30 September 1999 Edition
The Orange Maginot Line
Anthropologists tell us that you can best understand a culture by exploring its myths.
Orangeism has two - The Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Somme. Their much inflated tales of the ``sacrifice'' of the 36th Ulster Division - the UVF in khaki - is a central moment in Sammy proving who he is and what he is. There in the muck and bullets of Flanders, the bigot from Belfast proved what a noble savage he actually is.
It is a maxim among military historians that the generals invariably train to fight the last war. That is, the war they fought in as young men. They are too busy looking back to their own time up the sharp end to see the changes in tactics and technology hove into view. The maxim states that their subordinates usually pay for their lack of foresight.
The British generals of the First World War were, invariably, cavalry officers. They were the generation of Obdurman - the last operational charge of the British Calvary. They longed for the ``Big Breakout'' when the proletarian infantry would pierce the German trenches and the cavalry could spill through.
The thrill of open countryside! The sabre! Real war for a gentleman!
Machineguns, high explosive shells and mustard gas had other ideas. This fantasy on horseback denied the allies thousands of fighting men in the frontline. Cavalry units were cooped up - at great logistical cost - behind the lines for the four years of trench warfare.
In the end, it was the ironhorse of the tank and the ground attack aircraft that broke the deadlock. In the final episode of the Great War was laid the paradigm of the next one. Something not lost on the German military. The Blitzkrieg was fashioned from the brief successes of their last great offensive of April 1918 - Kaiserschlacht.
The French turned their back on the future. The French constructed a trench line for the next war and named it after their blinkered defence Minster - Maginot. This was built from 1929-36 and stretched from Switzerland to Luxembourg. It was the Jules Verne version of the Great War emplacements. A static defence to fight a static enemy.
A French Officer - General Huntziger - from the trench era prepared his men to fight the Great War again. In the Maginot Line Huntziger knew that he and his men could not fail - but they did. The Maginot Line was never breached. The world outside changed and made them redundant, useless. Their enclosed world was cut off from the influences and ideas that were shaping the new world - they were not part of the debate.
Nor'n Iron was established with a Maginot Line running through it. You can't see it on the ground, but it's there in every RUC barracks and Orange lodge. These impressively useless fortifications are in the head of every Orangeman, every unionist.
They are there in Glengall Street and it was in session for 50 years until the Queen's government decided that the Queen's nutters couldn't be trusted with power any more. They are well dug in, but they are being rapidly outflanked by the Blitzkrieg of history.
The game is changing and Sammy only knows on tactic, one tune. Defend. Delay. Not an inch.
The enemies were within and without. Within this military schema was a traitor - a Lundy. Then there are the dithering brass hats at HQ - the real British. This is where the Siege of Derry is crucial to the Orange Race Myth.
When they were needed, England hesitates at breaking the boom across the Foyle. The Ulstermen - in their hour of need - are on their own. In this origin myth, although Britain is unreliable, it's still there and finally comes to their aid. What if Britain stops existing and the reasons that the loyal tribe was needed vanish in a new Europe?
It has oft been written that the Six Counties was a police state - wrong. It was a military state. Everything was militarised and conceptualised within the schema of war, fighting and enemies.
A comprehensive history of the Orange State could be written devoted solely to military matters. Everything within the Orange State was militarised - especially politics. The Six-County statelet was a strategic redeployment of British imperialist interests within the island of Ireland. This followed on from Crown Forces being unable to defeat the IRA in the Tan War.
From the geography to the demography, Nor'n Iron was retrenchment of British involvement on this island. Not surprisingly then the garrison community - because that is how they viewed themselves - saw the main threats to their ``way of life'' as being within the island.
Whether it was an invasion by Collins-backed IRA units from across the border or an uprising of the West Belfast ghetto - the threat was Fenian. When Nor'n Iron was set up, it was designed to deal with republican attacks - any external association wasn't considered- that was the Imperial government's department.
The problems for this generation of unionists are that those certainties of the partitionist state, that probably started to decline as early as the 1950s, are now all but vanished.
When the Orange State was established, no-one envisaged a situation where the major combatant powers of the Great War - who would fight another Armageddon within a generation - would move towards being one super state within the lifetime of someone born the day Stormont opened.
Unionism's problem is that it is on permanent Sentry Duty and its services are no longer required. Barking mad on the edge of Europe - the unionists have no place left to go.
They are the major problem on this island for the next century. We have to find a way of dealing with this bizarre belief system. Like all frontline troops, Private Sam has a healthy disregard for the Brass Hats at HQ. They don't know the reality of the trenches, but then again, Sammy can't read a map. He can't read at all. The route march of history is there for all to see in the European project, but Sammy is still in his trench waiting for de Valera to lead a raiding party of Jesuits across the Border.
In the end, despite the apparent impregnability of the Maginot Line, it never saw any serious action. All of the action took place away from it and - crucially - behind it.
There is nothing more calculated to cause general panic among an army and an evaporation of morale that news that there is trouble behind them. The rear echelon of any army is usually derided by the frontline troops. Despite this, the guys at the front know that the supply train is desperately needed.
While Private Sammy has been on Stand To with his bayonet fixed waiting for the Popish invasion, his Generals have folded up their camp beds and gone away. Everything that defined who was on what side of the Orange Maginot Line has melted away, or it is in terminal decline.
None of this has been wrought by the bad Taigs. Moreover, not only has Private Sammy been powerless to prevent the dissolution of the cause he is still serving blindly, but also he hasn't even noticed some of it.
Orangeism is defined not by any organic cultural products - but by its servility to various connected English institutions. These institutions were vital to the interests of English capital for 300 years.
Those institutions are no longer required and are now a hindrance to the social forces that created them. They are obsolete- as obsolete as Private Sammy in his Trench.
What does Sammy defend? What are the chances he'll have anything to defend in 20 years? The English crown. CharlesIII? Doubt it.
The Pound Sterling? How much is that in real money? Gimme Euros man!
The established church? The what?
The Empire - Lord Patten of Hong Kong!..
All of the above are either gone or well past their sell-by date. Yet as recently as the 1950s, all of these things seemed monoliths that would define Sammy's life for eternity.
There is a functional - almost Darwinian - cruelty to war. In the long brawl of human development, it is a test to identify the most adaptable. Seeing his forces outflanked, Huntziger, instead of plugging the gap in the line, inexplicably pulled back to protect the Maginot Line at Verdun.
He and his men were imprisoned in a fort that was built to protect them. The changing nature of war turned a fortification into a holding pen for an outsmarted army.
General Huntziger emerged with his army into captivity and to sign the surrender to Germany. A clinging to the ways of the past sealed their fate.
Observe the Sons of Ulster marching proudly towards the Somme!
Orangeism has two - The Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Somme. Their much inflated tales of the ``sacrifice'' of the 36th Ulster Division - the UVF in khaki - is a central moment in Sammy proving who he is and what he is. There in the muck and bullets of Flanders, the bigot from Belfast proved what a noble savage he actually is.
It is a maxim among military historians that the generals invariably train to fight the last war. That is, the war they fought in as young men. They are too busy looking back to their own time up the sharp end to see the changes in tactics and technology hove into view. The maxim states that their subordinates usually pay for their lack of foresight.
The British generals of the First World War were, invariably, cavalry officers. They were the generation of Obdurman - the last operational charge of the British Calvary. They longed for the ``Big Breakout'' when the proletarian infantry would pierce the German trenches and the cavalry could spill through.
The thrill of open countryside! The sabre! Real war for a gentleman!
Machineguns, high explosive shells and mustard gas had other ideas. This fantasy on horseback denied the allies thousands of fighting men in the frontline. Cavalry units were cooped up - at great logistical cost - behind the lines for the four years of trench warfare.
In the end, it was the ironhorse of the tank and the ground attack aircraft that broke the deadlock. In the final episode of the Great War was laid the paradigm of the next one. Something not lost on the German military. The Blitzkrieg was fashioned from the brief successes of their last great offensive of April 1918 - Kaiserschlacht.
The French turned their back on the future. The French constructed a trench line for the next war and named it after their blinkered defence Minster - Maginot. This was built from 1929-36 and stretched from Switzerland to Luxembourg. It was the Jules Verne version of the Great War emplacements. A static defence to fight a static enemy.
A French Officer - General Huntziger - from the trench era prepared his men to fight the Great War again. In the Maginot Line Huntziger knew that he and his men could not fail - but they did. The Maginot Line was never breached. The world outside changed and made them redundant, useless. Their enclosed world was cut off from the influences and ideas that were shaping the new world - they were not part of the debate.
Nor'n Iron was established with a Maginot Line running through it. You can't see it on the ground, but it's there in every RUC barracks and Orange lodge. These impressively useless fortifications are in the head of every Orangeman, every unionist.
They are there in Glengall Street and it was in session for 50 years until the Queen's government decided that the Queen's nutters couldn't be trusted with power any more. They are well dug in, but they are being rapidly outflanked by the Blitzkrieg of history.
The game is changing and Sammy only knows on tactic, one tune. Defend. Delay. Not an inch.
The enemies were within and without. Within this military schema was a traitor - a Lundy. Then there are the dithering brass hats at HQ - the real British. This is where the Siege of Derry is crucial to the Orange Race Myth.
When they were needed, England hesitates at breaking the boom across the Foyle. The Ulstermen - in their hour of need - are on their own. In this origin myth, although Britain is unreliable, it's still there and finally comes to their aid. What if Britain stops existing and the reasons that the loyal tribe was needed vanish in a new Europe?
It has oft been written that the Six Counties was a police state - wrong. It was a military state. Everything was militarised and conceptualised within the schema of war, fighting and enemies.
A comprehensive history of the Orange State could be written devoted solely to military matters. Everything within the Orange State was militarised - especially politics. The Six-County statelet was a strategic redeployment of British imperialist interests within the island of Ireland. This followed on from Crown Forces being unable to defeat the IRA in the Tan War.
From the geography to the demography, Nor'n Iron was retrenchment of British involvement on this island. Not surprisingly then the garrison community - because that is how they viewed themselves - saw the main threats to their ``way of life'' as being within the island.
Whether it was an invasion by Collins-backed IRA units from across the border or an uprising of the West Belfast ghetto - the threat was Fenian. When Nor'n Iron was set up, it was designed to deal with republican attacks - any external association wasn't considered- that was the Imperial government's department.
The problems for this generation of unionists are that those certainties of the partitionist state, that probably started to decline as early as the 1950s, are now all but vanished.
When the Orange State was established, no-one envisaged a situation where the major combatant powers of the Great War - who would fight another Armageddon within a generation - would move towards being one super state within the lifetime of someone born the day Stormont opened.
Unionism's problem is that it is on permanent Sentry Duty and its services are no longer required. Barking mad on the edge of Europe - the unionists have no place left to go.
They are the major problem on this island for the next century. We have to find a way of dealing with this bizarre belief system. Like all frontline troops, Private Sam has a healthy disregard for the Brass Hats at HQ. They don't know the reality of the trenches, but then again, Sammy can't read a map. He can't read at all. The route march of history is there for all to see in the European project, but Sammy is still in his trench waiting for de Valera to lead a raiding party of Jesuits across the Border.
In the end, despite the apparent impregnability of the Maginot Line, it never saw any serious action. All of the action took place away from it and - crucially - behind it.
There is nothing more calculated to cause general panic among an army and an evaporation of morale that news that there is trouble behind them. The rear echelon of any army is usually derided by the frontline troops. Despite this, the guys at the front know that the supply train is desperately needed.
While Private Sammy has been on Stand To with his bayonet fixed waiting for the Popish invasion, his Generals have folded up their camp beds and gone away. Everything that defined who was on what side of the Orange Maginot Line has melted away, or it is in terminal decline.
None of this has been wrought by the bad Taigs. Moreover, not only has Private Sammy been powerless to prevent the dissolution of the cause he is still serving blindly, but also he hasn't even noticed some of it.
Orangeism is defined not by any organic cultural products - but by its servility to various connected English institutions. These institutions were vital to the interests of English capital for 300 years.
Those institutions are no longer required and are now a hindrance to the social forces that created them. They are obsolete- as obsolete as Private Sammy in his Trench.
What does Sammy defend? What are the chances he'll have anything to defend in 20 years? The English crown. CharlesIII? Doubt it.
The Pound Sterling? How much is that in real money? Gimme Euros man!
The established church? The what?
The Empire - Lord Patten of Hong Kong!..
All of the above are either gone or well past their sell-by date. Yet as recently as the 1950s, all of these things seemed monoliths that would define Sammy's life for eternity.
There is a functional - almost Darwinian - cruelty to war. In the long brawl of human development, it is a test to identify the most adaptable. Seeing his forces outflanked, Huntziger, instead of plugging the gap in the line, inexplicably pulled back to protect the Maginot Line at Verdun.
He and his men were imprisoned in a fort that was built to protect them. The changing nature of war turned a fortification into a holding pen for an outsmarted army.
General Huntziger emerged with his army into captivity and to sign the surrender to Germany. A clinging to the ways of the past sealed their fate.
Observe the Sons of Ulster marching proudly towards the Somme!