by Bury, Robin;
With no encouragement from the Church of Ireland, no support from Dublin city councillors and the political classes as a whole, and in the face of coolness from the DFA, Derek and Ian decided to postpone the parade to avoid possible violence.
Ian had heard that leaflets asking people to oppose the parade were being distributed at football matches, something that Mary Freehill confirmed, and he feared that should the parade go ahead, there would be a demonstration where bottles or missiles would be thrown, perhaps injuring bystanders, including children.
On the day that the plaque was unveiled by Freehill, the so-called Sovereignty Movement, a seemingly Sinn Féin organisation, appeared with a huge, elaborately designed banner declaring that the Orange Order was Ireland’s Ku Klux Klan. Designer and nationalist Robert Ballagh appeared, as did Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonnell, who was vocal. Both Julitta Clancy of the Meath Peace Group and Tomás MacGiolla challenged them vigorously on the street.
The plaque was unveiled on 28 May by Mary Freehill and a reception followed in the Mansion House. Freehill told me that she was disappointed that the brethren of the Dublin and Wicklow Lodge failed to turn up to the unveiling of the plaque and to the reception. I tend to agree, as the signal they were giving – which no doubt was not intended – was that they disapproved of her and the work of her team in the Mansion House. No TDs lent their support by coming to the ceremony – no one from Freehill’s own Labour Party other than Prionsias de Rossa, nor from Fine Gael, nor from the PDs. I asked her to comment on this, but she had no explanation. She did emphasise, though, that Ruairi Quinn was fully supportive. Why didn’t Bertie Ahern attend? Or his Minister for Foreign Affairs? The President, Mary McAleese? Was this not an act of ‘building bridges’?
Mary Henry went, to her great credit, but no other senator, who numbered among them the Protestant senators Martin Mansergh, David Norris and Shane Ross. I went, with the writer and columnist Bruce Arnold. Bernie Lowe, a Fianna Fáil councillor in Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown, whom I knew, spotted me on television and berated me later on. I was taken aback, and pointed out that it was a peaceful parade to commemorate the first meeting of the Grand Lodge in Ireland, and that if Fianna Fáil was serious about pluralism, which it proved itself not to be by opposing the parade in Dublin City Council, it would not only have welcomed this event, but sent the Taoiseach. She was unimpressed, and brought up the flight of unionists from Northern Ireland around 12 July every year.
Mary Freehill is convinced that Sinn Féin brings a highly confrontational brand of politics to the Republic, one that comes as second nature to them in Northern Ireland. She believes it is ‘Machiavellian’ in its behaviour; above all it seeks to get votes and more members. They see these kinds of issues as an opportunity to create discontent and get members into their party. She elaborated:
It is not principled. It is totally pragmatic and Machiavellian. That is the kind of politics that they have evolved in Northern Ireland. It is all about conflict. They haven’t passed over the point of saying, well, look down here now, we have got to figure out how we can get on and make peace rather than live by conflict. It is about the threat outside and how we can get people together.
As if a few dozen brethren in the Orange Order constituted a threat to the Irish state! I suggested that it was deeply sectarian and directed at further weakening a compliant Protestant population.
Some time later, Mary Freehill spoke at a meeting in Monaghan town, where Sinn Féin representatives wanted her to meet afterwards with some women from the Garvaghy Road.
So I agreed to meet them and there was a man who introduced himself as a journalist and wanted to interview me before I went into the meeting. He wanted to interview me about the Orange Order so I said I was there to talk about directly elected mayors. So I went into the meeting and they wanted me to go to the Garvaghy Road, which needless to say I wasn’t going to agree to but anyway I invited them down to Dublin. The people they had from the Garvaghy Road were actually Sinn Féin members but introduced to me as community workers. The reporter wrote on the front of the Star paper that I had got very annoyed and used language that I simply had not used. I sued the paper afterwards and won. What actually happened was that this guy was only out of Long Kesh about six weeks, and how and where he got a journalist card is another question, but he was part of the entourage to try and trap me. I just mention that because that is the day-to-day politics of Sinn Féin and probably, I don’t know, the DUP. That is the guttersnipe level that it operates at. Here we just get on with it. The same thing happened down in Cork. I was on the radio with the Sinn Féin representative in Cork, Doolan, and with the Fine Gael representative, Covenney. It was very interesting listening to Doolan, it was all very much Northern Ireland politics and the distance they were from each other.
As I have mentioned, the comparison with the Ku Klux Klan was the main thrust of Sinn Féin’s argument against the parade. Nicky Kehoe, a Sinn Féin councillor, wrote in a letter to The Irish Times on 14 April 2000:
The Orange men state that they are an expression of ‘Protestant’ culture in the same way that their views and actions are an expression of ‘white’ culture. Orange men and racists have a constitutional right to march, but the rest of us have a constitutional right to say what we think of the organisation organising the march.
There was another angle to the Sinn Féin approach, however. Councillor Larry O’Toole claimed in an interview on 19 August 2000:10
It was going to be used … you know that Orange parades are acceptable in Dawson Street, Dublin, then they’re acceptable in the Lower Ormeau and that’s why I don’t believe we could take any march in isolation from what was going on in the Garvaghy Road. Don’t forget that a month after the march in Dublin … the Drumcree thing was going to start all over again.
O’Toole thus considered that the parade in Dublin was not a natural event, like the one in Rossnowlagh, but was to be used as a kind of PR stunt. It was being promoted by people like Brian Kennaway in Belfast as a means of getting the Orange parade down the Garvaghy Road. As the Sinn Féin banner had stated, the Orange Order was the Ku Klux Klan. There was never a word said about the Roman Catholic fundamentalism that had taken hold in Ireland since 1922, nor the virtual suppression of the Orange Order all over the Republic and the disappearance of large numbers of Protestants to friendlier shores.
Garret FitzGerald had recognised that pluralism had not taken root in the republic when he wrote that it is ‘at variance with a traditional inherited value system [that] for historical reasons has not had occasion in the past to distinguish clearly between religious and secular loyalties’.11
For Sinn Féin to cast the Orange Order as an alien tribe has little relevance. In the words of the article written by Andrew Finlay and Natalie McDonnell, such an attitude ‘would have offended against the pluralist rhetoric at the heart of the GFA, which was invoked by supporters of the parade’.12
Senator Mary Henry wrote to The Irish Times on 29 March 2000 to encourage pluralism: ‘This march will say more about us here than about the Orangemen … no matter what our views on the Orange marches, the process of reconciliation and the development of a tolerant Irish society has to take place here as well as in Northern Ireland.’
Mary Freehill wrote:
It’s nothing to do with whether I agree or disagree with the Orange Order. I voted for the Good Friday Agreement and in that agreement I voted for parity of esteem and [of the] people [who] exist on this island. I mean what are you going to do? Push them off? I mean they’re there.13
William Binchy, Regius Professor of Law at Trinity College, Dublin, challenged the sectarian approach of Sinn Féin when he wrote to The Irish Times on 25 March 2000: ‘If a member of the Orange Order feels … secure walking down Dawson Street, that will be no defeat for Republican ideals but rather a small step towards their practical fulfilment.’
Sinn Féin is preoccupied, even obsessed, with achieving a united Ireland. Here is what one writer t
o The Irish Times said about the parade in the context of this aspiration for unity in a letter dated 3 March 2000:
Those of your correspondents who have expressed fury at the prospect of Orange men parading in Dublin wish (presumably) to see the creation of a United Ireland. They should ask themselves whether that prospect is enhanced by making it clear to Northern Protestants that they hate their culture.
So what is the future of Orangeism in the Republic? Brother Simpson is quite confident of a revival of the Dublin-Wicklow Lodge. Numbers are growing and more young men are joining; there are members from Cork, Limerick, Carlow and Kildare. He believes that Orangeism has a healthy future in the Republic, and there are some 30,000 members on the island. It is a diverse organisation with rural and urban people, including some professional people like David Trimble, though the professional people are drifting away. It is changing and becoming less political.
It is a sectarian organisation by definition, as is the Ancient Order of Hibernia. It bans its members from marrying Roman Catholics and attending Mass. The former rule was not always on the books, but in the interests of the greater good, both should go. The Order needs to reflect changes in modern Ireland and encourage inclusiveness. In the words of Roy Garland in the Irish News on 14 March 2005:
Orange people must reverse the old profile by dropping the negative emphasis on opposing Rome and instead promote the welfare of their fellow men in keeping with a more charitable emphasis. In line with this, the Orange Order has recently promoted a more festive approach to celebrations and has tried to reach out to the wider community. Recent reports say Orangemen have welcomed members of the Hindu community and provided them with refreshments in a Belfast Orange Hall.
The organisation was started to defend the Protestant faith and to oppose mixed-religion marriages. It encourages the Protestant churches to uphold the 39 Articles and the Westminster Confession. It also maintains important cultural aspects such as the Orange bands and social gatherings.
Brother Simpson put it this way:
The Orange Order believes that there are erroneous doctrines in the Roman Catholic Church and these can be identified and pointed out, based on teachings in the Bible. The Order consists of members of the Baptists, the Methodists, the Presbyterians and the Church of Ireland. The Church of Ireland seems obsessed with getting on with the Roman Catholic Church and many believe the 39 Articles are out of date and no longer of relevance. The Church of Ireland is fading away and were it not for the fact that Roman Catholics are sick of the paedophilia scandals and the way the bishops have responded and are turning to the Church of Ireland, it would disappear. The Protestant churches should concentrate on other issues like the right to have a nondenominational or Protestant education. In the border areas some school buses are being taken off the roads because the numbers of Protestant children are tiny so the children are ending up in Roman Catholic schools.
Perhaps the last word needs to go to the writers of the Irish Review article previously referred to:
The parade organisers’ claim that they belong to a minority that has been ill-treated mirrors the crucial distinction that Larry O’Toole made when attempting to reconcile Sinn Féin’s opposition to the parade with the party’s general valorisation of tradition and specific support for multicultural principles. He asserted his commitment to defend the cultural rights of minorities that have been ill-treated, but refused to extend this to the Orange Order or to Southern Protestants: the Orange Order is a threat to the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland, and the Republic’s Protestant minority has not been ill-treated. We have no wish to adjudicate on these conflicting claims to victimhood; indeed, to attempt to do so would be to pander to the dangerous “me too-ism” that identity politics seems to encourage. It is far more important that we register an objection to the notion – shared by the organisers of the parade, its principle opponents and too many others – that admission to the emerging multicultural order in Ireland is dependent on one’s ability to claim social or cultural victimisation.
As Ireland gets wealthier and continues to face a substantial influx of refugees and immigrants of different races from all over the world, it needs to progress from the homogeneous society it has been, to at last learn tolerance for all the different identities in its midst. This means learning to leave other traditions and cultures to practise their beliefs and customs. Part of that respect for other traditions is strongly demonstrated by allowing, even encouraging, a peaceful parade of uppity Protestants in Dawson Street. I suggest that decision should not be based on any claims of victimisation, and it should be respected by all Protestant religious denominations, particularly by the Church of Ireland, which has assumed a mode of ‘rapprochement’. Let us remember that the parade was not cancelled, it was postponed. It is now 15 years later and much has changed. Perhaps a very different response would be forthcoming if the Dublin and Wicklow Loyal Orange Lodge 1313 decided to parade in Dublin, perhaps this time in the city’s main thoroughfare, O’Connell Street. By linking a parade in Dublin with one in Drumcree, our politicians ensured that our unionist neighbours were confirmed in their belief that the republic was far from fostering the spirit of the Belfast Agreement. It seemed to show itself to be as Gaelic, Catholic, green and intolerant as ever. Mary Freehill and President Mary McAleese, as well as Mary Henry, were noble exceptions who did not seek to avoid the central message of the Irish flag: to cherish the orange and green traditions on this island, North and South.
Epilogue
Over recent decades the Republic of Ireland has undergone fundamental changes, particularly in the economic and religious spheres, but also in social and cultural areas. Economic nationalism was abandoned in the 1960s. Facing economic meltdown in the 1950s, the State turned its back on the failed policy of economic self-sufficiency behind protectionist tariff barriers. The dreams of the founding fathers that a free Ireland would be a prosperous once it was free to encourage native industries and develop its rich, unexplored mineral resources were just that, dreams.1 Agriculture was southern Ireland’s only significant natural resource.
Economic nationalism floundered and by 1956 ‘the Republic’s growth rate was clearly the slowest of the Western European countries … and semi-literate Portugal appeared to be doing rather better’.2 D.K. Whitaker, the Secretary of the Department of finance, drew up a report which called Irish economic protectionist policies a failure and instead recommended attracting foreign direct investment by tax incentives and other supports. The Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, took up his proposals and made them policies in the 1960s. The result was that between 1987 and 2001, the Republic of Ireland went through a half-generation of quite unprecedented growth, with GNP growth rates routinely exceeding 7 per cent and occasionally touching 10 per cent.3
Today, thanks to its attractively low rate of corporation tax, Ireland is home to most of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world and to leading manufacturers of computer parts as well as Apple, Intel, Google, Facebook and Dell. These transnational companies employ up to 165,000 people, of whom some 115,000 are well-educated Irish nationals. They export 90 per cent of total Irish exports, indigenous companies only 10 per cent. It is an impressive success story. However, these highly profitable companies contribute practically no corporation tax to the Irish exchequer and should the EU change the favourable corporation tax regime they enjoy some are likely to up and leave. Transnationals, by their very nature, locate where economic conditions make for maximisation of profits. They are not motivated by loyalty to nation States. But should some decide to move out of Ireland, the loss of employment of perhaps at most 115,000 jobs for Irish nationals, or 7 per cent of the total Irish workforce, would be hardly a death blow to the Irish economy.4 It is the indigenous sector of the economy that pays the corporation tax and provides the vast majority of jobs. In an EU environment of pressure for increased tax harmonisation, perhaps the indigenous service and manufacturing sectors need more nourishment by government in the yea
rs ahead.
During the first 50 years or so of the Irish State, from 1921 to 1970, Irish nationalism and Catholicism were virtually indivisible. This excluded, even suppressed, the Protestant minorities, as well as other sects and free thinkers. De Valera’s 1937 constitution embodied the then popular principles of Catholic teachings and sought to make the Free State incorporate Catholic moral teachings in its legislation. Article 44 recognised the special position of the Roman Catholic Church ‘as the guardian of the faith professed by the great majority of [the State’s] citizens and article 41 prohibited divorce’. The word ‘secular’ was notably absent from this constitution, unlike the Indian constitution written only a decade later. There was legislation for film censorship in 1923, censorship of publications in 1929, legislation against contraception in 1935. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin ‘prevailed upon the national broadcasting services [RTÉ] to carry the twice daily ringing of the angelus bell’5 which it does today, refusing to acknowledge the Angelus prayer embodies religious dogmas that all other churches find unacceptable, if not heretical. This reflected the ‘absolutist position of the Catholic Church, rather than the more flexible, but certainly not permissive, attitudes of other Churches and communions.’6 In other words, they could like it or lump it, ‘… in the South majority religion was flaunted without any reference to the sensibilities of the small Protestant minority.’7 Vincent Comerford believes a ‘puritanical mindset’ was at work:
It was highly prescriptive and dogmatic, promoting the assumption that everything was either obligatory or forbidden, and so did not place a high value on individual freedom of choice. Intolerance was epitomised in a readiness to demonise dissidents and opponents and to brand people and institutions as untouchable, without concern for the human dignity or rights of individuals, including the right of reply.8