I'm no fan of Orangemen. I live a few streets away from Belfast's Lower
Ormeau Road where they've behaved disgracefully.
In July 1992, just months after loyalists shot dead five Catholics in a
local bookies office, some Orange marchers shouted paramilitary slogans and
made five-fingered gestures passing the premises.
Many Orange parades are just a family day out. But too often marching
through Catholic areas means huge rings of steel imprisoning residents in
their own homes.
Yet a parade through a beleaguered nationalist neighbourhood, like the Lower
Ormeau or Garvaghy Road, is a million miles from Orangemen and IRA victims
marching in O'Connell Street – a main commercial thoroughfare.
If they were parading to Ballymun or Ballyfermot, that would be different.
But they're going to Leinster House, an entirely appropriate location for a
political rally.
They'll be in Dublin, not as a swaggering majority, but as a minority.
There's nothing triumphalist or threatening about the event. They're not
about to retake the GPO and raise the Union Jack.
The Orange Order is sectarian to its core but the test of any democracy is
the freedom it allows its staunchest opponents. No-one has ever resisted
Orangemen marching along Belfast's main thoroughfare, Royal Avenue, every
July. What makes O'Connell Street more special that it needs protecting from
Orange feet?
Opposing this march is deeply partitionist. Until 1998, the Republic claimed
jurisdiction over the North and, despite the abandonment of Articles 2 & 3,
it's still asserted that Northerners, Catholic AND Protestant, are Irish. So
if loyalists want to march in 'their' capital city, they should be most
welcome.
The biggest inconvenience will be traffic disruption for one hour one
Saturday afternoon – many Northerners put up with this two or three times a
week in summer months. If Orangemen are good enough to march in the North,
they're good enough for the South too.
If Southern protesters came North last July and blocked Royal Avenue I'd
have more respect for them. But then staging a protest outside the GPO is a
substantially safer venture for Saturday afternoon 'republicans' than facing
tens of thousands of loyalists and police in Belfast city-centre.
Some opponents of this march aren't acting in solidarity with six-county
nationalists at all. They just want all this "Northern nonsense" to stay
firmly across the Border. Others, underneath their PC arguments, are simply
bigots – they don't want an Orangeman about the place.
Republican Sinn Féin and the 32 County Sovereignty Movement are also
championing the opposition. Their supporters are horrified the parade will
pass the hallowed ground of Pearse and Connolly.
With the Tricolour of green, white and orange (not 'gold' as some ballads
conveniently assert) flying over the GPO, it's entirely appropriate that
'the orange' pass beneath it.
The Tricolour, acknowledging the Orange tradition, was first unfurled in
1848 when the Order was even more right-wing and reactionary than it is now.
And yet republicans then were inclusive.
Is opposing a few hundred Orangemen and widows in O'Connell Street really
the most pressing concern for those who believe the republic of Pearse and
Connolly has never been achieved?
The march is allegedly insensitive to the 1974 Dublin bombing victims. Yet
Britain allowed republican demonstrations while the IRA bombed British
cities. Sinn Féin speakers – including IRA Army Council members – have
addressed countless rallies there, which was undoubtedly difficult for the
families of civilians killed by the IRA.
If the British state, repressive as it was in so many ways to Irish people,
still allowed republican rallies, the Irish state must be big enough to
tolerate a loyalist one.
Yes, this march focuses on IRA victims but many republican rallies have
concentrated solely (and very legitimately), on the victims of loyalist and
state violence.
Willie Frazer's opinions might be anathema to many nationalists but the fact
remains he lost 11 relatives and close friends to the IRA.
Republicanism embraces the unity of Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. You
can't pick and choose your Protestants. You might wish they were modern-day
Wolfe Tones, but you have to deal with the Protestants you've got.
The Dublin march presents a threat to no-one. Opposing it is bigotry or
partitionism dressed up as patriotism. It's certainly not republicanism.
