Orange Order leaders have called for unionist unity in the wake of the Westminster election and urged members to ignore “spin” about a united Ireland “being around the corner”.
The message was delivered on Friday afternoon following the July 12th parades by the order’s deputy grandmaster Harold Henning, who reasserted the organisation’s opposition to the Windsor Framework and creation of a so-called Irish Sea border.
Addressing supporters in Bunburb, Co Tyrone, Mr Henning said the order would “continue to express our views at all levels of government in the weeks and months ahead” to the “outworkings” of the post-Brexit trade deal.
Hundreds of parades took place in what is the busiest day of the year for policing in Northern Ireland with more than 4,000 officers on duty. Two-thirds of the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) were deployed to staff parades attended by tens of thousands of people, with the bill for last year’s Twelfth policing operation topping £4.5 million.
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Friday morning’s events passed off peacefully, and despite concerns about potential violence this evening in north Belfast following the return leg of an Orange Order parade, there was no trouble.
The Northern Ireland Parades Commission had banned three Orange Order lodges from passing the nationalist Ardoyne shopfronts.
The interface area became a flashpoint for some of the worst sectarian summer violence until a deal was brokered between the two communities in 2016. It has remained peaceful since then. The PSNI said it detected “no appetite for disorder” following the collapse of the 2016 agreement last month.
Grand secretary of the Orange Order, Rev Mervyn Gibson, insisted on Friday that he did not see “any appetite for violence, certainly not from our side and I don’t think from any sides”. However, he said “relationships are probably the worst they’ve been in about 20 years”.
“There are a whole lot of factors for that – political agitation around calls for a United Ireland and other things,” he told the BBC.
Sinn Féin overtook the DUP for the first time in becoming Northern Ireland’s largest party at Westminster following last week’s UK general election and the Orange Order on Friday said its “earnest hope” was that elected MPs will “provide a strong voice for the unionist people here in Northern Ireland”.
The splintering of the unionist vote was cited as one of the reasons for DUP losses, including the shock defeat of Ian Paisley to TUV leader Jim Allister in the DUP heartland of North Antrim.
Mr Henning told supporters on Friday that the Orange Order had “played an important role in the elections of past generations” and vowed “to go the extra mile to help political unionism in the challenges ahead”.
“After the election we have heard the all too familiar cries for border polls and time for constitutional change,” he said.
“We should not take notice of the constant spin of nationalists and republicans who are taking every opportunity to tell us that a united Ireland is just around the corner, that we are a defeated people in constant decline and that our future lies outside the United Kingdom.”
On Thursday evening, bonfires burned with Tricolours and nationalist politicians’ election posters in some parts of the North in what the fire service described as a “relatively quiet” evening compared to previous years.
A sectarian sign on a pyre in Belfast was emblazoned with the threat ‘ATAT’ – all taigs are targets – while an effigy of SDLP leader Colum Eastwood hung from a bonfire in the loyalist Rathcoole area of Newtownabbey. Police confirmed they are treating the incident involving Mr Eastwood as a hate crime. A threat against him also appeared on the structure.
An estimated 300 bonfires were lit ahead of ‘the Twelfth’ parades which mark the victory of Protestant William III over Catholic James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.
Reacting to last night’s events, Mr Eastwood said it was saddening that the sectarian annual displays had become “normalised”. He called on unionist leaders to be “much more proactive in trying to move people away from that kind of thing”.
“I think the Twelfth should be able to be celebrated and people should be encouraged to do that. I would always defend people’s right to do that. But it is not OK at the same time to say, you are then allowed to do whatever you want,” the Foyle MP told the BBC. “There are elements of it that are clearly hate-filled.”
Elections posters of Sinn Féin Stormont First Minister Michelle O’Neill and SDLP MP Claire Hanna were also placed on a bonfire in south Belfast along with criticism of two daily newspapers, The Irish News and Belfast Telegraph.
Northern Secretary Hilary Benn condemned the sectarian threats and burning of effigies as he attended a parade in Irvinestown, Co Fermanagh, saying they were “wrong” and “disrespectful”.
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