Mary McAleese, President of the Occupied Twenty-Six Counties© (OTSC), today made a historic visit to Brakey Orange Hall at Bailieborough in Co. Cavan.
She quoted as being;
delighted to be in the presence of “a good Cavan man, a good Irishman and a good Orangeman.”
A view disputed by RSF with their statement that as usual is not in any linkable format anywhere:
Claims by 26-County President Mary McAleese during a visit to an Orange Hall in County Cavan that it is possible to be both Irish and British are nonsensical, a spokesperson for Republican Sinn Féin has said.
It is not possible for someone to give their allegiance both to Ireland and to Britain. Britain represents the denial of Ireland’s rights. Orangemen should instead be encouraged to recognise that they are exclusively Irish, and to work for the benefit of the Irish Nation rather than adhering to narrow sectarian Orange ideology.
To suggest that Unionists are anything other than Irish amounts to a tacit acceptance of Thatcherite claims that the Six Occupied Counties are ‘as British as Finchley’.
UPDATE thanks to reader Slug here is the link to the speech that so upset RSF.
It is possible to be both Irish and British, possible to be both Orange and Irish. We face into a landscape of new possibilities and understandings. The momentum of these times is, of course, difficult for some and so they lash out in intemperate acts of vandalism that have been visited on some Orange Halls, including Brakey.