Twelve-year-old Jack Irons stands to attention – one cymbal across his chest, the other by his side and a beaming smile across his face.
One of the youngest members of the William King Memorial Flute Band, he is marching on the Twelfth for the first time. “It was brilliant,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to do it, since I was a young boy.”
Asked why he was so keen to join, he replies: “My family’s in the band.”
“His Granda, his uncle, his other uncle,” senior band member Derek Moore adds.
Up the street, Jack’s grandparents Richard and Valerie Moore have been keeping an eye out for him from their front door. “It’s his first year out with the cymbals,” explains Valerie.
“Everyone here’s so proud of the band, and supports them 101 per cent.”
The band is based in the Fountain in Derry. A small housing estate nestling below the city’s 17th century walls and cathedral, it is also the last Protestant area in the overwhelmingly Catholic west bank of the River Foyle.
On Monday morning many of the kerbstones were freshly painted in red, white and blue, with bunting strung across the street, ready for the Twelfth.
Each July 12th, members of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland march, accompanied by bands, to commemorate the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Last year most parades were cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic and this year the large-scale demonstrations have been replaced with smaller parades and members of the Orange Order urged to “enjoy a Twelfth near you”.
In the Fountain, the band lines up with members of the local Orange Lodge; they take part in a short parade through the estate and, an hour later, join other lodges and bands from the city to march through the city centre and on to the walls.
While it is not on the scale they are used to, all involved are delighted to be “back out on the road”, the secretary of the local Orange lodge, Victor Wray, says. “Today is a great day for us all that we’re back out marching again and showing our culture.
“We know it’s not in the way we would want it, but we have to think about people’s safety,” he says.
Like many of those marching on Monday, he has a long pedigree in the order; he points proudly to a badge on his lapel denoting 50 years. Another member of his lodge, Terry Atcheson, describes how he has been going to parades since his father first brought him as a child.
“There is a great brotherhood at [Orange] meetings, and that has been missed during Covid-19. We are a family, and thinking in terms of people’s mental health, it’s important to get that back.”
On Monday, six-year-old Harry Guthrie is watching the parade with his father, Darryl. “I like the big drum. It goes very loud,” says Harry. “He’d usually be here with his bandstick, throwing it up in the air,” his father explains. The parades are “part of our culture”, he says, noting Catholics as well as Protestants used to watch the parades. “The Troubles made it more sectarian than it should have been.”
The controversy over Brexit, the Northern Ireland protocol and the Irish Sea border “hasn’t helped” with community relations. “Before this, there was no animosity,” he explains. “We class ourselves as British... [now] it seems as if bits and pieces are being taken away from us every time.”
Tradition
Valerie Moore also remembers watching the parades as a child. “You had your Sunday best on you, you were given a wee flag, had a picnic – it was a day out. They’re not marching to rub anybody’s nose in it. It’s tradition.”
Enjoying that tradition on Monday was Gary Middleton, DUP Assembly member, junior Minister and a member of one of the local Orange lodges.
“What we want to do is show what we’re about as a positive organisation,” he says. “We do a lot of good work around charity, around community relations, and we shouldn’t allow some of the negative stuff to take away from that work.
“If you go back to 2013 [when Derry was the UK City of Culture] and the huge amount of work that was put in by the Orange locally to go into schools and to educate people about what we’re about and bring down those barriers, that’s the work we need to continue doing.”
For Derek Moore, it is simple: “The culture and the politics should be kept apart all the time. This is not about protocols or politics, this is about the culture and the Battle of the Boyne, it should be kept separate all the time, it’s getting mixed far too much, that’s one of the bigger problems.
“It’s all about the music and the playing and young boys getting excited and getting out and performing in front of their families and giving them a wee bit of confidence going forward in life.”
