I couldn't believe my ears and eyes when I heard that the parade had been give the go-ahead, after 28 years.
And I remembered as favouriteflowers did the outbreak of anti-Catholic violence that resulted from the local resistance to the march - I've heard the figure of 21 people killed, I can't vouch for that, but how can anyone forget the fate of Richard Quinn, 11, Mark Quinn, 9, and Jason Quinn, 7, burnt to death in their beds because their mother was a Catholic in a Protestant area?
I say 'how can anyone forget?' but it's amazing how few people know about that particular atrocity.
Since we have posters on here who may not know all the background, it's worth reading up about the Orange Order, where it comes from, what it stands for, and why having it marching [and Orange parades are militaristic in style] through predominantly Catholic areas.
The Orange Order grew out of anti-Catholicism, and despite efforts to re-frame it as just a social club, and the Twelfth of July parades as a cross between the Mardi Gras in New Orleans and the Notting Hill Carnival, just without the dress sense and the good music, any public manifestation by the Orange Order carries with it centuries of anti-Catholicism, and by extension, anti-Irishism.
Historically in Ireland, 'Catholic' as a label is interchangeable with ethnicity/nationality, even though many nationalist heroes were Protestant, and even though many Catholic heroes were agnostic. It was never literally about the doctrines of Christianity, but the fact that the native Irish did not change religion during the Reformation, and the English and Scottish settlers who were sent in to replace the Irish very aggressively manifested the Protestant religion as one aspect of their superiority over the inferior Irish.
As a result, being Catholic was a clear way to assert that you were Irish not English or Scottish, and crushing the resistance of the Irish to colonisation by the British meant crushing the Catholic religion as well.
That' where the Orange Order comes in. One of the early members, William Blacker promised
“driving from this quarter of the county the entire of its Roman Catholic population”
with the result that the local British Governor Lord Gosford reported:
‘It is no secret that a persecution is now raging in this country… the only crime is… profession of the Roman Catholic faith. Lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges… and the sentence they have denounced… is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and an immediate banishment’.
That's the baggage that would be carried down the Garvaghy Road -
'Croppies lie down'
I acknowledge that others may have a different take on the Orange Order and I have tried to be factual and fair, but am open to challenge of course!