cheerless and there was no hot water. Men rushed in and out exchanging greetings, removing coats and putting on what I thought were black sashes but which are called collarettes, bowler hats and white gloves. The Blackmen,

(#ulink_6df2ae9f-1c48-5253-a651-63577dbabffa) as they are generally known, pride themselves on being well turned out: indeed, the only daft thing that Henry has ever said to me he said later that day. When he observed on parade a contingent from south of the border who were wanting in the white-glove department, he shook his head and said, ‘Look at them poor craturs there. If we’d been in a United Ireland we’d all be in that state.’

After introducing me to some of his brethren, Henry dispatched me with instructions to wait across the road from the hall, watch them parade round the village and then proceed to the coach to travel to the main parade. Then they assembled, their band struck up and they processed up the village and round and down, watched by no more than perhaps a dozen or so people along the way.

In the coach I was seated next to the Worshipful Master who said he hoped I would come to tea in the hall afterwards and suggested that if I enjoyed a nip of whiskey, I might like to accompany him to the pub afterwards. My enthusiasm for this notion sealed our friendship, and for the rest of the journey we talked about his family. (Ulster people are so cautious of causing affront by seeming nosy that they rarely ask personal questions; during interviews on countless occasions someone would say in response to a question about his religion, ‘I don’t know what your faith is and I wouldn’t ask but I hope I’m not giving offence,’ before going on to say something completely innocuous about his particular religious beliefs.)

Summing up the day in a newspaper article, I wrote:

The Clogher Valley people – who were extraordinarily welcoming – have since been described to me as among the most decent people in Northern Ireland. Dungannon, the local council, is working well on a system of power-sharing between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. As one council member explained: ‘For most purposes it’s us and the SDLP [John Hume’s party] against the fascists – the DUP [Ian Paisley’s party] and Sinn Féin.’

(#ulink_4a6018d2-1cc8-52d1-967c-6aeabcc188ec) And there were many Catholics among the more than 20,000 people who picnicked in cars along the parade route.

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You can’t become an RBP member without having spent two years in the Orange Order. The RBP has a reputation for being the least confrontational of loyal institutions, so I realize that what I saw in Aughnacloy was the most benign face of Orangeism. Of perhaps 90 lodges and bands, only three or four were even faintly intimidating. The exceptions were what are known as the ‘kick-the-pope’

(#ulink_c4a32757-a8ae-58c2-8875-8076c8539034) bands of young men from places like Portadown with earrings, shaven heads, vulgar and militaristic uniforms and a triumphalist swagger; in Scotland they would be on the terraces of Glasgow Rangers football club.

I’ve often vaguely wondered exactly what Orangemen do. ‘Sinn Féin think we talk politics and plot,’ said one RBP member. ‘In fact what we do is to have a monthly meeting in our hall to discuss trivial points about increasing the annual dues or repairing the roof; a few times a year we have a dinner. The main reason for going is just to meet your neighbours. And the parades are days out to look forward to.’

It was with a shock of recognition that I realized that, at bottom, the Orange Order is simply a Northern Irish Protestant means of male bonding. In England chaps have their clubs in which they obey arcane rules and organize social occasions. Some are Freemasons – cousins of Orangemen – and wear funny clothes and appear to be sinister because they conduct their proceedings in secret, but are in fact by and large a pretty harmless lot of men who just want an excuse to get out of the house. Irish Catholic men bond in pubs.

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Clogher Valley Protestants are hard-working, God-fearing, sober, frugal but warm people with a fierce pride in the land which many generations of their forefathers made so prosperous. Their RBP headquarters has so far escaped the fate of the almost 100 Orange halls attacked and seriously damaged in the past six years. It is a simple village hall with no creature comforts. The post-parade tea, at which I was made welcome both formally and informally, was – as one of them put it – ‘a country dinner’ of lots of meat and potatoes, and it was dry. But the Worshipful Master took me to the pub afterwards for Irish whiskey and chat with locals.

RBP 800 prided themselves on being well turned-out for the parade, in best suits, bowler hats, sash, mason’s apron and white gloves; the Murley Silver Band with whom they have marched for many years has a smart uniform. Like most of the bands, the Murley men and women are devoted to music-making rather than politics and like many of the other bands has extended its repertoire far beyond ‘The Sash’ and military music; many bands now play the music of that Catholic Derryman, Phil Coulter.

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What is missed in television coverage of these marches is the happy aspect. Old men walk along hand-in-hand with a toddler grandchild; cars follow individual lodges bearing proud but infirm elders; and every time I moved from my marching position beside the band and caught the eye of one of the men from my host lodge, I was awarded a wink or a large beam. Afterwards I said to one of them, ‘Why do you look so serious as you parade?’ He was puzzled. ‘It’s part of the discipline.’

There is a general belief that without the twenty-five years of assault from the IRA, the Orange Order would have almost withered away. The recognition that nationalist spokesmen are wiping the floor with unionists politically and on the media makes the parades a vital means of showing that the Protestants won’t go away. ‘What else have we got?’ asked one. Yet there is a new recognition of the necessity of taking on the nationalists at their own game. ‘We’ve been too stiff-necked and proud to explain ourselves,’ said one. ‘We’ve got to change.’ There is nothing they would like so much in the Clogher Valley as to watch on television the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party wipe that smile off Gerry Adams’s face.

There were aspects of the day I had no room to put in that article. Such as that my host – who wanted me to know how bad it could be – insisted that we sit on the wet grass and listen to an evangelist who seemed to me to be completely deranged. Or that I was totally baffled that chaps speaking from the platform referred to each other as ‘Sir Knight’. I was baffled too that there was almost no reference to politics: I had a vague impression that all marches ended with a unionist politician going on about the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was only afterwards that I discovered that the Black was concerned more with the spiritual than the political.