Sir, – Of course it is unfair to prevent Orange marches using arterial routes to get to Belfast city centre where there is limited or little contact en route with Catholic and nationalist residential areas. Of course there is much communal bigotry directed against the Order. Of course there will be riots in areas like Ardoyne, no matter how many restrictive conditions are adhered to by the Order, short of marching on its collective head.
But the Order also has its responsibilities for the consequences of a doctrinaire adherence to what it regards as “principles” and “rights”. Those consequences, demonstrated year after year, mean injured police men and women, opportunities for the recruitment of teenage rioters into dissident IRA groups, and images of violence that flash round the world. Is that what the Orange Order really wants? The effect of the annual entrenching of communal animosities is to undermine the good work of community workers, industrialists, trade unionists and others seeking to make Northern Ireland a better society for all its peoples.
The time is long overdue for the Loyal Orders to take a generous and patriotic initiative, that is to drop all marches in North Belfast until normal conditions of neighbourliness are restored. The sky didn’t cave in over Portadown when the Drumcree parade was stopped. The same just might be true of North Belfast.
If the orders can’t be prevailed on to act responsibly from patriotic motives, perhaps they might consider their Christian heritage. What happened to the view that Christians might sometimes “turn the other cheek”, presumably for the greater social good? Perhaps the clergymen associated with the loyal orders in Belfast would, indeed should, consider their positions until the annual orgy of disorder is sorted out. – Yours, etc,