DID we really imagine that it might be any different? What was it that created the expectation that Drumcree would not become another celebration of Orange supremacism in 1997? Looking back now over the events of the past few weeks, it s hard to believe that we were naive enough to hold out any hope of a compromise. It s hard to believe that we did not see the writing on the wall.
Compromise is not on the Orange agenda. It never has been. And it won t be in the future. Orangeism is about exclusion. It is about hatred of the other. It is deeply, fundamentally sectarian and bigoted. It is about Protestant supremacism, and it will never be about anything else.
So where is the room for compromise?
(Of course there are extremist Catholics who are just as poisonously bigoted. But there is no institutional equivalent to the Orange Order, thank fuck.)
One possibility: you look to the British government, and demand that they should oppose the public expression of Orange supremacism. You look to them to prevent the Orange Order from marching through Catholic areas, or mainly Catholic areas, of the North. Some hope had been invested in the new Labour government and in the Northern Secretary of State Mo Mowlam in particular on this score.
Well, not any more: Mo Mowlam was quickly proven to have feet of clay. Confronted with a dilemma, she chose to put expediency before justice or equality. It was a tough call to have to make, for sure but she made it badly. The people of the Garvaghy Road have a right to feel aggrieved. They were betrayed, their trust was abused and ultimately they themselves were brutalised.
Hardline Provos will have been rubbing their hands and smiling the twisted smile of committed killers, who have been vindicated in their vengefulness. We told you so. Not easy to take them on in an argument now and win. And so . . .
A second possibility: you look to the Provos and demand that they should protect your community at once from Orange supremacism, from the profound cynicism of the British establishment and from the oppression and violence of the RUC. Without a doubt this must now seem like a more attractive proposition to people in the nationalist minority in the North, than at any other time during the past twelve months.
But step back a little bit. Do we really want to sink back into the abyss of sectarian violence and military confrontation? Do we want blood on the streets? Do we want carnage and murder restored as an everyday fact of life in Ireland?
Do we want a war that no-one can win to go on for another 25 years? Could that possibly be what people really want? The clichi goes that anyone with the remotest sense of decency in them would so desperately want it to be otherwise, that it must be possible for people to reach an accommodation. But that just isn t true and so it is necessary to identify . . .
A third possibility: you look to no one other than yourselves for a solution to the kind of crises that are provoked by the Orange Order s desire to march down the Garvaghy Road. If Orangemen will not compromise, and the British will not help what about the people who are opposed to the march? What about those whom Orangemen wish to assert their supremacy over?
Well, here s another way of approaching the whole gruesome subject which might just end up having the desired effect of undermining the whole point of these useless farragoes.
Orangemen are idiots. Orange marches are preposterous and stupid. So why not let them display their crassness to the world? Encourage the fuckers. Invite them to walk like stuffed turkeys through every nook and cranny of Catholic and Nationalist areas and enjoy the pathetic spectacle of it all.
Have barbecues in every garden. Fornicate in the streets as they pass. Bring half of Europe in to join in the revelry. Laugh the bastards into oblivion.
I know it s easily said at this distance, but if there s a problem with the Garvaghy Road residents, it s that they take all this pompous nonsense too seriously.
To confront the Orange spectacle is to give it meaning. Much better to help it to die by merely laughing at it. If Breandan MacCionnaith wants me to draft the first letter, I will be happy to oblige.
It might begin: Dear Mr Grand Master, we saw yourself and your mates dressed up in all your finery when you came ambling down the Garvaghy Road the other day and, fair play to you, you looked only gorgeous . . .
Didn t they just.
Niall Stokes
Editor