Orange parades are now top of the republican 'hit' list and
this summer has proved that far from showing a spirit of toleration
and recongition of Protestant and Unionist culture, Sinn Fein/I.R.A.
and its fellow travellers in the so-called residents' groups
which have sprouted up all over the place, are determined
to eradicate Orangeism from as many places as possible.
The upsurge of anit-Orange activity in the past few years
is not a spontaneous thing. It is a product of a carefully
prepared and thought out plan of action by Sinn Fein/I.R.A.,
and Gerry Adams let the cat out of the bag in that infamous
speech in Athboy when he revealed that years of planning had
gone into Drumcree.
Just look at how the republicans targets have sprouted since
the first hostile actions towards the Obains Street parade
in Portadown in 1986.
The republican victory over that traditional parade was followed
up by an intensive campagin against the Orangemen returning
from the church service at Drumcree. Throughout the remainder
of the 1980s and most of the 1990s there was a vile campaign
of evil vindictiveness and hatred focused on this church parade.
Brethren were subjected to obscene language, the playing
of republican music on loudspeakers along Garvaghy Road, and
attacks on the police and army by republican mobs.
It was laughable to hear the republicans on the Springfield
Road complain about Orange tunes played on a PA system as
Number 9 District headed out of Workman Avenue. This received
tremendous coverage in the media, both press and television,
but there was hardly a word in any paper or on television
when the Portadown Orangemen were subjected to blaring republican
music on their return from divine worship.
The Portadown parades along with the re-routing ban on Ballynafeigh
District proceeding along the lower Ormeau Road made the headlines,
followed by Dunloy and Pomeroy.
But the republican hit list grows in recent years. It has
taken in the Tour of the North in Belfast, and now the Whiterock
parade.
The Whiterock parade has been an orderly and peaceful event
since 1957, apart from 1970 when it was attacked by the I.R.A.
on the Springfield Road, and the subsequent rioting in Belfast
lead to the deaths of six people - five Protestants and one
Roman Catholic.
The pressure applied by republicans has resulted in the parade
route being changed on three previous occasions - a switch
from Cupar Street to Mayo Street, and then Ainsworth Avenue.
For the information of those who do not know their Belfast,
the Workman Avenue exit is the last one available to Orangemen
emerging from the Shankill Road on to Springfield Road.
It means the parade passing a few Roman Catholic houses before
reaching a mainly industrial and then the Protestant West
Circular Road.
This short distance should prove no difficulty for reasonable
people, but the republicans are anything but, and their clear
objective is the removal of Orangemen from the Springfield
Road altogether.
Where does it all stop? There is hardly a major road in Belfast
which does not have at least one Roman Catholic enclave on
it, and in the eyes of republicans that would be enough to
justify re-routing, or, preferably, the removal of Orangeism
altogether.
So much for parity of esteem and for toleration. It is nothing
short of a campaign to eradicate Orangeism as a viable force
in Northern Ireland, and sadly the Parades Commission by its
one-sided determiantions and its interference with bands and
music, is playing into the hands of those who hate the Orange
Order and all that it represents.
The Orange Order emerged with great credit from its dignified
parades in the Tour of the North and Whiterock, and that is
the discipline which must be maintained, in the face of provocation,
and the ugly intimadation of republicanism.
But the Parades Commission has a duty to ensure that it does
not pander to the bigotry and intolerance of republicans who
continue to raise the ante in Northern Ireland and display
naked hatred towards the Loyal Orders and their parades.
Orangeism to these people represents the British presence
in Ireland and cannot be tolerated under any circumstances.
This was shown by the republican juggernaut used to crush
the minuscule Orange event planned for Dublin in May. Not
even a small, totally innocuous event, geared to history,
and the first public manifestation of Orange culture since
1937 could be allowed to go on.
That's how tolerant the republican movement is, and it proves
just what loyal Protestants and Orangemen could expect were
the Union Jack ever to be lowered in Northern Ireland and
the people forced into a united Ireland where their religion,
politics and culture would be ethnically cleansed and eradicated
in the manner of the elimination of Protestantism in the years
after partition in 1921.
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