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Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
  Orange Standard

Appalling Behaviour By So-Called Loyalists

Article 2 ~ March 2003

The matter of most concern for all of us was the feud between factions of the loyalist paramilitaries. Friendships, and collaborations in their several activities and involvements, were exchanged for animosities, disagreements and disengagements, and the result was murders, attacks on homes and families, and communities living in fear and trembling, for no one is safe when gunmen and bombers are at large. The causes of the feud have been analysed and described by journalists and politicians, with the impression given that politics and religion play no part in what has much to do with the illegal engagements of paramilitaries who control some urban areas in which their presence is felt acutely and hurtfully. There have been calls on the police to do more to prevent the easy movement of these men; and from the police to the people to let them have the information they need to capture and have convicted the guilty men and women. What to do in response to the clamant need to restore law and order to these communities was the question to be answered. What was needed was clear enough. how to meet the need was the problem. The situation was worsened by the shortage of police manpower to satisfy the demands on them. The concentration of police because of the feud tied up men and women to prevent them serving the wider community adequately. Police presence is essential to the people who have to live in an environment not of their making but in which they are the, victims, suffering mental and physical distress, and in despair. The feud had a surprising conclusion when the UDA - targeted 'C' Company members defected to the other factions and their leaders fled to Scotland. That happened on the day of the murdered "brigadier's" funeral February, 6, with its estimated 7,000 mourners. The media described what had happened as the end of the feud. It is to be hoped that, that is the case but it would be foolhardy to act on the assumption that the scene has changed, as though miraculously, and the problems and antagonisms have been permanently resolved. We deeply deplore the fearful circumstances in which so many have to live as victims of a terrorism horrific and the more so because the beligerants have loyalsim as their common philosophy. But then philosophy is not the motivation of those who divide on mundane matters like money and property and the means of getting possession of them. There are sociological problems demanding resolution in the areas where trouble and strife persists and these must be solved by those empowered to maintain the structures of society, to administer its affairs justly, fairly, sensitively and honourably, to remove from it the causes of disorder and to protect the people from their oppressors. The loyalism of the streets which affects people painfully, has nothing in common with Unionism or Orangeism. Their commitments are to peaceful co-existence, people with people, and in a society where the rule of law pertains and there is respect person for person as citizens of equal worth, equal rights and privileges and due responsibilities. Whatever happens here politically in the near future there must be an end to loyalist feuding and if that means removing from the scene to other addresses, leaders of groups let that be done if and where it is not done already.

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