ONE thing puzzles me about today’s reports; a statement by DUP politician and Orangeman Nelson McCausland. He said of the Ardoyne parade: “It is a community problem which has to be resolved by the community.” (News Letter, not online.) While this might fit in with his calls for the Parades Commission to go, Mr McCausland has also been at the forefront of calls not to talk to residents’ groups: “It is Grand Lodge policy that the Orange Order will not negotiate on parades with Sinn Fein-sponsored residents’ groups.”
So how does Mr McCausland square this circle? If the affected ‘community’ means republicans and loyalists, who does he intend to negotiate with, or is one a DUP stance and the other an official Orange one? They do not seem compatible, although I get the feeling that McCausland is leaning towards the ‘New’ DUP position of dealing indirectly with republicans, and merely stating Grand Lodge policy at other times.
There appears to be a gap between the DUP and the Orange Order here, which might create issues for members of both. Perhaps if the DUP is supposed to be preparing its supporters for political dealings with republicans in the autumn, it may be going down the old ‘constructive ambiguity’ path. Perhaps it will slip notes to Constable Gerry Kelly under the negotiating table come September, carefully avoiding the guns the DUP believes are already there?
North Belfast Assembly member Fred Cobain was also reported in today’s News Letter as saying (not online): “It is only through direct dialogue that unionists and loyalists will test the sincerity of republicans on the issue of contentious parades and see whether their mantra of ‘No talk, no walk’ is more than just a convenient slogan.”
Now that wasn’t so hard, was it.
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