The Same Old
Song
Many years ago when I was a mere primary
school lad, I walked down the High Street in Glasgow with my mum to what she
called the ‘Holy Shop.’ It stood on the western side of the street not far from
Glasgow Cross and sold all manner of Catholic devotional items. From Mass cards
to statues; from rosaries to crucifixes the ‘Holy Shop’ was the place to go. On
this particular Saturday I stood looking around the shop as my mum gabbed quietly
to the lady behind the counter. To my young eyes the huge array of religious
images and artefacts covering the walls looked quite impressive. There was a
stillness about the place, a calmness which gave it the air of a small church.
In the distance we could hear the thump of
drums being carried on the summer air like far off artillery. I looked at my
mum wondering if she’d call a halt to her conversation and move on before the
ominous sound came closer but she seemed deaf to it. Before long, the thump of
the drums merged with the shrill sounds of flutes and came nearer. Through the
grill of the window the first bands of an Orange Parade could be discerned in
their garishly coloured outfits. They seemed absorbed in what they were doing
although some who followed on the pavement were less focused. As I watched, a
few of the more drunken camp followers took time to spit on the window of the
shop and bang the grill with their fists. There were the usual tired shouts of
worn out slogans such as ‘Fuck the Pope’ but
it was in truth more empty posturing than seriously threatening given the fact
that the Police were seldom far away at these gatherings.
What struck me even as a young lad was the
way the older generation accepted such behaviour as the norm. The woman behind
the counter barely broke the conversation with my mother as this occurred
outside and kept up the chatter as she stepped around the counter to quietly
turn the closed sign and release the bolt on the Yale lock. We waited in the
shop for twenty minutes or so till the parade had passed before heading out and
back up the High Street towards home.
Growing up a Catholic in 1970's Glasgow meant
dealing with such incidents and learning the best ways to keep safe during the
marching season. You needed to know the geography of the place; where to avoid,
where was safe and not take unnecessary risks. There were pubs, areas and even
closes to be avoided at certain times of the year. The city centre was usually
a neutral area but even there when the flutes and drums were sounding you would
see crucifixes being tucked into shirts, zips going up to cover Celtic shirts
and folk heading into stores or pubs till the procession had passed. Often
you’d catch people’s eye and they’d shrug or shake their heads. A few would
mutter under their breath about banning this sort of thing but still it went on
year after year.
My last experience of it was in Glasgow Green
a year or so back and it hadn’t really changed in character since I was a boy
although the falling numbers suggests it’s on the wane. It wasn’t unusual to
see 70,000 at the ‘big Walk’ in days past. They’re doing well to get 10,000
now. One thing which has given it something of a boost in recent years is the
ongoing issue of Scottish Independence. Despite silly talk by some of the
‘Ulsterisation’ of Scottish politics there is no serious traction for the
politics of bigotry among the vast majority of Scots. The rise of the SNP may
have lead some on the Loyalist fringes to talk of Scotland using some of the
same imagery they use when describing the situation in the six counties but
there are huge differences in the two contexts. The constitutional question has
undoubtedly given a temporary boost to Orangeism just as it seemed to be on a
downward spiral to irrelevance.
As I watched the drinking and singing of
cringe worthy songs last summer in the park it was clear that such gatherings
have little to do with religion and much to do with a group seeking to find
some sort of common identity. Most of the people I saw in Glasgow Green were
unlikely to be at church the following day. The Church of Scotland’s own
figures suggest just 137,000 Scots are regular attendees at Church with the
average age being around 60. In 1956 1.3 Million attended weekly services.
Scotland is an increasingly secular country and this has forced the main
Christian churches to work together in face of a hostile environment where
their values are increasingly challenged and even ridiculed.
The Church of Scotland once produced a report
entitled ‘The Menace of the Irish Race to
our Scottish Nationality’ which was basically a racist diatribe demanding
the halting of immigration from Ireland and the repatriation of many of the
Irish already here. By ‘Irish’ of course they meant the Catholic Irish as the
25% of Irish coming from a Protestant background were it seemed their kinfolk. The
church belatedly apologised for the report and it is in fairness a document of
its time. The 1920s and 30s saw mass unemployment and poverty and in such times
of stress for any society there is a tendency for some to turn on the ‘other’
the ‘strangers’ in their midst. Thus we saw overtly sectarian political parties
such as the Scottish Protestant League win 23% of the popular vote at elections
in Glasgow. In Edinburgh the Protestant Action Society fared even better with
31% of the vote but when 20,000 of their followers stoned and attacked a Catholic
Eucharistic congress in the city in 1936 the Authorities cracked down hard on
them and ordered the Police to take robust action. The Lord Provost of
Edinburgh said with commendable fairness…
‘The sectarian spirit is a heady thing and some people seem to have lost
their moral and mental balance over this subject. Every honest
minded British citizen deplores Jew
baiting in Nazi Germany, we want no baiting of Roman Catholics
here. There is enough ill will in the world, even in our own
country, without adding the fires of religious fanaticism to it.’
Watching the cavorting in the park last year it
was hard not to conclude that it all had a hollow and empty feel to it, as if
the mythology of it all was somehow as important as the concrete reality of
post Brexit Britain unfolding around them. Some undoubtedly do hold prejudices
against Catholicism and express them in the crudest of terms but to define
yourself by what you hate is always self-defeating in the end. These parades are
not benign expressions of cultural identity as drunkenness and violence are not
uncommon and many ordinary citizens stay home to avoid them. They remain a
curious left over from more intolerant times, an echo of days most of us have
left behind.
The Orange Order does try to warn the wilder
spirits to behave but it remains a fact that their displays interfere with the
lives of many fellow citizens. They also offer a fig leaf or respectability to
serious bigots who loiter on the fringes spreading their poison. They would of course deny that they are in any way a sectarian organisation but the view from the street tells a different story. They may not be wholly responsible for the hangers on who follow the parades but I've seen enough over the years from members of the order to convince me that they do have an issue with bigots in their ranks.
A friend of mine from Coatbridge commented wryly
on the bad atmosphere in the town when a big parade took place there a few
years ago. He said with no little irony that a town famous for the Time Capsule
leisure facility had to put up with poor behaviour from many who appeared stuck
in their own time capsule. Wouldn’t it be nice to hold a celebration all Scots
can support and enjoy no matter what their ethnic, religious or cultural
background?
The world has moved on so much since my
childhood experience in the ‘Holy shop’ but for some it’s the same old song.
