A new film, Strong to Survive, tells the stories of Orange Order members killed, maimed, wounded or traumatised during the Troubles and describes the fear and trepidation many Protestant families endured over the decades of the conflict.
The Orange Order lost 332 of its members over some 30 years of violence, most of them killed by the IRA. The youngest was 18 and the oldest 86. One Orangewoman was killed. Nearly half were members of the Ulster Defence Regiment, while a quarter served with the RUC.
The film is particularly interesting in that the Orange Order, which commissioned the production, is notoriously reticent and secretive. This seems to be one of the first times its members have so collectively spoken about terrible events. There can be a partisan view of the order but this production tells of humanity and suffering. There are no bands or parades.
Strong to Survive, made by Brian Newman and Ian Courtney of White Horse Media, also recounts how almost 500 children were bereaved as the result of the murder of a parent in the Orange institution.
One of them was Nigel Lutton whose father, Frederick, was shot dead by the IRA as he locked the gates of the National Trust’s Argory House near Moy in Co Tyrone on May 1st, 1979. A father-of-two, he was a former RUC reservist.
Mr Lutton is a 44-year-old funeral director and embalmer who also works with victims and survivors of the Troubles. He explains in the 47-minute film how the order helped keep him on the straight and narrow.
“As I became a teen and the killings intensified, there was always the temptation for revenge, but the Orange Order, thank goodness, saw with a lot of people in my position the danger signs,” he recalls. “They made sure there was an alternative outlet to revenge, they made sure young people didn’t go to paramilitaries.”
The film is made without any backing soundtrack, apart from an accordion in one scene and birdsong in scenes depicting Protestants forced to abandon Border farms and homes. The quiet witness is provided by various members of the Orange Order about killings that took place in the conflict. The fact the participants tell their stories calmly imbues the film with a melancholy potency.
Six attacks
Strong to Survive
deals with six paramilitary attacks: the killing of Frederick Lutton; the IRA killing of five Orangemen following an attack on Tullyvallen Orange Hall near Newtownhamilton in south Armagh in 1975; the IRA killing of 23-year-old Edward Gibson as he was collecting dustbins for
Cookstown Borough Council
near Ardboe in Co Tyrone in April 1988; the IRA shooting dead of William Heenan as he was tending to livestock in Legananny in Co Down in May 1985; the IRA killing of Olven Kilpatrick, a part-time UDR soldier, shot in his shoe shop in Castlederg in Co Tyrone in 1990; and the killing of 20-year-old Heather Kerrigan, a corporal with the UDR in an IRA landmine explosion outside Castlederg in 1984.
