True colours

DECEMBER 2005: ELSIE DOIG, ORANGEWOMAN

FROM the tall cupboard behind a chair in her Ibrox flat, 79-year-old Elsie Doig lifts out a neatly folded cloth. She spreads out the creamy-white linen, revealing the colourful embroidered corners, the perfect neat stitches of more than 50 years ago. Her mother sewed it not long before she died. A beautiful sewer she was, Elsie says. The colours are strong and true still, despite the passing years. The orange bright and intense, the purple deep and rich. The hundreds of stitches depict an ebony-haired man on a white horse, his sword raised in defiance. William III of Orange, King Billy.

It was 59 years ago that Elsie joined the Orange Order at the suggestion of a friend. "I thought about it for a wee while and I decided I would go in with her, and that was it," she says, her tiny, slight frame lost in a two-seater settee. Different days. "More lively. It wasn't what teenagers are now, rough and ready, wanting to fight and drink all the time. Don't get me wrong; there was drink, but it was different."

For 30 years, she and friends from different lodges went to Blackpool for the September weekend. Not one of them drank to excess, she says. A couple of drinks, and on the way home a stop for some fish and chips.

Elsie's mother joined the lodge five years later. The two of them liked to watch the parades, getting to the park ahead of the bands, watching them march by. Lovely it was, all that colour. Sometimes Elsie marched too, but she has osteoporosis now; the music is too quick for her to keep time these days.

But there are those who think the parades are out of step with modern living anyway. Orange Order members say they are a celebration of heritage, a colourful carnival. Others view them as hate-filled displays of sectarianism that have no place in modern Scotland. There were 20 arrests at the last July 12 celebrations in Glasgow, but members claim the drunkenness and sporadic violence that now follow the thump of the drum and the whistle of the flutes has been instigated by hangers-on and exaggerated by the press.

New legislation governing public processions is making its way through the Scottish parliament, with a report due next month. At present, marches can only be banned by local authorities if police chiefs agree that they pose a threat to public safety. The new Police, Public Order and Criminal Justice (Scotland) Act aims to make public consultation a priority. But conflict has emerged at the heart of the legislation. The public can't have the final say because the right to peaceful assembly is enshrined in European human-rights legislation. How does society decide when one person's right to free speech impinges on another person's right to be tolerated?

In Strathclyde, 73% of all marches each year are loyalist, 1% are Catholic. In a survey of the general public for a report by retired Strathclyde police chief Sir John Orr, half of those interviewed said they felt "angry, upset or annoyed" by the marches. While two-thirds agreed that free speech was more important than whether someone was offended or not, three-quarters believed marches that are likely to inflame religious or racial tension should be banned. One side emphasises rights. The other emphasises responsibilities. And politicians have to weigh one against the other.
It is against this backdrop that the Orange Order has offered to open its doors. Accepting that there has been too much secrecy, it says it is time to let the public know what it stands for. Elsie's cloth spills over on to my knee and I run my hand over the stitching. Time may not have dented the vibrance of the thread, but have King Billy's colours faded in a modern Scotland? What do you see when you look at the picture? The bright, bold stitches of freedom? Or the gawdy, tawdry threads of bigotry?

THE rain is lashing horizontally on a grey, windy day at Bridgeton Cross in Glasgow, home to the Orange Order's Scottish headquarters, Olympia House. It's the kind of day Glasgow poet Edwin Morgan describes in 'King Billy', his poem about a gang leader caught up in Glasgow's sectarian violence during the 1930s. Billy dies alone, "a quiet man at last", in Bridgeton, an area as fiercely Protestant as the adjacent Gorbals is Catholic.

Sectarianism is part of our geography in Glasgow. Part of our history. It's even part of our poetry. "Scotland's secret shame", Jack McConnell called it, and the only disagreement for many was that there was anything remotely secret about it. Perhaps even writing about it demands that you declare your hand. That's the way Scotland is. Celtic or Rangers? Billy or a Tim? Let's just say that pressing the intercom at Olympia House, I hope entry isn't dependent on that old favourite, "What school did you go to?" Otherwise, the door's closed and I'm soaked.

It's not the whole story. I grew up in a house where one parent had been brought up Catholic, the other Protestant. Inside Olympia House, I meet Margaret Ferrier, from Wishaw, who had a Catholic father and Baptist mother, and her husband Tom. Margaret was employed in education, but has suffered from cancer in recent years and is not working, while Tom, the Grand Master of the local lodge, retired early because of ill-health.

Margaret's upbringing was strictly Christian, but her parents' mixed marriage caused friction within her family. She became very interested in theology and the Bible, and also the history of the reformation, when the 'protesters' within the Catholic Church broke free and formed the Protestant faith. "I find the teachings of Rome contradictory to the word of God," says Margaret. "The reason I decided to join was a Christian thing. It wasn't the bands and the razzmatazz."

On the walls in Olympia House are pictures of the Queen, and of King Billy. More than 300 years after William's famous Battle of the Boyne victory over his Catholic father-in-law James II (William was married to James's daughter Mary), William is still a potent Protestant symbol. And yet, the Boyne was not a Protestant-versus-Catholic war. It was about religious freedom, but it was also a political and a European war. William was of the Dutch house of Orange, and when he went into battle on July 12, 1690, the elite regiment that accompanied him was the Catholic Dutch Blue Guard. The regiment carried the papal banner.

The Orange Order, the Ferriers insist, is not anti-Catholic. But according to the organisation's strictures, any member should "strenuously oppose the fatal errors and doctrines of the Church of Rome, and scrupulously avoid countenancing (by his presence or otherwise) any act or ceremony of popish worship". It is perhaps only because the wording is a historical legacy, now hundreds of years old, that it remains unchallenged. Substitute Church of Rome with the Muslim equivalent, and prosecution seems a possibility. Yet, ironically, the Order's journal, The Orange Torch, published an attack on Catholicism following the death of Pope John Paul II, for its "outrageous dismissal of other Christian Churches as 'imperfect'".

Tom Ferrier joined the Order when he was ten. "I believe there's a divine person who sets out your life for you. Nobody within my family was a member of the Orange lodge, but at ten I went away and joined the juveniles. I was guided to join."

Presumably, the divine person is also setting out the lives of Jews, Muslims, atheists and even Catholics. So would Tom attend the wedding or funeral of a Catholic friend? His uncle was a Catholic, he says. In fact, when his uncle's wife, a Protestant, died, the Catholic family contacted Tom to arrange the funeral. He respected that. But what about his uncle's funeral? Did he respect that? "They knew I wouldn't attend a mass. But my family phoned up and said that they understood where I was coming from and respected my beliefs. They had a service in the funeral parlour, which allowed me to go."

A long silence follows his words. They seem so at odds with the apparently affable man in front of me. He got the funeral service he wanted, not the funeral service his uncle wanted? I ask eventually. No, no, says Tom. "They had a Catholic service to themselves." In other words, he didn't attend his uncle's official funeral. He went to a specially created second service. Principle or bigotry?

Theologically, his objection to the Catholic Church is its practice of confession and the refusal to give non-Catholics communion. But politically, both he and Margaret are incensed by Catholic schools. "We're going to have a joint campus in our town, bringing together St Ignatius and Wishaw Academy," explains Margaret. "We thought this was fabulous. They're all going to be in the same campus. But the archdiocese of Motherwell stepped in and said Catholic pupils are not going to enter by the same gates, won't share the same grounds, won't come together in a recreational sense.

"Personally, I do not believe in segregated schools and never have done. If you want your child to have a specific faith, it is your responsibility to teach that faith at home."

Margaret says segregated schools teach bigotry. Actually, a proportion of Catholics would agree with her. But is there not a conflict in arguing that children should be united while subscribing to an adult organisation that demands opposition to Catholicism? "I would resist the teaching of any other faith," retorts Margaret.

Certainly, if she is looking for the modern threat to Scottish Protestantism, the Catholic Church is an irrelevance. Only 15 per cent of the Scottish population is made up of Catholics. And in world terms, the Koran is as powerful as the Bible. We live in a multiracial, multicultural society. How can you possibly resist other faiths? Is this not simply proof that the Order is an anachronism?

Absolutely not, argues Margaret. "Nobody tells the Jewish people they're wrong, that they're not entitled to their beliefs. I am not prepared to tell the Muslims they are wrong or not entitled to their beliefs. And by the same token, the Protestant faith is entitled to its own beliefs."

But she tells Catholics of their "fatal errors". "I wouldn't tell them. It's just that I don't believe that. I certainly wouldn't want to see my child marrying into the Muslim faith or the Jewish faith or anything else, because it's not what I believe. It's not just Roman Catholicism I would be objecting to."

They object to the Catholic religion, not its adherents. Tom tells the story of a friend of theirs, a gentle person whose life has been hard. Each day she takes the paper to her housebound Catholic neighbour. Three times a week she brings her neighbour soup. And recently, her neighbour said, "Who would believe that a wee Orangewoman like yourself would be my best friend?" Tom smiles, and Margaret says, "Why would people think she couldn't be friends with a Roman Catholic? That hurts me."

So will Catholics get into Margaret's heaven? "Oh yes," she says. "There's room for us all, hen."

Though when she was child, she did think that the Catholics spent an inordinate amount of time in church. "There didn't seem to be much about being Christian to other people," she says. "I found that awful hard to understand." More about church than community? "Yes," she says. "And very much to themselves. A closed shop, I found."

THERE are 170 miles and an abyss of sectarianism separating Glasgow and Inverness. In the coffee shop of a bookstore, my phone signals a message. "R U there yet?" I look around for Roddy MacLean, an Inverness taxi driver, wondering what prompts a Highlander to become an Orangeman when there is so little Orange history here. There is one Catholic primary school in the city, but all secondaries are nondenominational and the political background is predominantly liberal and independent.

Roddy MacLean has a long ponytail tied back neatly, and a slightly suspicious manner that is transformed by a smile. Now 51, he was Grand Master of the Inverness Order 30 years ago. It lasted 15 years and folded around 1990. So many members were young and on the move. Roddy himself was a long-distance lorry driver, then he moved to Edinburgh for five years. Now back home, he wants to restart the lodge.

Asked why it is relevant in this area, he argues that the Highlands were a big part of the attempt to restore the Catholic monarchy. Bonnie Prince Charlie was the grandson of King James, who was defeated by King Billy. "People might wonder why we are interested in the Highlands, but what happened at the Boyne was never actually finished until Culloden, in 1746."

He's not particularly religious, he says, but he knows his background. He does not ask his friends what religion they are, and he doesn't care. "I have absolutely nothing against Catholics," he says. "I haven't asked you," he adds, which makes me smile. The last person who said that to me was Ian Paisley Jr. Both times I have had the feeling that the remark signalled not that my religious background wasn't known, but that it was.

Roddy and his family flew from Inverness to Belfast for the July 12 celebrations this summer. But he would like to see marches again in Inverness. The last time was in 1975, when 3,000 people arrived in town, complete with 13 flute bands. A local councillor, a former minister, had succeeded in getting the march banned, but with help from civil-rights groups the decision was overturned. Roddy says the atmosphere was "like a carnival".

But there is an attempt to undermine the Order. By whom? The Catholic Church. So what does it say officially? "With regard to the Orange Order marching down a street, we don't have a view," says a Church spokesman. "Certain issues are down to the law-makers. It goes back to the kind of people we are and if we respect one another."

Almost every member I talk to claims public animosity to the Order is not reflected in the press but shaped by it. Trouble is exaggerated and not caused by members. But if the Order is not sectarian, why does it attract these people to 'the cause'? In Glasgow, Margaret Ferrier had claimed drunks will attach themselves to any public event. "It's the easiest thing in the world for people to stick on a Rangers top and start throwing bottles about. We're walking down the street behind an open bible, believing in the principles of the organisation, and you've got drunks sitting on the side of the road singing sectarian songs. I find that very offensive," she says.

And then, they argue, their charitable endeavours go unreported. It is true that the Order raises substantial sums for charity. The national body donated almost £8,000 to Cancer Care last year, and the same to an MS charity. Individual lodges also raise money. The Ferriers' Wishaw lodge raised £8,400 for Maggie's Centre, because four members, including Margaret, have suffered from cancer in the last few years. Sadly, two died. But the lodge support has been of enormous benefit to Margaret. "It has been absolutely tremendous. Fabulous. Cards, phone calls, flowers. It gives you quite a wee boost. It is like a family, and when the chips are down, everybody is there and just sort of mucks in," she says.

Roddy MacLean believes the orange "family" in Inverness would extend to around 100 members if he could only get decent premises. In the old days they hired council premises, but it was unsatisfactory. Short of winning the lottery, he needs a generous benefactor to bring like-minded people together. He likes being part of something where people think the same? "Yes," he says. He tilts his head to one side, listening to music playing in the shop. "Listen," he says. "Orange Lily."

WHAT makes a 27-year-old woman join an organisation that gives her no voting rights? Sarah Murray is from Dalmellington in Ayrshire, a former mining village built on a hill and dominated by the two traditional spheres of Scottish influence: the tower of the Kirk of the Covenant at one end, a selection of pubs at the other. Dalmellington is also in the unusual position of having a female Orange lodge of around 25 members, but no companion male lodge.

The Orange Order is governed by men. Male and female lodges are separate. While women have autonomy over their own affairs, they have no voting rights for the district or national hierarchy. They have one representative at official meetings - a man. It is a situation that many would like to see changed. "Change is inevitable, but the structure of the Orange Order makes it difficult," says Sarah. "It's a case of how effectively the women's voices are actually heard."

The Orange Torch criticises the Catholic Church's "insulting attitude to the role of women". Not a surprising criticism, perhaps, but from a surprising quarter, given the Order's own stance. In a recent survey of lodges, the overall vote was to retain the status quo. Many orangewomen themselves, who make up around a third of the estimated 50,000 membership, voted against change.

But the vote was close and both Scotland's Grand Master, Ian Wilson, and executive officer, Robert McLean, believe the subject will be back on the agenda within a year. "Women have a big role to play, and there is a lot of talent," says McLean. "I think change will come."

Despite the restrictions, including an instruction to wear skirts on parade, Sarah Murray joined partly because it was a family tradition. Her father was in the now defunct Dalmellington male lodge, and her mother, a keen community activist, has been a key figure in keeping the women's lodge alive. Sarah, who works for East Ayrshire Council, is proud of her Protestant heritage. But while she agrees the Order should be specifically Protestant, she would prefer the language used about Catholics to be reviewed. Interestingly, Ian Wilson agrees. "Expressing ourselves in quite such florid language is why fingers are pointed at us," says the Grand Master, who also edits The Orange Torch. "We're accused of being anti-Catholic, we say we're not, and people, quite rightly, say, 'Hang on a minute, this is what you say.' We leave ourselves wide open. I think it's time to modernise."

Society has changed and the Order must too. "I am for pulling the organisation into the 20th century and then we'll have a go at bringing it into the 21st," he says.

A stance against sectarianism would certainly be welcomed by Sarah Murray. "I am going to be the first to say there's a minority of members in the Orange Order who are just as bad as some of the people following the marches," she says. "But I do think people have an opinion about the Order when they don't know anything about it. I get particularly wound up by people lumping the Orange Order with flute bands, Rangers football supporters, everything they tag as 'Orange'. There's such confusion there."

Sarah has never had to make the decision about going to a Catholic funeral. "But if it was someone I was close to, I don't feel being in the Orange Order would stop me doing that."

And the Grand Master? "As the situation stands, as heid honcho, I couldn't." But, he adds, that situation will probably change. Does he want it to? "Yes."

For Sarah Murray, the current instruction is simply an irrelevance. "I know what I am. I'm proud of it. I'm not going to change, no matter if I go to a Jewish service or a Catholic service or anything else."

ELSIE DOIG folds her mother's cloth back into neat squares, until only one King Billy remains. Her mother died when Elsie went into hospital for 16 months as a young woman, suffering from tuberculosis. Afterwards, there were years looking after her father. Elsie never married. The Orange lodge offered a social life, though when she was young and shy she didn't attend everything she might have.

When her lodge was celebrating an anniversary, she took her mother's cloth to a baker, to show what she would like on the icing. Just say if you don't do that kind of thing, she told the baker. But he was a multicultural baker. Communions. Bar mitzvahs. King Billy. It was all the same to him. "We do anything for anybody," he told her. A sign of the multicultural times. "The modern world is different from what it used to be," Elsie says.

She puts King Billy back in the cupboard, the vibrant threads protected for a little longer from the damaging daylight.