Orange marches belfast

Lighthearted but this reminds me of the Derry Girls episode in July which is hilarious and sad at the same time. The flight to the “free state” in July was real at the time.
I hope this is soon a thing of the past in NI.

We stayed in Belfast a few years ago and it was most odd / interesting to see matching

All these marches require permission and they are strictly regulated. As a family we look forward to the marching season and the various related church services.

We get Silver Bands round these parts (Devon), I think it might be linked to the Chapel movement - though generally not as noisy as the Pipe Bands, due to some Scottish people coming to help the local transition from wooden to metal shipbuilding.

Love them all, none creates any angst, although I understand why some might feel aggrieved at Orange Marches in NI. The same Marches in Scotland are just plain daft, they're no more than English Morris Dancers and should be treated as such. An amusement.....

That’s the impression visitors are getting. That NI is not progressive.

It's not.

The "troubles" only ceased relatively recently and the politics is still a mess.

This reminds me, in a slightly different way, of Kit Harington - who otherwise seems loveky - saying that Belfast is boring and not somewhere you'd want to spend much time ...... Clearly he missed the fact that Belfast was, as the capital, at the centre of something approaching a civil.war until a relatively very short time ago. His ignorance and subsequent judgement was ......smh.

I'm not a fan of them although my 3 brothers are orangemen. I'm sure most of them are bigots but the orange order actually do a lot of good-they were really proactive for the community during Covid helping out older folk (of any or no religion), in rural communities & donated significant sums to hospitals in Ireland, both north & south without publicity.

The issue with anti social behaviour is mostly linked to the bands with younger players, (kick the pope bands as they used to be known), & other folk who like a drink going to the parades for something to do. Like a pp said, it's like football hooligans & doesn't reflect on the majority of fans.

The police should definitely caution anyone singing antagonistic songs & there should be sanctions but peace here is such a volatile thing that maybe they've assessed it's normally better not to stir things up?

Catholics were very welcome at parades in my town & there was so little else to do that we often went with catholic friends. The disruption of roads & traffic is hella annoying though.

I'm surprised to hear that too.

I always had the impression that the Irish emigrants to Liverpool were almost exclusively Catholic folks who were probably more inclined to be sympathetic to Irish nationalism, but evidently the emigration patterns were a lot more complex than that.

This stuff is insidious.

I used to live in a town in the Midlands with a large Scots-born population (Don't bother asking if it starts with _ you're probably right). One day I was passing a market stall selling personalised leather items and heard a young mother ask her small child if they wanted a bracelet with "King Billy" embossed on it. The child said no. The mother was of an age that it was probably her grandparents that had moved to the town so she was probably 2nd generation Scots and at least another 2 from NI.

The town, despite being in England, had an Orange Walk, maybe still does. One of our neighbours had a son who played the big drum. When the parade was finished, he would go out in the garden and bang all night.

Thankfully my immediate neighbour was a 6' 4" Irish prop forward who played the bagpipes. There was no competition and peace soon reigned. 😄

I've never understood how they are still a thing either when they are based on hate.

The parades are not about "hate" to many of the people involved in organising them.

I know plenty of eg farmers who are Orangemen but are friendly to and help out, if required, eg. Catholic farmer neighbours.

You don't understand the mentality.

OP, please stop trying to pretend that you know better than people that actually live here. It’s embarrassing.

They will see its as 'discrimiantion and infringement of their human rights' but F the rest who have to suffer their marches

Threads like this make me glad me and my family live in London/England

I don't follow football but there are two teams in Scotland and from the little I read, their games are toxic because of religious affiliations. Again I'm glad I live in London

The practice is outdated and if I had my way - I'd ban them A-Sap
FYI, I'm not catholic

My view is that anyone who wants to march or celebrate their culture in public in NI should hire a stadium to do it, and not antagonise their neighbours

It's not a bad idea, @allthevitamins, but I doubt this would go down well with the knuckledraggers to whom "antagonising their neighbours" appears to be the entire point

I could be wrong (at least I hope I am!) but I’m fairly certain that it’s not taught anymore. DD went to the most diverse grammar school in NI and I remember backlash from pupils + parents about being denied the teaching of Irish history/the troubles until A level.

I could have sworn we did it - well, Irish history, at GCSE.

(I can't remember what point it stopped at though).

I never realised Liverpool got them until I was working there in July last year and was woken up from a nightshift by one.

Exactly this.

We get them in Liverpool too.

They were out the other day and it was a total mixture of ages and genders. Quite a few kids.

I've never understood how they are still a thing either when they are based on hate. Surely we are past all this now. They wouldn't get away with it if it was based under other circumstances.

Easy to say something has to change, do something about it when you won't be the one getting bricks thrown through your windows, bombs launched at you and your children in the town centre when you're out doing your shopping, getting your fucking legs broken by paramilitaries.

You seriously have no idea and are so ignorant to the realities that Northern Irish people face.

Larkhall is a big protestant town with flags and bunting put out from about now till August for 12th July.

Many, many people don't have anything to do with bands or sectarianism, they don't live in streets full of flags and painted pavements and they just get on with their lives quietly.
Your family seem to live in these areas with those sorts of people so maybe you think all of NI is like that but it's not.

Not touched on whatsoever it would seem - even here in NI it’s not taught as part of history GCSE as it was deemed too divisive of a subject.. beggars belief

but I think this thread is a perfect example of the staggering lack of understanding in the rest of the UK of social ecosystem in the North of Ireland.

Agreed.

There is also, in my experience, a lack of knowledge of the history of Ireland and NI. I got the impression it's not touched on at school (?)