Buried Lives

by Bury, Robin;

  So why did the plans for the parade go so wrong? I interviewed the two Orangemen that Eric Waugh refers to above, Brother Simpson and Brother Cox of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge 1313 to try to find out. But first, a little history of the Orange Order in the Republic might be helpful.

  Before 1916, the Orange Order had its headquarters for the island of Ireland at Nos 9 and 10 Parnell Square in the heart of Dublin. But in 1922, during the Civil War, the Dublin headquarters was attacked and badly damaged.

  A large number of Protestants were living in Dublin at that time. In Rathgar and Rathmines, they made up about one third of the population, and more than a quarter of the population of Dún Laoghaire. Some were members of the Orange Order. Every year there was an Orange parade from Rutland Square to King William’s statue in College Green, Dublin. This statue was removed in 1928, having stood there since 1701. Parades did go ahead up to the 1930s, but unfortunately some individuals took it into their hands to stop Orange parades. They moved to Cootehill, Co. Cavan, where the roads were blocked, the railways were stopped, telephone lines were cut and buses and lorries were commandeered by the invaders, armed with hurley sticks. In de Valera’s Ireland, the last Orange march took place in Dublin in 1937. The parade was planned to end in Amiens Street, on its way to Belfast, but it was attacked and stopped. After that incident, the Orange Lodges went into terminal decline. Parades in the South are now few and are concentrated near the border.

  Derek Simpson explained the background to the request for a church parade in Dublin, emphasising that this particular form of parade is quite different from the traditional Twelfth of July processions. It involves a Reformed Church service taken by a clergyman, or a minister, from one of the various Protestant churches. It would be a memorable occasion, celebrating the pluralism of a confident, newly wealthy Irish State. It was anticipated that the political establishment would support it.

  Mary Freehill agreed the wording for the plaque with Brian Kennaway, and Dublin Corporation agreed to pay for it, having responsibility for the placing of plaques in Dublin. A church service was planned in St Ann’s church in Dawson Street as Canon Adrian Empey, the rector, had previously been supportive of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge when welcoming an Orange service in St Stephen’s church in Dublin in 1995.

  However, as we have seen, Canon Empey and his select vestry turned down the request. Canon Empey clarified his position in a letter to The Irish Times on 13 April 2000, explaining why a church service was being refused. He feared that it ‘would reinforce the popular misconception that the Orange Order was connected to the Church of Ireland … Through Drumcree, people have the impression we are linked which, emphatically, we are not … To have permitted the service would only have reinforced the perception, and that was also the unanimous view of the vestry.’

  Canon Empey wrote a letter on 6 March 2000 to Brother Ian Cox of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge, saying that ‘the people of Dublin did not have their city shamed in the eyes of the world in the way that the Church of Ireland was disgraced by the episode at Drumcree’.

  In an email to me, Adrian Empey wrote on 4 October 2004:

  I appreciate that an effort was being made to demonstrate that we in the Republic were prepared to be ‘inclusive’ of all the traditions on the islands – including, of course, the Orange tradition – but the highjacking of Drumcree by sinister elements also raised difficult issues for the Church of Ireland which had nothing to do with keeping our heads down. The church was also struggling to come to terms with its part over the centuries in creating or accommodating sectarian attitudes. As you know, that report has since appeared, and we are all obliged to act on its recommendations.

  I accept – and always have – that the order played an unacknowledged role in restraining sectarian strife in many localities, and that we shall never know how bad things might have been without quiet and dignified restraint of that kind. However, the Drumcree thing was really run by very different elements.

  The nature of these ‘elements’ is not clarified by Canon Empey. Mark Davenport has suggested that they were not connected to the Orange Order.

  The reluctance of the Church of Ireland to support a service opened the way for Dublin County Council’s negative attitude. Almost all of the councillors sought to prevent the parade. Some letters to the papers used the refusal of Canon Empey and the vestry of St Ann’s to justify their opposition to the parade. If the Church of Ireland refused to accommodate the Orange Order service, why should the Dublin councillors, the Irish State and the Irish people?

  As for the report, Empey refers to in his email, it was published at the direction of the General Synod in 1999. In the words of Canon Empey in an email to me on 31 March 2005:

  … as far as I remember it was presented at the General Synod in the same year. This is a lengthy report, running to 179 pages. The short title is The Hard Gospel. According to the General Synod Report of 1997, following a major debate on the issue of sectarianism the following motion was adopted:

  That this synod affirms that the Church of Ireland is opposed to sectarianism and requests the Standing Committee to initiate an examination of church life at all levels, to identify ways in which the church may be deemed to be accommodating to sectarianism, and as a means of combating sectarianism, to promote, at all levels of church life tolerance, dialogue, co-operation and mutual respect between the churches and in society, to identify and recommend specific actions towards that end and then to report progress in the matter to the meeting of General Synod in 1998.

  The context of that debate was, of course, the events at Drumcree.

  Canon Empey was a co-signatory to the letter sent by ‘Catalyst’ to the rector of Drumcree parish church in 1998, asking him ‘not to accept requests from the Orange Order to participate in the church service’ (Irish Studies Review, Vol.1, 2003). The Catalyst request put the Revd Pickering in a difficult position. What Pickering did instead, as I have indicated, was to tell the Orange brethren to comply with the law of the land and behave with dignity and restraint.

  The Protestant churches in the Irish Republic have had to come to terms with living on the margins of an adamantine form of Roman Catholicism. It has not been an easy task, and it has generally been faced with forbearance and diplomacy, but to argue – as Canon Empey did – that ‘the church was also struggling to come to terms with its part over the centuries in creating or accommodating sectarian attitudes’ is surely to beg the question of tolerance for the Orange Order in Irish society. In reality, the foundations, even the inspiration for the Irish State, are sectarian. The Roman Catholic Church was ‘an institutional pillar’ and formed ‘the inner life of the State’.9 It claimed it was the one true church, and in few countries in the world did this belief proclaim itself in more powerful terms than in Ireland, whose 1937 Constitution gave the Church a privileged position and enshrined some of the social and moral doctrines of Rome. Well before the Free State had come into being, Protestants in the 26 counties had lost political power. That had ended with Catholic emancipation in the nineteenth century, and the various land acts in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century removed the large landholdings of the Protestant Irish ascendency, some 13 million acres. To hark back ‘over the centuries’ is to enhance, even enliven, the often thinly disguised Protestant guilt. Perhaps a more appropriate stance for the Church of Ireland in today’s Ireland, where many Roman Catholics are disillusioned and looking for alternatives, would be to assert the theological values of the Reformation: individualism and rejection of the invasiveness of the Roman Catholic church, now in disgrace.

  Mary Freehill progressed the plans for the day with Ian Cox of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge. From the start, she had made it clear that there was to be both a parade and an unveiling of a plaque on the same day and she would be present for both events, laying the plaque herself. In a letter to Ian on 19 January 2000, she wrote:

  Thank you for your letter of the planned Parade in Dublin on May 28th
next. Please keep me informed as your plans progress.

  I have written to Mr Peter Morley in the Roads and Streets Department asking that arrangements for the plaque to mark the site of the original Grand Lodge be progressed in time for May 28th.

  She was well aware of strong opposition from her fellow councillors, particularly from Sinn Féin, and told me in an interview on 16 May 2005 that ‘I have no doubt whatsoever that Sinn Féin wound it up … I knew it because they circulated literature at some sports events asking people not to support the parade’.

  Freehill’s opinion on the refusal of St Ann’s to allow a service was that it ‘gave fuel to the opposition’. But she insisted on continuing her talks with Ian Cox and Derek Simpson adding, somewhat to my surprise, ‘I suppose in a way I was not expecting the two gentlemen to be as Machievellian as Sinn Féin’. She meant by this that both Ian and Derek were ‘saying in the end that I was not really supporting them’. In fact, Ian and Derek believed that she was being pressurised by the Labour Party and was retreating. Councillor Freehill denied this, but it became apparent that she was being put under pressure by other parties. When asked after a council meeting if she would be marching herself, she replied she would not be ‘next or near the Orange Order’ and ‘that was an unfortunate way I said it and it might appear I was changing my position and I will admit it might have appeared that way but it was in the context of a difficult meeting’. She seems to have been distancing herself. On 19 May 2000, Phoenix magazine wrote that ‘she delivered the sharpest political U-turn in memory’ but Freehill insisted that she had never intended to walk in the parade in the first place. Now it seemed that she did not want to participate in the ceremony in the Mansion House after the plaque was unveiled. Both Derek and Ian had failed to understand this and were taken aback.

  The plan was for the Orange Order to rent the Round Room in the Mansion House, where they would meet for a service and reception. But the cost was high and Mary Freehill believed that it discouraged the Orange Order from proceeding. It was an important factor, but it was not the crucial one, as Derek made clear to me. When St Ann’s was refused, she offered the Oak Room in the Mansion House for a service, but it was not big enough for the 400 people expected. ‘I didn’t have the giving of the Round Room as that was in the hands of a separate company, Sports and Leisure, and it would have to be rented.’ I challenged her about Ian Cox’s assertion that the Round Room could not be rented, as the private company that owned it had not signed a contract with Dublin County Council to allow it to be let. This may have been because it was being refurbished at that time but ‘certainly the officials were not against it and John FitzGerald was very supportive, the City Manager. But there is no doubt about it a lot of the council were against me supporting the march, even against me unveiling the plaque.’

  The council meetings were then being held in the Mansion House and she ‘remembers when all of the leaders were there and they were nearly all of them putting pressure on me. Pat Carey from Fianna Fáil, Christy Burke from Sinn Féin, Joe Doyle from Fine Gael and all saying “Would you ever give this up, Mary, would you ever forget about it”.’ But she made it clear she was going ahead with the unveiling of the plaque.

  Freehill also made it clear that she would support the parade, but would not participate in it: ‘I don’t even agree with the Orange Order. My position in all of this was people having the right to march. It is part of our culture, whether we agree with it or whether we don’t … let’s be tolerant.’

  Those who were to participate in the parade would have come mainly from Northern Ireland, England, Canada and Australia, as well as the Republic of Ireland. The banners were to be confined to the crosses of St Patrick, St George and St Andrew. Only Canadian and Australian flags were permitted. The parade would take 20 minutes and men, women and children were invited to participate. It was planned to use the excellent Temple Band from the North, which had won an all-Ireland band competition. The service after the parade was one to which all were invited, and a collection was to be taken for the Romanian appeal fund.

  At this stage, Brothers Simpson and Cox held a meeting with the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) to request financial assistance, as well as moral support (though why the DFA was involved in a domestic matter puzzled A. Simpson and Cox). At this meeting, Derek and Ian were astounded to hear that someone had advised the DFA that the Lodge had breached a contract with the Church of Ireland over the service that they held in 1995. Adrian Empey had taken this service. Derek and Ian told me that it was untrue, but also, more worryingly, it meant that the Church of Ireland seemed to be running a secret campaign to stop help being offered to the Orange Order by the State. Why advise the DFA of a private dispute between Canon Empey and the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge? Derek asked Adrian Empey for an explanation.

  Derek told me that there had not been any complaints after the service in 1995. The Orange Order had agreed at the time that the service was not to be publicised, except in the Orange Standard, and this condition was fully met. But somehow RTÉ’s John O’Mahony radio programme got wind of the service and mentioned on Sunday on air that the service was going to be held.

  The leak did not come from a member of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge and Derek has been unable to find out from RTÉ where they got their information. At any rate, a member of the Lodge, John Quincy, heard the comment on air before the service took place and told Adrian Empey that the programme had incorrectly mentioned that Adrian Empey’s brother, Walton Empey, the Archbishop of Dublin, was to take the service. At the time, Adrian did not make a fuss about the leak, but he revisited it 5 years later when Derek asked Canon Empey for an explanation in writing, to no avail. He copied his letter to Empey to the Primate, Robin Eames. There was no response.

  The upshot was, in Ian’s words, that he and Derek were ‘very courteously shown the door and treated like parlour guests’ by the DFA.

  Mary Freehill went on to say that difficulties arose:

  [Derek Simpson and Ian Cox] used me and started to blame me by saying that I had started to pull back. I did not expect such Machievellian behaviour from them. But I suppose they did not understand my background. I was born and raised in the Cavan/Fermanagh border area. I grew up in a town, Ballyconnell, a very middle class town and I’d say a third of the population would have been Protestant. There was a Presbyterian church, Church of Ireland church, a Methodist one, a Masonic Hall. In a small town it encapsulated the Plantation of Ulster. We got on very well, there was great regard for one another. My father would always be teasing people saying there is a bit of a stalwart in you. Very good humoured. I grew up in a tolerant society.

  I asked whether the whole idea was premature, being in the shadow of the Garvaghy Road; that it was simply the wrong time to have a parade. She replied: ‘Isn’t that always the way? When is the right time? As long as you have somebody trying to turn it to their advantage there always will be a problem.’

  As for the Garvaghy Road:

  There was the difference between night and day between the Orangemen walking down the Garvaghy Road and walking down Dawson Street, and the President, Mary McAleese, said that to me also. She was very supportive and very helpful. She made it her business to say, ‘I think what you are doing is great.’ But you see, she was into all of that and had been working to improve the understanding between the different communities.

  Mary Freehill and President McAleese led the way here, questioning both the Church of Ireland and the councillors who linked the Garvaghy Road to the proposed Dawson Street parade. It was perhaps naïve to believe that these events could be separated, certainly as far as the Church of Ireland was concerned.

  The following Sinn Féin motion was carried by the council:

  The Dublin City Council defends the right to freedom of speech and assembly which includes the rights of bodies such as the Orange Order to parade peacefully in the streets of the city. In the spirit of mutual respect for diverse traditions and the right of c
ommunities and mindful of the planned Orange parade and plaque unveiling in Dublin, the City Council calls on the Orange Order to enter into direct dialogue with the chosen representatives of the people of the Garvaghy Road in Portadown to lift the siege of that beleaguered area to finally resolve the issue through negotiations.

  Fianna Fáil councillors supported this motion, which was designed to stop the plaque going up, not to stop the parade. Mary Freehill had got permission 3 years earlier to put up the plaque so the decision could not be rescinded. Mary Freehill explained:

  The parade did not need anyone’s permission: that was the whole point. You do not have to obtain permission to have a parade. However, it is necessary to get permission from Northern Ireland to have a parade as well as notifying the Gardaí. The senior Gardaí were extremely helpful and believed they could handle it.

  I asked if the Lodge was therefore wrong to pull out if the Gardaí were convinced they could handle it, and Mary wondered if Derek and Ian faced a problem of ‘diminished support’. The Grand Lodge seemed to be split and their Education Officer, Brian Kennaway, decided not to come to the unveiling. He threw a different light on what was happening in an email to me on 24 March 2005. He believed that a very senior ex-officer of the Grand Lodge had deliberately linked Dawson Street to the Garvaghy Road, which was unhelpful. If a parade could be held in Dawson Street, he asked, why not on the Garvaghy Road? But if the Grand Lodge put its foot in it by making this unwise, provocative comparison, it was still supportive of the parade, just clumsy in its approach to a delicate situation in another jurisdiction. As Brian Kennaway wrote:

  But there are extremes on both sides. On the nationalist side you have Sinn Féin and their raison d’être is to prove that they cannot get on with these people and in some ways you have the same thing being said by the DUP who may not want people down there being too nice to the Orange Order.