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Orange Order Demonstration, Rossnowlagh, Co Donegal

The annual pre-Twelfth of July Orange Order demonstration in Rossnowlagh, County Donegal, which was held on July 6 2019, is traditionally held the Saturday before the Twelfth of July parades take place across Northern Ireland. This is the biggest annual Orange Order parade in the Republic of Ireland. The annual Orange Order marches and demonstrations celebrate when Protestant King William of Orange defeated the Catholic King James II in the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 to end the Stuart density on the Untied Kingdom throne. Rossnowlagh is a small tourist village on a glorious beach about 10 kilometres north of Ballyshannon. The road to the village is narrow and twisty and the there are lots of holiday homes and seasonal caravan parks dotted along the two-kilometre road from the crossroads at St John’s Church to the coast. It is difficult to know why this parade survives, or even to understand why a march even came to be held here, but this march far pre-dates the Troubles in Northern Ireland. And remarkably, it managed to pass off relatively peacefully even at the height of the thirty years of violence. The roads to Rossnowlagh are usually clogged by mid-morning. The marchers and bands usually assemble in a field across the road from St John Church of Ireland church and march to road to the strand. A prayer service is held in mid-afternoon and the marchers then return to the assembly point. Events like this are important and are more about tradition than tribalism. The importance of ‘the community’ is always there, bubbling at the surface, but the primary focus is family. The Orange tradition is a family tradition, passed from generation to generation. This Orange Order march highlights a fundamental dichotomy the new, European Republic of Ireland. Membership of the European Union was an essential catalyst in the Republic moving to a more pluralist society. The power of the Catholic Church has waned; Ireland has embraced divorce, same-sex marriages and abortion, and has become a country as a destination for immigration for the first time ever. But has the majority of people the Republic – myself included – do not understand the Orange, loyalist tradition at a granular level; beyond the caricature. Brexit has made the prospect of a ‘Border’ poll on Irish unification more likely. A united Ireland, achieved by democratic means, is no longer a vague, aspirational goal. The question of how this will be achieved can only start to be resolved when we understand. (Images made 2019)