Mollie Malone 🇮🇪

“Faith, heritage, charity and family”, Moore? Is that the complete history we’re going with? Where were those principles at Drumcree in 1996, when thousands gathered after the Orange Order was told it could not march down the predominantly Catholic Garvaghy Road, while loyalist rioting and road blockades spread across the North? Where was respect for your Catholic “neighbours and fellow citizens” when the pressure became so intense that the police eventually reversed their decision and put the parade through? Where was “family” in 1997, when the nationalist community was effectively sealed into its own area and residents were prevented from reaching their Catholic church? And let’s not airbrush another deeply uncomfortable part of the past, there have been Orange Order members who were also members of loyalist paramilitary organisations and involved in terrorism and sectarian violence. That doesn’t make every Orangeman responsible for their crimes, but it makes this attempt to present the institution’s history as nothing but “faith, heritage, charity and family” rather selective. One incident out of hundreds of examples that was particularly disturbing that I specifically remember was Seán Graham’s bookmakers on the Lower Ormeau Road. Five innocent Catholics were murdered there by the UDA in 1992. Months later, Orangemen parading past the scene held up five fingers towards nationalist protesters , widely understood as mocking the five people murdered there. The Orange Order subsequently expelled those involved, that’s only one from a long list. Think about that while telling Catholics this organisation has always been about respecting its “neighbours and fellow citizens”. And while we’re currently hearing outrage about republicans commemorating or celebrating their dead, perhaps the same standard should apply consistently. Loyalist paramilitary flags, UVF/UDA emblems and banners commemorating loyalist paramilitaries have appeared around loyalist and Orange-related parading culture for decades . Some bands participating in Orange marches have openly displayed paramilitary symbolism, while prominent loyalist paramilitaries themselves have also been members of the Orange Order. If glorifying people involved in republican terrorism is offensive and retraumatising to victims , and it absolutely can be, then glorifying loyalist terrorists or displaying the symbols of organisations responsible for murdering Catholics cannot suddenly become harmless “culture” or “heritage”. Victims don’t become less dead depending on whether the gunman wore a balaclava with a tricolour or a Union flag behind him. Nobody is claiming every Orangeman is a bad person. Many undoubtedly are decent neighbours, colleagues and family men. But you don’t get to present four comforting words as though they erase the documented history of the institution, the conduct of some of its members or the paramilitary symbolism that has appeared alongside parts of its parading tradition. If the Orange Order wants its neighbours to judge it on “faith, heritage, charity and family”, that’s perfectly reasonable. Those neighbours are equally entitled to judge it on what it has actually done, what has happened in its name and what has sometimes been tolerated alongside it.

The irony of talking about “aggressors” after the language used to whip this issue into a frenzy is extraordinary. For days Bryson has been front and centre: “Either Portadown District goes down the Garvaghy Road or the Executive goes down.” “The law or the mob.” He even talked about the First Minister being put in the back of a Land Rover. That isn’t the language of de-escalation or reconciliation. It’s confrontational rhetoric around one of the most historically sensitive flashpoints in NI And then, when people rally behind the Garvaghy Road residents, they’re collectively branded a venomous Republican “mob” and the “aggressors”. You cannot continually turn up the temperature, frame everything as surrender versus victory, and then pretend to be astonished when the other community mobilises in response. Drumcree needed calm heads and compromise. Instead, an unelected loyalist activist was given a microphone and helped turn 35 men walking down one road into another constitutional showdown, unionism now need to take control, his posts on X are not helping either