PEOPLE GATHERED outside Downing Street on Saturday to greet a protest march by gays, atheists, secularists, clerical sex-abuse victims and others against Pope Benedict’s visit – only to be greeted by the banners of the Apprentice Boys of Derry and Orange Order lodges from England and Wales and men dressed in first World War uniforms.
Enmity can create strange bed-fellows, but even in a world of unpredictable alliances there is a limit. The “Protest The Pope” march, having left Piccadilly earlier, was, in fact, still minutes away.
In the meantime, the Orange Order had permission to march to the Cenotaph to lay wreaths to mark the sacrifice of the men from the Ulster Divisions lost in the Battle of the Somme.
The colour parties, carrying banners from Protestant Action Force, London Brigade “The Elite”, the London Somme Association, the Larkhall First Battalion and others, lined up, while Orangemen moved forward in silence to lay their wreaths, smiling for the cameras held by others amongst them. The crowd waiting looked on, somewhat bemused. Shortly afterwards the thousands, including actor Ian McKellan, carrying banners reading “Some People are Gay: Get Used to It”, “The Pope is a Homophobe” and others condemning the Catholic Church arrived, with organisers cribbing about the space the Metropolitan Police had left for them to hold their gathering outside the gates of Downing Street.
Protesters, who had been delighted by the wave of criticism of the pope in the British press prior to the visit, were by now infuriated with the change in tone, with human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson lambasting the press and the establishment for “the grovelling politeness” shown to him since he first landed in Edinburgh.
Demanding that British politicians “stand up for British values”, Robertson said the Vatican should not be regarded as a state by the international community: “Because a state must first of all have people of its own. And there are no Vaticanians.” Abuse victims around the world did not want prayers from senior churchmen, he said: “They want justice. They want to be sure that those who have abused do not get the chance to abuse more women.”
Brian Doherty, who was held in the Nazareth House orphanage in Derry, said: “I was one of those victims. I went in at three weeks of age and left at 14 and I was tortured by the nuns.
“He has come here. Why can’t he come to Ireland and apologise? We just want him to recognise what happened in Northern Ireland. The abuse victims in the South are so far ahead of where we are in the North.”
“We have written to the Cardinal, but we have never got a reply,” said Mr Doherty, who will be one of those at Stormont next month for meetings with Assembly politicians.