Analysis: Orange Order’s day of reckoning has come

Posted by admin on July 20, 2013

 

 By Brian Feeney (for Irish News)

 

 Thomas Babington Macaulay was a 19th century English historian,  politician and writer. In the 1840s he was MP for Edinburgh. In 1847,  after he had made a speech supporting an increase in the annual grant to  Maynooth, the Tories whipped up Orangemen into a campaign of sectarian  hatred against him and he lost his seat. The campaign degenerated into  violence against Catholics fleeing the Famine to Scotland. The Tories  washed their hands of it.

 Plus ca change.

 Macaulay said: “The natural consequences follow. All those fierce  spirits, whom you hallooed on to harass us, now turn round and begin to  worry you. The Orangeman raises his war-whoop… But what did you  expect? Did you think, when, to serve your turn, you called the Devil  up, that it was as easy to lay him as to raise him? Did you think, when  you went on flattering all the worse passions of those whom you knew to  be in the wrong, that the day of reckoning would never come?”

 The day of reckoning has certainly come for the Orange Order. They have  been exposed as never before after the inflammatory speeches of their  leaders threatening days of demonstrations and “fighting the war on  today’s battleground” blew up in their faces. They were isolated as the  thugs their emotive language unleashed proceeded to wreck the gardens,  walls and fences of neat houses on the Woodvale Road. To add to their  disgrace semi-naked men and women full of cheap drink performed acts of  debauchery in public. Men wearing Orange Order collarettes and uniformed  bandsmen tried to kill police with swords, ball-bearings fired from  hunting catapults and petrol bombs. Orange culture on fulldisplay for  the world’s media.

 

 Like Macauley’s Tories the cowardly unionist politicians who only days  before had signed an appeal calling for decisionsof the Parades  Commission to be obeyedran for cover after immediately attacking any  decision they didn’t like whether at Carrick Hill or Ardoyne, Besashed  Nigel Dodds and his little Sir Echo, nodding dog McCausland, tried on  Friday morning to persuade the police to breach the ruling that only 100  blue-bag yahoos be permitted past Ardoyne. Rather than starting the day  with a riot the police agreed to the raucous jeers of said blue-bag  brigade.

 

 You’d think that even the ancient dopes who lead the Orange Order must  realise the game is up. They don’t. When Richard Haass arrives to try to  square the circle he will need to realise that the only way to bring  them to heel is to hit them where ithurts – in their pockets.

 

 If you were to try to organise a public function ina park or square you  would need to acquire public liability insurance. Every Orange march  declared contentious should be required to lodge a bond of 10,000 pounds  and provide an insurance certificate for 10 million pounds. The Orange  Order should be required to pay for policing justas football clubs do.

 ACC Will Kerr has said the cost of the weekend disturbances is already  into “multiple millions”. We all have to pay for that in money diverted  from schools, hospitals and roads. That’s outrageous. The people who  cause the damage should be liable and that’s the Orange Order.

 

 Just as the Football Association penalises clubs that transgress so the  order should be made to fine lodges who hire paramilitaries masquerading  as bands and who breach Parades Commission rulings.

 

 The executive will never agree to any of this. However, the Public  Processions Act 1998 is Westminster legislation that Westminster can  amend overnight. It’s long past time to stop concentrating efforts to  regulate Orange marches on criminal sanctions for policing their routes  and behaviour. The only way to proceed is to cripple the order  financially if  theyrefuse to behave decently and lawfully. Hurting the  clubs was the only way football thuggery was brought to heel.

 

 For a start there should be a review of conditions for all government  grants and certainly of any EU money promised to the Orange Order. They  cannot continue to receive public money yet tell their members to  disobey the law, encourage them onto the streets and then collect the  next tranche of cash after their antics have cost millions of pounds.