Northern Ireland Putting Protest Back in Protestant

By Pico Iyer

The rumble of drums, the piping of flutes echoed through the warm summer twilight. Hundreds upon hundreds of men in bowler hats and orange sashes marched through the north of Belfast, their bright silken banners gilded by the setting sun. As the Sunday-suited men strode past, to the tune of their stirring ancestral anthem, The Sash, a British army helicopter hovered overhead and riot police stood guard before the 20-ft.-high screens they had just erected. Later that evening, 22 miles away, another group of men in tribal orange filed through the village of Downpatrick and gathered on a field of freshly mown hay. "We have our backs to the wall," an aged Protestant clergyman exhorted his flock, "and our whole province is in a state of turmoil."

Summertime is marching time for the Orange Order, a secretive clan that has trooped through the streets of Northern Ireland each summer for more than 150 years to commemorate Protestant triumphs in days gone by. This year, however, the marches threaten to become protests, and the protests skirmishes. Tensions have been running high ever since last November, when British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald agreed to give the neighboring Irish Republic a limited say in Ulster affairs for the first time. As a result, Northern Ireland's 1 million Protestants, who make up roughly two-thirds of the population, have risen with fury and unanimity to protest what they regard as London's betrayal.

Many now fear that the fuse of Protestant anger could be set alight by the Orangemen's peaceful but boisterously partisan rites. So it is that Irish eyes are anxiously turned to the climax of the year's 1,800 marches this coming Saturday. As many as half a million Protestants will take to the streets across the province in memory of Protestant William of Orange's victory over James II, England's last Roman Catholic King, at the Battle of the Boyne, 296 years ago.

In trying to appease Ulster's alienated Catholic minority, last year's historic agreement was intended to defuse the menace of the outlawed Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.). Instead, it has stirred outrage among Ulster Protestants.

Over the past seven months, Ulster's representatives in Westminster have consistently boycotted parliamentary debates, and British officials have been snubbed at every opportunity. Across the province, walls have been plastered with slogans shouting ULSTER SAYS NO, and up to 10,000 people have enrolled in "Ulster Clubs," Protestant cells formed over the past year to challenge the agreement. The Republic's decision two weeks ago to continue its ban on divorce only confirmed a Protestant sense of distance from their neighbors to the south. "There is nothing that attracts me toward the Irish Republic," complains Billy Stevenson, chairman of the Castlereagh Ulster Club in east Belfast. "The present situation under the Anglo-Irish agreement is like living with in-laws who don't want you."

The dissent gathered new intensity two weeks ago, on the day the 78-seat Northern Ireland Assembly at Stormont was due to close under orders from Britain. To dramatize their rejection of the Anglo-Irish accord, the Rev. Ian Paisley and members of his Democratic Unionist Party refused to leave the assembly hall. Finally, as the sit-in entered its eleventh hour, police moved in among the blue-leather benches and unceremoniously evicted the militant Protestants by force. That set off a full-scale fracas on the steep steps of the white-stone building. "Don't come crying to me if your homes are attacked," Paisley shouted at the police during the melee. "You will reap what you sow." The following day, the veteran firebrand predicted "hand-to- hand fighting in every street in Northern Ireland."

Though most Protestants shy away from such hyperbole, and Paisley has often in recent months been eclipsed by his deputy, Peter Robinson, 38, the agitation for change has grown increasingly disturbing. Members of the paramilitary Ulster Defense Association and the banned Ulster Volunteer Force are widely believed to be behind many of the more than 400 recent attacks, mostly on police, that have also sent a chill through Catholic hearts.

The threat of further violence has cast a long shadow over the Orangemen marches this summer. The grand master of the Orange Order, the Rev. Martin Smyth, has warned his marshals to be "extra vigilant." Last week Tom King, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, made a public plea for restraint. For its part, the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a predominantly Protestant police force, is planning to reroute the ceremonies from possible flash points. But merely changing the line of march could provoke more protests from hard-line Protestants. At any time this summer, the men of Orange could see red. "I espouse nonviolent protest," says Smyth, "but there is a growing feeling that only violence wins."

With reporting by Edmund Curran/Belfast