Orange Dilemma is Simple

By AM Monday, August 12, 2013

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In his Ireland Eye column in Tribune magazine, former Blanket columnist Dr John Coulter analyses how the Orange Order has become piggy in the middle in a wider struggle as to which brand of republicanism speaks for nationalists in Ardoyne. A shorter version of this column was published on Friday 26 July 2001.


To the outside world, the current riots in Northern Ireland are about the exclusively Protestant Orange Order wanting to march in overwhelmingly Catholic streets. The underlying reality tell totally different and separate pictures.


Within nationalism, the battle is for the hearts and minds of the republican cause between mainstream thinking as represented by Provisional Sinn Fein, and the dissident factions. Electorally, Sinn Fein is by far the dominant force. At grassrootslevel, a new picture is emerging and this is clearly witnessed in north Belfast, the trigger for the recent July riots.

The Parades Commission in Northern Ireland, which rules on contentious parades, banned a march by the Orange Order and its accompanying marching bands from walking along a nationalist area known locally as the Ardoyne Shops.

Catholic residents have formed themselves into rival political camps, each claiming to speak for nationalists in the locality. On one hand is the pro-Sinn Fein Crumlin Ardoyne Residents Association (CARA); on the other is the non-Sinn Fein Greater Ardoyne Residents Collective (GARC).

To resolve the marching dispute, the Orange Order has to talk to nationalist residents. Its dilemma is simple – which faction does it speak to? In Derry, the 2013 City of Culture, the high point of the marching season – known as the Twelfth (12 July) – talks between the Order and nationalist residents resulted in a trouble-free parade.

In spite of the ‘start/stop’ terror campaign by dissident republican death gangs, these groups have been unable to mount a credible political alternative to Sinn Fein in the same way Sinn Fein was able to build itself on the terror campaign of the Provisionals.

But the rivalry between CARA and GARC is clear proof that a niche is slowly emerging on the republican political spectrum for a non-violent, democratic nationalist party which is a realistic alternative to Sinn Fein.

Surely this mantel is held by the moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, the sister party of the British Labour movement? But the SDLP is fighting for its very existence as Sinn Fein has climbed to power within nationalism by stealing the political clothes, policies, votes – and ultimately seats – once held by the SDLP.

The emergence of an independent republican party won’t threaten Sinn Fein’s European seat in next year’s poll, but it could prove damaging in any following Super Council or Assembly elections.

Slowly but surely the Northern Ireland political scene is developing into a two-party power-sharing Stormont government run by Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists. Eventually, Stormont will return to a situation as existed in the mid-1960s – one main nationalist party and one main Unionist party, with a few representatives from some of the smaller parties.

But the DUP is not without its troubles and this represents the other side of the loyalist riots. Many working class Protestants feel the DUP has abandoned its loyalist roots for the lure of political power at Stormont.

In 1985, the DUP ran its local council election campaign on a ‘Smash Sinn Fein’ platform, yet a generation later the DUP is running a power-sharing Executive with Sinn Fein. That has been a bitter political pill for many grassroots Unionists to swallow.

This year is a rough time for the DUP, but it can take some comfort in the fact that the non-DUP camp within Unionism is so heavily fragmented it cannot provide a serious political alternative to the Peter Robinson-led party.

Caught in the middle of this Unionist infighting is the Orange Order. In spite of inter-republican rivalries and Unionist fragmentation, the Order will be the fall guy in the current marching dispute.

The real danger is that it could eventually find itself being banned altogether, with its existence limited to religious services in church and no parades. Media footage of men in Orange regalia attacking police lines does not auger well with the church-going Protestant middle class.

It was similar violence in 1997 and 1998 surrounding the now annual Drumcree stand-off in Portadown which saw the Unionist middle class abandon the Order in thousands, forcing Orangeism is attempt to rebrand itself as a cultural family movement rather than a Protestant fundamentalist organisation.

The Order was once the cement which held the various pro-Union factions together. At one time, no Unionist politician could ever hope to be Northern Ireland Prime Minister unless he was an Orangeman.

The Order has tried to defend its policies by insisting that republicans are indulging in a co-called cultural war against Britishness in Northern Ireland. But these claims appear to have fallen on deaf ears as the Unionist middle class continues to look to other political movements to find a way out of the parades impasse.

Pluralist Unionists launched a new party known as NI21 as the battle for the pro-Union centre ground with Alliance and the Northern Ireland Tories hots up.

But a new dark horse is emerging in the North as it has done in Britain – Ukip. MEP Nigel Farage’s recent foray to Northern Ireland was a public relations coup. His July Belfast rally brought together a cross section of pro-Union opinion which drove existing Unionist parties green with envy. Meanwhile, the riots continue.