The parade was led this year by Thomas Passmore, the county grand master for Belfast, who was seated grandiosely in an open, horsedrawn landau. Most Lodges had a black car and a band in front, then a six-by-eight foot silk banner before a procession of four or five columns. The banners were embroidered with exotic scenes; many showed Prince William, in different hues, shapes, and sizes, marching to victory atop his white prancer. Biblical scenes like "Jacob's Dream" or "The Parting of the Red Sea" were common and there were a few uncommon banners like one showing "The Storming of Jaffa," a bizarre scene with British soldiers climbing the city's walls and staring into the suspended smoke of Turkish muskets.
The bands were primed for this Twelfth, especially the local boys from Belfast. They had names like "Pride of the Shankill," "The Ligoniel True Blues," "Sons of Ulster," and "Young Conquerors." The drummers would weave in and around each other, dipping from side to side; they were the toughest-looking too, with rolled-up sleeves invariably revealing an Ulster tatoo.
Aong the back edge of the crowds, Belfast's teenieboppers, with stencils on their shirts reading "Bay City Rollers" (the local rock group that made it big) ran alongside their neighborhood bands. At the beginning of a new tune, the drums would sound a sharp call and the girls would throw up their fists three times, punching the air with a stacatto "Hey! Hey! Hey!"
The B-Specials brought up the rear of the parade, but they didn't have a band. Their banner showed three innocent-looking B-Specials dressed in full uniform (one facing forward, the other two flanking him as if protecting him) holding pistols level with their shoulders, pointing toward the sky. They got the biggest hand of the day.
Even if the more sinister sectarian rituals are still strong, some of the other traditions of fanatic Orangeism are dying out. One of the true traditions of the Orange parade, the lambeg drum--weighing about 40 pounds and fabricated from oak, ash and goatskin (only the skin of the she-goat will do)--is just about extinct. A lambeg drummer used canes instead of drumsticks and during the course of a single parade, he'd break more than ten of them. That's because the drummer hits the drum as hard as he can. In the process, he hits his knuckles against the edge of the rim. By the end of a march, the drummer's hands would be dripping with blood, and sometimes mangled. But lambegs slowed up the parade, and now only one band in all of Ireland uses them.
The Twelfth parade has always been a sensitive flashpoint, especially in the sections of town where it passes by the Catholic community--like Unity Flat, at the entrance to the Protestant stronghold of Shankhill road. This year these sections were blocked off with large canvas screens. There were some stone-throwing incidents--mostly at the edges of all-Catholic or mixed neighborhoods. And another man was killed, a Protestant, but it seemed to be because of an internecine squabble.
As the day wore on the parade was a still a grand affair, but it had lost a lot of its solemnity as the Orangemen got drunk and tired. By the time the I reached Edenderry Field, suitcoats were off, bowlers tipped back, ties pulled down and disordered. Edenderry is an expansive horseshoe-shaped slope and the speakers' platform was tucked away in one corner under some trees--almost, it seemed, on purpose. Most of the revelers just lounged around on the grass, eating, drinking, or trying to get over hangovers from drinking earlier in the day. And only a small crowd gathered around the platform.
The speeches at "The Field" this year all centered around Loyalty. Loyalty is a concept of much debate among the Unionists (those seeking to perpetuate union with the United Kingdom) since Enoch Powell, the Official Unionist M.P. from South Down said the week before that a proper Loyalist should be "loyal to the Crown in Parliament: the Parliament of the United Kingdom." Every Unionist faction had denounced Powell's commitment to Parliament by the Twelfth, supporting instead the "constitutional Protestant majority," for them the Crown.
Most of the speeches at "The Field" seemed to echo Martin Smyth, Imperial Grand Master of the Orange Institution, who pledged his allegiance to the Crown. "The Monarchy stands for the highest and best of our Constitutional procedures," Smyth said. "All things are done in the name of Her Majesty whether it is a result of foolish counsel by her ministers or not..."
The Orange Institution in Northern Ireland is like the Elks in America; they espouse arcane political theory at social functions, but mainly they serve as bastions of sectarianism and Protestant ascendancy.
But when I talked in depth with Protestants not in the Orange Order, I found out that the Lodges were to some degree a manifestation of a much larger current of subtle Protestant sectarianism.
By the end of my first full day in Belfast, I still hadn't talked to any Catholics. But then not many Catholics are visible on the Twelfth.