Northern Ireland - The First 100 Years

In our Imperial Grand Master’s Twelfth Address he looked forward to the forthcoming Centenary Celebrations for Northern Ireland. As an Order we have been involved in the Unionist Centenary Committee work as it has successfully celebrated over a decade of some of the most important and poignant Centenaries in our Nation’s History.

Now as we look forward to 2021 and the Centenary of Northern Ireland we are proud to be involved once more and are undertaking a programme this Autumn amongst out lodges and bands to develop a commemoration, interpretation and education programme to mark this Centenary.

It is timely to announce our plans as Prime Minister Boris Johnston visits our country to announce the response of the British Government to mark this milestone. We have as part of the organising committee of what is termed CENTENNIAL the platform on which many organisations will build their planned events Have met with the Northern Ireland Office to press for just this sort of official Government Response.

We would urge our political parties, other Loyal Orders and bands as well as PUL communities to join with us, to develop a comprehensive programme of events and activities which will provide a lasting legacy and honest history of this period. The need to properly mark and also to properly understand these events was never more apparent than when we hear the response of the Sinn Fein leader.

Her sectarian and erroneous analysis of the creation of Northern Ireland would be shocking if we were not so used to the loose relationship Republicans have with historical fact. Her partisan political diatribe stood in shameful contrast to even the response of former history teacher and new Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin who saw the usefulness of the Centenary to improve understanding.

It would appear that many even in our own community need to understand the past better, and we would welcome a UK wide approach to this event, with local Councils offering funding and official events to mark the Centenary. We will release in due course our own programme of events and proposals. These will include a design competition amongst lodges bands and wider community to create a commemorative jewel or medal and badge; an event to mark the Centenary and an educational or other legacy project to ensure that the past is properly understood.

As an Institution our Unionist principles and our sense of duty to fellow Protestants in the rest of Ireland meant that Partition was never our preference. Our desire in the Home Rule Era was to see the United Kingdom remain United, and for Nationalist and Republican demands and violence aimed at secession to be resisted. Our fears about the willingness of the then Unionist leadership to focus on Ulster at the expense of our co-religionists in the rest of Ireland proved true.

Our vision for Unionism was not based on the compromise of a section of Ireland remaining in the Union, it was a bigger more ambitious vision. It was the original vision of Unionists everywhere but the leadership of Carson and Craig chose a more pragmatic route and the ILOI were amongst their harshest critics. We in turn were accused of being dreamers, or worse when we spoke of keeping the whole of Ireland in the Union we were misrepresented as Home Rulers.

It was the ILOI who stood by their Orange brethren In the rest of Ireland and it was our Twelfth platforms which offered a voice as they became a persecuted minority. However in the face of the reality of partition and as Republican violence threatened to overturn the fledgling state the ILOI stood shoulder to shoulder with their Orange brethren to defend it.

Therefore our story and our journey is unique, and while the ILOI continued to be a vocal critic of what it saw as Big House Unionism which came to dominate Northern Ireland politics and government, we have also been persuaded of the merits and need for a Northern Ireland. The best lesson was to look across the border, to see a state there that had been fashioned by terrorism, and how it treated its Protestant minority.

Ironically it was the actions of the IRA and its allies and political apologists which galvanised Unionists of all persuasions into defenders of the new Northern Ireland. Perhaps Michelle O’Neill should reflect on her own terrorism movement’s role in the creation and sustenance of the new state. Every bomb, every murder every lie has added to the case for a Northern Ireland, their very efforts to destroy our wee country have in fact made it stronger.

If any minority group suffered discrimination in Northern Ireland it was the ILOI and independent unionists, it was not an attempt to disenfranchise Nationalists which led to the electoral changes it was an attempt to end internal unionist criticism. The working class protestant areas of Belfast and beyond lived in the same conditions as the Roman Catholic areas. This is why we find the Nationalist and Republican recourse to Civil Rights so disingenuous. That movement was less about rights and more  about a Republican agenda to destabilise and destroy Northern Ireland.

When the mask slips and Michele O’Neill speaks about the country she jointly governs yet cannot even say its name we must all remind ourselves that despite the trappings of office their aim remains to destroy this country. Therefore we must all work against this sectarian agenda and show that Northern Ireland is a success, and to that end our theme for the Centenary will be: ”Northern Ireland – The First 100 Years”.