The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions. Ruth Edwards Dudley

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      I’ve interviewed many of the leaders of the loyal institutions, but I’ve been just as interested in hearing the views of innumerable foot-soldiers and their spouses. I can’t mention all those who helped me and there are, sadly, others, particularly in the border areas, who do not wish to be acknowledged in case they or their families are in consequence put at greater risk from thugs and terrorists from either side. But since they are readily identifiable anyway, I will mention the Reverend William Bingham and Janet, Edwin and Gail Boyd, Harrison and Beryl Boyd, Eric Brown, Bertie Campbell, the Charlton family, George Chittick, Johnny Cowan, Tony Crowe, Richard Dallas, Gerry Douglas, Tommy Doyle, Sammy Foster, Jackie Hewitt, Jack Hunter, Roy Kells, the Reverend Brian Kennaway and Liz, Alfred and Charlie Kenwell, Cecil Kilpatrick, Warren Loan, Gordon Lucy, Jim McBride, John McCrea, Lexie McFeeter, Chris and Joyce McGimpsey, Derek Miller, Lord Molyneaux, Gordon, Graham and Heather Montgomery, the late Jack Moore, Billy Moore, Noel Mulligan, Dave Packer, George Patten, Mike and Sue Phelan, the Reverend Warren Porter, Tom and Louie Reid, Bobby Saulters, Alistair Simpson, the Reverend Martin Smyth, David and Daphne Trimble, Denis Watson, Richard Whitten, Ian Wiggins and James Wilson. I am grateful also to Ian Black, Charles Fenton, David Griffin, the Reverend Gordon McMullan, Ian Wilson, Frederick and Betty Stewart, Cephas Tay, Hilton Wickham and all the other delegates to the Imperial Council who gave so much help. To all those other Orangemen and Apprentice Boys who gave me their time and trust, I give my thanks. It has been a privilege to be welcomed into a community as you have welcomed me and to know that you expect of me only that I tell the truth as I see it.

      Among the non-Orange people to whom I owe thanks are Brian Walker, who took me to my first bonfire, and to various parade companions, especially Karen Davies, Rhondda Donnaghy, Bridget and Emily Hourican, Hugh Jordan, Shelly Kang, Gary Kent, Steven King, Gus Legge, John Lloyd, Paul Le Druillenec, Jenny McCarthey, Gerry McLoughlin, Úna O’Donoghue, Paddy O’Gorman, Priscilla Ridgway, Mark and Margot Stakem and James Tansley. I’m grateful too to the many friends who put up with me despite thinking I must be mad to have embarked on a project that took me away so often to squelch through mud in the company of religiously-minded men in bowler hats who keep making a fuss about walking down roads. ‘Oh, God, you’re not going Orangeing again, are you? Be careful,’ was the usual line. I’m particularly grateful, though, to the friends who listened, even if not always sympathetically, to what I reported back or those who told me I was doing something useful. Special mention must be made of two beloved and encouraging friends, Niall Crowley and Jill Neville, who died while I was working on the book, and of Paul Bew, Chaz Brenchley, Stephen Cang, Maírín Carter, Nina Clarke, Betsy Crabtree, Robert Cranborne, Colm de Barra, Barbara Sweetman Fitzgerald, Dean Godson, Graham Gudgeon, Blair Hall, Rory Hanrahan, Eoghan Harris, Kate Hoey, Eamonn Hughes, Sylvia Kalisch, Mary Keen, Liam Kennedy, Kathryn Kennison, Kuku Khanna, Janet Laurence, Gordon Lee, John Lippitt, Robin Little, Jim and Lindy McDowell, James McGuire, Janet McIver, John and Elizabeth Midgley, Sean O’Callaghan, Eoin O’Neachtain, Henry Robinson, Des Smith, Oliver Snoddy, Veronica Sutherland, Bert Ward, Julia Wisdom and my niece Neasa MacErlean. And Martin Mansergh kindly gave me the benefit of his researches into the Orange Order.

      I am very grateful to David Armstrong, editor of the Portadown Times, Graham Montgomery, Sean O’Callaghan, Mike Phelan and Henry Reid for reading and commenting on the typescript. Along with Brian Kennaway, Graham, Mike and Henry have been the Orangemen on whom I have most relied throughout the last few years for help, hospitality, wit and honest answers to innumerable difficult questions. James McGuire, an historian of the seventeenth-century and one of the few southern Catholics I know who has close friendships with Ulster Protestants, has been the non-Orange equivalent. My brother Owen, who is notoriously generous with his time and his scholarship, took tremendous trouble, picked up several errors, filled in several gaps and engaged for about eight hours on the telephone in healthy disagreement with me about certain passages – most of which I amended. Not only is he exceptionally well informed about the subject, but his Catholic perspective was a very useful corrective: I greatly appreciate his support and encouragement.

      It was Alan Ruddock, who as Irish editor of the Sunday Times first gave me space to write about the Orange Order, and Aengus Fanning and Willie Kealy of the Sunday Independent who have since he left been my main indulgere. I quote from or use here articles of mine in both papers as well in the Belfast Newsletter, Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Telegraph, Irish Times, Portadown Times and Spectator.

      Michael Fishwick of HarperCollins took me to lunch to discuss a completely different project, listened to my babbling about Drumcree, and said: ‘That’s what you’re really interested in. Why not write a book about the Orangemen?’ Not only was he invariably sympathetic and helpful, but he did not even raise an eyebrow when he was given a typescript which was twice the length agreed. He was lucky that time did not permit me to do a proper job on Orangewomen or juniors, not to speak of the Orange Order abroad. My agent, Felicity Bryan, wanted me to do something far more sensible, but she gritted her teeth and as always, backed me up. The HarperCollins team including Janet Law, Phyllis Richardson, Prue Jeffreys and Moira Reilly, did me proud and my editor, Kate Johnson, who came late and over-worked to the project, was a pleasure to deal with and always laughed rather than cried.

      But the name of my assistant, Carol Scott, should lead all the rest. Not only did she, as usual, look after me with patience and humour, but she listened to my stories, sympathized with the sufferings of my troubled Orange friends and readily accepted that Orangemen are people too. I hope others will show a similarly open mind.

       1

       Eight Parades, a Cancellation and Some Anthropological Notes from the War-zone

I CAME TO THE LOYAL institutions bringing with me all the unconscious prejudices I had imbibed during a Dublin Roman Catholic^* childhood and a secular adulthood in London. The best way of explaining how my views have changed is to give my own parading history; so here is a cross-section of the dozens of parades, big and small, that I have attended. I have tried to show how my assumptions and attitudes changed along the way, so where I wrote at the time about a parade, I quote relevant extracts here.

      1. Belfast, 13 July 1987

      At the time I was chairman of the British Association for Irish Studies (BAIS) which, inter alia, sought to give public expression to all aspects of Irish history, politics and culture. Protestant and unionist perspectives received a decent airing at our conferences and public lectures, but we had never heard a positive view of Orangeism – a closed, unreadable and rather distasteful book to most academics. (‘For all I know about Orangemen after twenty years of living and working in Belfast,’ said an English academic friend to me recently, ‘they could live in burrows in the Glens of Antrim.’) So I thought I had better go and look at a Twelfth of July parade and see if I could understand what was going on.

      Orangeism to me then represented thuggish, stupid, sectarian bigotry. I had a vague feeling that Orangemen were mainly working-class, and that aspiring unionist politicians cynically donned the Orange sash to help them get elected. People on the Anglo-Irish scene occasionally passed on the information that all unionist MPs, with the exception of Ken Maginnis, were in the Orange Order. Since Maginnis was and is a well-known liberal and one of the few unionist leaders to have friends in the Republic of Ireland, this was added evidence that Orangeism was for bigots only. It was ten years before I learned that Maginnis was in fact a member of a loyal institution with an even rougher reputation: the Apprentice Boys.

      Northern nationalist friends spoke of the fear that gripped them on the Twelfth of July; middle-class Protestants СКАЧАТЬ