The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions

Obedient down the wandering of the years

Through many a hope deferred, a plan delayed,

Claiming the land for ever by his tears Shed at

the grave where his dear dust was laid.

So by these graves we claim the country still,

This land made rich by sacrifice and tears,

Held with such passionate love, such stubborn will, Tom from the people oft down bitter years,

Spoiled by the hirelings of a servile court,

Harried by prelates of a faith denied.

The rebels’ plunder and the landlords’ sport,

Yet loved of those who tilled her fields, and died,

And dying passed into her kindly mould

To sanctify for us each kirkyard green,

Each sheltered vale and every hillside cold,

And little highways where their feet have been.

Thus do we claim our country from the lord

As Abraham claimed his at Machpelah’s cave,

From age to age still runs the changeless word,

‘The land is his who claims it by a grave.’

It came as no surprise that such an anti-Episcopalian poem had been written by a Presbyterian minister. What was more surprising was that he was a distant kinsman of Henry’s, for I had thought all of his blood were farmers or businessmen apart from the odd engineer. And Henry was able to tell me the story that had inspired such ardent love of Ulster and such bitter denunciation of his ancestors’ persecutors.

The paternal family of the poet, John Worthington Johnston, had farmed south of the border in County Monaghan from King William’s time until, in the 1860s, as a result of some skulduggery by the landlord and his steward, who wanted the prosperous farm for himself, they had to move. In the Clogher Valley, Johnston’s grandfather started afresh and turned unproductive land into a fertile farm; he had seven children, including one who became Henry’s great-grandmother. When Johnston died at fifty-one, his eldest son took over, ran the farm and then became a Presbyterian minister. He had a church in County Antrim and then for a long time served in Dublin. His son John, who was born south of Dublin, was only twelve when his father’s church, the Abbey, was burned down during the 1916 Easter Rising.

John Johnston graduated from Trinity College Dublin with first-class honours in Classics and from Cambridge University with a first in Theology and then, like his father before him, became a minister in County Antrim. In October 1942 he joined the 1st Battalion of the Royal Ulster Rifles, in the 6th Airborne Division, and served as one of the small number of ‘parachute padres’ until invalided out in 1945 after a parachute jump that went wrong. Of his three daughters, one became a distinguished historian and the other two senior civil servants, one of whom later became, like her father and grandfather, a Presbyterian minister.

The story of the Johnstons is an illustration of how, until very recently, almost the only acceptable way for any rural Presbyterian to follow an intellectual route was through the ministry. And equally graphically, his poem shows how even one of the loftier intellects among Presbyterian ministers kept true to his roots. Being elected by the members of their congregation, and running their kirk hand-in-hand with their elders, keep ministers humble and in touch with reality.

In his book on Presbyterians, the Reverend John Dunlop described the Bible as ‘the book of a pilgrim people’, which goes a long way towards explaining why they identify so much with the Israelites of the Old Testament, an aspect of their collective psyche represented throughout the rituals of the Orange and Black institutions. There was not a man walking in an Orange collarette down that hill from Glenageeragh, thinking about Drumcree, in whom Johnston’s poem would not have struck a deep chord.

7. Rossnowlagh, 5 July 1997

The annual Orange parade in Rossnowlagh, County Donegal, in the Republic of Ireland, challenges two beliefs: the first that Orange marches are inherently territorial and triumphalist; the other that a United Ireland would stamp out the Protestant identity.

The truth is more complicated. Northern Irish Orangemen love the Rossnowlagh parade because there is no trouble and nothing to prove: citizens of the Republic of Ireland – in so far as they are aware of the parade’s existence – are happy about it because they think it shows how tolerant they are. Yet the Orangemen of the Republic of Ireland are very aware that since the foundation of the Irish Free State, for a variety of reasons – including persecution by the IRA at a local level – Orangemen are down to just one parade a year at the seaside and away from any towns. And all Protestants, North and South, are aware that since partition, while the Catholic population of Northern Ireland has increased steadily, the Protestant population in the Republic has decreased from 10 to 3 per cent. Many believe that they were persecuted; some that they were ethnically cleansed.

Still, Rossnowlagh is every romantic Orangeman’s idea of a happy family day out. You have the countryside, you have the seaside and there are no protesting nationalists. The parade is policed by two or three amiable gardaí. Or, as one Orangeman put it to me: ‘You walk into Rossnowlagh and there’ll be one guard saying: “How’re ye doin’, boy?” ’

It is an outing, it is an adventure, for it involves foreign travel and it is a way of linking up again with those of your comrades, your brothers, who found themselves after partition on the wrong side of the border. Of all the parades I attended, it was the one most redolent of a school outing in an innocent world: no khaki, no guns, no nasty graffiti, not a hint of violence and therefore, of course, no television cameras. Yet, since Rossnowlagh happens the day before the Drumcree church parade, a lot of people present were fearful about what might happen the following morning. So was I, but being a stranger there, my more immediate concern was how to find the right place on time and where to park my car.

There had been consternation among some of the Northern Irish brethren when they discovered that I was going to Rossnowlagh on my own. Gordon was distressed because a business engagement meant he couldn’t drive me there. Roy was on my mobile worrying that because of a funeral he couldn’t take me, but he gave me details of how to find people there who would look after me and invited me to tea in his Orange Hall in Fermanagh on my way home. Brian was also frustrated at not being able to come; he contemplated but proved unable to bring forward the service he was taking at a different funeral.

How long to get there, I asked Graham, whose favourite parade it is but who this year was doing duty elsewhere looking after the young at a Bible study camp. ‘Well, of course it’s fine while you’re in Northern Ireland,’ he explained, ‘because the roads are very good, but once you get over the border they’re absolutely dreadful, so you’ll have to allow about two hours.’ ‘You lot are always going on about the Republic’s bad roads like a kind of defence mechanism,’ I said. ‘It’s not confined to that,’ he said. ‘Every time I spend a few days in the Republic of Ireland I know more than ever I don’t want to be part of a United Ireland.’ He paused. ‘But then maybe when you’re abroad, you always see the worst of it the longer you’re there.’ ‘Why doesn’t that apply to home?’ I asked, and he replied, Oh, that’s different. That’s like saying that your house needs a bit of renovation.’

I left my Orange friends in Portadown, noting as I looked back that there was an Ulster flag flying from a flagpole above my bedroom window. As I drove along the excellent roads fretting about Drumcree I got depressed once again about how deceptively tranquil is the countryside and how awful the sufferings of many of its inhabitants. You come out of Armagh into the Clogher Valley and thence to Fermanagh of the lakes and everywhere is lovely and well-tended and apparently peaceful; the fields are neat and the cattle sleek and the adolescent lambs are gambolling, yet road signs throw up reminders of atrocity after atrocity and latterly, reflecting my new preoccupations, of lower-level inter-communal cruelties and sectarian strife and the burning of Orange halls and the vandalizing of Catholic churches and the boycotting of decent shopkeepers from both tribes.

Then I knew I was in Donegal, for the roads had, in truth, suddenly become very bad. Seeing from a sign that my destination was, however, only 8 kilometres away, I thought Graham had been making rather a fuss, but then I got caught behind a bus with a shamrock on the back which crawled all the way to Rossnowlagh; it turned out to be a shuttle-bus for transporting fragile Orangepeople around the place.

Rossnowlagh farmers are happy annually to make a few bob out of this incursion from the North so there was no shortage of paying car parks. It was a sunny day, I wandered back to the assembly point and watched out for the people I was supposed to be linking up with, but inevitably I’d forgotten half the relevant details, like the number of their lodge, and was confined to wandering about the place asking people if they knew a big man with a moustache who came from Cavan. But then another coach drew up at the assembly point and out of it emerged the friendly face of the Grand Master, Bobby Saulters.

Bobby Saulters is sunny-natured, humorous and fatalistic, which in his difficult position is just as well. He is also without self-importance. As he stood there clutching his bowler hat and beaming at people, he was ribbed about something he had said on television that had annoyed the Orange hard-line pressure group known as the Spirit of Drumcree. ‘Ach,’ said Bobby, laughing, ‘you should have heard what was on my answering machine when I got home.’

Like all Orangemen of my acquaintance, Saulters cannot see you without worrying that you might be hungry. Having established that, unlike the brethren in the coaches, I had not stopped for refreshment along the way, he said we must go to the meeting hall for tea. We wandered up and joined a queue of Orangemen and their families: there was no VIP line, no notion in anyone’s mind, let alone his, that the Grand Master deserved any special attention other than a warm welcome for having come all the way from Belfast.

By now a veteran of church and Orange and village halls and refreshment tents in fields, I marvelled with Saulters that we were given proper crockery. Here catering was not left just to the ladies: a clergyman was in charge of selling sandwiches and a layman in charge of the teapots. The whole event was very much a community effort by local Protestants. I had a sandwich and refused cake, but Saulters was so worried that I might faint from hunger on the parade that eventually he persuaded me to parcel up a cake in a napkin and put it in my bag for later. I ate it in the afternoon sitting on the grass during the service.

There seemed to be far more women than usual in the Rossnowlagh parade. I studied their clothes for a while. There was a wide variation in the dress code probably reflecting differences between rural and urban and middle-class and working-class backgrounds. One lodge had everyone dressed identically, regardless of what suited their colouring or size, in another everyone wore a suit and hat of the same colour but in different styles, another permitted skirts of any colour but all jackets were black and there was one in which they wore their best outfits, which were all different.

I ambled along with the parade in company with Gerry, an Irish journalist (I think we were the only media representatives there). We enjoyed the sunshine and the walk and the music and talking politics and people. When we reached the little seaside town, it proved to be unpretentious and unspoiled. There were the usual stalls selling fast food, books and souvenirs. Most people settled down by the sea or in the field and ate their own picnics.

The hotel was full up, crammed with feeding dignitaries or Orangepeople who had pre-booked – the usual number swollen by the presence of some members of the Imperial Grand Council – but my companion and I got into the bar because we were journalists. The manager depressed us by telling us that for the first time ever, they had no guests staying this year because of the parade. They had never had any problems at Rossnowlagh; there never had been any tension and it had always been seen as a day for both communities. But Drumcree Two had changed the climate and people were frightened.

Having looked at the more interesting stalls we settled down in the field waiting for the usual problems of whistling microphones and missing speakers to be resolved by the hosts. I recorded some of the speeches. Most memorable was the thoughtful address by Dr Warren Porter, Presbyterian clergyman and an Assistant Grand Master of the Orange. It was no accident that he chose as the text on which to preach these verses from 1 Peter 2:

Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.

Having your conversation honest amongst the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.

Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;

Or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.

For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men:

As free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servants of God.

Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king.

Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.