Abstract
The development of the Orange Order as a factor in the Ulster problem was coeval with the latter’s emergence as a specifically political issue in the early 1880s. As the Order grew in strength its relationship with the Liberal governments of this period (1880–85 and January–July 1886) became, and remained, problematical. As they have today, Orange processions and demonstrations then had the capacity to occasion civil disorder and to impact dramatically on politics. Despite the considerable differences in the political contexts of the 1880s and our own time, the problems raised for impartial government in the North have a close correspondence. Accordingly, an examination of the parades issue in the 1880s can enhance our understanding of a central and enduring dimension of the Ulster problem.
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Notes
For a useful survey of state-Orange relations up to 1870, see Hereward Senior, ‘The Early Orange Order 1795–1870’ in T.D. Williams (ed.), Secret Societies in Ireland (Dublin and New York, 1973), pp. 36–45. On the Dolly’s Brae incident, in particular,
see Kevin B. Nowlan, The Politics of Repeal: a Study in the Relations between Great Britain and Ireland 1841–1850 (London and Toronto, 1965), p. 228;
D.J. Hickey and J.E. Doherty, A Dictionary of Irish History 1800–1980 (Dublin, 1987), pp. 133–4.
See, for example, R.D. Storch, ‘“Please to Remember the Fifth of November”: Conflict, Solidarity and Public Order in Southern England 1815–1900’ in R.D. Storch (ed.), Popular Culture and Custom in Nineteenth Century England (London, 1982), pp. 71–99.
For a nuanced assessment of Gladstone’s attitude to Ireland and home rule at this time, see J.L. Hammond, Gladstone and the Irish Nation (London, 1938), Chs 8 and 11.
The arrest merely provoked a great increase in agrarian crime. See Paul Bew, Land and the National Question in Ireland 1858–82 (Dublin, 1979).
The Emergency Committee was established by the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland on 3 November 1880 to help the victims of Land League persecution. During the spring and summer of 1881 it had upwards of 300 labourers, chiefly from counties Armagh, Monaghan and Cavan working on boycotted estates and farms in 19 Irish counties. From 1880–85 it spent almost £22,000, of which £3,000 was spent on arms and ammunition (Aiken McClelland, ‘Johnston of Ballykilbeg’, MPhil, New University of Ulster, 1977, pp. 87–8).
W.E. Forster to anonymous correspondent, 14 December 1881 in T. Wemyss Reid, The Life of W.E. Forster (2 vols, London, 1888), ii, 376.
See Joyce Marlow, Captain Boycott and the Irish (London, 1973), pp. 158–73.
Gladstone to Earl Spencer, 27 August 1872 in H.C.G. Matthew (ed.), The Gladstone Diaries, with Cabinet Minutes and Prime Ministerial Correspondence: Vol. VIII, July 1871–December 1874 (Oxford, 1982), pp. 101–2.
Virginia Crossman, Politics, Law and Order in Nineteenth Century Ireland (Dublin, 1996), pp. 100–1.
R.W. Kirkpatrick, ‘The Origins and Development of the Land War in Mid-Ulster 1881–1890’ in F.S.L. Lyons and Richard Hawkins (eds), Ireland Under the Union: Varieties of Tension: Essays in Honour of T.W. Moody (Oxford, 1980), pp. 228–9.
For extensive quotations from nationalist speeches exposing this ‘duplicity’, see Col. Edward Saunderson, Two Irelands: or Loyalty Versus Treason (Dublin, 1884).
Kirkpatrick, pp. 228–33. See also the late Frank Wright’s impressive Two Lands on One Soil: Ulster Politics Before Home Rule (Dublin, 1996), Ch. 13.
R.B. McDowell, The Irish Administration 1801–1914 (London, 1964), pp. 114–15.
See K.T. Hoppen, Elections, Politics and Society in Ireland 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1985), pp. 408–9.
Earl Cowper, p. 491. RMs had the freedom to direct troops — a function of the ‘constitutional ambiguity’ that existed between the army and the police. Thus the ‘army’s role in Ireland turned on the quality of the per formance of the Irish police’. See Elizabeth A. Muenger, The British Military Dilemma in Ireland: Occupation Politics 1886–1914 (Lawrence, Kansas and Dublin, 1991), p. 81.
On the political impact of the win, see Annual Register 1883 (London, 1884), chronicle, pp. 302–4; John Magee, ‘The Monaghan Election and the “Invasion of Ulster”’, Clogher Record, vol. III, no. 2 (1974), pp. 147–66.
The most extensive contemporary coverage of the loyalist reaction to the nationalist ‘invasion’ of the North is provided by J. Wallace Taylor, The Rossmore Incident: an Account of the Various Nationalist and Anti-Nationalist Meetings held in Ulster in the Autumn of 1883 (Dublin, 1884). See also the following issues of the BNL: 24–9 September; 5, 10 October 1883; 1–20 January 1884.
See A.B. Cooke, ‘A Conservative Party Leader in Ulster: Sir Stafford Northcote’s Diary of a Visit to the Province, October 1883’, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. 75, section C, no. 4, pp. 69–71; Andrew Lang, Sir Stafford Northcote: First Earl of Iddesleigh (2 vols, Edinburgh and London, 1890), ii, 252. Nationalist opinion would come to view Northcote’s visit as an originating cause of the Belfast riots of 1886 (Anon. ‘The Riots in Belfast’. Fortnightly Review xl (September 1886) p. 279).
The parliamentary inquiry into the events at Derry found that while the Apprentice Boys were responsible for the violence, the source of the disorder lay with the decision to allow nationalists to use the Hall. See Londonderry Sentinel (LS), 12 February 1884. On legalities which constrained police action, see Spencer to Gladstone, 28 February 1884 in Charles Townshend, Political Violence in Ireland: Government and Resistance Since 1848 (Oxford, 1983), p. 184.
T.D. Sullivan, Troubled Times in Irish Politics (Dublin, 1905), pp. 305–6.
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Longhlin, J. (2000). Parades and Politics: Liberal Governments and the Orange Order, 1880–86. In: Fraser, T.G. (eds) The Irish Parading Tradition. Ethnic and Intercommunity Conflict Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333993859_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780333993859_3
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