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| Carrick Hill Memorial Garden |
Ree-diculous,
all this brouhaha about the bands marching past St Patrick’s Church on 29
September. Don’t you think? One side says we’ve a perfectly good right to march
and anyway we’ve talked to the priest and parishioners, the other side says you
haven’t talked to us and we’re the residents. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, eh?
Tit for tat and no resolution.
Except
it’s nothing of the sort. This is a very old story going back for years: not the marching past the church bit, but
who the loyal orders, particularly the Orange Order, are prepared to talk to .
Remember Drumcree and the Garvaghy Road? The Orangemen wouldn’t talk to
residents because they didn’t like Breandan Mac Cionnaith. Change your
leader/spokesman, they told the residents, and we’ll think about it.
Eh?
Change your spokesman? Can you think
of anything more high-handed?
Normally groups choose their own leaders or spokespeople. It’s called
representation – a form of democracy. But the loyal orders don’t buy that. Not
only will they choose their own leaders, they’ll choose those for the opposing
side. In this case they’ve decided that the opposing side’s spokespeople will
be the local priest and his parishioners.
I expect there was a time when that kind
of proviso washed with the nationalist/republican community, because they felt
powerless to do other. That day, however, is dead. Very dead. And know what? It ain’t going to do a Lazarus. So the Orange Order and
such other groupings had better get used to the funny notion of
nationalists/republicans wanting the same basic – very basic – rights as any
other grouping: to decide who speaks for them.
And
if that means the OO and its ilk will go all huffy and take their ball and go
home, so be it. Speaking personally, I can’t understand why Carrick Hill residents’
spokespersons like Frank Dempsey can say they have no objection in principle to
loyal order marches, because I have. Yes, it’d be better if these various
orders did their tootling and drumming far away from people who don’t want to
hear it. But it would be better still the tootling and drumming and dressing up
didn’t occur at all, because, certainly in the case of the Orange Order, it is
built on a history and ordinances that are – yes, I know I’ve said it before
but the need to say it again and again and again keeps on cropping up –
anti-Catholic. What’s more, if I were a unionist, not only would I stay miles
away from such organizations, I’d be urging them to pack it in and go home, because
with every provocative march and with every refusal to talk to the people
involved they’re digging a deeper and deeper hole into which they are plunging,
taking unionism with them.
My fantasy is to have the whole Orange Order assemble on the southwest edge of The Burren in County Clare, and have them march due west right over the Cliffs of Moher.
ReplyDeleteThey would do it if they thought there were Taigs on the beach below. They couldn't get down there fast enough.
Ah well, we can always dream.
Fit the new windsor park with mock ups of catholic houses and streets and let the orange men march there 24/7 365 days a year
DeleteJude,
ReplyDeleteThese people don't want a taig about the place even in the 21st century, and if one happens to appear en route, then its 'croppies lie down' time. They're so immersed in hatred and bitter loathing, that they cannot even accept, that Carson himself in later years disengaged himself from their parochial little mindset and was scathing in his regret.