Ruth Edwards - The Faithful Tribe - An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions

‘The media show only the bad side,’ said an Australian delegate. ‘My wife was panic-stricken. “Tell me you’re not there,” she said, meaning Drumcree. “No,” I said, “the only thing we disturbed this morning when we paraded to church was about half-a-dozen cows and a few crows that flew out of a tree as we went past.” ’

However, spirits were generally high. For many of the foreign delegates, to parade in Northern Ireland on the Twelfth and Thirteenth was the achievement of a life-long ambition. ‘It was a thrill for me,’ said the Australian Grand Secretary. ‘Something I always wanted to do. People cheering and waving reminded me of the days when I was a very young member in Sydney and people used to line the streets and wave the Union Jack as well as the Aussie flag and cheer. I felt a little emotional a couple of times.’

He was especially emotional because he had been the one to stop the processing in New South Wales. ‘I felt old men were marching when they shouldn’t have been and shared the feelings with a few others that we didn’t want it on our conscience that someone would collapse in the middle of the parade because they felt they had to march. When I stood up and announced it at the lodge I was visiting, the deputy master cried “Shame, shame”. It was a sad and tough decision: there was a long period of silence before someone had to get up and move the inevitable. It was like someone moving to close a lodge. No one wants to have their name down that they moved the motion to close the lodge.’ Although there were a few areas showing signs of revival, numbers were down to around one thousand and Victoria was now the only Australian state left with a young enough and large enough Orange population to make a parade viable.

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