Orange Marches

[Picky_Picky]

The Old Orange Flute - now I get it.

What’s the history behind the colors green and orange? I’m also now assuming that this is why there is green and orange in the Irish flag - if so, does the white symbolize anything?

And I think the green is from the shamrock. The orange recalls the Protestant William of Orange who took the crown in 1688 as William III jointly with his wife Mary II at the invitation of Parliament, overthrowing the Catholic James II. The Battle of the Boyne between the two in 1690 is a key historical date celebrated by the Protestant Unionist community in Ireland.

 

[triumphguy]

Politics.

Northern Ireland is a British territory and the orange boys just want to make sure everybody knows it. Especially important now given the surrender to the IRA by Blair, and moves by disloyal facts to have NI become part of the Irish republic.

It’s now illegal to fly the British flag outside government buildings in Belfast for most of the year. That is a disgrace.

That’s because Northern Ireland isn’t British.

It’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK. It is not part of Britain.

Northern Ireland is er … the northern part of Ireland.

 

[triumphguy]

I sympathise a lot with what you say, but add these points:

Most of Provisional IRA are now stood down, although dissident groups still practise terror.

The RUC no longer exists and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, which replaced it, has made serious attempts to recruit from both communities. Mind you, that didn’t stop a dissident republican group from murdering Constable Ronan Kerr, a Catholic, with a car bomb.

Paisley was indeed a nasty piece of work but he did in the end agree to enter a power-sharing administration with the equally unpleasant McGuinness of Sinn Fein. Paisley has since retired, but the power-sharing executive is still alive, and is our best hope at present.

Thanks for the update, I’ve been out of the country 20 years.

My claim to some kind of understanding of this situation (apart from having a mixed Catholic Irish/Protestant Orange background) is that I missed an IRA bomb once, in Manchester, by 20 minutes. Yes, really!

I was quite upset and took it personally. At that time I was a 17 year old and quite pro IRA. (Don’t ask me why - probably because my frontal lobes hadn’t developed yet.)

 

[Picky_Picky]

That’s because Northern Ireland isn’t British.

It’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK. It is not part of Britain.

Northern Ireland is er … the northern part of Ireland.

Well, to be fair, British is the usual adjective applied to things UKish, just as American is equally inaccurately applied to things USish.

I was quite upset and took it personally. At that time I was a 17 year old and quite pro IRA. (Don’t ask me why - probably because my frontal lobes hadn’t developed yet.)

Yes, I was thinking just the other day of the number of my friends and relatives who have been yards or seconds away from bombs of the IRA or Islamist-nutters varieties. This terrorism stuff is very bad manners, don’t you think?

 

[triumphguy]

Well, to be fair, British is the usual adjective applied to things UKish, just as American is equally inaccurately applied to things USish.

Yes, I was thinking just the other day of the number of my friends and relatives who have been yards or seconds away from bombs of the IRA or Islamist-nutters varieties. This terrorism stuff is very bad manners, don’t you think?

Absolutely - I was quite dischuffed I can tell you

 

[Nine_Two]

That’s because Northern Ireland isn’t British.

It’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is part of the UK. It is not part of Britain.

Northern Ireland is er … the northern part of Ireland.

British is the Demonym for the United Kingdom, even if not all the territory is part of Great Britain.

 

[andrewstx]

I agree. I think that the Orange should have never came and the English should have left four hundred years age.

:harp::knight2::irish1::shamrock2:

With that I agree, but they weren’t really English. They were Scots. That is where the term ScotsIrish comes from.

The English were mostly Anglican, but the Scots are mostly Presbyterian.

Ian Paisley is a ScotsIrish Presbyterian preacher.

 

[Bergon]

I’m not Northern Irish but I worked with a lady from a Northern Irish Presbyterian family. She told me that both sides are raised from the cradle to hate each other. I believe it will take several generations to bring the Catholics and Protestants closer together in peaceful co-existence. Instead of both sides arguing for staying in the UK or joining the Irish Republic they ought to put it to a referendum and let the people decide. I know that not everyone in Northern Ireland is a partisan bigot. I remember being on a training course with a lady from Belfast who at one point was in tears because she was ashamed of her fellow countrymen for the way they behave to each other. It seems to me that neither side is worthy of the name Christian - their behaviour is certainly not Christian.

 

[Picky_Picky]

I’m not Northern Irish but I worked with a lady from a Northern Irish Presbyterian family. She told me that both sides are raised from the cradle to hate each other. I believe it will take several generations to bring the Catholics and Protestants closer together in peaceful co-existence. Instead of both sides arguing for staying in the UK or joining the Irish Republic they ought to put it to a referendum and let the people decide. I know that not everyone in Northern Ireland is a partisan bigot. I remember being on a training course with a lady from Belfast who at one point was in tears because she was ashamed of her fellow countrymen for the way they behave to each other. It seems to me that neither side is worthy of the name Christian - their behaviour is certainly not Christian.

Yes, but it was put to a referendum.

 

[Picky_Picky]

With that I agree, but they weren’t really English. They were Scots. That is where the term ScotsIrish comes from.

The English were mostly Anglican, but the Scots are mostly Presbyterian.

Ian Paisley is a ScotsIrish Presbyterian preacher.

That’s true as far as it goes, and I’m pleased to see the Scots members of my family taking their fair share of the blame, but I don’t really think we English can escape their share, too.

 

[dandy1822]

are they really a christian organisation or just trouble organisations. what a job those police
have there. they should hand out much stiffer punishments for these offenders or do they
really care there about going to prison. i think both sides should learn to have respect for
each other.

 

[triumphguy]

It’s tribal warfare and ethnic hatred of the most visceral kind.

And truth be told each side is a mirror of the other.

The Catholics were oppressed and dispossessed.
The Protestants were kicked off their land in Scotland by the enclosure act, drifted to the cities and were enticed/coerced to go to Ireland to work in industry.

Both the Scots and the Irish are Celtic.

The Catholics were despised by the English.
These same Protestants were despised by the English.

The Catholics were working class.
The Protestants were working class.

Both the Scots and the Irish love a fight.

There is far more in common than not.

This is a prime case of mimetic rivalry.

auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/01/05/mimetic-desire-and-the-scapegoat-mechanism-perception-warfare-p-9/

 

[Bergon]

Yes, but it was put to a referendum.

When did the referendum take place? What was the outcome of it?

 

[triumphguy]

When did the referendum take place? What was the outcome of it?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Ireland_Good_Friday_Agreement_referendum,_1998

 

[Slaney]

There should be a cap on marching, not a marching season, Catholics have very few marches, St Patrick’s being one of them, the republicans occasionally have them.

A lot of them are bigots, tell them were you don’t want them to march and they’re bound to make a dirt trail over it.

50 plus years of looking at this and it’s got slightly boring, same old, same old.

 

[Picky_Picky]

There should be a cap on marching, not a marching season, Catholics have very few marches, St Patrick’s being one of them, the republicans occasionally have them.

A lot of them are bigots, tell them were you don’t want them to march and they’re bound to make a dirt trail over it.

50 plus years of looking at this and it’s got slightly boring, same old, same old.

There should be this, there should be that, and I’m sorry if you are bored, poor thing. Nothing is easy in Northern Ireland and you and I can think up simple solutions; the simple solutions don’t work. Don’t you see – the Protestants are the ones who like to march, so any restriction on the right to march is seen as discriminatory (indeed is discriminatory) against Protestants. There is a semi-judicial body in NI called the Parades Commission which has the power to ban or restrict marches to keep the public peace. It was the Parades Commission that restricted this latest march. Result: mayhem. Nothing is easy in Northern Ireland.

 

[Slaney]

There should be this, there should be that, and I’m sorry if you are bored, poor thing.

Yeah since childhood I’ve watched this going on, so it does get a bitt zzzzzzzzz picky picky.

Nothing is easy in Northern Ireland and you and I can think up simple solutions; the simple solutions don’t work. Don’t you see – the Protestants are the ones who like to march, so any restriction on the right to march is seen as discriminatory (indeed is discriminatory) against Protestants.

Oh who are you telling, you must have wrote the book, discrimination works both ways, catholics see it as provocation which it is as can be seen from the violence, 15 to 25 is the age group of the rioters.

There is a semi-judicial body in NI called the Parades Commission which has the power to ban or restrict marches to keep the public peace. It was the Parades Commission that restricted this latest march. Result: mayhem. Nothing is easy in Northern Ireland.

Oh thanks for telling me all that, I didn’t know :bowdown2: they say they are loyalist’s which means being loyal to their queen & country, and then they don’t abide by the parades commission ruling, loyalist when it suits them.

 

[Slaney]

It’s now illegal to fly the British flag outside government buildings in Belfast for most of the year. That is a disgrace.

More rubbing Catholics noses in it, no it’s not a disgrace, the City hall is for everybody, not just so-called loyalists, Some Catholic nationalists are affiliated to the Irish Republic & the Tricolour.

As per the Good Friday agreement I now have an Irish passport which I was able to obtain in the north of Ireland, before we had to go to Dublin, that’s progress for me, I have no intention of getting a UK passport.
There is more than one tradition here now with all the European immigrants, I don’t accept the Union Jack as my flag, it’s the Tricolour, which coincidently means peace between the orange & green, if only !

 

[Picky_Picky]

Yeah since childhood I’ve watched this going on, so it does get a bitt zzzzzzzzz picky picky.

Yeah, me too. 45 years, I guess, the latest episode of this sorry saga.

Oh who are you telling, you must have wrote the book, discrimination works both ways, catholics see it as provocation which it is as can be seen from the violence, 15 to 25 is the age group of the rioters.

Yes, of course it does. Yes, the Catholics see it as provocation, and provoking it certainly is, thus the Catholic attacks on Protestant marchers in previous years, thus the attempt to reduce the provocation, thus the riots. Painful isn’t it?

Oh thanks for telling me all that, I didn’t know :bowdown2: they say they are loyalist’s which means being loyal to their queen & country, and then they don’t abide by the parades commission ruling, loyalist when it suits them.

I agree with that as far as it goes, but it doesn’t carry us very far: it would be as useful to ask why the remaining republican terrorists, if they believe NI should be under the Republic, don’t follow the peaceful path the Republican government wants everyone to follow. It don’t work like that. Nothing is easy in Northern Ireland,

 

[Picky_Picky]

More rubbing Catholics noses in it, no it’s not a disgrace, the City hall is for everybody, not just so-called loyalists, Some Catholic nationalists are affiliated to the Irish Republic & the Tricolour.

As per the Good Friday agreement I now have an Irish passport which I was able to obtain in the north of Ireland, before we had to go to Dublin, that’s progress for me, I have no intention of getting a UK passport.
There is more than one tradition here now with all the European immigrants, I don’t accept the Union Jack as my flag, it’s the Tricolour, which coincidently means peace between the orange & green, if only !

If you think flying the nation’s flag on the town hall is rubbing Catholics’ noses in it (given the terms of the GF agreement, approved by vast majorities throughout the island of Ireland) you are not trying to be very balanced. Equally, of course, if those Unionist teenage thugs thought the Alliance compromise on that silly flags issue entitled them to run riot, they need thoroughly, and preferably painfully, re-educating. Nothing is easy in Northern Ireand.