Marching orders

THE LATEST stumbling block for the endless – and impossibly dull – Northern peace process is the issue of local control of policing and justice. Sinn Féin wants it now and the DUP doesn’t want it at all. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose… Cue the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media – and snores of soporific boredom from the rest of us.

The DUP has, it appears, offered Sinn Féin a carrot in the unlikely form of Orange marches. The theory goes like this: devolved policing will cover the issue of parades and so the DUP will agree to it only if Sinn Féin agrees to allow contentious parades through republican areas such as the Ormeau Road in Belfast and Portadown’s Garvaghy Road. For the DUP it’s a useful sop to hardliners who are purple-faced with rage at the idea of not being allowed to maraud down their traditional routes.

Sinn Féin says no and that the issue can be dealt with once the Assembly is in control of policing. The party did try to get the idea past locals but they weren’t interested in playing ball and so, of course, it’s suddenly a question of principle. Again.

Before anyone falls asleep, there is actually an issue of political principle here, though it is buried under several tonnes of the kind of grade-A pseudo-political gibberish that only the Irish peace process can produce. That issue is freedom.

For now, the decision on whether or not to allow any particular parade falls to the Parades Commission. Since its creation under then-secretary of state for Northern Ireland Mo Mowlam, Orangemen and unionist politicians have complained that the Parades Commission was an undemocratic body of appointees and in direct contradiction of the right to freedom of assembly.

They were right then and, sadly, they’re still right today.

The problem is local residents don’t want the Oragemen and their hangers-on marching though their areas, disturbing the peace and generally making a nuisance of themselves. It’s not terribly difficult to understand why. What the Orange Order refers to as ‘walking’ is in fact noisily parading along in full (and bizarre) regalia followed by hundreds of beered-up louts, many of whom are simply out looking for a fight.

The spectacle of Orangemen griping about a lack of democracy is nothing short of hilarious, though. After all, these are the very people whose raison d’etre is to go into places where they are not wanted and lord it over the very people to whom democracy was denied. The North of Ireland was, from day one, an undemocratic sectarian carve-up that went against the wishes of the people of Ireland as expressed in the 1919 election. Moreover, once they had founded their antediluvian Protestant Bantustan, unionists set about ensuring that Catholics were second class citizens through widespread discrimination, gerrymandering the electoral districts and creating an voting system of not only one man one vote but also extra votes for property owners and even limited companies. If ever there was a squandered opportunity for what was once called working class unity it was in the North of Ireland. Alas, it was not to be. The Orange and unionist “fur coat brigade” made handy use of the deprived unionist working class when it wanted to teach the Catholics a lesson and was even quicker to deny knowledge or connections with them when, inevitably, blood spilled onto the streets.

In short, unionists have nothing to teach any of us about democracy. Unfortunately, neither do Sinn Féin nor the British or Irish governments.

The North today is a long way from the Orange State described by civil rights veteran Michael Farrell in his seminal 1980 book, ‘Northern Ireland: the Orange State’, (1) but it is still not anything even remotely like a democracy. Instead the Assembly and all of its deformed children are like ghoulish zombies, staggering around without purpose and lacking any free will. Most of the North’s post-agreement institutions are voted for, but only in the sense that they also were in the Soviet Union after Stalin’s ascension to power: vote however you like, it makes no difference.

The Assembly itself, for instance, is a mandatory coalition of five parties, two unionist, two republican and one composed of cringing snobbish liberals. There is no opposition and no possibility of booting the parties out. Some democracy…

The replacement of the Parades Commission and similar unelected bodies imposed by Westminster with local representatives would be a small step forward in that at least the minister for justice would be elected – but it still wouldn’t be an actual democracy.

For those not initiated into the secrets of the fraternal organisation (or with enough sense to not be interested) Orange marches are a major nuisance – they are loud, irritating, interminably long and the threat of violence does hang in the air even today. If that sounds like something New Labour would hand out antisocial behaviour orders (Asbos) for then you’ve got the basic idea – and as with Asbos, the “crimes” in question are, well, questionable.

Orangemen really do have a right to march – and so do the rest of us. The North’s overstaffed police force, surely, is capable of dealing with any law-n’-order problems that arise. Either way, though, republicans must have a niggling feeling that keeping Orange feet off the streets will also keep green and red ones off them too. After all, they spent decades protesting the appalling injustices meted out by the local Stormont parliament and British government.

(1) See: Michael Farrell, Northern Ireland: the Orange State, Pluto Press, 1980