La Conciliación en la Ley 2

Broken Lines - Overlapping Routes Hatching - Nationalist areas.

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campaign to get all loyalist parades excluded from the area was intensified and with the police responding to each parade on an individual basis the future access to this traditional route looked doubtful for the Orangemen. In 1993 the RUC also attempted to re-route the west Belfast parade away from its traditional route on the Springfield Road. Loyalists protested and a UVF man died when a grenade he was holding exploded. Several days of rioting followed on the Shankill as loyalists clashed with the police.

Threats to traditional parade routes have a strong emotive appeal to the loyalist community across Ulster because they threaten perceived "traditional rights" and thereby undermine the unified symbolic community that is re-created each year. The old mini-Twelfth route along the Ormeau Road connected the Ballynafeigh district with the Sandy Row area, both included Donegall Pass within their processional, that symbolic unity has now been ruptured and Ballynafeigh is cast adrift in south east Belfast. Although the right to parade itself is not questioned the intricate web of affiliations that they map out across the city is being destroyed as Orangemen are forced to take account of the changing structure of the city. For loyalists, brought up with the belief that Northern Ireland was a Protestant state for a Protestant people, the right to parade where they will was an expression of their collective authority over the whole of Ulster. Any constraint or restriction on parading rights emotionally symbolises, more clearly than anything else, their declining position of power in their own land. Nationalist residents who object to the disruption and inconvenience caused by loyalist parades through their streets have insisted that tradition takes notice of changing residential patterns and thus accept the evolving nature of the city and its symbolically created power relations (see Cohen 1993, Jackson 1992 for contests over parade routes). By refusing to allow specific routes to be annually re-incorporated into the Orange community

the nationalists continue to assert new rights to define for themselves the new boundaries in each locality, in this way the nationalist communities gnaw away at a loyalist unity and their sense of control that is annually inscribed on the city streets.

BONFIRES AND CHURCH.

The mini-Twelfth parade defines and re-affirms the essential unity of a community that is spread disparately over a diverse, but bounded, geographical area. It publically reveals and gives physical expression to an otherwise fragmented imagined community. Until the Twelfth this unity of purpose once again disappears from view. There is lots of activity and much of it is in public but there is no public activity as such. Numerous diverse interest groups, Orangemen, bandsmen and bonfire builders, but also the women whose invisible work is no less necessary to a successful Twelfth, prepare for their part in the celebrations independently of each other. There is no coercion or central organisation overseeing the entire process, although individual activities and groups are of course organised. Preparations happen informally and to a great extent depend on the number of people able and willing to get involved. Therefore the scale, the range and the quality of the celebrations vary from year to year and from area to area. The scale of flags, decorations, murals and bonfires may depend on the actions of no more than a few men.

The main visible activity at this time is in the gathering and protecting of wood for the local bonfire. Countless fires are built across the city in preparation for the 11th night when the Twelfth will be seen in. Pallets, railway sleepers, tyres, old furniture and any wooden or burnable debris are gathered at the chosen site. Each locality gathers its own wood and builds its own fire, and with

local competition over who will build the biggest pile, there is a threat and fear that outsiders will try to burn the assembled timber before the event. So most wood only appears, and the fire built, in the few days before the 11th. During this time the pile is always protected, young boys stand guard through the night with a makeshift shelter offering protection from the rain. The fire builders are assisted by boys of all ages, the youngest kids being content to play with the small smoky fires and embers that are a constant feature of these sites. Girls are rarely attracted to, or encouraged to help at, the fire sites.

For the past two years the fire on Sandy Row has been built on the corner of one of the car park sites at Hope Street. Before that it had been constructed on empty land next to the Orange Hall, but as with all bonfires across the city, traditional sites have to be given up to the demands of redevelopment, and the fire builders are forced into a nomadic quest for space. Usually another derelict plot is available but if not fires are sometimes built in the road, or closer than desirable to houses. Houses and shops may suffer damage as plastic gutters and signs melt, murals get blackened or destroyed, street lamps are burnt, telephone poles set on fire and wires brought down and grassy play areas are scorched. Within broad limits the inconvenience and potential danger is tolerated. The fire is an essential part of the Twelfth celebrations and as such has a primacy in many peoples eyes over more mundane concerns.

Tyres are often used to form the core of the fire, to fill a frame constructed from interlocking railway sleepers. Pallets are then stacked on top to give as much height as is possible. Around the base the smaller pieces are piled to give conical form to the whole. Wood is carried to the top by clambering up the side of the stack, ladders may be used in the early stages when carrying up the railway sleepers but no mechanical assistance is used. The finished

fires can in some cases be awe inspiring in height and their apparent precariousness. They easily reach twenty feet or more and only the amount of wood available and the ingenuity and skill of the men building it constrain the scale. On Sandy Row the fire, built over the 10th and 11th, was initially topped with the Ulster flag, but this would be replaced with an Irish tricolour before the firing.

The only parade held in this period is on the Sunday before the Twelfth, when Orangemen across the north walk to church for the Boyne Anniversary Church Service (3) . No banners are carried, only a Union Flag, an Ulster Cross and the Orange Standard head the parade. The Sandy Row parade is formed of a single column in three ranks, consisting of perhaps 400 men. The men walk in lodge groups, but without banners there is no means of identifying these and individuals are distinguished only by the variations in colour and design of their collarettes or sashes. As they approach the Somme Memorial, the single accompanying band stops playing and the men march to the beat of a single side drummer, flags are lowered, and at the command "eyes right", hats are removed and the dead honoured.

Few people gather to watch this parade, which involves only a short walk down Sandy Row and back up Dublin Road to the Great Victoria Street Presbyterian Church. Without the brash music, the range of banners and flags, church parades have none of the colour or noise of the main commemorations; they are essentially private events to the Orange Institution which move through public space rather than being public occasions per se. This distinction between church parades and public commemorations is enhanced by the fact that alone of all Orange parades they are held on a Sunday, a day that still remains devoid of public or commercial activity within the Protestant community. When the Twelfth falls on a Sunday the parades are postponed until the next day. The men process within

the core of the district rather than marking boundaries or confronting outsiders and they generate little of the controversy, the protests or the interest of the other parades. Church parades focus attention onto the religious principles that underpin the Orange Institution and which provide its unifying core, principles that are frequently occluded in the public sphere. At the same time, the church parades are the least supported by the membership of any parades, and if the lack of regalia emphasises the underlying unity rather than more localised divisions, it also obscures absences.

On the eleventh of July the final touches are put to the bonfires. From eleven o'clock people gather around the fire sites, young men and women with carrier bags full of cans of beer, families with young children and babies in prams, older people who have seen it all before, a few tourists. Chip shops and fast food vans do a roaring trade, two small groups of evangelical Christians hold services on the pavement, trying to convince passers-by of the errors of their ways but generate little interest. A prologue to the main event is a small fire made of left-over bits of wood and set alight by the younger children shortly after eleven o'clock. This quickly gets out of hand and engulfs a group of advertising hoardings whose images are gradually eaten away by the flames. Later the boards themselves crash to the ground to cheers from the crowd. In Sandy Row the main fire is lit on the dot of midnight to welcome in the Twelfth. The fire starts slowly but as it spreads around and up the stack the crowd is forced to retreat across the road. As the flames eat their way up the pile of sleepers and pallets, attention is focused on the Irish tricolour at the top, and as it is engulfed and dissolves in flames a great roar goes up. In the years before the Troubles, the night would continue with music and dancing in the streets until the early hours, but now once the flag has been burnt and the peak of the fire has passed, the crowd rapidly

fades away, to more private partying or perhaps even to get some sleep before the big parade.

THE TWELFTH.

In the morning the Orangemen and their bands begin to assemble at the Orange Hall from eight o'clock in readiness for a 9am departure. Some lodges meet at the hall, others parade from their lodge master's house. Here they break ranks and, leaning flags and banners against the walls and scattering drums over the pavement, they talk with friends, smoke a cigarette and in some cases crack an early beer. The 11th had been overcast but dry, but now a steady, and sometimes heavy, drizzle is falling, the sky is a darkish shade of grey and there is no wind to clear the air. Popularly, a sunny Twelfth confirms that God is Protestant, but this year he is definitely a "taig" (Catholic) . Some bandsmen, in particular accordion bands, don capes to protect their instruments and many of the Orangemen carry umbrellas as a matter of course, but most of the younger bandsmen, attired in brightly coloured uniforms, take the rain as part of the day and are already quite wet by the time the parade assembles for the start. For many Orangemen the stereotypical dark suit and tie, with a bowler hat and umbrella remains the appropriate dress for the day, but for most a suit of any colour is adequate and hats are no longer so important. The one article of clothing which is essential is the sash (worn over one shoulder) or the collarette. These are usually orange and purple but blue, crimson and white are also common colours. All members of a lodge wear the same style and colour. The collarette carries the lodge number and may also bear badges noting the wearer's present or past office in the lodge (Treasurer, Chaplain, Past Master etc). Some Orangemen also decorate their collarettes with emblems and symbols of the order or badges of King William.

Each Twelfth numerous small boys make their first appearance on the Orange stage, accompanying fathers or grandfathers in the ranks. Some hold the ribbons of the banners to stop them blowing about too much, boys from as young as 4 or 5 years old also appear as members of various bands, carrying cymbals or miniature drum major's staffs they walk as far as they can. Women also parade in small, but increasing, numbers, but they never seem as relaxed or expressive as the men, as if they know they are intruding in a male event. Younger girls are largely kept to the sidelines, a few accompany their fathers but not in the same number as young boys and although girls often form the colour party or play in many of many of the bands, they too are marginalised and forced to adopt a male role for the day. Most women settle for a support role, cheering their men from the sidelines.

At 9am the Orangemen set off down Sandy Row for the third time in 12 days. The Somme Memorial is acknowledged with the usual solemnity, they turn right into Hope Street where the bonfire is still smouldering from the night before and then left onto Great Victoria Street, towards the city centre. The parade moves past the City Hall and along Royal Avenue before turning up North Street towards the Shankill. At Peters Hill, they pass the small nationalist Unity Flats estate which is blocked off with huge vehicle-mounted screens attended by army personnel who stand guard and attentive as the Orangemen pass by. At the bottom of the Shankill the parade cuts through the new estate towards Carlisle Circus where the Orangemen from other Belfast districts are assembling for the start of the main parade (Map 5.3). At Carlisle Circus the junction north with the Antrim Road is also closed and screened off, and further down Clifton Street the other end of the Unity estate is similarly closed. Although the residents make no protest and remain invisible, they are effectively imprisoned within their estate until the procession has left the city

MAP 5.3