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Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland
  Orange Standard

Grassroots Demand Unity

Article 1 ~ April 2003

If a poll was to be carried out among the Protestant population in Northern Ireland and people were to be asked what issue concerns them most and what they would most like to see, it is a safe guess that the answer would be one word - Unity.

Battered by 30 years of republican violence, demonised by the 'liberal' media, forsaken by mainland Britain which has displayed little loyalty or understanding of the courageous loyal people of Ulster who have been in the front line of IRA murder and terrorism, the Unionist people have been able to withstand all this without breaking.

But there is almost total disillusionment and despair on the part of the vast majority of Ulster Protestants over the failure of the Unionist political parties to get their act together and make common cause in the face of the perils and dangers which confront this Province.

In the days of the Home Rule crisis of 1912-14 the Unionist leader and icon Edward Carson warned the loyal people of this Province that the only thing which could defeat them and eventually lead to Ulster being incorporated into a Roman Catholic-dominated State detached from the United Kingdom would be disunity on the part of the majority population.

"United we stand, divided we fall" has been one of Ulster's key slogans for generations, once as well known as "Derry, Aughrim, Enniskillen and the Boyne". It was something that Ulster loyalists learned from they were young enough to understand.

Carson's warning was no mere slogan. He fully understood the situation which faced the Ulster population, especially the one-and-a-half million of the new state of Northern Ireland.

In those days there was a majority of two-to-one for the Protestants in this country. Today, it is more like 57-43 per cent, but even in the days when Protestants were two-thirds of the population Carson was conscious that serious disunity on the part of Protestants and Unionists would put Northern Ireland in great peril.

In short, he was getting across the message that Northern Ireland did not need more than one Unionist party. Within that party there could be democratic debate and room for dissention. Unionism was a broad church, and indeed at one time there was a strong Unionist-Labour movement within the Ulster Unionist Party.

Today, the once mighty monolith of Unionism has fractured and there are some six Unionist parties, of which the Ulster Unionist and Democratic Unionist parties are by far the largest. Unionists are engaged in a bitter and debilitating battle for the hearts and minds of their people, and instead of creating a positive feeling on the part of rank-and-file unionists, it is having the opposite effect.

People are walking away from politics in droves, they are thoroughly fed up and digusted at the sight of unionist politicians tearing one another to shreds in front of television cameras and on the radio.

The people are not fools. They know that their cherished British identity and citizenship is under the greatest threat in the past 80 years since this little country was formed.

Every day they see their Britishness being diluted. They have watched the finest police force in the world being destroyed and dismantled. They have watched the symbols of British rule being removed from buildings, and the proud 'Royal' prefix being removed from organisations.

They have listened to radio programmes and watched television programmes which denigrate and hold up to contempt the great Ulster institutions and organisations, including the Orange Institution. They have also had to watch men and women "inextricably linked" to terrorist organisations become part of the ruling Assembly.

They have also had to watch the release of hundreds of prisioners, many of them convicted murderers, who had completed only a fraction of their sentence, and contemplate an amnesty for other killers on the run.

All this should have been sufficient to convince Unionists that their best way of preserving what is left of British identity in Northern Ireland is to unite and stand firm behind one common objective. But what do they find?

More bitter words than ever between Unionists of different parties and a further tearing asunder of the overall Unionist position.

It is not too late for Unionists to get their act together and to defeat this evil conspiracy which seeks to destroy their position and this Province and put it under the heel of Dublin.

But there is not a moment to be lost if this is to be achieved, and somehow Unionists must put their own selfish interests and that of their own political brand and party to the background and seek common cause against the enemies of Ulster.

The Orange Order is the one organisation which binds Protestants and Unionists together in the common brotherhood, and, as throughout its history, it will be prepared to play its part in achieving the cherished goal of unity.

But it requires everyone who loves this Province and its British identity to stand up and be counted and play their part in persuading Unionists that they must end this awful civil war within Unionism and concentrate on the common goal of keeping Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom and defeating republicanism.

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