and cheerless and there was no hot water. Men rushed in and out exchanging greetings, removing coats and putting on what I thought were black sashes but which are called collarettes, bowler hats and white gloves. The Blackmen,† as they are generally known, pride themselves on being well turned out: indeed, the only daft thing that Henry has ever said to me he said later that day. When he observed on parade a contingent from south of the border who were wanting in the white-glove department, he shook his head and said, ‘Look at them poor craturs there. If we’d been in a United Ireland we’d all be in that state.’
After introducing me to some of his brethren, Henry dispatched me with instructions to wait across the road from the hall, watch them parade round the village and then proceed to the coach to travel to the main parade. Then they assembled, their band struck up and they processed up the village and round and down, watched by no more than perhaps a dozen or so people along the way.
In the coach I was seated next to the Worshipful Master who said he hoped I would come to tea in the hall afterwards and suggested that if I enjoyed a nip of whiskey, I might like to accompany him to the pub afterwards. My enthusiasm for this notion sealed our friendship, and for the rest of the journey we talked about his family. (Ulster people are so cautious of causing affront by seeming nosy that they rarely ask personal questions; during interviews on countless occasions someone would say in response to a question about his religion, ‘I don’t know what your faith is and I wouldn’t ask but I hope I’m not giving offence,’ before going on to say something completely innocuous about his particular religious beliefs.)
Summing up the day in a newspaper article, I wrote:
The Clogher Valley people – who were extraordinarily welcoming – have since been described to me as among the most decent people in Northern Ireland. Dungannon, the local council, is working well on a system of power-sharing between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. As one council member explained: ‘For most purposes it’s us and the SDLP [John Hume’s party] against the fascists – the DUP [Ian Paisley’s party] and Sinn Féin.’* And there were many Catholics among the more than 20,000 people who picnicked in cars along the parade route.†
You can’t become an RBP member without having spent two years in the Orange Order. The RBP has a reputation for being the least confrontational of loyal institutions, so I realize that what I saw in Aughnacloy was the most benign face of Orangeism. Of perhaps 90 lodges and bands, only three or four were even faintly intimidating. The exceptions were what are known as the ‘kick-the-pope’* bands of young men from places like Portadown with earrings, shaven heads, vulgar and militaristic uniforms and a triumphalist swagger; in Scotland they would be on the terraces of Glasgow Rangers football club.
I’ve often vaguely wondered exactly what Orangemen do. ‘Sinn Féin think we talk politics and plot,’ said one RBP member. ‘In fact what we do is to have a monthly meeting in our hall to discuss trivial points about increasing the annual dues or repairing the roof; a few times a year we have a dinner. The main reason for going is just to meet your neighbours. And the parades are days out to look forward to.’
It was with a shock of recognition that I realized that, at bottom, the Orange Order is simply a Northern Irish Protestant means of male bonding. In England chaps have their clubs in which they obey arcane rules and organize social occasions. Some are Freemasons – cousins of Orangemen – and wear funny clothes and appear to be sinister because they conduct their proceedings in secret, but are in fact by and large a pretty harmless lot of men who just want an excuse to get out of the house. Irish Catholic men bond in pubs.†
Clogher Valley Protestants are hard-working, God-fearing, sober, frugal but warm people with a fierce pride in the land which many generations of their forefathers made so prosperous. Their RBP headquarters has so far escaped the fate of the almost 100 Orange halls attacked and seriously damaged in the past six years. It is a simple village hall with no creature comforts. The post-parade tea, at which I was made welcome both formally and informally, was – as one of them put it – ‘a country dinner’ of lots of meat and potatoes, and it was dry. But the Worshipful Master took me to the pub afterwards for Irish whiskey and chat with locals.
RBP 800 prided themselves on being well turned-out for the parade, in best suits, bowler hats, sash, mason’s apron and white gloves; the Murley Silver Band with whom they have marched for many years has a smart uniform. Like most of the bands, the Murley men and women are devoted to music-making rather than politics and like many of the other bands has extended its repertoire far beyond ‘The Sash’ and military music; many bands now play the music of that Catholic Derryman, Phil Coulter.*
What is missed in television coverage of these marches is the happy aspect. Old men walk along hand-in-hand with a toddler grandchild; cars follow individual lodges bearing proud but infirm elders; and every time I moved from my marching position beside the band and caught the eye of one of the men from my host lodge, I was awarded a wink or a large beam. Afterwards I said to one of them, ‘Why do you look so serious as you parade?’ He was puzzled. ‘It’s part of the discipline.’
There is a general belief that without the twenty-five years of assault from the IRA, the Orange Order would have almost withered away. The recognition that nationalist spokesmen are wiping the floor with unionists politically and on the media makes the parades a vital means of showing that the Protestants won’t go away. ‘What else have we got?’ asked one. Yet there is a new recognition of the necessity of taking on the nationalists at their own game. ‘We’ve been too stiff-necked and proud to explain ourselves,’ said one. ‘We’ve got to change.’ There is nothing they would like so much in the Clogher Valley as to watch on television the new leader of the Ulster Unionist Party wipe that smile off Gerry Adams’s face.
There were aspects of the day I had no room to put in that article. Such as that my host – who wanted me to know how bad it could be – insisted that we sit on the wet grass and listen to an evangelist who seemed to me to be completely deranged. Or that I was totally baffled that chaps speaking from the platform referred to each other as ‘Sir Knight’. I was baffled too that there was almost no reference to politics: I had a vague impression that all marches ended with a unionist politician going on about the Anglo-Irish Agreement. It was only afterwards that I discovered that the Black was concerned more with the spiritual than the political.
I didn’t mention that I discovered that it was rather fun singing hymns – this was the first of my many attempts at ‘O God, Our Help in Ages Past’ – nor did I refer to the ‘resolutions’ that were proposed at what I had just learned was called a ‘demonstration’. Here are the three listed in the leaflet I was given, which included this instruction about a forthcoming anniversary service: ‘Sir Knights to assemble on the Augher Road beside the Filling Station at 2.45 p.m.’
FIRST RESOLUTION
In pursuit of lasting peace in our land, we stress the need to contend earnestly for the Faith: We urge all Sir Knights to continue to live in harmony with their neighbours and to do all in their power to witness to the saving truths of the everlasting Gospel. We call upon everyone to embrace the Faith once delivered to the Saints and to engage whole-heartedly in the battle against the evil forces so rampant in today’s society.
SECOND RESOLUTION
We, the Members of the Imperial Grand Black Chapter of the British Commonwealth, send our loyal greetings to Her Majesty The Queen. The commemorations of the end of the Second World War enabled the British people to manifest their deep respect for Her Majesty, who has maintained the commitment and duty to Her people as displayed throughout the war by Her Father and Mother, and confirmed their conviction that the Monarchy remains the keystone