Given that grim tally, the Orange Order seems increasingly out of step with what passes for peace in Ulster since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement–which the Order vehemently opposed. Orangemen are not responsible for every bomb blast or window smashed. But the link between their protests and the violence is widely acknowledged. Midway through the trouble, Harold Gracey, district master of the Orange Lodge in Portadown, ground zero of the most contentious marching-season protests, told an interviewer: “I’m not going to condemn violence because Gerry Adams [president of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA] never condemns it.” That attitude now threatens not so much the Good Friday Agreement as the Order itself, according to Paul Bew, a professor of politics at Queens University, Belfast. “The burning, stoning and blocking of roads,” he said, “shows that the Orange Order–not the peace process–is in crisis.”
It certainly looks that way. Membership is probably half of the 80,000 that the Order claims, according to insiders. Discord is rife. The Order’s best-known member, Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble, who heads the Ulster Unionist Party and runs the new Northern Ireland Assembly, cut his political teeth on Orange Order protests. As an Orangeman in 1995, he defied police the first time they sought to block the Orange parade down the now famous Garvaghy Road in Portadown. At the time his act elevated his stature among unionists. But today he distances himself from the hard-liners: “They serve no cause at all and only bring dishonor and disgrace on the cause they profess to support.”
Some Orangemen have abandoned the Order altogether. Brian Kennaway, a Presbyterian minister who resigned in protest last month, called for others to speak out: “Decent Orangemen must stand up and proclaim that the shameful events of recent days are not being done in their name.” Last week the overall head of the Orange Order tried to do just that. “People have had enough,” said Robert Saulters, the Order’s grand master. “I think it’s time we sat back and reflected.” The reaction of the Orangemen of Portadown? District spokesman David Jones called another protest for the following day.
