Bigoted Brethren

By AM Sunday, October 9, 2011

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Some elements of unionism seem not to have even the limited brains Dawson Bailey was born with. Had grey matter been present even in small quantities post-Holy Cross, the debacle of seriously silly own goals might have taken a backseat. It was not to be. If there is any group more than capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory it is the Orange Order.

Attending a funeral would appear to be a civilised course of action. Not long back Martin McGuinness turned up for the funeral of Iris Robinson’s father and was made welcome by Free Presbyterian officials on the day. Doubtless, in some church hall in the bowels of Sandy Row, a few enraged bigots cursed the event and shook their fists at their devil hijacked television screens amidst undertakings that they would gouge their own eyes out if they took another peek at proceedings.

Decency it seems, like Maryfield and much else that has happened since 1985 is a satanic design purpose built to encroach on the lives of good law-abiding, god-fearing, devil-hating Protestants who daily go about the work of the lord, hating with a perfect hate. Now as always within the Orange Order there lurks a strain of hatred and irrationality immune to everything society has learned since the Enlightenment. For all the brightness that the colour orange conjures up there is never much light emitting from the Orange Order which continues to be home to some of the more overt strains of backwardness and bigotry.

Tom Elliot and Danny Kennedy, leader and deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party respectively are, in what Trevor Ringland rightly calls a PR disaster’, to be disciplined for attending the funeral of the young British police officer Ronan Kerr who was unpardonably cut apart by armed republicans on an Omagh street earlier in the year. That Elliot through his own ‘scum’ accusing political discourse, may have sharpened the teeth of the orange mouth that is coming back to bite him is a discussion for another day.  His current view that ‘I do not believe it was any sin or crime to go to the funeral of a murdered police officer’ is not one shared in the holy dens of Sandy Row Orangeism.

Bigotry runs so deep that the Sandy Row Lodge responsible for initiating the complaint against both unionist politicians - on the grounds that they ‘sold their principles for political expediency’ - took no consideration of the fact that Ronan Kerr died in the full service of the British state. He was a British police officer in a British police force defending the constitutional status of Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom. This was insufficient in the eyes of the loyal Sandy Row brethren. To them he was a Catholic, a mere second class citizen whose funeral should have been shunned. This was a virulent strain identified by Kate Carroll whose PSNI husband was shot dead in Lurgan 2 years ago: ‘I'm saddened to see that people still have this mentality whereby Catholics seem to be the second-class citizens.’

If the Orange Order was to punish people for attending a Jewish funeral it would be hit with every charge in the anti-Semitic handbook. Yet here there are some still prepared to make excuses for it, explain its actions as those of fools playing silly buggers, or that it has ‘nothing to do with bigotry, all to do with reformed theology.’

Brian Kennaway, once a senior figure in the Order, was having little truck with such perspectives, referring to the disciplinary action as ‘an embarrassment.’

Multitudes of Orangemen through Ireland either attend marriage ceremonies or funerals. They see it as paying their respects and as their duty. The vast majority of people, including the leadership, are embarrassed by this.

But the vast majority of people including Orange leaders are not members of Sandy Row’s St Simon's Church Total Abstinence LOL 821. And as Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly implies the leadership cannot evade responsibility. He points out that the real issue is the rulebook governing behaviour of the Orange Order. ‘By having these anti-Catholic rules, the Orange Order is showing that it is clearly a sectarian organisation.’ Such sentiment cannot be dismissed as a cheap shot from the usual suspects. Tom Elliot baldly states ‘attempts by the Orange Order to rebrand itself as a cultural organisation are completely discredited while they retain sectarian rules.’

In the debate about the past there is always the question of how far we want to go back. In this case, the 17th century.