‘Heart, Pocket and Hand’: Unionist Politics and the Orange Order

Abstract

The Orange Order in the far north of England was too small and weak to exercise any obvious political influence. Their narrow proletarian base dictated that, unlike their nationalist counterparts, Orange lodges would never run dedicated candidates for general elections. The men and women who belonged to the Order, however committed they might be, were too weak to present the sort of united face that saw the Liverpool Irish return T. P. O'Connor to the Liverpool Scotland Road division for more than forty years (1885–1929). Yet for the ordinary Orange lodge member, in Auckland, New Zealand, or Bishop Auckland, County Durham, the object of the movement was power. Whether the issue was control of schools, the right to hold parades, or the political future of Ireland, Orangemen were opposed to equality for Catholics, particularly those in Ireland, seeking to prevent the followers of what they viewed as an alien faith from achieving a foothold in society. This stretched beyond anti- Catholic rhetoric into daily life and the politics that underpinned it. Catholics and others were left in no doubt that this was an important side of the Orange ideal. At the same time, somewhat paradoxically, we can see similarities in the polar opposites of the Orange and nationalist positions. For the two sides of Irish sectarianism existed partly as a negative reflection of the other. We should not overdraw any such notions of similarity, for Orangeism was also quite different from the various nationalist organisations it stood against. For one thing, nationalist groups developed (and continued to exist) as a direct response to British rule in Ireland and the Act of Union. Orangeism, on the other hand, was a secretive, convivial (if sectarian) friendly style organisation in existence long before the politics of Home Rule took the shape that they did. Its roots were clearly political, but its subsequent historical development ensured that party politics would be only one of its many dimensions. Orangemen allowed their political agenda to be shaped and sharpened by Home Rule; but politics did not eclipse the club-centred daily realities of the Order. Irish politics was only rarely the centrepiece of their meetings. Most of what they did concerned the procedures of a highly formal organisation dedicated to a peculiarly religious world-view.