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

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СКАЧАТЬ what the BRG had been complaining about was that at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning it would be theoretically possible for some residents to see a procession of bowler hats passing silently 100 yards away.

      An engagement in Tyrone meant that we could not hang around to see the march in Derry city centre organized by the BRG to demand, according to the subsequent An Phoblacht/Republican News account, ‘equality for all the nationalists of Northern Ireland. At the rally, both Donncha MacNiallais and Martin McGuinness stressed the importance of continuing solidarity with nationalists in small villages throughout the Six Counties who each year had Orange marches forced upon them.’ A protest rally was planned for the following afternoon.

      On Saturday morning we arrived in blazing sunshine, left our car near where dozens of coaches were off-loading Apprentice Boys and bands and walked across the bridge and into the city. Derry is a lovely city, much improved in recent years through investment by the British government, the European Union and the foreign-owned businesses courted by John Hume and others. Although in many respects it has blossomed under nationalist rule – it is, for instance, much more cosmopolitan than it used to be – many of those who love it with irrational passion are now wholly out of power. Derry Protestants love every stone in those walls; Derry republicans seem to hate it. Certainly they are still happy to vandalize it whenever there is an excuse. It is almost as if centuries of feeling excluded have made them loathe the very buildings. Tony Crowe, Apprentice Boy and historian, observed to me:

      Derry was like a kept woman, a young prostitute, in an ironic way. When she was a young maiden she was loved and feted by the unionists and she was seen as the untaken bride and known as the Maiden City. And then when they inherited her eventually in the late 1960s, the nationalists couldn’t thole her because she still carried some of the vestiges of her early whoredom. Republicans systematically bombed and buggered the city and peaceful nationalists didn’t mind too much because they couldn’t relate to it. Now there’s no refurbishment of fine buildings like you have in the Republic in cities like Limerick: the old St Augustine’s rectory was knocked down and turned into a car park. It was within the walls, so nationalists felt it didn’t belong to them.

      On our way to meet friends, Paul and I stopped to take a photograph of some graffiti in a loyalist area and were instantly challenged by a couple of thuggish-looking locals. Who were we? ‘Journalists,’ I said. ‘We don’t like journalists. You never write anything good about us. You’re all biased.’ ‘We’re not. We’re sympathetic,’ I said, having no desire to start the day with trouble. The yobs clearly thought this highly unlikely, but their aggression nonetheless lessened somewhat. ‘Just tell the truth,’ one of them said grumpily and off they went. You can always rely on loyalists to do their best to alienate, just as you can rely on their republican counterparts to woo the press politely and articulately.

      We went on to the gloomy Victorian premises of the Northern Counties Club, where many Apprentice Boys were gathering for their dinner. It was 11.30 and their service at St Columb’s Cathedral was now over. The news was that in the middle of the previous night the RUC had agreed to allow thirteen Apprentice Boys to touch each of the gates in Derry’s walls as a symbolic re-enactment of their closing in 1690. At Butcher Gate, the RUC had asked one of the BRG stewards who was on duty all night if they could speak to MacNiallais. ‘When I found that no regalia at all was involved,’ MacNiallais explained to An Phoblacht/Republican News, ‘no bands or singing or shouting sectarian remarks, I told them we had no problem with this. Myself and a group of stewards escorted them to Butcher Gate, to Magazine Gate and towards Shipquay Gate. It was all very respectful on every side.’ For the Apprentice Boys, being patronized like that was very hard to bear.

      We supped beer with Chris McGimpsey and several other of his brethren and left him to his big feed while we went to the Apprentice Boys’ Memorial Hall, paint-spattered and pock-marked from the paint bombs and ball-bearings that are launched at it regularly from the Bogside. In a tiny garden beside it is a statue of one of the Apprentice Boys’ heroes, Governor Walker. In the 1970s the tall pillar on which he stood was destroyed by a bomb; more recently another blew his hand off and damaged his face. Alistair Simpson spoke to the media and the crowd to announce that though they greatly regretted being prevented from walking the walls, they would not challenge the ban, but would walk the walls another day of their own choosing. Face was saved. The majority of the Apprentice Boys were relieved; the more militant were disappointed. Like most of the media they had been hoping for a fight.

      After chatting with a few Apprentice Boys, we were led off by our friend Henry to the best watching-place, just by the walls at the top of the hill leading to the Fountain Estate, the loyalist ghetto, festooned with a mass of red, white and blue bunting and flags and the remnants of the mighty bonfire of the previous night. He wanted us to experience the sheer emotion that grips the Apprentice Boys as the walls come into view. The drawback was that instead of the usual wide variety of music, most of the bands inevitably broke into ‘Derry’s Walls’ as they approached their Mecca. Among the crowds a woman held up a poster saying ‘ULSTER PROTESTANTS DEMAND PARITY OF ESTEEM’, which showed that some PR lessons were being learned from the enemy.

      It was a wonderful parade, full of vigour and brilliance of colour and sound, heightened in its impact when compared to its Belfast Orange counterpart because of the narrowness of some of the streets through which it passed. It’s a strange mixture of spectacle and intimacy and if you are on a narrow street it is easy to spot your friends as they stride past. Pointing at Mike or Graham or Chris or Jim, catching their eye and exchanging waves and smiles is one of the pleasures of parade-watching.

      It was with some regret therefore that, in the early afternoon, duty called me to the Bogside to attend the three o’clock protest meeting. There was no IRA ceasefire at the time and there were fears of an organized assault on the RUC and the Apprentice Boys. Violence didn’t seem likely this time, since there wasn’t an awful lot for them to protest about, but one could never be sure.

      My unionist friends just laughed when I suggested they might like to come with me, but Paul came along. We had to go by a longish indirect route because I had forgotten my press pass and so could not go through police lines. We got to the ‘Free Derry’ wall that is the Bogside equivalent of Speakers’ Corner just in time to hear MacNiallais uttering the word ‘Finally’, thanking the two or three hundred people present for their restraint and announcing the cancellation of the rally. The pretext was a generous gesture to the Apprentice Boys; the reality was that the turnout was so poor the protest would have presented badly. And then I caught the eye of Mitchel McLaughlin, the chairman of Sinn Féin.

      A plausible and likeable fellow, McLaughlin is despised by the hard men because, unlike most other Sinn Féin leaders, he never served in the IRA; his nickname in Derry is ‘the draft-dodger’. He was wearing a smart grey suit and chatting to a young admirer, who told him, her eyes glowing with hero-worship, that he would have her vote. He is John Hume’s main challenger for his Westminster seat.

      We had not met for a year, during which time I had frequently savaged IRA/Sinn Féin in print and had defended the Orangemen’s right to walk from Drumcree Church down Garvaghy Road, but McLaughlin, a complete professional, betrayed not a flicker of hostility. We shook hands: ‘Ruth, you are very welcome to Derry.’ Paul was similarly warmly greeted. Rather churlishly, the thought flickered through my mind that McLaughlin sounded as if he owned the bloody place. He then spent the next fifteen minutes or so explaining most courteously how I was completely wrong to have thought that Sinn Féin was behind the anti-parade agitation and expressing genuine amazement that I could have spoken up for the now ‘finished’ David Trimble, whom republicans were convinced had been politically destroyed by the fall-out from Drumcree.

      He was called away to sort out some trouble, we nodded goodbye civilly, and Paul and I ambled up to Butcher Gate, where a small disappointed mob were looking for trouble. We returned to the parade just in time to see an alarmingly nasty-looking Ulster Freedom Fighters colour party, СКАЧАТЬ