Unionism must face political reality
Compelled to live on this island on the same terms as the rest of us following generations of a unionist hegemony in a gerrymandered state, unionism is now suffocating in its own political bile.
To present this abhorrent behaviour as a justified reaction to the curtailment of the flying of the Union flag, or because of restrictions imposed by the Parades Commission on specific Orange Order marches, is dishonest.
This type of behaviour has been an integral element of unionist hegemony since the establishment of the northern state. In 1965 when then Taoiseach Seam Lemass travelled to Belfast for talks with Northern Ireland prime minister, Capt. Terence O’Neill, the Rev Ian Paisley and some of his supporters, who rejected any dealings with Dublin, attacked Mr Lemass.
Furthermore in 1967, former Taoiseach Jack Lynch, also on a visit to Stormont for talks with Prime Minister O’Neill, was similarly attacked by the Rev Paisley, who was accompanied by the Rev Ivan Foster and the Rev Willie McCrea. All three were arrested for public order offences.
The call by the secretary of state for Northern Ireland Theresa Villiers for Sinn Féin to call off the republican commemoration in Castlederg last Sunday, claiming such a parade was “a glorification of terrorism“, is trawling the sewers of hypocrisy. Perhaps Ms. Villiers might explain why the annual Whiterock Orange Order parade includes an Orange Order standard bearing a picture of Shankill Road UVF killer Noel Kinner who randomly murdered an innocent Catholic, Brendan McLoughlin?
Or why there is not alone toleration of a mural to Brian Robinson, the UVF gunman who also murdered a Catholic in a random sectarian attack in 1989, but is also commemorated by Orange Order banners as they strut their sectarian stuff past where Brian Robinson’s victim was murdered.
To those who may feel I am unreasonably biased or unfair in my critique of the Orange Order, may I refer to former NI secretary of state Patrick Mayhew. In 1992, and subsequent years, a parade of Orangemen passing a bookmakers office in Belfast where five Catholics had been shot dead by loyalists, ostentatiously gave a five fingered salute in mockery of the five men who had been murdered. Mr Mayhew said their actions “would have disgraced a tribe of cannibals let alone Protestants marching under a flag of the United Kingdom“.
Yet again, a considerable body of unionism seems incapable of accepting the democratic will of the people as expressed in the Belfast Agreement, or the right of nationalists to be consulted about sectarian Orange parades passing through their areas.
Unionism must recognise their single-dimensional political culture must give way to a mutual citizenship with nationalists.
Delaford Lawn
Knocklyon Woods
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