By SHAWN POGATCHNIK : Associated Press Writer
Jul 12, 2004 : 9:01 pm ET
BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Catholic hard-liners attacked British soldiers and police Monday after daylong parades across Northern Ireland by the Orange Order, the province's major Protestant brotherhood. No serious injuries were reported.
In north Belfast, rows of troops and riot police prevented direct clashes between passing Orangemen and the Catholic residents of Ardoyne, a power base for the outlawed Irish Republican Army. But as soon as the Protestants had paraded past, Catholic men and teenage boys surrounded several parked army jeeps with soldiers inside, smashed the windows, and tried to tip them over.
Meanwhile, in the towns of Antrim and Greysteel, stone-throwing Catholics attacked two buses carrying Orangemen and musicians home. The holiday, observed each July 12, commemorates the 1690 Battle of the Boyne. The annual parades feature Orangemen in suits and bowler hats, teenagers and young men playing fife and drum in so-called "kick the pope" bands. Thousands of Orangemen also travel from nearby Scotland to participate. Orangemen "deplore the way in which the teachings of our Protestant reformed faith are being denied, eroded and undermined by those Protestant ministers who have aligned themselves with the Church of Rome," said the group's declaration on religious faith.
The competing parades are a fixture of Northern Irish Life, despite being about the dumbest thing anyone has ever seen. "I mean, seriously, these are adults?" asked one visiting Pole. "Fighting over a 424-year old battle? And they tell jokes about us??"
Irish commentators, however, disputed such views. "It's like a Gay Pride parade," said one Protestant observer, "but for violent, small-minded lowbrows who glorify hatred and sectarian violence…. Of course, when you put it that way, it sounds bad." Asked for a way to put it that didn't sound so bad, the man replied "It's a proud celebration of our ancient traditions of ethnic hatred and mob violence… no, that sounds bad too. Ummm…. It's a reaffirmation of our loyalty the English crown, and all the things it stands for, like inbreeding and emotional distance …wait, I can do this."
A Catholic observer, asked to justify the use of violence against innocent troops and police to protest the actions of the Protestants, replied "well, we have to set fire to things, to show that we're really very angry that protestants are allowed to walk… on ... public roads…OK, that sounds petty and downright imbecilic. Put it this way: If the Prods are allowed to walk past our towns, wearing bowler hats, what's to stop them from wearing… uh, well, other hats… OK, that came out sounding stupid. But it's a long-standing thing: they want to march here because we don't want them to, and we don't want them to because they do." He paused. "OK. That is pretty stupid, I admit. But they started it."
Outside observers agreed that the Northern Irish should be proud at having managed to turn their backs on the best of both halves of their English and Irish heritages. "Those Idiots,," said one man seen peddling 'Beat the crap out of me, I'm Irish' t-shirts. "They took the a race of beautiful poets and the country that gave us the Magna Carta, and produced a mob of bone-stupid yahoos who glorify hatred for its own sake. It makes me proud to be a Sicilian-Navajo-Zulu-Mandarin-American."
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