Martina Devlin: Drumming up enthusiasm for the Glorious Twelfth
Thursday July 08 2010
For the first time I intend to admire the chocolate box uniforms, the juggling skills of the drum majors, and the ritual display of a martial tradition
THIS year I've decided to turn out to watch the blood-and-thunder bands march on the Twelfth. It may not sound like much. But coming from my northern tradition, it's not something you'd usually care to admit in public.
The Lambeg drum was a menacing sound among the community where I grew up -- not a celebratory one. The thud of wood on goatskin sent a message to Catholics from their Protestant counterparts that we should know our place. It beat the tattoo of a two-tier society.
In my family, we stayed indoors when the Orange parades passed, or made a point of being south of the Border. But this year I'll be spending the Twelfth in Omagh, and for the first time I intend to stand on the pavement and admire the chocolate box uniforms, the juggling skills of the drum majors, and the ritual display of a martial tradition.
I'm going for the spectacle in the same way I might watch a St Patrick's Day parade -- persuaded to it by a new book about these bands, 'Blood and Thunder' by Darach MacDonald.
The Monaghan-born author and journalist spent 2009 with the Castlederg Young Loyalists Flute Band, watching them rehearse and parade; noting their anxieties about uniforms and how to get time off work to travel to marches; sensitive to their dismissal as tribal bigots.
The allusion to blood and thunder, by the way, refers to the decibel levels and to the zeal of drummers playing until their wrists bleed and their drumsticks are stumps.
MacDonald concludes that marching bands are a vibrant manifestation of 21st Century loyalist culture. The Orange Order's membership is dwindling in an increasingly secular society (it has fewer than 36,000 members in Ireland compared with more than 93,000 in 1968), but these bands offer an outlet to loyalist youths to celebrate their heritage.
If full reconciliation within the North's divided society is to happen, MacDonald suggests that respect for loyalist traditions must be part of it. "Choosing to be entertained. . . rather than offended is the secret to a shared future," he says.
So I've decided to see if I can overcome a lifetime's conditioning, and give this year's bands a chance to entertain me, rather than grate as a strutting, braying reminder of centuries of Protestant supremacy.
Loyalism is right in its contention that we -- by which I mean people who identify themselves as Irish, north and south -- dismiss the Ulster-Scots way of life as invalid, insisting on Gaelic customs as the only legitimate expression of Irishness. And that attitude must change in the interests of this shared future.
Critics dismiss the marching bands as the musical wing of loyalist hardliners. There is no doubt some bands were on the fringes of the paramilitary movement -- paramilitary displays happened during parades, and some band members also belonged to the Ulster Defence Regiment, a reserve army force suspected of loyalist paramilitary collusion.
But those bands that have survived appear to have evolved beyond their kick-the-Pope subtexts. Some have made strides to reinvent themselves, post-Good Friday Agreement, aware of the requirement to interface with the Parades Commission.
Increasingly, protests about parades hinge on the economic impact on town-centre businesses during a march and on traffic restrictions, rather on the political context.
There are more than 500 loyalist bands closely associated with working class loyalist communities, giving vocal expression to the proud-to-be-Prod ethos from a group which feels it made the ultimate sacrifice to proclaim its Britishness at the Somme -- and was sold down the river for its pains.
The bands operate as social networks for their overwhelmingly young, single and almost exclusively male membership. "A band is more than parades and music . . . it's a social club and it's all your friends," one of the Castlederg fluters tells the author. Incidentally, James Galway once played flute in a marching band.
MacDonald was struck by how loyalist youth is innately drawn to the militarism bands represent, marching in formation in uniform. It's hardwired into their DNA, he concludes.
Since the Ulster Plantation 400 years ago, Protestants have been recruited into bands of part-time militia for defence of their community in a hostile environment. These volunteer armies revelled in a martial tradition that was largely alien to their Catholic neighbours. The current crop of Protestants is the first generation not to enlist as part-time soldiers, but the marching bands allow them to express their military culture.
MacDonald makes an interesting analogy between these bands, with their disciplined tribal display, and GAA clubs. Each side passes on traditional skills, whether in sport or music and marching, develops pride in identity and earns its stripes in competition.
And while nationalists complain about the symbols used by bands, with their emphasis on King Billy, the Boyne defeat and World War One battles, GAA clubs are often dedicated to icons of the republican struggle -- equally offensive to loyalists. In addition, the blood sacrifice is a key component in both ideologies.
The marching season accentuates tribal differences between the people living as neighbours on this island. But to be Ulster-Scots is also to be Irish -- it's just another embodiment. As MacDonald observed, after a year of band practice and parades, many of the tunes are identical on the Green and Orange side. Only the names are different.
'Blood and Thunder: Inside An Ulster Protestant Band' by Darach MacDonald is published by Mercier.
- Martina Devlin
Irish Independent
