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4 December 2003 Edition

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Book Review

An Army with Banners: The Real Face of Orangeism - By William Brown

Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast (2003)

Price: £12.99/€19

With anti-Agreement unionists enjoying big electoral gains, we can expect more strident demands for republican decommissioning over the coming weeks, along the familiar line: No guns, no government.

Trimble's thorn in the backside, Jeffrey Donaldson, was in particular super-sanctimonious mode after his crushing electoral victory, repeating the tired old refrain about Sinn Féin being disbarred from government because it has a "private army".

This is laughably ironic, given the huge contribution to violence and conflict from unionism, and in particular its "army with banners" - the Orange Order.

Author William Brown catalogues the damage inflicted on Irish society by Orange-unionism. From its inception in the late 1700s, the Order was designed to defeat the republican vision of uniting "Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter".

Just like its modern standard bearers, Orange-unionism claimed to be the sole exponents of democracy. But such highbrow claims were, and still are, contradicted by its practice of violence and intolerance of others of different religious or political persuasion.

Brown shows how wealthy landowners in particular manipulated Orange-unionism to prevent any progress towards social justice during the 1800s, even when rank and file Orangemen would have benefited from fairer land rights being agitated for by impoverished Catholics. This counter-movement conducted a reign of terror with serious riots and upheavals in almost decade. One of the most heinous was the massacre of 30 Catholics at Dolly Brae in 1849, which inspired the popular Orange song with the line: "We didn't even give them time to pray."

During the Home Rule period of the early 1900s, the Orange-unionist "loyalists" even threatened armed rebellion against the British parliament. They backed up their threats by setting up the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force and illegally importing thousands of rifles from Germany. As Brown notes, it was this truculent defiance of democracy by the Orange-unionists, which in turn gave birth to armed republicanism.

In spite of a national mandate from the 1918 elections for full independence, anti-democratic Orangeism led to the violation of national rights, with partition and the setting up of a violently repressive northern statelet. This artificial statelet was only held together by deployment of draconian laws, discriminatory policies, and the vicious B-Specials, which grew out the UVF.

But the Orange-unionist pedigree for violence and militancy is not just a matter of the past. The continued possession of up to 100,000 rifles, its links to the paramilitary Orange Volunteers, its use of countless country halls as distribution centres for Paisley's Ulster Resistance, and its annual quasi-military marching are all overwhelming evidence that the Orange gun and its latent threat is still very much in politics.

It therefore either takes arrogance, ignorance or delusion for the likes of Orangeman Jeffrey Donaldson to lecture others about having a private army. But we can expect more of this unilateral focus, with the prospect of a reconvened Assembly and Executive being made conditional on total IRA surrender.

Of course, this unionist mindset suits the objectives of the London and Dublin Governments. They would only be too glad to tighten the unionist noose around republican necks.

And a supine media will not help to remove the unionist prism distorting the political dialogue, not when interviewers are on first-names terms with Jeffrey but treat Sinn Féin's Paul Butler (Mr Butler) with reluctance and scepticism when he sought to highlight loyalist and PSNI manhandling while at a polling station.

That's why all of us who want a just and democratic peace must use every opportunity to remind Orange-unionism of its past and present responsibility for violence. Orange-unionists should not be allowed to gerrymander history, dialogue and the terms of democracy. Brown's book is a refreshing and empowering record of truth.

BY FINIAN CUNNINGHAM


An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland