Drumbeats of Tension Set Cadence in Ulster Marches

Protestants call them “Kick-the-Pope” bands, and when tensions run high between Protestants and Roman Catholics in this divided province an aggressive bass drummer can trigger violence as easily as if he wielded a Colt .45.

Catholics have their parades, too, but it is the incongruous-looking Protestant bandsmen, in bowler hats and bright-orange sashes, who form the centerpiece of what is known here as the “the marching season.”

Every year, from Easter through late August, tension rises as the pride of Northern Ireland Protestantism struts through the province, celebrating victories that nearly three centuries ago guaranteed Protestant ascendancy in Northern Ireland, or Ulster.

Most of the 1,900 or so Protestant marches that make their way through the towns and villages come off peacefully. But the marching season is anything but harmless. It exemplifies the complex mixture of lighthearted fun and psychological terrorism that fuels emotions, stirs insecurity and fear, and prevents any mending of Ulster’s torn social fabric.

During the marching season, the sectarian divide widens, political efforts at reconciliation cease and the police struggle harder than ever to keep the peace in a province where nearly 2,500 have died in the past 18 years of unrest.

A Reminder of Intimidation

Occasionally tempers boil over into violence and bloodshed, but the Protestant marching season is essentially a reminder that intimidation, often based on the pettiest of actions, is the real currency of Ulster’s conflict.

The marches also help to explain how the conflict between Protestant and Catholic, which might be centuries out of date in some other context, continues to survive. The distinction between past and present becomes irrelevant. An insult or a battle that may go back hundreds of years hangs in the air as though it had taken place only yesterday.

The largest Protestant marches take place on July 12, Ulster’s principal holiday, the day that Dutch Protestant Prince William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690.

Protestants look on the Battle of the Boyne as preserving their ascendancy, and their annual marches serve to ensure that no one forgets.

In outlying areas, parades take place daily, for weeks in advance, and then, on July 12, thousands of people descend on Belfast for a grand procession through the city, followed by picnics and political speech-making.

‘Loyality to the Crown’

“Its a time for Protestants to profess witness and loyalty to the Crown,” said Walter Williams, general secretary of the Orange Order, the all-male organization that organizes the July 12 marches. “It’s a great morale booster.”

Catholics take a different view.

“It’s supposed to be a celebration of a battle 300 years ago, but it’s really a reminder of the supremacy of one community over the other,” said Dan Keenan, spokesman for the Social Democratic Labor Party, which draws its support mainly from moderate Catholics. “It is threatening.”

Next month, the spotlight will shift to Londonderry, where Protestants celebrate the day in 1688 that 13 apprentice boys slammed the city’s gate on the army of James II, beginning a prolonged, eventually unsuccessful siege.

In periods of sectarian peace, the Protestant marches can be lighthearted affairs, and many recall that during the tranquil mid-1960s Catholics turned out in large numbers to watch the parades.

Trigger for Violence

Today, Catholics either leave town or stay indoors, for subtle, often petty intimidation can trigger violence.

One cause of a 1969 riot in Londonderry, for example, was said to be Catholic anger at Protestant marchers who had tossed coins from the city’s walls onto the Catholic Bogside neighborhood below.

Marchers often carry provocative banners, and graffiti warning Catholics to beware appears on walls. Songs are sung from the Loyalist Song Book, with anti-Catholic lyrics. One song promises that “we’ll knock 10,000 papishes (papists) all over Dolly’s Brae.”

But much more subtle actions, such as the sound of a drum, can also ignite or soothe community feelings.

“It’s a bit like tom-toms in the jungle,” Keenan said. “You hear them miles away and they slowly get louder and louder. You feel a mixture of annoyance and fear. It’s definitely intimidating.”

Frank Wright, political scientist at Queens University, Belfast, said, “If a drum beats louder or stops altogether when it passes a Catholic chapel, it’s a signal, and everyone knows what it means.”

“If there is trouble generally, then problems here are often the beginning of a much larger collision,” Wright said.

In a period of sectarian tension in the last century, arguments over these arches resulted in shooting incidents at the town of Desert Martin, 30 miles west of Belfast.

In the political atmosphere of the present cycle of unrest, which goes back almost two decades, emotions inflamed by the marches have sparked some of Ulster’s worst unrest.

In 1969, a Protestant march through Catholic neighborhoods of Londonderry ignited four days of rioting that spread through the province, leaving five dead, hundreds injured and an estimated 3,000 houses destroyed. The rioting was so intense that finally the British army was called in to stop it. Nine thousand British troops remain to keep the peace, down from 22,000 in the early 1970s.

Fatal Plastic Bullet

Last July, and again three months ago, violence flared in Portadown, south of Belfast, when police banned one march and rerouted another away from a Catholic residential enclave. One Protestant youth died of injuries sustained from a police officer’s plastic bullet, and 130 others were injured in the incidents.

A tendency by some younger members of the Orange Order to exchange the traditional bowler hat for military-style berets and dark glasses has added to the provocative character of the parades.

Now, with Protestants angered by last November’s Anglo-Irish agreement that gives the predominantly Catholic Republic of Ireland a consultative role in Northern Ireland’s political affairs, the mood for this summer’s marches is expected to be especially sour.

Police have already decided to curtail one march, in Portadown, and will be out in force there and elsewhere in an effort to dampen the unrest.

“We’re appealing for common sense, but it’s going to be a very difficult time,” an Ulster police spokesman said.

Despite the tension, old-timers here are optimistic that emotions will recede and that the chill of autumn’s winds, along with the passing of another marching season, will cool tempers and give political dialogue a chance.