Orange marches belfast

[Pippin24]

I’m visiting Belfast today to see extended family. My dad’s family are from Ireland/n Ireland I try to get over a few times per year. I’m in my aunts house and we had planned a picnic in the garden which has steadily been interrupted by orange bands marching up a down a road not far from her. It’s a terrible noise and apart from the assault to the ears seems entirely pointless- I cannot believe in this day and age this is still happening.

it’s a mixed area faith wise and my aunt is so embarrassed about it. My husband has just arrived back from a walk where he managed to see some of the march and has informed me that there are a shit ton of the marchers drinking - singing anti catholic/Irish songs and generally behaving badly. Surely there are rules around this? Grown men with younger kids marching drunk and causing a disturbance. Culture is one thing - this isn’t it. Rant over!

@DistinguishedSocialCommentator, m not making any assumptions about you. Your widespread lack of knowledge is manifest in all your posts, including, ironically, about university education you appear to think is useless, but which would give you, in some instances, knowledge and nuance you patently lack.

Re negative attitudes to the diaspora — I don’t see ‘plastic paddies’, n itself a dopey term, but one emerging from cultural cringe due to internalised colonial attitudes, as indicating any kind of general negativity. Virtually everyone has spent time away themselves, or has close family who have. I spent nearly 30 years away before returning with an English-born child. At one point my parents had children in the ME, Tokyo, Poland and England. Mary Robinson had her diaspora light in Áras an Uachtarán.

I met a UK history teacher in a pub in Dublin once and she genuinely had no idea of the origins of the Troubles. No idea whatsoever. So the kids have no hope. She just seemed to to accept the idea that NI people were murderous bastards and never questioned where that came from!

Orange marches should be a thing of the past, and indeed other marches such as those commemorating the Easter Rising. There should be gatherings and memorial events instead.

Won't happen though.

I lived in England for decades. It's not that we were ridiculed - that would have entailed acknowledging our existence. We were an irrelevance to official Ireland at best , an embarrassment at worst. Mary Robinson was the first President to show any interest in us.

I remember once having a conversation with a very left wing feminist nurse from Dublin. Foolishly I suggested that we emigrants might have the vote for a limited period - like British and American people. Well , you'd think I had suggested the death of the first born children. Incandescent she was. And that's how cherished we were.

I think for a lot of us , Protestant or Catholic , we were really only at home on the ferry. 🛥

@MoreCraicPlease
But thinking someone is a "plastic paddy" - which is usually based in frustration about wrong or incomplete or out-dated assumptions some of the diaspora have about Ireland - is not at all the same as your claim that Irish people "laugh at them and their descendents for having to leave". It's not nearly the same thing.

Really.
Nobody is laughing about emigration.
Nobody's laughing at those who left - in many cases because they had literally no other choice.

How can you even think that?

History GCSE includes the topic Changing Relations : NI & its Neighbours 1965-1988, its on the CCEA syllabus and is one of four topics that can be chosen.
I've found that quite a lot of schools here in NI that would refer to themselves as diverse and inclusive would rather gouge their own eyes out with a spoon than teach it.

I was taught some history of Northern Ireland and Ireland around 30 years ago for a GCSE in England. I struggled to understand then and still struggle now, I think because I haven't lived there. The closest I can think of is that I intuitively understand the Miner's Strikes and all the fall out, struggles and anger because I lived in the area even though I was too young to be aware. I now live on the west coast of Scotland and see the sectarian undercurrent, particularly related to football. It's no day to day but I hadn't come across that before I moved here and still struggle to understand. (England is far from perfect but doesn't have the same sectarianism in my experience.)

I don't like the marches and the undercurrents that come with it and that some seem to be antagonistic. But I understand that it is part of the culture of Northern Ireland and that changes can't be imposed and will take time. I don't really know what the solution is.

Utterly incomprehensible to any of us in England and Wales without Irish connections. Pointless macho displays of blokey braggadocio with spurious religious message. They are a shameful, antiquated playtime for bigots.

I'm assuming the "they "referred to here are Ulster Protestants.A large percentage of this entire post is pure hate speech against a particular section of the community in NI.
Try targeting any other section of the community and see how that progresses.

Which entire post are you referring to @Summertimeagain?

Simply observing that Scottish Protestants settled in the North of Ireland during the Ulster Plantation is not hate speech. It is just a part of history. Which pp have complained nobody ever told them about. After all nobody can blame people for stuff that happened 400 years ago. Apart from some crank I guess. I think most people neither celebrate it nor mourn it really.

Having them go on from March - July is ridiculous

You want marching bands to practice without marching.

There's only so much they can practise in a hall.
Going around a field/stadium is also not totally equivalent. And most of them would be wet & muddy if you matched around them, because it never stops raining here.

They probably can't even use municipal facilities - because people might kick off about those being used by those type of organisations, I don't know.

(They also do it partly to raise money for the instruments and uniforms etc.)

Sorry, that poster responded to a post as though the post was about Ulster scots/unionists, but the original post actually seemed to be referring to marches. That's what I meant.

I have to say I often find English people of Irish and Northern Irish extraction to be particularly zealous, simplistic and opinionated on this.

I have to admit, I was one of those, being English with Irish parents

Now living here for 20 years married to a Northern Irish man, I see things very differently now

Things have moved on so much these past 25 years - for the better. Indeed some of the changes have been very very fast when you think of it

When I came over, I refused point blank to move anywhere near my husbands home - because it was still very very divided . I remember walking down the town with his kids and carrying on walking when the kids said ' we dont go down that end , this is our end " and it saddened me and that was just 25 years ago. Now those two kids as I say that grew up in a very very divided community have married Catholics and send the grandkids to integrated schools and the kids get to try any sport or out of school activity they wish, mix with whoever they wish and shop and socialise in any part of that town without fear

A PP has mentioned that she lived here through the troubles ( as did my husband ) and they saw the devastation it bought first hand ( husband was held with a gun to his forehead whilst his boss was shot, many of his friends were blown up ) and hes seen his children grow up and now our grandchildren not having to bear witness to that

And no the history of NI was never taught in the schools. I remember having a conversation with my MIL, a few years after FIL had died and she telling me that she had finally got herself an education about Ireland and the forming of NI through reading and she was very troubled over what she had never known , that she felt her entire lifes beliefs were based on very simplistic views

And I think really that's most people, their idealism comes from very simplistic beliefs because they really haven't studied Irish history. I cant say I know too much, but I do know that living here has stopped me from thinking that uniting Ireland is the answer , and perhaps not the best solution - definitely not now anyway

That's the beauty of the Good Friday Agreement @suki1964 . There's something in it for everyone. You can have a British passport or an Irish one. Or both. You can identify as British, Irish , Northern Irish or any combination thereof. Or indeed European. There is the possibility of joint sovereignty or a federal system - which seem a more feasible option than a United Ireland tbh. Although the door is left open for that depending on a sizeable majority in favour I'd imagine.

In retrospect the GFA seems like a miracle of diplomacy. Except to a small group of extremists on either side. Like Michael Gove , who described it as ' treason '. In any event the issue of sovereignty didn't seem that pressing in 1998. There was an open border with free trade in a single market. The fact we were all in the EU seemed to have helped defuse the tension and given a bit of perspective.

But then ....

Very well said.

A bit of a side question I know, but why are rehearsals needed for any of these marches?
These aren't state occasions with massed ranks of troops and countless vehicles, but a bunch of folk walking along with banners and various bands - and if the bands need to rehearse they can presumably do it in a hall somewhere

It's hard not to wonder if it's really just another opportunity to encourage division and hope for a ruck along the way

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/p0ff7cg0/once-upon-a-time-in-northern-ireland
watched this last month with my teenage daughter- she was traumatised. I cried. She cried. Everyone should watch it all before commenting.

It is such a powerful film. DD’s A level politics teacher made a point of showing it during their first lesson, the teens were amazed at how little they really knew of the history of the place that they grew up in. Very moving indeed and certainly changed a lot of opinions within the class

Has the OP said she is English? I think she has touched a nerve with people who feel she is somehow trivialising the history of NI. I don’t think that’s what she meant at all. Most people who aren’t from NI find marches/sectarianism etc very odd. There are people in their late teens here now who have little to no idea of the extent of the troubles. It’s not on their radar. Is it any wonder outsiders think it’s fucking weird and we need to sort ourselves out.

I think the divide is getting smaller but we need to proactively pursue it. What do people get out of marching and following marches - I’ve never understood it from my own community. it’s hard to believe that playing sectarian songs and calling people taigs and huns could be seen as cultural or religious?

An earlier poster made reference to it being the people following a march who were drinking not the lodge/band. The thing is most people will lump that together- ie if I see/hear someone partaking in a march whether watching or walking, singing along to bigoted songs I’m going to think they are condoning of that.

btw it’s rarely one band marching up and down a road - it’s several and they can go on for hours.

@ThatBrickRaven I'd be willing to bet money that her father married an English woman and OP was brought up in England. I could be wrong, but her comments are pretty telling. Thinks she has valid opinions because her father hails from the island of Ireland and she has visited. In reality she clearly hasn't a clue, hasn't read any history or followed any politics, but like all English people, still thinks her opinions are worth spouting and that she knows better than everyone else in the world simply because she's English.

I've attended orange parades all my life and I've never heard abusive songs, sectarianism or anyone called a taig.There are so many unhelpful generalisations on this post and it's simply spreading misinformation and hatred.
The last Black lodge parade I went to attracted 100k people. 100, 000 did not turn out to be sectarian or to spread hatred. It was a family day celebrating bands and culture, if you don't want to even attempt to understand that it's really not my problem.

I wish people would stop referring to the six counties as Ulster. It's only part of the ancient kingdom of ulster. Obviously Donegal is in Ulster! I find it strange that unionists refer to Northern Ireland as Ulster. Uladh or Ulster is Gaelic and one of the four ancient kingdoms of Ireland. It seems incongruous that they're so proud of using a Gaelic term.

I don't think speaking of "all" English people does us any favours.