I Welcome OrangeFest

The old sectarianism conflict in Scotland needs to be put in the bin.

I bide-in with an Irish catholic-atheist and am the son of a half-mixed marriage: my mother started as a catholic daughter in a mixed marriage but changed schools — and religions — when my grandad was away in the war.

I have old IRA men in the family tree and Lanarkshire Orangemen alike — just like a million other Scots.

If the Provo’s and the DUP can form a government it cannot be beyond the whit of man to address the marching season in Glasgow.

It is time to end this — and that means both sides have to talk.

Years ago I went up the field in Belfast on the 12th with my pal Nuala Haughey (whose name I had to be careful not to use). The war was still on, and it was clear that the 12th was both a day of sectarian triumphalism and a family day out.

I heard all the stories about Glasgow. I came to work in Kinning Park — walking past UVF graffiti. One day big Shuggie, who had a company hatchback so as he could put his lambeg drum in, came and put round a sponsorship sheet to take the Winhill True Blues from Airdrie to Belfast for the 12th.

Now in Belfast then, in a mixed workplace, that would be how the ethnic cleansing of a workplace was done.

Folk say “I nearly shat myself”, but that day, stomach cramps, one of those sweats where you know you’ve gone green, I really was a bawhair from shiting myself — and then one of the Catholic lads put himself down for a fiver.

Later I asked Shug about Northern Irish politics and he telt me it was for nutters — we were def-in-et-ely not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

When Belfast went up in flames, ‘67, ’68 — “Scotland said naw” and walked away from it.

So how do we turn the marching season in Glasgow into a folk fair? I dunno — but it is what we have to do. And it starts with talking.

The Orangemen have invited representatives of all the other major Scottish religions to come and be their guests — and I think those of us who are not of the Orange traditions, particularly SNPers like me, should take them at their word.

The long allegation that the Orange Order marching is like the KKK is a nonsense — the days of a Protestant State in Scotland are long gone.

But let me be clear — the price of ‘normalising’ the Orange Order is the death of the politics of a Protestant Scotland — religious liberty is the liberty to freely practice all religions and none. Personally I would disestablish the Kirk.

So will I be going on Saturday? Unfortunately, no I won’t. I’m going out with a much more ferociously persecuted cultural minority — to the 110th Scottish Esperanto Congress.

Saluton!