A recent article in the Herald by Gerry Braiden reported that the Orange Order was mobilising to oppose Scottish independence. The order was reportedly applying to join community councils, had planned roadshows with local councillors invited and was printing leaflets to be distributed to a membership widely considered to number in the tens of thousands.
These actions, it seems, are part of an internal campaign to counter apathy. The danger of complacency was highlighted in the April edition of the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s Orange Torch publication. It was also revealed that Ian Wilson, a past grand master, is heading up the order’s referendum strategy group. The order is hardly likely to receive an invitation to join the Better Together campaign but relationships formed in Glasgow before last year’s local elections might be utilised. Following the elections, Gordon Matheson, the Labour leader of Glasgow City Council, was forced to deny on BBC Radio Scotland that he had promised a review of parading rules the order considered unfavourable. It isn’t outwith the realms of possibility that informal lines of communication might have been kept open.
Furthermore, it was reported that members (no indication was given of their seniority) had discussed the possible formation of a political party should Scotland vote for independence. Attempts to join the Townhead and Ladywell Community Council in Glasgow had been frustrated because of the order’s status as a religious group. Any political party that might emerge would be sure to attract significant criticism but might act to channel the anxieties of a membership that would, in the main, find itself disorientated in a post-Britain Scotland.
Such a move would also have historical precedent. In the early inter-war period, Orange candidates stood for school board elections with some success while the MPs Sir John Gilmour, Secretary of State for Scotland from 1924 to 1929, and Col A D McInnes Shaw were known Orangemen. The latter was also, for a time, the president of the Orange and Protestant Party (OPP) which was formed in the years after the first world war when the order had resigned its position on the Western Divisional Council of the Scottish Unionist Association in protest at perceived Tory capitulation over Ireland. The party largely restricted itself to issuing guidance to members on tactical voting but it had one notable success in the election of Hugh Ferguson as MP for Motherwell in 1923.
Ferguson’s election was attributable to the class and religious strife of the early 1920s. In the space of three years, the people of Motherwell elected the communist J T Walton Newbold, Ferguson and the Rev James Barr of the Independent Labour Party. Ferguson’s career had grown out of the sectarian fault lines in Lanarkshire. Prior to the 1923 election the Times declared, perhaps with a touch of hyperbole: ‘Nowhere outside Ulster is there more bitter enmity between Roman Catholics and Protestants than in Motherwell’. The Scotsman, also exaggerating in line with its own political sympathies, reported: ‘The chance to redeem themselves politically is eagerly anticipated by the electors of Motherwell’.
Ferguson’s parliamentary career was as undistinguished as it was short. He sought to portray himself as a reliable friend of Northern Ireland, particularly on the boundary issue, but made few interventions of note in the Commons. During a debate on the Lanarkshire Hydroelectric Bill, Tom Johnston taunted him, saying Ferguson thought it was the Battle of the Boyne. After losing to Barr in 1924, Ferguson was quickly embraced by anonymity but as late as 1927 the OPP could boast over 20 branches in places such as Greenock, Motherwell and Govan.
In 1986, the order was involved in the creation of the Scottish Unionist Party (SUP) in response to the Anglo-Irish Agreement which was signed on 15 November 1985 by Margaret Thatcher and Garrett Fitzgerald. Two aspects of the agreement served to provoke unionist hostility. Firstly, the fact that unionists had not been informed about the agreement prior to its signing and secondly, the creation of the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Conference which was viewed as the first step on the road to a united Ireland and the facilitator for unwarranted Dublin input in the affairs of Northern Ireland.
As had become the norm by this stage of the troubles, the order reflected the anger of Ulster unionists, readily joining them in denouncing the agreement as a betrayal of Ulster’s loyal subjects. The ensuing months saw an increased intensity in protest activity including letter writing and rallies in Scotland and Ulster addressed by Orange leaders. The formation of the party to contest the 1987 election was believed to have been the work of grand secretary David Bryce and Bill McMurdo (better known as the agent responsible for Maurice Johnston’s transfer to Rangers in 1989). Its primary objective, according to the Orange Torch, was to inflict a ‘crippling indictment’ on the Tories for their Northern Ireland policies.
It was announced that nine candidates would stand in selected target seats but the campaign became somewhat lacklustre. With a month to go before the June 1987 election, the candidates had yet to be named. It was belatedly announced that the SUP was endorsing tactical voting in 11 constituencies including those of George Younger, Michael Ancram and Malcolm Rifkind. The order took credit for of five of the 11 seats the Tories lost in Scotland including its two main pre-election target seats of Renfrew West and Inverclyde and Cunninghame North.
According to the order’s analysis: ‘The mauling of the Conservative Party in Scotland was due, in no small part, to the loss of thousands of orange votes’. Academics who have considered the electoral impact of the SUP offer a far more cautious appraisal, indicating the claim needs to be treated with a degree of scepticism. Some have highlighted the limited impact of the ‘Orange vote’ at times of more pronounced Protestant politics in Scotland and the generally poor performance of the Tories at the election in question.
One member of the order was bold enough to write in to the Orange Torch and ask: ‘Where is the evidence that it was the "Orange vote" that decimated the standing of the government in this part of the country?’ Although the electoral success of the SUP initiative is difficult to measure, in its other, more subtle, function it can largely be regarded as a success. It successfully pre-empted any violent tactics that more hard-line elements within the order might have sought to employ to mirror what was going on in Ulster in response to the agreement.
Scottish politics would probably experience a degree of splintering and realignment following a Yes vote. Any party seeking out the ‘Orange vote’ would do well to consider its historically elusive nature and consider the probability that the very act of doing so will be framed in the most unfavourable manner.
Alasdair McKillop is a writer based in Edinburgh
