The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions

If you sit in a lodge meeting and the eighty-nine-year-old speaks, everybody’s quiet and gives him respect and listens. And that isn’t happening generally in society. They tend to separate the young, the middle-aged and the old – even the churches tend to separate them. I think that’s very important.

JOYCE: I was away for a long time and when I came home, because I was now living in a middle-class area, I took this way of reconnecting with the working-class district where I was brought up. An Orange Lodge gave me the chance to show my loyalty to my country and my religion and to be involved socially with my own people.

MICHAEL: I was a bit of a thug when I joined. It was just after the murder of the Scottish soldiers, and I walked round Sheffield with a Rangers scarf tied round me head, a leather jacket and lots of Red Hand badges on the front ready to attack anyone who sounded like a Fenian.

All I’d got culturally was that I was a Prod and we were under attack and we were all supporting each other. So I joined the Orange Order without much of an intellectual agenda. But because I came under the influence of the prayers and the Bible at lodge meetings it reminded me of what I had had as a younger boy. It gave a context for our actions. So I abandoned the physical force idea and started to think more constructively. And the Order did that for me. It did that for a lot of people. It was a restraint on people. This is the Bible. This is your faith. It reminds you that you can’t act in a manner that is inconsistent with the basic principles. You actually think about that.

ALF: I just had an interest in the Orange Order. I thought it was a good institution. There was a lot of brotherly friendship. And you met people in different places and if you were an Orangeman, you were welcome. And I just had a liking to join the Orange Order, because there’s no doubt about it, lived up to, it’s a good institution. There’s no getting away from that.

To Alf, who was ninety when I met him and who had been a member of his lodge for seventy-two years, his involvement with the Orange Order was a matter of the greatest pride. Early in our conversation he pulled out a copy of its Laws and Ordinances and read to me, his voice trembling with emotion:

Basis of the institution: The institution is composed of Protestants, united and resolved to the utmost of their power to support and defend the rightful Sovereign, the Protestant religion, the Laws of the Realm, and the Succession to the Throne in the House of Windsor, BEING PROTESTANT and united further for the defence of their own Persons and Properties, and the maintenance of the Public Peace. It is exclusively an Association of those who are attached to the religion of the Reformation, and will not admit into its brotherhood persons whom an intolerant spirit leads to persecute, injure or upbraid any man on account of his religious opinions. They associate also in honour of KING WILLIAM III, Prince of Orange, whose name they bear, as supporters of his glorious memory.

Alf is one of many Orangemen who cannot see how anyone could find such a statement objectionable; the principle of religious tolerance is for them an imperative. Over and over again people like him spoke to me of the importance of respect for those of different religious persuasions. They talk a lot of ‘decent’ Roman Catholics, by which they mean those who want to live at peace and will not be taking potshots at Protestants from behind hedges, throwing stones at their parades or voting for those who want to drive them off what they would describe as ‘the Queen’s highway’, or force them into a United Ireland.

How they join

The etiquette is that you are asked, though obviously you can intimate to an Orangeman that you would like to join his lodge. Your name will be proposed and seconded and there will be a vote: maybe about 10 per cent of people are excluded at that stage. Then, in theory at least, you are vetted: ‘There’s supposed to be a committee in each lodge which should actually check the qualifications and the type of character of a candidate,’ said Martin Smyth, retired Grand Master. ‘I was reading the minutes of my lodge about three years ago and I discovered that when I was proposed, a member of the lodge said: “There’s no need to have a censoring committee on this candidate.” And another brother got up and said this candidate should be treated like everyone else and proposed a censoring committee. That brother was my father. It reflects the type of man he was and perhaps reflects me too. Because I believe that things should be done decently and in order and show no favouritism. And whoever it is be treated equally.’

The 1997 recruitment leaflet puts it succinctly: ‘If you are a practising Protestant in the truly religious sense; regularly at your place of worship, morally upright in your life, and if you display a tolerant spirit towards those with whom you may disagree, then you will be welcome within the Orange instititution.’ Tolerance goes only so far, though. So frightened is the Irish Orange Order still of the wiles of the Church of Rome that it is afraid of converts. There is an unspoken fear that they might be Romish (or, worse, Fenian) Trojan horses. It is therefore difficult, though not impossible, for them to join.

Anyone wishing to join the Orange Order will be told of ‘The Qualifications of an Orangeman’, to which he is expected to live up. ‘The qualifications show what the commission is – what’s expected of people,’ said another Orangeman. ‘And people fall short of what’s expected. They fall short of what’s expected from their respective churches too, but it doesn’t mean to say the whole church is entirely wrong because of that. And the same applies to the Orange institution.’ He was another veteran, and he was as proud as Alf of the principles and language of ‘The Qualifications’ which are crucial to an understanding of the fundamental principles of Orangeism. Recently they were published with an illuminating commentary from the Chaplains’ Committee of the Grand Orange Lodge for study in lodges. I have included here in italics and in brackets a section from the commentary on each part of ‘The Qualifications’. Although rather long and indigestible for those unused to reading scripture, it is worth making the effort to read the whole passage.

An Orangeman should have a sincere love and veneration for his Heavenly Father (To fear God is to treat Him with reverence and respect … The Orangeman ‘should never take the Name of God in vain’* because to do so is to despise His Most Holy Majesty … God is Sovereign and God is Saviour … We recognize God’s Royal Rule and we rest on God’s redeeming work): an humble and steadfast faith in Jesus Christ (As Orangemen we stand by the Gospel. ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved’ … Payments and Penances are not required. Christ has paid all His people’s debt … But doctrine implies duty. Brethren, let it be our care to exercise the faith we proclaim and to prove our profession by the deeds of a godly life)., the Saviour of mankind, believing in Him as the only Mediator between God and man’. (The one all-perfect Mediator excludes all others. No one else, not even his own blessed mother, can fulfil the work which He reserves to Himself) He should cultivate truth and justice, brotherly kindness and charity, devotion and piety, concord and unity, and obedience to the laws; his deportment should be gentle and compassionate, kind and courteous (Loving God, we are to love our neighbour also … The virtues of truth, justice, kindness and charity are only visible when we put them into practice), he should seek the society of the virtuous, and avoid that of the evil (We are of course but sinners saved, and we will seek the welfare of every fellow-sinner. But to share their vice would shame us and harden them. From such we turn away); he should honour and diligently study the Holy Scriptures, and make them the rule of his faith and practice (The Bible is our only infallible rule of faith and practice. To them we bow and place no mere tradition of men beside them. They are our guidelines for godly living. Their daily study is the secret of our strength.), he should love, uphold, and defend the Protestant religion, and sincerely desire and endeavour to propagate its doctrines and precepts (A ‘Protestant’ is one who ‘protests for’ the Evangelical Doctrine. Such was the meaning given to the word by the first Reformers. The common faith they taught is the religion we are pledged to uphold and defend. An Orangeman stands for the great truths re-discovered at the Glorious Reformation. That ‘Christ alone’ is our only sacrifice, that it is through ‘Grace alone’ that we can experience salvation, that justification can be received through ‘Faith alone’, and that the ‘Bible’ alone, is our only rule); he should strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act or ceremony of Popish Worship; he should, by all lawful means, resist the ascendancy of that Church, its encroachments and the extension of its power, ever abstaining from all uncharitable words, actions, or sentiment towards Roman Catholics (Our Order and the Word of God prescribe a double duty to us. We are to speak the truth, and we are to speak it in love … Truth demands that we expose and refute the peculiar errors of the Church of Rome. Love requires that we do this in a manner which honours our Saviour. Above all we proclaim that Redemption is complete. No priestly ritual can add to the work of Christ … We refuse all communion with the errors of Rome nor can we share in her forms of worship. And we do all this for love of truth, and love of souls); he should remember to keep holy the Sabbath day, and attend the public worship of God, and diligently train up his offspring, and all under his control, in the fear of God, and in the Protestant faith (While every day is His by right He has appointed one day in seven for His special service … The Sabbath should be our delight. Not gloom but gladness should mark its tone … our children should know that it is a glad thing to go to the house of God); he should never take the name of God in vain, but abstain from all cursing and profane language, and use every opportunity of discouraging those, and all other sinful practices, in others; his conduct should be guided by wisdom and prudence, and marked by honesty, temperance, and sobriety; the glory of God and the welfare of man [should be the motives of his actions] (An Orangeman is to bear witness to the truth among his neighbours day by day. We claim to reverence God. How can we blaspheme His name? … As those who will answer to Him from whom nothing is hidden we must show by our speech and convince by our characters that we are sincere servants of the Most High), the honour of his Sovereign, and the good of his country, should be the motives of his actions. (Every Orangeman is called to be a loyal citizen of the country which gives him shelter* As a good citizen he will be obedient to the laws of the land, his higher obligations to God never being forgotten. All evil conspiracy and rebellion are forbidden by our faith. If tyranny indeed may be resisted, as our history attests, no private individual has any right to break the law for his own advantage … Law-abiding loyalty to Queen and Contitution will be the hall-mark of all our public work as citizens and in good times and bad the Orangeman will be steady. This is our duty to our country. It is also our duty to God.)

Orangemen admit that some lodges are neglectful on the vetting front and that unsavoury people get in. But the democratic nature of the organization is such that nothing can be done about this. There is no way as things stand to stop a lodge with a weak or pliable Worshipful Master being taken over by undesirables, who in turn recruit more undesirables. Jim Guiney, murdered in January 1998, was a paramilitary commander as well as the Worshipful Master of his lodge.

In normal circumstances, there are checks and balances. First, the vetting – which at the very least is supposed to ensure that anyone joining is ‘good, decent, law-abiding, of good character and attends church’. Then there is the election procedure, which allows for black-balling. Then sponsors are appointed to prepare the candidate for his initiation, which involves learning by rote some simple responses to questions and is intended to impress upon candidates the seriousness of what they are about to become involved in.

‘I was very surprised at how religiously-based it was,’ observed one newcomer. That is a common response, for where the Orange Order is concerned, fiction is almost always stranger than fact. ‘And it’s much more pedestrian than candidates expect,’ said an old hand. ‘That’s part of its charm.’

How they are initiated

On the 12th of July in the year ‘89,

I first took the notion this Order to join;

Then up to the Lodge Room and there I did go,

And what I got there you will very soon know.

CHORUS: On the goat, on the goat, To get in the Order you ride on the goat.

And when I arrived there I knocked on the door;

There’s one they call Master who stood on the floor;

Come in and sit down you are welcome sez he,

But a goat in the corner kept lookin’ at me.

CHORUS

Then the goat was brought forward, that I might get on,

After I mounted they bid him begone;

Through the Lodge window the goat he did go, Through bogs and wild mountains and where I don’t know.

CHORUS

Then after a long and wearisome chase,

The goat he arrived in the very same place,

Approaching the Lodge Room I heard them all sing

Success to the member that made the house ring.

‘The Ride on the Goat’

As Orangemen frequently and plaintively point out, the organization is not a secret society but a society with secrets, and very few of them at that. How can an organization be secret, they ask, when its members parade openly in groups with banners declaring where they are from and what they stand for. ‘The only secrets the Orange has are related to its ritual,’ said an Orangeman. ‘There has to be something mysterious to make you want to join and find out. That’s what creates the male bonding. The fact that we know what the ladder stands for on our sash may not be earth-shattering, but it matters to us.’ His father is in the same lodge; his mother refers to what they do in the lodge as ‘playing silly buggers’. They don’t take offence. ‘Sure, it’s childish. That’s why we don’t want to do these things in public. It’s not because they’re bad, but because they’re stupid.’

I know from private and public sources the details of Orange ceremonies and rituals.* At their worst they are no more stupid than most ceremonials or rituals of guilds or fraternal societies seem to outsiders; they are certainly not sinister. Ritual accounts for less than 1 per cent of what goes on at an Orange Lodge – infinitesimal compared to what goes on among Freemasons. The most exciting event is an initiation, and mischievous brethren enjoy winding-up potential candidates by making mysterious references to ‘riding the goat’ (which is, in fact, a backwards acronym for ‘the ark of God’†) and hinting darkly at stringent tests of courage. There are physical aspects to the initiation (the travel) which involve a blindfolded candidate having to face certain tests and travails inspired by a biblical story; in tough urban areas, especially in England and Scotland, these might be occasionally on the exuberant side, but in general the experience is rather tame. ‘The initiation is a bit amusing,’ one young man remarked, ‘but when you come home you think it’s a bit silly.’ A less blasé brother describes the ceremony as ‘a heady mixture of folk memory, rural Ulster Protestant tradition and ancient ritual’, which is for many ‘a moving experience, a rite of passage from boy to manhood, the admission to an historic brotherhood bonded by centuries of blood, fire and persecution and a spiritual experience couched in terms of the language of the deliverance and pilgrimage of the children of Israel’.*

The written-down part of the initiation involves the sponsors leading the candidate into the Lodge Room, where the Worshipful Master reads out in full the qualifications of an Orangeman and establishes that the candidate assents to these and is seeking admission to the Orange institution of his own free will. The lodge members agree to his initiation, the chaplain says a prayer and the Worshipful Master then asks the candidate at considerable length if, inter alia, he promises allegiance to the sovereign, her successors and the constitution; assistance to the civil authorities when called upon; fidelity to brother Orangemen ‘in all just actions’; and a vow of silence about lodge proceedings to any but a brother Orangeman. There are the promises about religion and secret societies.

‘I don’t think there’s anything in there that would be offensive towards your Roman Catholic friends,’ said a senior Orangeman who was telling me about the ceremony. He then went on to read out one request of the Worshipful Master:

Do you promise, before this Lodge, to give no countenance, by your presence or otherwise, to the unscriptural, superstitious, and idolatrous worship of the Church of Rome? And do you also promise never to marry a Roman Catholic, never to stand sponsor for a child when receiving baptism from a priest of Rome, or allow a Roman Catholic to stand sponsor for your child at baptism? And do you further promise to resist, by all lawful means, the ascendancy, extension, and encroachments of that Church; at the same time being careful always to abstain from all unkind words and actions towards its members, yea, even prayerfully and diligently, as opportunity occurs, to use your best efforts to deliver them from error and false doctrine, and lead them to the truth of the Holy Word, which is able to make them wise unto salvation?

All that Orangemen can see or hear when they read such words are the injunctions to behave properly towards Roman Catholics. They are genuinely baffled that outsiders find such rules and language bigoted.* Perhaps the reason I have never taken offence is that I was brought up in the Republic of Ireland under the authoritarian and intolerant Irish Catholic Church and understand something of their traditional fears. Also, by the time I began to read the rules and regulations I had developed a great admiration and affection for many Orangemen.

‘As far as the Orange Order’s concerned,’ said an aged Worshipful Master to me, ‘it’s not a bigoted order. It’s a religious order, there to protect the religious beliefs of the Protestant people. In the very opening prayer you pray for your Roman Catholic brethren. I don’t dictate to the Roman Catholic man where he should go to church; I’m as happy with him going to his own as he is to mine. I’ll not condemn any man’s religion – except Paisley, for he’s divided everybody.

‘To me the Orange is a family and if a man would live to the qualifications of the Orangeman and to what he’s taught inside the four walls of an Orange hall, he would be fit to live a good life.’

Where lodge meetings are held

All over Ulster in villages and in the middle of nowhere there are little Orange Halls built of wood or brick, often with galvanized tin roofs. In Dromore, for instance, Orangemen used to meet in an old army hut that was a rapidly decaying tin shack on wooden stilts. Ulster Protestants are frugal people and the prospect of raising enough money to buy a site and erect a hall was daunting. Alf, the Worshipful Master, decided on drastic action. ‘I said this night, at a lodge meeting: “We must have a hall of our own. I’ll supply the material and I’ll pay the contractor and I’ll get paid some time.” The secretary came in the next morning and he said to me – the only time he ever give me any praise – he says: “Churchill the Second.”’

It took some time to find and buy the right site, and then they built a hall with a stage, which seated about three hundred so it could be used for socials and dances as well as band-practice. It was opened in 1953 in September; in December the north wall of the church collapsed and the church service was held in the hall for three years. Socials ended about twenty years ago; nowadays the hall is a venue for the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme. In the fullness of time, the brethren repaid Alf; building that hall is an achievement which even forty years later he felt was a highlight of his life.

Most halls have been built mostly through jumble sales and sales of work and other unremitting labour by the ladies. Most would be smaller than Alf’s, though large enough to host the dances and conversazioni and teas that made Orange Halls important community centres until the advent of television and other major distractions. The furnishings are of the plainest: mostly wooden benches and trestle tables and the most spartan of spartan fixtures and fittings. There will always be a picture of the Queen and usually some representation of King Billy, and the lodge banner will be displayed on festive occasions.

In towns, the buildings are larger, since they often have to accommodate district or county functions, but austerity remains the norm. Brownlow House, the headquarters of the Royal Black Institution (Orange and Black men often share accommodation), was a fine house until it was torched, though it too was plainly furnished. The two-storey hall at Scarva is as luxurious as it gets, with the stained-glass window featuring King Billy, a spacious assembly-room and portraits and prints of Orange significance.

A 1960s building, the tall, narrow Orange HQ at 65 Dublin Road, Belfast, sets the tone for the whole organization. There are a few adornments, including a portrait of the Reverend Martin Smyth, ??, Grand Master for a quarter of a century, and some William-related pictures. A small room contains an interesting hotch-potch of archives, books and memorabilia, but for the most part the building consists of spartan offices.*

What happens at lodge meetings

Although the ritual and ceremonies in every Irish lodge are the same, the ambience and emphasis and what happens afterwards depend on where and who you are. I once sat in on a conversation between two Orangemen, one from Belfast and one from rural Tyrone, each of whom was amazed by the other’s revelations about his lodge. The Belfast Orangeman reckoned that although all his brethren were believing Protestants, 90 per cent of his lodge hadn’t been to church in years except for Orange services; he would expect churchgoers to join one of the lodges for committed, evangelical born-again Christians. His lodge was almost entirely social – more a drinking-club than anything else – although it kept to the strict rule that alcohol should not be consumed until after the formal meeting is over. Brethren paid about £60 a year in basic dues to cover rates and so on and a levy for Orange widows; any shortfall was made up by a night at the races or a big booze-up.

The brethren of the rural Orangeman’s lodge were Calvinist or Free Presbyterians and 90 per cent would go to church every Sunday. Like most Orange lodges, his was strictly teetotal. The dues were £12 a year and the difference had to be made up by jumble sales; even raffle tickets were not allowed.

For geographical reasons, rural lodges are more likely than urban to be socially mixed. These days very few of the gentry or the better-off would attend lodge meetings, though one of the exceptions is Eldon Lodge in Belfast: ‘It’s the toffs’ lodge,’ said my urban friend, ‘for the great and the good; the one Stormont Cabinet ministers traditionally would have been members of. Today it has people like Josias Cunningham [Ulster Unionist Party president] or John Taylor [UUP deputy leader], who never goes but needs to have a sash available if required.