Well - that was instructive, wasn’t it? A special gathering of the Assembly to pick up the pieces from Friday night and arrange the signposts towards a new shared future.
The most colourful contribution came from DUP MLA William Humphrey, who tried the old trick of transforming the victim into the aggressor. That statue of Our Lady wasn’t placed on the bonfire by respectful loyalists - it was thrown onto it by NATIONALISTS! Or was it republicans? Anyway, the fact that it landed, as Oliver McMullan of Sinn Féin has pointed out, on a prepared platform in the bonfire, was nothing short of miraculous. It gives a whole new meaning to the concept of moving statues. Fair play to Conal McDevitt for standing up in the Assembly and salami-slicing Humphrey’s pathetic blame-game construct.
Peter Robinson was pretty good too. He is without doubt a polished speaker who can range over a number of topics without sign of a note. His core point yesterday seemed to be that we needed a shared future, but it must be a future that incorporated the Orange Order. Mmm. Let me think about that one a second, Peter...Right. We don’t want to import all of our past into the future, because of matters of quantity and quality. For example, we don’t want to bring with us your window-smashing episode in Clontibret and that fat fine the judge let you off with, any more than we want to import your fellow First Minister Martin McGuinness’s role in the IRA. So if we’re going to jettison some stuff and bring other stuff, we’ll have to use some sort of screening mechanism, that brings on the good and abandons the bad.
So with that in mind, we must face a question: is the Orange Order a force for good or a force for bad in our society? We all know the answer to that one - for decades, centuries, its thousands of marches have at best been a motivation to triumphalism and at worst a source of drunkenness, bigotry and rioting. Because something has always been there, or because a march has always gone along a particular route, doesn’t mean that that thing is good or that it should continue. So nice try, Peter, but before our shared future includes the Orange Order, it’ll need to meet standards in terms of ordinances and conduct. If we import into our shared future uncritically, we deserve a future not shared but shameful.
"Peter Robinson was pretty good too. He is without doubt a polished speaker who can range over a number of topics without sign of a note. His core point yesterday seemed to be that we needed a shared future, but it must be a future that incorporated the Orange Order."
ReplyDeleteA shared future which incorporates the Orange Order is an oxymoron, Mr.Robinson, but you know that already, you sly devil you!
Couple of points...The Orange Order has a membership of 30,000 members less than 2% of the population of Northern Ireland (currently at 1.8million)but because most DUP members are also O.O members this organisation is allowed to hold the whole 6 counties to ransom every year threatening to destabalise the government itself .The Orange Order's constant marching and vicious rioting brings nothing but misery ,mayhem and extreme violence with a history of death and destruction to communities and police officers throughout the north and especially this year in Belfast.Their "celebrations" can ruin years of good relations in cross-community partnerships overnight in the city and many young teenagers futures have been ruined by criminal convictions after listening to the reckless O.O leadership calling them on to the streets from the comfort of their living rooms in the leafy burbs.The cost to the tax payer in policing and cleanup yearly is in the tens of millions.If the north was a functional civilised society the Orange Order would have been proscribed long along in the interests of the common good like what happened in 1825 already for these very same reasons.
ReplyDeletePoint two....In regard to the statue on the bonfire this would seem to be a yearly "tradition" .If you Google "Carlsberg dont do bonfires" you will get a link to a video where at 3:27 of the video that was taken in 2012 you can very clearly see a statue of the Virgin Mary that was subsequently burned on the 11th night "celebrations" at Lanark Way just off the Shankill.
i have concerns about conflicts of interest.
ReplyDeleteA lot of DUP and UUP MLAs are members of the orange order. Should they have been voting on a motion about the Parades Commission, given the opposition the OO displays towards it?
see how the issue is explored at eurofree3.wordpress.com