Orange Order grant endorses sectarianism

THE decision by Community, Rural, and Gaeltacht Affairs Minister Eamon Ó Cuiv to issue a grant of €250,000 to the Orange Order is most regrettable.

Recent media attempts to portray the order as misrepresented liberals or misunderstood pluralists, and the July 12 marches as Europe’s largest folk festival, have been a resounding failure. All the soft focus media airbrushing or high-powered spindoctoring cannot disguise the true nature of this sectarian organisation or its supremacist raison d’etre.

Have we forgotten the sight of tens of thousands of Northern Catholics fleeing across the border every July 11 to escape the annual orgy of pyromania and bigotry which passes for ‘Orangefest’? This is the same organisation that former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Patrick Mayhew said “would have disgraced a tribe of cannibals” in 1992 as some of the marchers in an Orange parade gave a five-fingered salute in mockery of five men who had been murdered in a bookies on the Lower Ormeau Road by members of the UDA. This is the same organisation that expels any member who enters a Catholic church.

The history of the Orange Order has been a shameful litany of intimidation and supremacy. The nature of the membership oath, which seeks to ensure there is no genetic contamination of the loyalist bloodline, is reminiscent of the Ku Klux Klan. I regard this funding of the Orange Order as an endorsement of sectarianism which has no place in a tolerant, diverse society.

Tom Cooper

23 Delaford Lawn

Knocklyon

Dublin 16