Jenny McCartney Jenny McCartney

Put out the fires

<div> <div id="x_divtagdefaultwrapper" dir="ltr"> Ulster's newly influential Unionists must face down paramilitary flags, fires and casual glorification of violence. </div> </div>

Few events have appalled London liberals so publicly as the surprise emergence of the ten MPs of the Democratic Unionist Party as a force in UK politics. The metropolitan horror has been given full expression in the Twitter railing against ‘misogynist dinosaur homophobes’ and the press caricatures of DUP politicians as overfed, bowler-hatted Orangemen slyly looting government cash. Words such as ‘vile’ and ‘disgusting’ are flung around exultantly, as all nuance is shed. And beneath this lies an unspoken, potent little thrill: how wonderful, finally, to have a bunch of people whom one can openly despise.

I fear that thrill is going to intensify very soon, when images trickle in from the imminent Twelfth of July celebrations, for which energetic loyalists are even now putting the finishing touches to their towering unlit bonfires. The Twelfth is the traditional date upon which members of the Protestant Orange Order parade through the streets and lanes of Northern Ireland, accompanied by skirling pipe music and the deep boom of the Lambeg drum. They do so in celebration of the Protestant King William III’s victory over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 (it is one of history’s little ironies that Pope Alexander VIII was firmly on the Williamite side).

This annual display has long proved mystifying and challenging for English onlookers, for whom Northern Ireland Protestants are the least fashionable Celtic minority, and even less so when in parading mode. In recent years, however, the rites of the Twelfth have been widely ignored. Given the fresh alliances in Westminster and their irresistible opportunities for point-scoring, that will not be the case this year.

Many years ago, when first writing about the Twelfth, I used to explain to my London friends that it was not as bonkers as it seemed to them: in most places the parades were peaceful and an excuse for a family day out.

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