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COMMENT: Violence on the Twelfth – Treat the cause, not the symptoms
The Orange Order’s Twelfth parades have again been marred by violence. Rioting occurred on Belfast’s Ormeau Road on the twelfth itself and disturbances in the Ardoyne area of North Belfast continued days afterwards. This has rightly been condemned by the police, by Assembly members from both sides of the community, and has been attributed to “dissident republicans” by Sinn Fein. Duncan McCausland, Assistant Chief Constable of the PSNI, has promised that “significant arrests” will be made. Two men, aged sixteen and twenty, have already appeared in court over their involvement in the riots.
BY BEN FINCH
In the Ardoyne area, a policewoman was injured when a block of masonry was thrown from the roof of a shop onto her head. Three officers were shot in the area and petrol and blast bombs were thrown at police. Over eighty officers were injured in the riots and millions of pounds worth of damage done to buildings in the community.
Father Gary Donegan of Holy Cross Church on the Crumlin Road has described the violence as “recreational rioting” and likened it to a theme park due to the age of many involved. It has been claimed that there were some rioters as young as eight years old involved in the disturbances.
So far, most attention has focused on the violence and consequences of the trouble. Very little has been paid to the underlying cause. If at all, it has been decried as dissident republicans hoping to scupper the peace process. Without making excuses for any of those taking part in the riots, if the Orange Order had been told they were not to pass through such areas as the Ardoyne by the Parades Commission, chances are that the high level of violence witnessed would not have happened. For years Orange parades have caused widespread rioting by both sides of the community, often in areas not directly affected by the marching. In any other part of the UK marches such as this would be treated as incitement to religious violence.
Plenty of comments made by students, over Facebook or otherwise, have been made along the lines of “If rioters want to throw petrol bombs and fire a few rounds of a shotgun at the police then the police should be allowed to fire a few rounds or a few petrol bombs back. See if they like it…Get off the streets, stop sponging off the government you don’t even recognise and get a job”. Again, this simply focuses on the effects, ignoring the current difficulty of finding and maintaining work, especially for those brought up in under-privileged areas, where young people are less likely to engage in education, thus seriously reducing their chances of gaining qualifications. A lack of engagement with education does not reflect a lack of desire to work. Also, similar comments do not take into consideration the fact that similar acts of violence and the blatant entrenchment of views were among the major reasons why Northern Ireland needed a peace process in the first place.
Comments such as these may represent a large part of the unionist community in Northern Ireland, but not everyone feels the same way. I have been speaking to students who have said that if the protests were peaceful then they’d join them, and others who have called for the outright banning of the Orange Order. These people did not want to be named. This is the crux of the matter. While the violence may be organised by dissident republicans taking advantage of ill-informed youths, the opportunity was handed to them by the Orange Order marching through areas where, as they very well know, they are not at all welcome.
Trouble also occurred in other areas during the twelfth; cars were set alight in Armagh, in Lurgan the Dublin-bound Enterprise suffered an attempted hijack and police officers were attacked in the Bogside area of Derry. All such incidents occurred in specific areas where parades did not take place. Such acts of violence can only be tenuously linked to the marches and should be condemned as Orange Lodges in these areas respectfully diverted their parades away from hostile areas. This approach needs to be followed in the few places where twelfth celebrations are still contentious.
It is constantly hammered into those studying medicine to treat the underlying cause of an illness rather than the symptoms, otherwise the treatment has no effect. Civil disobedience and uncivil disruption happens for a reason, not for the sake of it. Now that the disturbances have ended and a relatively stable situation has at last developed in the Ardoyne area, rather than concentrating solely on the violence, the cause of the riots needs to be examined and dealt with by both sides.
Tags: Ben Finch, Gown, newspaper, Queen's, queen's university, student, students, su, The Gown, Twelfth
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 at 12:32 am and is filed under News, Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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‘myself at 16′ i have been trying to put forward the pro orange side and not just lash out wildly as other respondents are doing, i think achara above makes good points to answer your questions. first the benefits of membership, back in 1795 when first founded the main benefit of membership was the social aspect and the chance to travel and meet friends back in the pre tv days and the other option was sitting by the fire with the wife, indeed the social side is for many still the main attraction as the 12th is the only time during a year that folk will see each other, particulary the rural areas that barely register with belfast folk, there is the religious aspect, not mentioned really by anyone here and granted taken more serioulsy by some lodges than others but fact is even if the ‘followers’ of the order and people who show up at events have no religious persuasion thats not the orders fault and the anti social elements are not welcome in lodges, fact is lodge meetings by constitution have to include a bible reading and thats no bad thing by me, 12th celebrations include speeches from the platform which this year at lurgan 12th were on faith loyalty and a motion of thanks, if oo events can expose the word of god to someone not familiar with it then great, and as mentioned before the vast majority, over 97 percent, of oo walks are to church and back along a traditional route not picked because catholics live there and wont like it, orangemen were walking the garvaghy road in portadown in 1810 literally hundreds of years before catholics became the main denomination represented there. on the orange sash or collarette if you bother to look you will likely see among other symbols an open bible, a star of david or jacobs ladder, the steps taken to represent faith hope and charity. the history is another benefit, the fact that the glorious revolution was perhaps the key event in shaping the modern day blue print for constitutional democracies worldwide, and also the civil and religious liberties for all which was in fact a phrase used in the declaration at the easter rising and the notion becoming the backbone of society in britain and gradually across the world since the battle of the boyne, also back in the days when the oo was recently formed it was common practice for events in which different guilds would take part in parades around towns such as carpenters and smiths, generally to coincide with the particular saints day on which they occured, small scale events such as saint clements day celebration in devon for blacksmiths tske place but are no match for the 12th in terms of numbers present, it is only the oo which has lasted so long, the best comparision i can think of is the cheese market in arnhem holland which has taken place almost weekly since the 1500′s, and is a major toursit attraction for the town as it goes, history and culture doesnt come easy or quickly, and the cultural side and expression of identity that comes with being part of an organisation is obvious. i think all that feeds into why people see it as a part of their culture, an orange collarette is as much an expression of identity and culture as a hurley bat really. about your accusation of burning imagery that is not in any way a part of the orange order, bonfires are organised by the local community in which they take place, undertaken by 5 or 6 individuals who have always done it and the makeup of those groups personnel changing over the years, thats not to say there is no historical relevance, bonfires and beacons were lit along belfast lough and carrickfergus to guide william iii into ireland on his way to the battle of the boyne, and bonfires were lit up the east coast of ireland to spread the news of victory, personally i dont agree with the burning of imagery on bonfires but the fact is it is not the oo that organises them. hopefully that dispells some of what you believe, ignorance of something naturally breeds hatred of it is a paraphrase of some of orwells works, just to add year on year a greater attempt has been made by the police to prevent unlawful behaviour such as underage drinking, i have seen orange men take drink away from youths and the fact that so many people attend 12th events probably doesnt help police in stamping it all out. to finish i said above ‘at least’ orangefest etc are attempts to attract tourists, not perfect and much criticised but ‘at least’ they are attempts, the oo isnt sitting around being stubborn it is trying to find its place in modern day society and even if thus far it hasnt worked at least applaud the sentiment behind trying to boost tourism in this country, it is trying to make an effort. this argument is all fact based im not anti anyone, i just think its insane to try and brand 4 nights of rioting as the fault of the orange order, it is the fault of the youths who did it, the parents who let them and the social situation in these working class areas that has created these kind of problems for over thirty years, the orange cannot be blamed for what happened in ardoyne, lurgan bogside or anywhere else, fact. here i stand i can do no other!
@ cuchulainn
Thanks for taking the time to make a comprehensive argument but lol it’s “Myself” where’d you get “at 16″ from? You make me sound like a would-be rioter with those 2 words.
2 more things: Don’t presume what I am presuming. You don’t know what I do or do not presume about the OO or anything. I only asked questions that everyone before had asked but had not been answered.
Finally. Full. Stops. Are. Great. They make things easier to read. Bullet Points also work.
Cheeky as always, Myself.
well, there we are, 10 comments from Queen’s students about a new graduate tax proposal and four times that number of comments about the Twelfth and subsequent riots.
What, if anything, does that tell us about Queen’s students priorities?
Robbo,
What, if anything, does this tell us about the impact of our ‘student leaders’?
@Achara,
Folks who “base their predjudice on hearsay, pan nationalist propaganda and biased media reports”, you forgot about personal experience their mo Chara! For a start I would like to point out that I have several friends and neighbours involved with the OO, and by and large, they are respectable, law abiding men, many of whom I would think more of than some of my fellow co-religionists. However, the fact remains, and by all means, catholics have engaged in similar activites, but definatly not to the same extent, that the OO have been instrumental in maintaining the concept of a protestant ascendancy, in terms of land ownership, and employment to a much greater degree than any thing catholics have done. Ihave been subjected to serious sectarian harassment at the behest of members of the OO, coming back from marches, for having the sheer cheek of wearing my County GAA jersey. I have neighbours who were burnt out of their homes in the neighbouring village by some members of the OO for the fact that they were catholic. While this activity is in no way representative of all the membership, it is the activity that forms the impression in the minds of most catholics.
@ Thomas
You seem to mistake “Republicans at Queens are really rattled”, for Republicans, and indeed several neutral commentators, are rather perturbed that the pro Orange contributers are failing to grasp the concept that not every person in the six counties looks towards the OO are a source of cultural inspiration. Every criticism leveled against the OO has been met with the almost predictable, well your lot did this, that or the other. I’ve already stated that the Republican tradition has a dark past, and I’m still waiting on a similar comment about the OO.
Someone give Yer Ma a pint or a medal.
I love Yer Ma.
Ben, how can you say the Orange Order handed the rioters the excuse on a plate?
The reality is as you reported yourself
1. They were recreational rioters.
2. There is never an excuse for rioting.
3.You cannot travel 1.5 hours to be offended (as some rioters from Armagh did).
4. There can be no direct link between OO march, then riots happen.
5.People choose to riot and cause disturbance.
6.The majority of parades pass off peacefully.
Drumcree
Ben doesn’t say the oo handed the rioters an excuse, but an opportunity. It may just be semantics, but I think there’s a big difference, if the oo hadn’t marched through a disputed area then they wouldn’t have happened.
While there is no excuse for rioting there is always a reason, people don’t tear up where they live without one: Paris a few years back, brixton’s white and black riots, Bolton and rushdie, cartoons of Muhammad and much of the Muslim world… A riot is like self harm, a call of ‘look, I’m here, I’m very unhappy and feel no-one listens’
LA and Rodney King
nice post. thanks.
@ Bemused
The OO organises a mass demonstration, to which people come from far and wide to show their support of a parade which goes through an area in which they are not welcome.
Look at the simple scenario, two communities in a standoff. Going by your comment, one of these communities is allowed the support of their wider community, whilst the other is not. That is not fair.
Take another example of this, Drumcree, were all the rioters at Drumcree from Portadown? The simple answer is no, but they wanted to show their support for the Drumcree standoff.
I disagreed with the Orange Order in rioting at Drumcree also.