March of the Orangemen

On February 25th the Orange Order plan to march in Dublin to protest at the Dáil, highlighting the plight of the victims of terrorism in Northern Ireland in the era of the Good Friday Peace agreement which has seen many of the perpetrators of the worst atrocities in the Irish ’Troubles’ set free from prison. If all goes to plan they will parade down O’Connell Street in an event that many in the Irish capital will see as extremely provocative.

For those out there who don’t know, the Orange Order is a highly sectarian society who celebrate the Protestant William of Orange’ famous victory over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne over 300 years ago and want to maintain the Union between Britain and Northern Ireland. Their marches are the cause of much tension between the Loyalist and Nationalist communities of the province every summer. Northern Catholics see them as triumphalist and deliberately provocative, Orangemen say they are merely worshiping and asserting their right to hold parades; even if they are routed directly through Catholic communities Their presence in the South will not be popular.

In the North, Orange Marches are met with counter-protests and often riots. We can only hope the same won’t happen South of the border as this would be playing into the Orangemen’s hands. No doubt they would love trouble to prove the hostility of the Irish Republic to their culture. Trouble at the march would confirm everything that Unionists have always said about the intolerance of the South. The best thing that could happen would be for the parade to be ignored. Indeed that would be the best thing for Nationalist communities in the North for them to do the same even in the face of deliberately confrontational marches in their areas.

The Orange Order is a relic of the troubled history of Ireland but today these men in their black suits, bowler hats and orange sashes, swords in hand, are more to be pitied or ridiculed than anything else. More often than not they are drunken yobs in tracksuits, rangers football shirts and trainers - hardly an expression of pride in Loyalist or Protestant culture.

Unionism in general appears to feel under siege at the moment. Unwilling to share power in the North with Sinn Féin (which isn’t that hard to understand), threatened by the demographic time bomb that is the higher Nationalist birth rate in Northern Ireland and flanked to the South by a more prosperous, and tolerant Irish Republic, their way of life is under threat like never before. It is not impossible to imagine a United Ireland within the coming decades and with that Unionism would eventually lose its popularity and relevance. Orange marches may be petty and offensive to the Nationalist community but they are increasingly looking like the last gasps of a the slowly dying movement that is Unionism. Nationalists should realise this and let it die in peace.

As for the coming march in Dublin I welcome it as a sign of the more tolerant times that have belatedly reached this country and hope it passes off with the low levels of controversy that such an irrelevant movement deserves.