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The Orange Order is being subjected to the most intensive
campaign of vilification and demonisation since the start
of the Troubles.
Once again the Orange Order has found itself between a rock
and a hard place, due to the ridiculous decision of the Parades
Commission to ban Shankill Road District L.O.L. No. 9 from
walking the Springfield Road as part of its route during the
Whiterock parade.
It is Garvaghy Road all over again, and viewing the BBC television
on September 12, dealing with Portadown District L.O.L. No.
1 and another unfair ban, one can see the clear pattern that
has been emerging.
There is undoubtedly a campaign being mounted to demonise
the Orange Order, and point the finger at this Christian organisation,
blaming it for violence over which the Order has no control.
The violence which took place on the day of the Whiterock
parade was loyalist paramilitary organised, and as at Drumcree,
the Orange Order was put in the position where it was blamed
for instigating the trouble.
The Orange Order has never faced a more determined attempt
by its enemies to destroy it. The nefarious attempt has many
features, and one of the most important of these is to alienate
many Protestants by presenting the Orange Order as being responsible
for large scale violence.
The truth is entirely different. The paramilitary organisations
follow their own agenda, and they used the natural outrage
and anger of the Protestant and loyalist people to launch
totally unacceptable physical attacks on police at the Whiterock
confrontation.
The violence was deplorable and cannot be condoned by any
law-abiding people.
Such violence does the Protestant and Unionist cause no service,
and the biggest loser in such a situation tends to be the
Orange Order, because they find themselves in the middle of
a confrontation between paramilitaries and the security forces.
This is a terrible position to be in, as Portadown Orangemen
can testify, having experienced this in the years from 1986
until 2002 - in the past three years Drumcree has been entirely
peaceful.
In fact, the Order at the Whiterock parade was merely trying
to leave the Shankill area on to the Springmartin Road at
the last street available for this purpose.
For the Orangemen to be shunted up a back route into a disused
industrial estate was humiliating, unfair, and quite unnecessary.
It is worth noting that even though this was the biggest insult
to the Order yet, in this whole sorry saga, republicans on
the Springfield still managed to taunt the Orangemen by displaying
tricolours from the top of houses, and shout abuse.
All this is a continuation of the policy which began nearly
20 years ago when Orange parades were first targeted by Sinn
Fein-IRA.
The IRA did this as part of their policy of destabilising
Northern Ireland, and at the same time furthering their own
agenda, by vilifying the Orange Order and presenting it as
the aggressor, whereas in fact it was Sinn Fein-IRA who was
the instigator.
Portadown was selected by the IRA as the high profile target
for the first parade agitation. That was in 1986, when the
Obins Street part of the route taken by the Portadown Orangemen
to get to Drumcree Parish Church, was the main target.
The Orangemen were re-routed from Obins Street, after violence
for which the Order was not responsible, but was due to Protestant
outrage over what they clearly perceived to be an attack on
their culture.
The loss of the Obins Street route was followed by agitation
over the Garvaghy Road route for the return parade. Once again
the Government caved in to republican violence, clearly taking
the view it was easier to face down law-abiding, churchgoing
Orangemen, than to deal with vicious republican violence.
In other parts of Northern Ireland the same pattern was being
followed, one of the most notable examples being the village
of Dunloy.
Dunloy, once a mainly Protestant village, had been gradually
ethnically cleansed, and once a Roman Catholic majority had
materialised, the republicans agitated for Orange parades
to the church and even the Orange Hall, to be prevented.
A well-known Sinn Fein figure was reported in a speech at
Athy as saying it took three years to plan Drumcree, and the
success of Sinn Fein-IRA which, as a cover for its operation,
used a 'residents group' encouraged it to extend its programme.
The most recent examples have been in Londonderry and Belfast,
and the republicans have even tried to have an Orange parade
re-routed away from the overwhelmingly Protestant town of
Ballymena.
Republican militancy in such matters knows no bounds, but
the most alarming aspect of all this has been the willingness
of the Parades Commission and the authorities to accommodate
the enemies of Ulster in this matter.
In justifying their biased decisions, the Parades Commission,
and sections of the media, notably the BBC, have pulled out
all the stops to portray the Orange Order as the aggressors,
the source of violence and the 'problem.'
No matter that the IRA murdered 1,800 people in Northern
Ireland, wounded and maimed many other thousands, and caused
damage to property on a vast scale. For those whose objective
is to destroy Orangeism, and to remove the most significant
remaining barrier to a united Ireland, such matters do not
enter the equation.
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