Why painting the Orange only in the darkest colours will rebound on nationalism…

I wonder what our media would report during silly season if it were not for the Orange celebrations leading up to and following the 12th July. Sammy Morrison of the TUV calls it Twelfth Derangement Syndrome (does TDS sound a wee bit familiar?).

In the US, the liberal media’s earnings soared as they daily expressed shocked outrage at the latest utterances of Donald Trump firstly on Twitter, and latterly on his own platform, the ironically named Truth Social. Their overreaction helped put him in the White House in 2016.

I think it would be fair to say that in Northern Ireland the Orange Order has been trying to get its house in order over the last ten years. A lot of angry waters have subsided since Belfast Gonzo found himself on the inside of the Ardoyne riots in 2009.

The Twelfth has simmered down into an arcane form of respectability, such that journalists need to get magnifying glasses out to find some offence or other that involves a tiny number of fringe or ancillary events (usually community organised bonfires).

Even in the controversy at North Down Cricket Club, the local lodge say they had nothing to do with objections that persuaded the club to cancel hosting a Cricket Camp because invites had gone to East Belfast GAA but merely noted them after cancellation.

Media’s confirmation bias

I’ve had conversations with nationalist friends as to whether the Orange has ever done anything good. In all honesty, in the roll call of malign forces pulsing through our recent past, a series of ceremonial processions is surely the least of our troubles?

The vast majority of what happened over the Twelfth weekend was a calm, peaceful day out for families all over northern Ireland. But most of the media coverage focused on a very few alienating hotspots (like the Moygashel bonfire).

Yet, there’s been far fewer words of controversy about Feile’s Joe Cahill Festival of Gaelic, a Belfast wide football competition for kids under 12 and half named after a man who was reportedly chief of staff of the Provisionals from November 1972 to March 1973.

Whilst not the bloodiest period their campaign (it largely featured a tit for tat feud with loyalists as well as attacks on ‘legitimate targets’) such occurrences as official events have been normalised, whilst a loyalist painted on a drum is treated as catastrophic.

Imbalances within media are both human and inevitable, but what we’re seeing here is how settled expectations give rise to a selective retelling of the same story as last year, whether the current evidence justifies it or not. And that matters to all of us.

It matters because broad trust is crucial if we’re to make something substantive of the peace Northern Ireland has enjoyed (and largely taken for granted) for more than a generation now, even if some will always prefer to exist outside the social contract.

Ignoring general information about how the Twelfth (and those who manage its huge logistics) has been on a long and positive journey we focus only on cases that sell news. That’s not just a bias, it’s a fallacy. And fallacies cannot be a basis for social trust.

Nationalism’s desperately tribal hedge

This is nationalism’s problem a lot more than it thinks. If there’s no social trust within Northern Ireland, there’s none for unity. Condescending false consciousness theories are just a tribal hedge on unionist incompetence in lieu of a plan (cunning or not) of their own.

This contrasts with Scottish nationalism in two ways. One, Scottish nationalism only had one future to project: move to an independent state which entailed asking the population just to take control of its future (without pre-existing conditions).

Nationalism’s ask for Northern Ireland’s population is to coalesce with a state which has substantially diverged in economic underpinnings and how its public administration operates.  That’s far more tricky to communicate than blue sky independence.

Secondly, the Scots benefited from Alex Salmond’s determination to lower any sectarian boundaries that would continue to keep Irish Scots Catholics beyond the SNP’s influence. Northern nationalism has shown little interest in doing anything similar.

Although the Orange tradition is a relatively small part of the unionist/pro Remain UK population it does not mean that more liberal folks within that segment of NI society are happy when nationalists go after them (whilst giving themselves a very generous pass).

Twenty years ago a liberal Protestant friend from my younger days told me that the only issue people like him would have with a UI was currency: ie, that the pocket book would be the key thing they would consider. 

Twenty years on, he has changed his mind. He’s still liberal, but (like the rest of his family) a Linfield supporter. In his own words he now says it is become transparently obvious that the majority of northern nationalists cannot stand people like him. 

Thirty years ago I could have made a cast iron case that one of the main problems (beside paramilitary decommissioning) in the years leading up to the GFA would be unreconcilable unionism. Today it’s not something I could in all conscience repeat today.

Counterproductive

It’s popular within the nationalist bubble to beat up on the Orange/Unionism (and, no doubt, fun). And yet most unionists today are reconciled to the Stormont institutions, even if they’re not happy with its lack of seriousness or poor performance.

Fun, but counter productive if you want to grow the vote outside the current Nationalist laagers. To paraphrase an unusually memorable quip from Keir Starmer, nationalism has become “comfortable in the tepid bath of managed decline”.

In these terms, whether the OO ever did anything good, depends on your perspective and experience. I’ve heard praise for the bonding capital it generates in the ways it affords rural communities to come together from different protestant denominations.

But of course it is also true that, as the sociologist Robert Putnam has rightly noted, “networks high in bonding social capital but weak in bridging social capital become susceptible to conspiracy theories and anti-democratic behaviour.”

Asked recently would there be uproar had the Moygashel bonfire motif happened in Lewes, Sussex, where 40k gather on Bonfire Night to burn effigies as diverse as the Pope and Ian Paisley on the pyre. I answered, Lewes would never have been daft enough to go there.

That’s Moygashel’s problem. Nationalism’s dilemma is whether to continue waging an annual culture war to maintain a too-weak-to-change-the-constitution coalition (40% is a big but stagnant minority), or find ways to build the missing bridges.

The latter route is the harder and less popular way to go. But consider this. In a period when the Catholic population has been outgrowing the non Catholic (recently modestly) one, why is nationalism stuck on 40% for nearly 30 years? Answer, tribalism.

If you are serious about change then rapprochement is in Nationalism’s own best interest. That means changing the narrative, which is incredibly difficult. So difficult, the SDLP’s founders decided to cut loose from the Nationalist Party and being anew.

Empathy is a superpower

In the south they use a word I found uncomfortable the first time I heard it in a party political context: “coalesce”. It felt indecently intimate.  And yet how can we take any Stormont government seriously if there’s no “coalescing” at its heart? 

And how do you coalesce with a party or parties whose supporters much the media (though not all) spends every summer vilifying, whilst ignoring the fact that many of the most deprived parts of Belfast are plagued with racketeers and extortionists. 

Maybe, sooner or later, the ‘risen people’ will awake and find they’ve been short changed by all this talk of a new Ireland that never comes. In the meantime, those shiny promises have all been short on delivery be it a derelict Casement or a cancelled A5.

To grow, actions must match words. Did you know that the 100 most deprived places in 2017 had a  population that is c60% Catholic, whilst the 100 most affluent have a Catholic population of 26%? Irredentism builds few houses, butters no parsnips.

Why? In unionist areas there are interventions in place which are aimed at getting to local NEETs and getting them into work early on. They’re also helped in that the balance of Protestant areas are found in the more developed infrastructure of the east.

After nearly twenty years of Sinn Féin in power Protestant majority areas in the bottom 100 are increasingly being replaced by Catholic majority areas. “Doing nothing” has just kept nationalists, to borrow an old phrase, “barefooted and pregnant”.

Reform has worked

Where is the SDLP in all this mess? They have the values and history to get a motor under coalition building for the only agenda that has ever delivered for nationalists or unionists in NI, ie “reform”. Yet, post the Agreement, we’ve seen little such ambition.

This is what Lemass’ said of the Nationalist Party: “for them the day partition ended would be the day they would get their foot on the necks of Orangemen”. Perhaps unintended but this is what non-nationalists hear today: ie, the opposite of persuasive.

The irony is that with the diversification of the population in the east, that day will never come if the only nationalist party with the potential reach across the religious divide keeps to the wrong side of Sinn Féin’s far too predicable irredentism. 

My mate voted for Hume in the  European Parliamentary FPTP elections of 1979. He sensed in Hume a passion for the common good (and he spoke French). Technically he remains pursuable, but with no sense any nationalist is interested in his vote.

I’m told (by another Prod mate who hasn’t seen one since he was 13) ethnic minorities watched the Coleraine parade along with kids wearing Celtic and Rangers shirts. I’ve heard similar about GAA tops in rural areas elsewhere. Is this NOT a good thing?

Or do we all just have to pretend it is not happening? I’m no more a fan of the OO than many of its critics, but statecraft and nation building demands a higher standard of leaders than pointless venting or lecturing others about what they must do.

Do shallow. Search, do not find. Nationalists need to make up their minds: Orange is either in the Irish flag, or it isn’t. Ultimately Irish unity will require generosity, partition doesn’t. And that lack of generosity is anchoring NI in the UK.

“You tell of the descent of Aeacus,

and of the battles fought under the walls of Troy:

but you are silent about the price of a barrel of Chian wine;

you do not tell who will heat the water of my bath,

or when or where I will be offered shelter from the Pelignian frosts.”

– Horace, Odes, III, xix, 3.