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Anthony McIntyre ☠ It is no great challenge to the imagination to entertain simultaneous thoughts that are wholly at odds with each other.

  • Willie McCrea - love thy neighbour
  • Donald Trump - strategic intellect
  • Gerry Adams - honesty
  • Orange Order - equality

It would be quite the irony, and a fitting one, were the Orange Order to see its life pronounced extinct on the hill of Drumcree, the coroner's verdict: death by suicide. The hilltop - from which it roared supremacist hatred while prioritising its right to march over the right to life of 21 people slain by those determined that the Orange would stomp its way through Garvaghy Road and trample over the residents who lived there - its final resting place, buried beneath a headstone engraved with a single sentence: here lies hate.

Not all members of the Orange Order are unalloyed bigots. Along with another former republican prisoner I once spoke in an Orange hall. The people there were most gracious and courteous. Their marches annoy no one nor are they intended to. It is impossible to see the late Brian Kennaway as anything other than a person who steadfastly refused to bear his Catholic neighbours as much as a slither of contempt. He certainly viewed those who wanted to push the hate marches down Garvaghy Road with unremitting disdain. Brian was not one of those Christians for whom there is no hatred like Christian love. The Irish Times said of him "he was loyal to the Orange tradition but highly critical of the Orange Order leadership."

Yet, people like Brian Kennaway apart, it seems undeniable that the Orange Order is institutionally bigoted and sectarian. It lacks the sway of yore but is still a hate institution, its influence a thing of the past, its hatred very much alive in the present. Its leadership has done nothing in 28 years to dissuade the Portadown District from lodging weekly applications with the Parades Commission to be allowed to perform the Hate Haka along the Garvaghy Road where it is detested by those who live there for its bigotry, coat trailing, triumphalism and supremacism. While the Orange, for understandable reasons, might value the tradition of marching, only a hate filled bigot would insist on stomping through the heart of a community that had endured so much suffering and loss of life due to Orange domination theology. The Orange Order might not have pulled the trigger, hurled the petrol bomb, placed the explosive device that ended 21 lives but the Spirit of Drumcree was present at the scene of the crime.

And it pretends not to understand why it is considered a plague. 

Many wonder what lies behind the Orange obsession with ostentatiously flaunting itself in areas where its presence is reviled. Kevin Haddick Flynn explained it best in his book on the institution. 

We are the masters here and you are Fenian scum - we will march where we wish and you are powerless to stop us … we are your superiors: we dare you to do something about it; if you don’t you confirm your own inferior status.

It didn't quite work out that way when last Sunday's planned hate march in Portadown was halted by community resistance and resilience, where the residents were not prepared to confirm their assigned inferiority, instead opting to go on the front foot against their self-styled superiors. 

Yes, the law has been disobeyed by the Garvaghy Road defenders. There is no shame in that, no reason to be apologetic or say sorry m'Lud. That is the very purpose of civil disobedience: facing down unjust laws and either taking the consequences or reaping the rewards for refusing to obey the law. The law was disobeyed in the spirit of Bobby Sands whose words helped exorcise the spirit of Drumcree with his admonition against 'systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots.' 

Not many of them on the Garvaghy Road. 

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Hate Halted

Anthony McIntyre ☠ It is no great challenge to the imagination to entertain simultaneous thoughts that are wholly at odds with each other.

  • Willie McCrea - love thy neighbour
  • Donald Trump - strategic intellect
  • Gerry Adams - honesty
  • Orange Order - equality

It would be quite the irony, and a fitting one, were the Orange Order to see its life pronounced extinct on the hill of Drumcree, the coroner's verdict: death by suicide. The hilltop - from which it roared supremacist hatred while prioritising its right to march over the right to life of 21 people slain by those determined that the Orange would stomp its way through Garvaghy Road and trample over the residents who lived there - its final resting place, buried beneath a headstone engraved with a single sentence: here lies hate.

Not all members of the Orange Order are unalloyed bigots. Along with another former republican prisoner I once spoke in an Orange hall. The people there were most gracious and courteous. Their marches annoy no one nor are they intended to. It is impossible to see the late Brian Kennaway as anything other than a person who steadfastly refused to bear his Catholic neighbours as much as a slither of contempt. He certainly viewed those who wanted to push the hate marches down Garvaghy Road with unremitting disdain. Brian was not one of those Christians for whom there is no hatred like Christian love. The Irish Times said of him "he was loyal to the Orange tradition but highly critical of the Orange Order leadership."

Yet, people like Brian Kennaway apart, it seems undeniable that the Orange Order is institutionally bigoted and sectarian. It lacks the sway of yore but is still a hate institution, its influence a thing of the past, its hatred very much alive in the present. Its leadership has done nothing in 28 years to dissuade the Portadown District from lodging weekly applications with the Parades Commission to be allowed to perform the Hate Haka along the Garvaghy Road where it is detested by those who live there for its bigotry, coat trailing, triumphalism and supremacism. While the Orange, for understandable reasons, might value the tradition of marching, only a hate filled bigot would insist on stomping through the heart of a community that had endured so much suffering and loss of life due to Orange domination theology. The Orange Order might not have pulled the trigger, hurled the petrol bomb, placed the explosive device that ended 21 lives but the Spirit of Drumcree was present at the scene of the crime.

And it pretends not to understand why it is considered a plague. 

Many wonder what lies behind the Orange obsession with ostentatiously flaunting itself in areas where its presence is reviled. Kevin Haddick Flynn explained it best in his book on the institution. 

We are the masters here and you are Fenian scum - we will march where we wish and you are powerless to stop us … we are your superiors: we dare you to do something about it; if you don’t you confirm your own inferior status.

It didn't quite work out that way when last Sunday's planned hate march in Portadown was halted by community resistance and resilience, where the residents were not prepared to confirm their assigned inferiority, instead opting to go on the front foot against their self-styled superiors. 

Yes, the law has been disobeyed by the Garvaghy Road defenders. There is no shame in that, no reason to be apologetic or say sorry m'Lud. That is the very purpose of civil disobedience: facing down unjust laws and either taking the consequences or reaping the rewards for refusing to obey the law. The law was disobeyed in the spirit of Bobby Sands whose words helped exorcise the spirit of Drumcree with his admonition against 'systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots.' 

Not many of them on the Garvaghy Road. 

⏩Follow on Bluesky.


Anthony McIntyre Drumcree/Garvaghy Road Orange Marches

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