Playing today’s game of aggrieved victimhood should be called out as sectarianism

While the unionist parties may be trying out a new game at Stormont portraying restraint as strength rather than weakness, what is the temper of the times among the people?   Will something far worse that Drumcree be repeated on the Ormeau Road, where the Orange Hall is bang in the busy built up area  and the parade route takes then  over the bridge past the site of one of the worst atrocities of the Troubles  – with reactions including the vilest sectarian gloating? Nobody needs reminding  of the multitude of incendiary factors here beside which  the fresh memory of Drumcree recedes like a picnic in the park.

The Parades Commission will consider this week whether to give the planned parade the go ahead.

The Belfast Walker Club wants to bring 80 participants and one band along the contentious route on Saturday, November 7.

It has now emerged that the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community has applied to the commission to hold a protest between 7.30am and 10am on the same morning involving up to 1,500 people.

The route of next month’s planned parade would take it past the scene of Sean Graham’s bookmaker’s massacre.

Five people were murdered when a UDA/UFF gunman burst into the building and opened fire on February 5, 1992. In July 1992 Orangemen shouted pro-UDA slogans and taunted local residents by holding up five fingers – one for each of the dead – while passing the murder scene. In recent months a memorial to those who died in the atrocity has been vandalised on two separate occasions

A botched police handling of a commemoration of the murders at Sean Graham’s three years ago  was a factor in the resignation of the  previous Chief Constable and the bizarre footnote that the gun used in the attack ended up in the Imperial War Museum.

Simon Byrne’s  successor as Chief Constable, the far more savvy  Jon  Boutcher is unlikely to fall into the Ormeau Road trap and will surely recommend a ban to the Parades Commission. But  what then? Adjourn to the chipper in Sunnyside Street?

The local Orange Order seem  to be getting their protests in first as an aggrieved minority, a stance  which is the polar opposite to the old republican trope of  loyalist  “triumphalism”.  But there’s another dimension to it –   class resentment due to the modest gentrification of the upper Ormeau Road to Ballynafeigh  In its way, piling on victimhood  is as dangerous as triumphalism as it claims  the moral advantage  that was so effective for nationalists a generation ago.  But are the grievances really so substantial ?

Mark Hennessy’s fascinating interview  in the Irish Times with the local Grand Master lets him speak for himself.

Noel Liggett’s days of marching in Orange Order parades are long behind him, following a football injury decades ago that has left him now with severe arthritis. But the order still means everything to him.

“In my knees, it is. Now I can’t walk, I need to sit down all the time,” the former baker tells The Irish Times in his sittingroom, “but I’m still out four or five nights at lodge meetings.”

“I first walked the Ormeau Road when I was age four. In 1969, on the way back from the old field up at Finaghy – after my ma got sick and tired of listening to me saying I wanted to walk,” he goes on.

Liggett is the District Master of Ballynafeigh Loyal Orange Lodge, No 10, whose Orange Hall stands on the Ormeau Road in south Belfast – once one of the most contested Orange routes.

Last December, he was awarded an MBE award for demonstrating “outstanding determination, tenacity and drive in promoting good relations and community cohesion in south Belfast for 30 yearsThe Ormeau Bridge confrontations in the 1990s, like those in Drumcree, had drifted into history, but the core of the issue had never been dealt with: “Everyone believed the Ormeau Road’s been settled. It’s never been settled.”

Between the course of the Troubles and today, the Ormeau Road area has gone from being overwhelmingly Protestant to being majority Catholic, he says.

“The Protestant community on the road is now very clearly in a minority. Every other group on the road can enjoy its rights to the full, bar the Protestant community,”

“The Protestant community on the road is now very clearly in a minority. Every other group on the road can enjoy its rights to the full, bar the Protestant community,” Liggett says.

In addition, the area has gentrified and many “middle-class Prods” look down on the Orange: “Some of our main problems now is with the middle class who believe they own the Ormeau,” he goes on.

“If you drive down the Ormeau Road in a bit of sunshine, you’ll see the coffee shops, all the guys sitting sipping their coffees. The older Prods will be down the side street, not really taking part. They look on us with contempt.”

 He had, he said, thought for a day for a word to describe the impact of Drumcree this year on the Protestant community. Not wanting to sound pompous, he says he believes the word is “clarity”.

“It’s a moment of clarity for the unionist community. The whole nationalist republican community in the North, and the Taoiseach, political parties, cultural figures in the South all came together,” he said.

Questioned about the belief of many that the Orange Order is a bitter, sectarian organisation, Liggett is perplexed: “It’s an organisation for Protestants. Does that make us sectarian? The Catholic Church is an organisation for Catholics. Does that make them sectarian?

“I don’t believe there’s anything wrong in having societies for the benefit of the community it represents. But Catholics seem to see the Orangeman as the bogeyman.

“They have this visceral hatred of the Orange Order, thinking that we spend hours thinking, ‘how can we annoy Taigs?’ Well, we’re not. Half the time we’re worried about where we’re getting our sandwiches on the Twelfth, or our sore feet.”

The Drumcree controversy will cast long shadows, he believes: “No unionist will look at any assurances that will be offered by the South, or by Sinn Féin and say, ‘maybe, it’s worth considering’.

“There was a lawful decision that the parade could take place. There were lawful decisions in past years that said it could not take place, and that was accepted by the Orange.”

In time, he believes sharper people in Sinn Féin will realise that they went too far at Drumcree: “There must be some thinking that. If your aspiration is truly a united Ireland, this is not the way to go about it.”

Across to Strabane and a very different far less incendiary protest  which has nevertheless one thing in common with  the Ormeau Road Orange chief’s –  that  of an aggrieved minority deeply offended by the assertion of the common good  because its badged out as the other identity.

Strabane is divided over a bid to be crowned the UK Town of Culture as sections of the community take issue with the ‘UK’ title. Out of 400 applications, Strabane was one of just 15 selected to move to the next stage for UK Town of Culture 2028.

At a previous Derry City and Strabane Council meeting, Sinn Féin Councillor Brian Harte also fully endorsed it. He said it is an opportunity “to showcase what Strabane has to offer, which is our history in music, literature, sports, arts, historical areas and many other areas rich in culture.”

Shortlisted towns receive £60,000 to work on their full bids, with the winner announced early next year.

Local Independent councillor Paul Gallagher said Strabane has a “large percentage of republicans” and “one of the highest percentages of people who were imprisoned at Long Kesh”.

On Saturday, Cairde Strabane, a republican ex-prisoners’ group, held a white line demonstration in the town to oppose the bid. The group described it as “the biggest white-line picket since the days of the Blanket protests”, adding “200+ people braved the wind and rain today to show their determination to reject the labelling of our town as a United Kingdom town”.

They have argued, “Strabane is entitled to sufficient funding without such hurtful and toxic labelling.”

The question for the future is whether the  gaps being enacted are gradually being marginalised by an uneasy consensus no longer willing to join in.   But they are as yet unable to create a coherent consensus.  Can the gaps become narrowed to the point where such militancy begins to seem absurd to the militants themselves?