TENS OF thousands of Orangemen and many more supporters have turned out for the annual Twelfth demonstrations across Northern Ireland.
Eighteen demonstrations were staged, the largest in Belfast, at which the 320th anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne was commemorated.
So-called “flagship” demonstrations were held at Hillsborough, Co Down, Portrush and Antrim in Co Antrim, and Newtownstewart and Cookstown in Co Tyrone.
These events have been specially geared to engaging with visitors and overseas tourists with no connection with Orangeism.
Support has been offered by the Northern Ireland Tourist Board and Tourism Ireland.
In keeping with efforts to present the annual holiday, the high point of the loyalist marching season, the occasion was presented as an “Orangefest” – a cultural event emphasising the Ulster Scots tradition.
For a second successive year the main city centre stores in Belfast opened for a time in between the outward and homeward marches by the Belfast lodges.
Speaking in Waringstown, Co Down, secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland Drew Nelson called on his organisation not to fear change.
Appealing for the next generation of young men to join Orange lodges, Mr Nelson admitted they were entering adulthood in a Northern Ireland vastly different from what went before.
He recognised they had little direct experience of the Troubles and said there were now other influences.
“The young men we want to join are the mobile phone generation, the computer generation, the technology generation,” he said. “If we are to remain relevant then we as an institution have to change the way we do things or we run the risk of appearing irrelevant to this new generation.”
The threat is, he said, that the Orange Order would become irrelevant “and slowly wither away”.