Orange Order

When I think of the violent nature of the Orange Order, I am drawn to the similarities of the KKK. In both organizations, the “perpetrators of enslavement” are White Anglo Saxon Protestant, i.e., English WASP. Both are secret organizations designed to strike terror into the hearts of their target in order to maintain dominance over a group they consider inferior; both were given their privilege by the English. The Orange order and the KKK are cousin organizations with identical purpose, method and motivation.

The Orange Order was formed in 1795 as a militant Protestant organization, whose purpose was to preserve English Protestant privilege and supremacy over the Native Irish whose land their fathers stole. They pilfered their name from William of Orange who defeated the English King James in 1690, 105 years earlier. James was Catholic, so the name "Orange" was chosen for only one reason, because it successfully incited the English-Scottish Protestant population against the native Irish who were predominantly Catholic. The Orangemen were organized and officered by the English Protestant landowners and Belfast businessmen, and they immediately launched a reign of terror on the Native Irish, and that reign of terror was not limited to the Catholic majority. The Ulster Plantation derives its name from the phrase "Transplantation of English Society". Their sole purpose is to terrorize and murder the Irish to reinforce their claim to stolen lands and resources.

The KKK was organized in Pulaske, Tennessee in 1866 as a secret militant White Anglo Saxon Protestant organization, whose purpose was to preserve white privilege and supremacy over African Americans, whom they called "Niggers". They formed immediately after the Blacks were emancipated, that is "freed from forced slavery". First they assassinated President Lincoln for freeing the Blacks, then the always clever WASP's invented "convict leasing", whereby the large plantations owners could lease prisoners from the State. These newly freed blacks soon found themselves behind bars, working on the same plantations they had been freed from. These plantation owners and the State representatives were predominantly Protestant descendants of the English Plantation slave owners. This is the identical status quo as in Northern Ireland society. The KKK assumed the mantle of the Knights of the Golden Circle, an earlier English invention. The KKK took its name from the Greek "Ku Klos" meaning Circle, and the English word "Clan"; i.e., the English Circle. The term plantation comes from the phrase "Transplantation of English Society". The Orange Order and the KKK have identical agendas and identical modes of operation. The KKK is the epitome of the violence visited upon the blacks by their WASP neighbors. The Orange Order is the epitome of the violence visited upon the Native Irish by their WASP neighbors.

Both organizations carry out a campaign of terror, beatings, burnings of churches and homes, bombings, shootings, rapes, and intimidations. They burn children in their homes and nail men to fence posts in the day. They lynch men in the middle of the night and rape and abuse their women. The KKK and the OO both strike terror into the hearts of the innocents.

They both strike under cover of night, (in Ireland they strike in full daylight) with the help of State police collusion. It took the full power of the U.S. Government, led by an Irish Catholic, President John F. Kennedy, and the inspiration of Martin Luther King, a Black man, to break the KKK. The always vengeful WASP’s assassinated both John Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

In its peak, the KKK had 4.5 million members, mostly White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.

Today they number in the mere thousands. The Civil Rights Organization in Derry modeled themselves after Martin Luther King, but they were gunned down in broad daylight by Government Sponsored (WASP) assassins. Martin Luther King was assassinated by a die-hard holdout of white supremacy in spite of the fact that he no longer had the support and protection of the State.

Don't look to the British to Break the Orange Order any time soon, and forget their paid-for puppets in Dublin. The British cherish their Orange card, all 60,000 of them wagging the tail of the dog, as it is their trump card. Northern Ireland is their boot camp, where they train their military, with live targets.

The British military send new recruits to Northern Ireland, and when they have done a year or two of terrorizing unarmed civilians, they are then categorized as battle hardened soldiers, qualified to go into battle anywhere. Without Northern Ireland in turmoil, the British have no excuse for even having a military.

Its a terrible thing for the Irish to kill Irish, on behalf of the Queen of England.

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It is unfortunate, if perhaps somewhat inevitable, that the now annual battles around the 'marching season' fall along religious lines. The Orange parades are being used to test the supposed neutrality of the northern regime and the RUC in particular. The losing side in this dangerous game however is likely to be the working class, Protestant and Catholic, as the confrontations and the sectarian attacks that occur around the Orange marches drive people further into 'their own' communities.

The reality of the Orange Order is that it is a counter-revolutionary institution set up and maintained to target not just Catholics but also 'disloyal' Protestants. It's formation and spread was encouraged by the British state in the years leading up to the 1798 rebellion precisely in order to drive a wedge between ordinary Catholics and Protestants. The 12th of July was picked as the key date to provide an alternative attraction to the marking of Bastille day and in itself to mark the sectarian massacre that led to the formation of the Orange Order.

The Orange Order was born in Armagh in 1795 as part of an armed terror campaign to deny full citizenship rights to Catholics. This was in the context of struggles between landlords and tenants in the area of which the Anglican Archbishop of Armagh said "the worst of this is that it stands to unite Protestant and Papist, and whenever that happens, good-bye to the English interest in Ireland". Specifically the penal laws forbade Catholics from bearing arms, but radical (and mostly Protestant) volunteer companies in the 1780's had been recruiting and arming Catholics with the "the full support of a radical section of Protestant political opinion.

The sectarian attacks that accompany Orange marches today also go right back to its origins. Again in 1795 up to 7,000 Catholics were driven out of Armagh by Orange Order pogroms. But there was one key difference with today, then many expelled Catholic families were sheltered by Presbyterian United Irishmen in Belfast and later Antrim and Down, and the (mostly) Protestant leadership of the United Irishmen sent lawyers to prosecute on behalf of the victims of Orange attacks. They also sent special missions to the area to undermine the Orange Order's influence.

Indeed the Orange Order probably played a key part in ensuring the failure of the 1798 rebellion. At the time General John Knox, the architect of this policy described the Orange Order as "the only barrier we have against the United Irishmen"2 after the failed rebellion he wrote "the institution of the Orange Order was of infinite use"3 . The survival of the Orange Order since, and in particular the special place it was given in the sectarian make up of the northern state (every single head of the 6 counties has also been a senior member of the Orange Order), reflect its success in this role.

The strategy was simple. In order to prevent Protestant workers identifying with their Catholic neighbours the order offered an anti-Catholic society, led by the wealthy Protestants that offered all Protestants a place in its ranks, and the promise of promotion and privilege. The annual parades were a key part of this strategy, they filled two roles. They allowed the working class Protestant members a day in the sun to mix with their 'betters' and at the same time lord it over their Catholic neighbours.

At the same time they exposed radical Protestant workers to accusations of being 'traitors' for refusing to take part in the events. Much of the imagery of loyalism, the bonfires, the bunting and the painted kerbstones provide an opportunity to demand of every Protestant worker in a community 'which side are you on'.

Right from the start the parades have been accompanied by violence as they attempt to force their way through areas where they are not wanted. The first parades of 1796 saw one fatality, but in 1797 14 were killed during violence at an Orange parade in Stewartstown. In 1813 an Orange parade through one of the first areas of Belfast identified as 'Catholic' saw four more deaths.

The town of Portadown has long been a hot bed of 'contentious' parades, banned marches took place there in 1825 and 1827. In 1835 the Portadown marches claimed their first victim, Hugh Donnelly, a Catholic from Drumcree. Armagh Magistrate, William Hancock, (a Protestant), said:

"For some time past the peaceable inhabitants of the parish of Drumcree have been insulted and outraged by large bodies of Orangemen parading the highways, playing party tunes, firing shots, and using the most opprobrious epithets they could invent ... a body of Orangemen marched through the town and proceeded to Drumcree church, passing by the Catholic chapel though it was a considerable distance out of their way."4

In the relevant stability after the defeat of 1798 the British and local ruling class felt they no longer needed the Order and, as we have seen, went so far as to ban it and its marches. Its survival during these years shows that the institution cannot simply be viewed as dependent on Britain or local Protestant rulers. It also fed off the historical legacy of sectarianism and annually offered a chance for the 'little man' to feel big. In this sense the psychological attraction of Orangism for poor Protestants is similar to the attraction described by William Reich of poor workers/unemployed for fascism.

The Orange Order's complex nature is also shown by the events of 1881 when it was possible for the Land league to hold a meeting in the local Orange hall at Loughgall. Micheal Davitt told the crowd that the "landlords of Ireland are all of one religion - their God is mammon and rack-rents, and evictions their only morality, while the toilers of the fields, whether Orangemen, Catholics, Presbyterians or Methodists are the victims".

This danger of class unity saw the ruling class and British conservatives rapidly returning to the Order and the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland responded with a manifesto claiming that the Land League was a conspiracy against property rights, Protestantism, civil and religious liberty and the British constitution. When the question was put this way the Orange Order fulfilled its role and went on to provide the scab labour which attempted to harvest Captain Boycott's crops.

From this period on, with the growth of the socialist movement, the Orange Order's warnings became extended to the idea of a conspiracy of "Popery", "anarchy" and "communism". These sort of warnings were repeated whenever periods of social radicalism saw Protestant workers acting in their own interests as it was precisely at these moments that the danger of them linking up with Catholic workers threatened the unity of the Order. In 1932, when the Falls and Shankill rioted together against unemployment, the Order warned "loyal subjects of the King, the vital necessity of standing guard against communism".

Although Catholic workers have been and continue to have a higher chance of being unemployed than Protestant workers for much of the North's history, rates of Protestant unemployment have still been high. This gave the Orange order both a 'carrot and stick' to encourage Protestant workers to join. The Order was a place where workers could meet employers, and formally or informally receive job offers. On the other hand, particularly in rural areas, employers would be aware of who was a member and discriminate in job applications against those who were not.

Understanding the reactionary origins of the Orange Order is central is understanding why the claims that the marches represent 'Protestant culture' is about on a par with claiming a Ku Klux Klan march represents 'white culture'. Indeed the very promotion of a separate 'Protestant' culture can only be seen as deeply reactionary in the context of the 6 counties. The term 'Protestant' culture is never used to include the Protestant republicans of 1798 or 1934, for instance. As such it's real meaning can only be 'anti-Catholic'.
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Loyalists use Ku Klux Klan to defend march

Sunday Herald, The, Jun 23, 2002 by Neil Mackay

THE Ulster Unionist Party is using the right of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party to demonstrate in public in the United States to back controversial Orange Order parades in Northern Ireland.
In a document submitted to the Parades Commission in Northern Ireland, chaired by Sir George Quigley, the UUP use case law in America to back the right of Drumcree loyalists to march through the Garvaghy Road area in Portadown next month.
The parade brings rioting and disorder in its wake every summer, often destabilising the peace process. The parade makes its way through a Catholic and nationalist area on its way from Drumcree church.
In the case "National Socialist Party of America et al versus Skokie", the UUP quote the legal finding that "the freedom of expression or peaceful assembly may only be curtailed where there is a clear and present danger of public disorder directed to fighting or producing imminent lawless action".
US courts found that it would breach the civil liberties of Nazis if they were prevented from marching through Skokie, where one in six Jewish residents was a Holocaust survivor.
The UUP submission also cites case law on the KKK, calling on court findings in the case "The Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Invisible Empire Inc versus District of Columbia 1992". The submission says: "The US has recognised the point that to punish a parade organiser for the behav-iour of counter-demonstrators or hostile audiences would create a law-breaker's charter.
"The march was permitted even though previous rallies have resulted in violence. The court held that even where the threat of violence was substantial, restrictions would be content-based and thus unconstitutional unless the violence was 'beyond reasonable control'."
The UUP say the document is an attempt to resolve the annual Drumcree "stand-off" and believes the Parades Commission should be scrapped as it does not give a "fair hearing" to Orangemen.
The Orange Order believe this will take pressure off themselves. The first minister and leader of the UUP, David Trimble, who is also an Orangeman, supports the move.
The bizarre attempt to use political pariahs such as the KKK and American Nazis to bolster the loyalist cause came as rioting and shooting broke out in the wake of another contentious Orange march - the "Tour of the North".
Nationalist homes came under gun attack from loyalists in Belfast yesterday just hours after the parade passed. Bricks and bottles were also thrown by nationalist residents and loyalist marchers, and one police officer was injured.

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