Orange Parades Undermine Justice and Policing

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis

Tuesday January 26, 2010 17:34

by Peter Mulholland - none

Two Centuries of Corruption

This review of the history of Orange triumphalism and violence does not attempt to deny the need for, or peoples' right to practice rituals that celebrate and reinforce their religious convictions, cultural identity, or sense of belonging and community. Rather, I am posting it on the internet in the hope of undermining the DUPs attempt to make policing and justice in Northern Ireland conditional on securing sectarian parades through Nationalist areas.

Orange Parades Undermine Policing and Justice in Northern Ireland.
The full text of this paper is available at http://orangecitadel.blogspot.com/
It is based on research carried out by myself while campaigning to have Orange demonstrations barred from Nationalist areas of Portadown. It was partly inspired by Orange Order and RUC claims that the violence associated with Orange marches in the Obins Street area of Portadown was a recent phenomenon and that it was the result of a secretive Republican campaign, instigated and orchestrated by Sinn Féin.
The findings were issued in pamphlet form to journalists and other visitors attending the scene of the Drumcree Siege of 1997. The findings appear to have been used selectively and without any acknowledgment by at least one journalist/author.
They were also summarised as part of the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition submission to the North Commission: Independent Review of Parades and Marches (1996). And an edited and updated version was included in the book Garvaghy: A Community Under Siege; Beyond The Pale. 1999.
It should be remembered that the vast bulk of the material detailed below was gathered from Unionist and/or Orange owned publications and newspapers. It should be remembered because material emanating from those sources was not likely to tell the whole story of Orange violence and the corruption of policing and justice in Northern Ireland.

Policing and Justice and Orange Parades 0.33 Mb

Comments (1 of 1)

Artifically Created Crisis

by Seami Mac

Wed Jan 27, 2010 10:41

Political Games in the northern statelet
Provisional Sinn Fein and the artificial creation of crisis to stabilise the British imposed structures. As an old Paul Brady song would have it "Nothing but the same old story". The deal is always done it's only a matter of timing and carefully choreographed media display's.
The artificially created crisis

Today in the six county state, known as ‘Northern Ireland’ (itself an artificially created entity), political ‘crisis’ appears to be the modus operandi of the local political groups. The political parties in the northern statelet lurch from crisis to crisis in what appears to be a never ending circus. On close inspection as always the devil is in the detail. This is negotiation politics, there is no threat to the status quo from the establishment political parties merely an endless round of attempting ‘one up man ship’. Provisional Sinn Fein (SF) like the DUP do not want the British devolved administration to collapse both have too much at stake, the only power they have is within that state and within those institutions therefore their main purpose for actually existing is gone, not to mention the personal financial benefits if the structures fail.

The endless creation of crisis by the political groups, particularly by Sinn Fein is not only a game with the DUP but is a game aimed at continuing the delusion that Sinn Fein is actually working for Republican aims and objectives from within the British administration. When SF sign up to a deal (as they will with this present one) it is played to their voters as a hard fought victory by ‘Republican’s’, the mantra being “we got one over on the orangies”. Thus the circus continues, SF masquerading as fighting the Republican cause, the rolling out of a British plan for the north of Ireland portrayed as some sort of strategy by the leadership of Sinn Fein, stability within the northern state and its political institutions assured.

Sinn Fein and the DUP will make any deal that will keep them in power, there will necessarily be an artificially created crisis, a media choreographed battle of will’s, with stern faces and dire warnings but in reality it is merely business as usual within the Stormont assembly.