The Orange Order has elected another good ole boy as its grand master, a safe pair of hands to oversee its headlong and quarrelsome decline. "There may be a new grand master, but that doesn't mean there is a new policy," Edward Stevenson told the cameras as he stepped out of Ballykelly Orange hall in his sash after being elected. In the slow, ponderous tones of an Ardstraw farmer, he announced that he would not be talking to Sinn Féin or the Parades Commission or attending any GAA matches.
No doubt Stevenson remembered the slightly racy note struck by Robert Saulters, his predecessor, in his first interviews. Saulters is at once chatty and a little shy, an engaging man with a twinkle in his eye who is at his best in an Orange hall with a cup of tea in one hand and a sandwich in the other.
In 1998, two years after he took the helm, Saulters said that he intended to talk to the Garvaghy Road residents who were blocking the annual Drumcree Orange march. He even said he would meet Brendan McKenna, the former republican prisoner who headed the group, despite the ongoing Grand Lodge embargo on talking to "Sinn Féin/IRA".
This went down well with a community tired of the annual Drumcree stand-off. The News Letter, the province's unionist daily, carried an editorial congratulating Saulters for the courage to recognise political reality. But it was a false dawn. Within days, Saulters had bottled it and was saying that his remarks had been taken out of context, that there may have been some confusion about them, and so on.
So the Orange Order lost the initiative, but avoided an internal row. That is how it always is at the Order's top table. Its top figures lag behind public opinion, they fail to provide leadership or do what is necessary, and prefer to lose a battle rather than do a deal.
Nowadays, Portadown Orangemen do talk to the Parades Commission. They also offer to talk to the Garvaghy residents, but are snubbed by McKenna who knows that they are beaten and doesn't see much to talk about. The Parades Commission, a governmentappointed body, will meet this week to decide whether a Drumcree march can go ahead later this month. The Rev Brian Kennaway, a former member of Grand Lodge, now sits on it, but nobody expects a change in its verdict that the march be banned.
If Saulters had held his nerve, things might have been different. Instead he spent much of last year in an Orange wonderland politicking with the DUP, and through them Sinn Féin, to have the commission replaced. Like so much the Orange Order does, it was a waste of time. Once new legislation was agreed, the Grand Lodge refused to accept it, and it was ditched. Stevenson says he will try again this year. Perhaps he will surprise us all, but if I was on the Parades Commission I would consider my position fairly safe.
Those who know Stevenson say he is "a decent big man", but one fellow Orangeman adds that he can come across as "dull and uncommunicative". He added that these were good faults, as faults go, and that Stevenson could be relied on to emphasise the religious and charitable aspects of the Order.
While he avoided Saulters' mistake of trying anything new or creative, Stevenson did back one of his predecessor's daftest ideas: the formation of one big unionist party, which was promoted at a meeting convened by the Order.
In 2009, internal figures showed that the Orange Order had 34,538 members.
This was down from 93,447 in 1968, but it remains a significant organisation because, Orange sources claim, at least 80% of them vote at a time when voter participation is falling overall.
Neither of the main unionist parties was prepared to criticise the Order, so they both turned up at the "unity" meeting in December 2009 – but it went nowhere.
Tom Elliott, the Ulster Unionist leader and a former Orange grand master of Tyrone, where Stevenson lives, has repeatedly warned the Order not to get mixed up in politics. It would be a turn-off for many Protestants as well as most Catholics.
But once upon a time, when the old Stormont was governed by a single unionist party without nationalist interference, the Orange Order more or less ran the place and it was next to impossible to become a unionist MP without joining it. Nostalgia for those days means that it will always play well internally to talk about uniting unionism, with the Order as an honest broker.
Refusing to talk to Sinn Féin is another policy that makes sense within the Orange bubble, but looks silly to everyone else now that Sinn Féin is the largest nationalist party and shares power at Stormont. The Orange Order seeks to influence legislation and to get government grants – the latest application is for a centre to promote its culture – but refuses to meet politicians who have to approve it.
Stevenson says the ban on Sinn Féin is because more than 300 Orangemen were killed during the Troubles, and republicans have never apologised to the Order for the deaths. No doubt the vast majority of the Orange dead were killed by the IRA, but some were not.
The British army, for instance, shot dead Brian Robinson, an Orangeman and UVF member, moments after he'd killed an innocent Catholic in Ardoyne in 1989. His coffin was accompanied by members of his lodge, Old Boyne Island Heroes, wearing their collarettes. Until the Parades Commission banned it, a drum with Robinson's image accompanied their march past Ardoyne shops. In Co Londonderry, the Order has published a list of 26 members killed there. Most were killed by republicans. However, one, John Burns, was murdered by the UDA, along with six Catholics, in 1993 in the Rising Sun Bar, Greysteel. Another of the dead Derry Orangemen was Cecil McKnight, a UDA commander shot dead in his home by the IRA in 1991.
No doubt if the names of the full 300 who died are revealed, the picture to emerge won't be entirely black and white. Overall, 1,287 Protestants were killed in the Troubles, most by republicans, but 231 were killed by loyalists and 43 by the security forces. Yet Stevenson makes no mention of wanting apologies from the UDA or, for that matter, from the security forces.
The ban on talking to the GAA is said to be because some clubs are named after dead republicans, but ignores the fact that the PSNI now competes in GAA leagues and some Protestant schools are also taking an interest. Besides, the GAA is the largest sporting body in the province, just as Sinn Féin is the second-largest party. Both are thriving and gaining support among the young. In contrast, the Orange Order has an aging and shrinking support base.
The Order probably still has a generation to go before it becomes a historical oddity. Stevenson could use the time to carve out a new role for it as a cultural and religious body, carrying forward a rich musical and cultural heritage.
Stevenson does need to get out more.
As a Presbyterian elder, he will know the biblical injunction to look to your own prejudices before considering the faults of others, to cast out the beam in your own eye. That is a formula for enlarging your circle of friends – and so is not being too choosy about who you talk to.
