| RSAUB | Date: Wednesday, 2011-11-23, 2:53 AM | Message # 1 |
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Colonel general
Group: Moderators
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| 60% of Order view Catholics as 'IRA sympathisers'
A new book on the Orange Order has found that more than 60% of its members agree with the view that "most Catholics are IRA sympathisers".
One of the authors, Professor Jon Tonge from Liverpool University, said the findings were "disturbing".
They are based on the views of 1,500 members from across Northern Ireland.
The book also notes that nine out of 10 Orangemen think Protestants are discriminated against.
Only 6% of respondents said they would be in favour of one of their children marrying a Catholic.
However, Mr Tonge said this was largely representative of the Northern Irish community as a whole.
"Only 9% of marriages are mixed here, so in that sense the Orange Order is not that far removed," he added.
Mr Tonge said the book, "Loyal to the Core? Orangeism and Britishness in Northern Ireland", was the first of its kind and had the full backing of the Order.
"They wanted a full and frank survey. We did offer concessions, but in the end they chose not to hold anything back," he added.
"They wanted a warts and all survey"
In all honesty the size of the Sinn Fein/IRA vote would verify this viewpoint, but allowing this survey to be carried out does the Orange Order no favors whatsoever.
Regardless of how we view the other side, you don’t make it easy for them by putting information like this into the public domain, do they want to become even more insignificant in this Country than they already are?
Message edited by RSAUB - Wednesday, 2011-11-23, 2:54 AM |
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| Culzie | Date: Wednesday, 2011-11-23, 8:13 PM | Message # 2 |
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Generalissimo
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| I agree with your comments. Its a thing which I have always felt about the Protestant people in general. They tend to speak the truth too much for their own good. The Irish by contrast can murder and maim but yet amid all the broken bodies and broken hearts they have left in their wake they get the sympathy because of the way they 'sell' themselves.
I remember just after the start of the troubles the TV was going round the various areas. The RC areas played it brilliantly ..lots of tearful interviews with women and children..the Protestant mobs came up our street etc. Then a Protestant area where a leading COI bishop was visiting (think his name was Peacocke) asking the Protestant people how they were coping had they been attacked. It was a fella he was asking. The fella replied 'aye we were attacked,they tried to come up our street but we beat them back and showed them the road home'. He said it in a bravado sort of way. No wonder we started off under a handicap. It might not have made any difference but nevertheless it set the scene for the future. Of course I have always felt like that. I couldn't understand the point in Bombay St if we didn't move people in there. Seems it was just the same attitude of the fella interviewed...we gave them a bloody nose. 
But speaking re the Orange Order position. What are people expected to think when large swathes of the Roman Catholic population voted for sinn fein/ira? There is a lot of prevaricating goes on in respect of this, but the plain fact is that even in the 1980s when the ira murder campaign was still ongoing the RC people were voting for them in large numbers.
But as you say they didn't do themselves any favours by being honest. People say they OO live in the past and that true in the sense also that they belive in the old ways ''honesty is the best policy''. They haven't realised that that is 'out the window' now and its cunningness,sleekitness and downright lying which counts with the media.
Ulster Protestants consider themselves to be a separate nation. This nation they call Ulster
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| RSAUB | Date: Friday, 2011-11-25, 8:25 PM | Message # 3 |
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Colonel general
Group: Moderators
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| Very true, we have the “We Are The People” mentality.
We only have to look at our paramilitaries, it’s all a very macho World and about flaunting their hard men reputations rather than a love for their community and a political desire for the long term future of our community and Country.
In prison while a minority of loyalists took advantage of the education facilities at their disposal. The majority seemed to be more interested in pumping iron, while in contrast the republicans were getting educated and strengthening their cultural and political ideology.
We seem to lack long term planning and are ignorant of what’s going on around us, we sort a see, what we want to see. It’s like we’re a community living in a bubble and some day that bubble is well and truly going to burst.
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