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Orange streets awash with booze and vomit

Despite the Order's stated commitment to temperance, and legal warnings from city council officials, alcohol was everywhere at yesterday's 'Twelfth' celebrations

Suzanne Breen

CLOCKWISE?(FROM?FAR?LEFT): 'Eleventh Night' celebrations in Roden Street, Belfast­; An Orange Order band member receives some first-aid spray after injuring himself playing the drums; a baby joins in the celebrations in central Belfast as young girls watch the celebrations in Central Belfast Julien Behal/PA

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The guy with the dyed orange hair and Union Jack shades stood outside King Billy's Park on the Lisburn Road, waving his beer bottle in the air. 'F**k the IRA!' he shouted as the Orangemen marched by. 'F**k all Fenians!' yelled his friend.

Another young man was draped in a red, white and blue flag. 'Rule Britannia, Britannia rule the waves. Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!' was emblazoned across it.

The Orange Order and their supporters don't rule anything in the North nowadays, but for a few hours every 12 July, they take over the streets of Belfast city centre, and they certainly make the most of it.

Around 250 Orange lodges and their bands departed from Carlisle Circus at 10am yesterday for the four-hour journey to 'the Field' in Edenderry. It was perfect marching weather: dry with a gentle breeze.

The older Orangemen were immaculate in their Sunday best. They carried carefully folded umbrellas or unsheathed swords with military-like precision. Some sported carnations in their bowler hats. The younger ones were unkempt. Sashes were stretched untidily over ill-fitting suits.

Still, they were having a grand time, especially the heavily ear-ringed and tattooed bandsmen. Shankill Star band swaggered up the road full of machismo. 'In memory of Brian Robinson' was splashed across its enormous drum. Robinson was a well-known UVF killer.

It wasn't the only sign of paramilitarism. Scores of teenagers carried the flag of the Ulster Young Militants, the UDA's youth wing. At Bradbury Place, three mini-skirted blonde women – all with bottles of beer in one hand, cigarettes in the other – sashayed onto the road as bands which they particularly liked passed.

They were perplexed as the 'Upper Falls Protestant Boys' marched by. "I thought there were only Taigs up there," one said. Several pitbulls were bedecked in red, white, and blue. For many, the Twelfth was just a family day out. People shouted to marchers they knew. "Billy, Billy, Happy Twelfth!" yelled a woman in a Union Jack sombrero with a tin whistle around her neck.

Youngsters waved plastic Union Jacks and squealed in delight at the blood-and-thunder bands. Families shared flasks of tea, and ham and cheese sandwiches. An elderly man in a wheelchair – a tartan blanket draped over his knees – watched the parade from Elmwood Avenue.

"I only make it out of the house once a year. My daughter drives me here. I wouldn't miss it for the world," he said.

The Orangemen's lush, ornate banners carried scenes of a bygone era: the battle of the Somme, Mountbatten of Burma, Queen Victoria, Martin Luther, Moses and the tablets of stone. 'Prepare to meet thy God' and 'the wages of sin is death', other banners declared. Nobody paid much notice. Despite the Order's stated commitment to temperance, alcohol was everywhere.

In Shaftesbury Square, almost everyone was drunk or getting there. It was only 11.30am. Men downed bottles of cider and Buckfast. Women balanced plastic cups of vodka and coke in the drinks' holders of prams. Children sat on boxes of Harp. This year, we were told there'd be a clamp-down on street drinking.

Belfast City Council officials, police officers standing beside them, handed out leaflets telling people it was an offence to drink in public places and there could be a £500 fine. Hundreds of people all around them were drinking. No action was taken. "It's a difficult situation," one official said.

Outside the Northern Bank, a police officer chatted to a man who held a Tennant's can in his hand. Many streets were awash with litter, vomit and urine.

Stalls selling loyalist paraphernalia did a roaring trade. The most popular item was a T-shirt declaring 10 reasons why it was better to be a Protestant than a Catholic. 'We can count without a rosary'; 'we weren't all born with orange hair and freckles'; 'we don't have 10 screaming kids'; 'we're not told what to do by some doddery old lech in Rome'; and 'it's safer to bend over in a church than in a chapel' were some.

The Eleventh night, on which dozens of bonfires were lit across the North, saw sporadic violence from nationalist and loyalist youths. Police officers were injured in Portadown and Belfast as they were attacked with paint, petrol bombs, stones and fireworks. Fire-fighters dealt with 49 incidents at bonfires and came under attack in Co Antrim and Co Derry.

An Ireland football shirt, the Tricolour, the Starry Plough, and an INLA sign topped a 40ft bonfire near an entrance to the City Hospital on the Donegall Road. At one point, a drunken crowd blocked the road. Ambulances would have found it impossible to pass.

The bonfire teetered on the brink of collapse. At five to midnight, it tumbled down, the flames dancing wildly to massive cheers. In nearby Roden Street, hundreds gathered at another bonfire. A band belted out 'Sash' and youths roared sectarian songs aimed at Catholics across the motorway.

At 1 am on Sandy Row, beer was being openly sold from makeshift stalls in full view of police. At the bonfire on Annadale embankment, rave music blasted. A young man stepped out of the crowd and picked up a discarded piece of wood. He posed against the bonfire as though holding a rifle. Just another glorious Twelfth in Northern Ireland.