London Observer
14 July 2002

In League with the Devil
By Henry McDonald

P.J. O'Rourke came to a startling conclusion after leaving a born-
again Christian theme park he visited in 1987: the Christians running
the multimillion-dollar racket were actually in league with the
Devil.

So appalled was he by the poor taste, the bad food, the tacky gifts
and the swelling mass of humungous backsides (both male and female)
on offer at Heritage USA that the libertarian satirist could find no
other reason for the existence of the 2,300-acre site.

The disgraced televangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker just had to be, in
O'Rourke's words 'working for the other side', ie they were agents of
Satan.

O'Rourke and his then partner were so repelled by what they
encountered at Heritage USA - Christian rap that was actually worse
than real rap, Devotion Ducks and Swords of Truth, born-again diet
plans and so on - that they immediately converted to Satanism.

Observing the Orange Order's antics as they tried to squirm free from
the embarrassment of Drumcree last weekend, the only rational
explanation for this behaviour was the same as O'Rourke's. The
Orangemen are also 'working for the other side', in this case for the
loyalist's temporal version of Beelzebub - the republican movement.

Some of their members dropped boulders on police officers' feet in
defence of civil and religious liberty. They spat in the faces of men
and women they vowed not so long ago to 'save' (save the RUC that
is). Under Union flags, some of which displayed the Queen's face in
the centre, they hurled bricks, bottles, beer cans and fireworks at
the Queen's Army.

And then, when it was all over, when troops and police had to clear
away the half-eaten BSE burgers, the squished chips and the crushed
cans of Tennants Super along with the usual riot debris, the Orange
leadership tried to distance itself again from the disgrace Orangemen
had brought into church grounds.

The confrontation may have only lasted 10 to 15 minutes but there
were enough images of thuggery and snarling bigotry to fill a short
slot on CNN. Short enough to show up the Orange Order as the bad guys
in the Northern Ireland parades dispute and the nationalist residents
as the goodie-goodies. Game, set and media match once more to Brendan
McKenna and the Garvaghy Road.

Worse still, the Orange rank and file on the front line at Drumcree
Bridge destroyed an unwritten deal between the Orange Order and the
police - a vastly scaled-down security operation in return for a
peaceful, dignified protest. This bad faith played right into
republican hands. If the Orangemen couldn't keep their word with the
police, McKenna and Co argued with some justification, then how could
they be trusted to behave themselves passing by Catholic homes on the
Garvaghy Road?

The Orange Order, in general, has what the public-relations gurus and
spin doctors call an 'image problem'. But maybe this is all
deliberate. Perhaps it is part of some cunning conspiracy to
undermine the entire basis of unionism and at the same time deflect
the republican movement's core from collective reflection.

For certainly the Orange Order's Pavlovian response to every
contentious parade skirting a Catholic area - no talk
with 'republican' residents groups, no dialogue with the Parades
Commission - brings continual relief to the IRA and Sinn Fein
leadership. While they get on with selling out every traditional
republican core value, the republican base's attention can be
diverted down the track of communal confrontation.

The tactical ineptitude at Drumcree is merely one part of a greater
paralysis that has seized up the entire Orange Order, preventing it
from moving or thinking forwards. So removed are the Orangemen from
the rest of the world that they can only lash out in one direction,
in a linear, absolutist path.

Most protestants, it must be stressed, are not even members of the
Orange Order anymore. Law-abiding and thinking Orangemen are
deserting the institution in their droves. Yet all that does not
matter. Because there is only one beneficiary from the Orange Order's
refusal to enter into talks either with the Parades Commission or
nationalist residents - the Sinn Fein/IRA leadership.

Like O'Rourke's mock conversion to Satan's cause, the Orange Order's
obstinacy has driven more Catholics into the Shinners' arms.
Moreover, it has helped distract the Provo base from pondering on the
seismic shift from armed struggle to sitting comfortably in Stormont.
Parades disputes and other distractions such as decommissioning mean
there is no time for republican introspection, no space for focusing
on the immoral futility of 'the struggle'.

In these circumstances, the Orange Order must be, they have to be,
they can only be 'working for the other side'. That or they are
simply totally and utterly stupid. But come on now, that is
stretching it a bit.

Isn't it?

END