The past burns bright
Saturday July 14 2007
The Orange Order: A contemporary Northern Ireland History
Eric P Kaufmann
Oxford University Press Stg£30.00 (€44.00)
The Orange Order
Mervyn Jess
O'Brien Press €11.95
Forty years ago, any Unionist aspiring to ministerial office, or to a judgeship, would have felt compelled to join the Orange Order. The Order called Prime Ministers regularly to account on health, education and security policies. Cabinet ministers were disciplined for attending Roman Catholic weddings and funerals, and everywhere the Order was a power in the land.
Today, membership would be regarded as a disadvantage for most public appointments. Orange influence has now passed to their perennial rival, Ian Paisley; membership has plummeted from 70,000 to 14,000, and the Order finds itself at a critical crossroads.
These two books in their different ways chart the changes which have affected the Order in the intervening years and the challenges it now faces.
Kaufmann's is the more academic study, which fairly and objectively discusses the changes taking place in Orangeism, its place in Loyalist Protestant culture and its role in the politics of Northern Ireland. He has been given access to internal Grand Lodge and private lodge documents which adds authority and value to the work. He charts the exercise of Orange Order influence on successive Unionist governments: opposition to the Mater Hospital and grants to Catholic schools; the co-ordinated campaign against Sunningdale and the Anglo-Irish Agreement; the persistent advocacy of internment and a strong security policy and refusal to countenance the admission of republicans to the political sphere.
There is, too, the principled Grand Lodge opposition to violence and to Loyalist paramilitaries and the real efforts made to keep young people from involvement; the real sacrifices suffered by rural Orangemen, either through membership of local security forces, ethnic cleansing in Border areas or retaliatory killings -- over 500 deaths in all. There is the self-inflicted perennial wound of Drumcree which haemorrhaged credibility and outside support; the persistent refusal to recognise the Parades Commission or to talk to residents groups; and the assertion of rights to parade traditional routes despite demographic changes and other factors.
Kaufmann details changes in the nature and leadership of the Order from the landed gentry to an emerging working-class leadership; from political conservatism to populist activism; from the rural areas to the urban enclaves.
It produced a less predictable, less controllable more aggressive and less religiously motivated organisation as loss of political power and influence, and reaction to a more self-confident Catholic community led to greater assertiveness.
This is an important, informative and stimulating book, if at times difficult to access. That said, the author has been poorly served by his publisher.
This is quite a disgracefully sloppy production for an academic press. The text is littered with mistakes, some on the level of schoolboy howlers. Most of those who knew him would be surprised that Brian Faulkner affected a patrician pseudo-English accent, or that he was the last of the squirearchy (which appears to be a particular bete-noir of the author's). The Republic is irritatingly and anachronistically referred to as Eire. Lansdowne Road is helpfully identified as a racecourse near Dublin. Dates are wrong and people mis-identified all over the place: Bill Craig becomes Jim; Harold McCusker, Robert; the wrong McGimpsey is given office; Jim Prior did not author the report of the New Ireland Forum; Cardinal Daly is not Cahan; and Donegore Hill is not Donegal -- and that is just a sample.
Mervyn Jess, on the other hand, produces a decent job of journey-work by a competent journalist who knows how to gather information and to present it in an accessible form. It helps too that he knows a bit about editing and proof-reading, and knows the local scene intimately.
His book has the additional benefit of presenting views of the Order by those who are not Orangemen and placing its activities in a more recognisable social and political context. He deals particularly well with the ebb and flow of public feeling about Drumcree.
At one third the price, Jess is not only the best budget buy, but the better bargain by far if what you want is a rapid snapshot of the Orange Order and where it is now, and highly recommended to the general reader.
Both books see the Order at a point where it must decide between an isolation sustained by the frustration of a growing Loyalist underclass who have lost power, or a more open policy which would embrace community, religious and cultural values, would follow the Apprentice Boys in seeking accommodation with civic and residents' groups in order to exercise the desire to march with security and public harmony.
The second choice would restore the Order as a protector of heritage, protecting and sustaining a vibrant culture which would contribute from its own richness to cultural diversity in an Ulster in which all traditions are respected. In this scenario, the Twelfth marches would become Mardi Gras, a tourist attraction and a cultural celebration to be enjoyed by all, threatening to none. In recent Northern Ireland politics, stranger things have happened.
Senator Maurice Hayes is a former Ombudsman in the North
- MAURICE HAYES
