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Liverpool's Orange Past
In 1909, riots broke out in Liverpool when for weeks, ordinary working class Protestants and Catholics fought each other in the streets. Religious riots were not unusual in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, but the Liverpool riots were by far the most bitter of any city with the exception of Belfast.
Throughout the 19th Century a series of developments had fanned the flames of sectarianism in Britain. The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 was viewed with suspicion by Protestants of all classes, the feeling at that time being that a Catholic could not be a true Englishman whilst holding allegiance to the pope. Followers of the newly founded Oxford Movement, which introduced statues, candles and incense burning within the Church of England were seen as traitors and closet papists by the evangelical wing of Anglicanism. The influx into British cities of Irish people escaping the famine introduced the divisions prevalent in that country to cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool.
In the 1840s, Liverpool was a non-conformist city with a large Welsh population. Ten years later, the population had more than doubled and the religious allegiance of the town became half Catholic and half Protestant. In a television documentary shown just a couple of years ago, Liverpool was described as 'England's last sectarian city'. What makes Liverpool unique and marks it out for this unfortunate label?
Early Days
The Protestant Irish fleeing the famine had brought with them their Orange Lodges. These were men-only affairs and, unlike today's membership, had followers across the social divides. Their Catholic counterparts had the Irish Foresters who also paraded in paramilitary uniforms.
The Orange Order was founded after a violent sectarian fight, known as the Battle of the Diamond, in northern Ireland in 1794 and organised into lodges by one Thomas Wilson, a Freemason of County Tyrone. Orangeism likes to trace it's ancestry to the group of noblemen who met in Exeter Cathedral in 1688 with the purpose of inviting the Dutch king William to take the throne and oust the Catholic king, James. The noblemen took the name Orange Association after the Dutch royal colour, but there is no evidence of the associations' continuance once William became king.
Whilst the Catholic Irish and their descendants supported the Liberal Party, their Protestant counterparts were Tory. The Tories were quick to see the political mileage in playing the Orange card and once the ship building industry moved to the other side of the Mersey in the 1880s, the Tories blamed the resulting unemployment on the Irish Catholics instead of their friends in the industry. This was in the days when time served tradesmen could usually be counted on to vote Tory, and the Tories billed themselves as the party of 'The Church', that church being the Church of England.
So it came to be that Tory appeals to patriotism and religion, features which loomed large in Orangeism, added to a scarcely veiled hatred of the Irish fanned the flames of bigotry. Flames which are only slowly dying out today as poverty stricken Protestant lorded it over poverty stricken Catholic in the knowledge that their monarch, who couldn't have cared less about them anyway, was a member of the same church as they were.
Recent Times
Membership of the Orange Order in Liverpool (its only real stronghold outside of the six counties and Glasgow) has fallen away over the last forty years. Between Easter, which usually occurred around the time of St. George's Day, and Remembrance Day, scarcely a Sunday was not without an Orange parade somewhere in the city. In the fifties and sixties, the big parades such as Whit Monday and the 12th of July could take over an hour for the parade to pass a given point. On the evenings of those parades, the Orangemen and their groupies, fuelled by day long drinking sessions would make life a misery for anyone of either religious affiliation by singing their songs and engaging in brawls with anyone who remonstrated.
These days, the Orange Order is down to a rump of the mostly elderly and the odd (some might say very odd) younger person caught up in his family history and unwilling to accept that the twenty first century is under way. In fact, the Orange Order is not even welcome in many of Liverpool's Protestant churches these days.
Orange Rituals
The Orange Order is a secret society heavily influenced by the Freemasonry from which it sprang. Like Freemasonry, there are three degrees. These are 'The Orange Degree' which is the first degree. The candidate is blindfolded and led around a room containing the assembled members of the particular lodge he has chosen to join. He is requested to kneel and swear an oath of allegience to the crown and give his word that he will not marry a member of The Roman Catholic church or the Greek Orthodox church (assuming he could find one daft enough to have him that is).
'The Purple Degree' is the second degree. The significance of the colour is explained to the candidate. Purple being a combination of the English colour scarlet with the Scottish colour blue. The Orange is explained as combining the scarlet with the old Irish colour of yellow (probably more correctly saffron). There are biblical references throughout and the assembled 'brethren' are attired in their sashes of orange and purple. At such meetings, no member is allowed to be present who does not hold the correct degree.
It is with the third degree, 'The Royal Arch Purple' or the 'Orange and Blue', or sometimes known as 'the Two and a Half', that all sense and reason fly out of the window. The 'Two and a Half' refers to the tribes of Israel which refused to worship the golden calf of the Old Testament. The Orangemen see themselves as being similar to the Old Testament Jews as the chosen people.
An Orangeman will ask a fellow member (in all seriousness) if he has "ridden the goat". This is a way of establishing if that person has taken the third degree. The significance of the 'goat' is a cryptic reference to the initials of The Ark Of God written backwards. It will have become apparent to the reader that the 'goat' is not the only thing which is backward in the weird world of Orangeism. The candidate often has to climb a ladder which signifies Jacob's Ladder as the way to heaven.
The candidate receives the 'five points of fellowship' the five pointed star being prominent on Orange banners, letterheads, jewellery, etc. He stands opposite another member already initiated into the third degree, one foot touching the other, one knee touching, one breast touching, likewise with the hand and forehead. In fact the whole thing is lifted from Freemasonry.
There are handshakes and signs which go with membership of the Orange Order. The most common being right hands clasping with the thumbnail touching the second knuckle of the third finger. The significance being the 'two and a half' fingers. Should a Catholic person enter the company, a member will stroke the lapel of his jacket upwards as if brushing something away. This shows to the initiated that there is someone 'against the grain' among them.
The really keen Orangeman upon completion of the third degree might be asked to join another, more senior order known as the Royal Black Preceptory. Here, he (there are no women members) can partake of a further twelve degrees. And here once again sense and reason are nowhere to be found. In one degree, the blindfolded candidate is told he will receive a drink from a cup not made with man's hands. The cup is the top of a human skull containing water. Such an item would not be difficult to procure in any town containing a university.
He might wish to join the organisation known as the Apprentice Boys of Derry. If so, he would be required to travel to the historic walls of the very town itself as it is only there that he may be properly initiated. There was a cartoon published some years ago showing a small boy watching an Apprentice Boys parade with his mother. "They look old for apprentices, mum" declares the boy. "They're late learners, son", replies the mother.
Such is the strange, dark world of the Orangemen. The ever smaller group of social misfits who see themselves as upholders of queen, country and the Protestant religion. Not that any three would miss them if they were to pass away immediately, or even take up time travel and join the rest of us.
Influence
The influence of Orangeism has cast a shadow over Merseyside life for years. Their Tory voting membership helped keep in power on the city council, a party which did not see fit to clear the last Victorian slum 'court' and 'cellar' dwellings and which were only finally cleared in the early 1970s. They kept in power a party which threw up sub standard housing all over Liverpool and was responsible for splitting extended families and friends all over Merseyside, Lancashire and Cheshire.
They have helped maintain a situation in which a fairly innocuous inquiry such as what school a person went to marks the questioner as being one thing or another and therefore either suitable for employment or not. A timely warning for Blair's vision (if that term is appropriate) of increasing the numbers of 'faith' schools.
However, hope springs eternal and there have been notable occasions when Liverpudlians have set aside their differences and united against the common enemy. During the strikes of 1911 and 1919, religious sectarianism was set aside and in 1911 in particular, the British Army was not concerned which side it opened fire on and police batons showed that everyone has red blood whether the cracked skull belonged to the Orange or the Green. In the 1930s, Mosley's Blackshirts were chased from the streets, the great man himself ending up at a local hospital as the result of a well aimed brick. Rejecting calls from ultra-Protestants to let the fascists hold their meetings, and support for the fascist cause in Spain from some Catholic clergy, ordinary people united to keep fascism off the streets.
In 1997, Royal Mail announced its intention to close the main sorting office in Liverpool. A national demonstration was called and thousands of marchers were led through the city streets by the 'Sons of William' an Orange pipe band. A few months later, the 'James Larkin Republican Flute Band' led a huge march in support of the Dockers' strike. There were no religious sectarian incidents at either demonstration. Perhaps Liverpool is throwing off a regrettable aspect of its past and realising there are bigger and better enemies to take on than the family down the street who are being just as ripped off by the system as they are.
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