page_title: Orange Order
section_title: Since 1921
hierarchical_section_title: Orange Order / History / Since 1921
caption_attribution_description: English: Sir James Craig 1924
context_page_description: The Loyal Orange Institution, commonly known as the Orange Order, is an international Protestant fraternal order based in Northern Ireland. It also has lodges in England, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland, as well as throughout the British Commonwealth and the United States. The Orange Order was founded in County Armagh in 1795, during a period of Protestant–Catholic sectarian conflict, as a Masonic-style fraternity sworn to maintain the Protestant Ascendancy. It is headed by the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, which was established in 1798. Its name is a tribute to the Dutch-born Protestant king William of Orange, who defeated the army of Catholic king James II in the Williamite–Jacobite War. The order is best known for its yearly marches, the biggest of which is held on or around 12 July.
  The Orange Order is a conservative unionist organisation, with links to Ulster loyalism. It campaigned against Scottish independence in 2014. The Order sees itself as defending Protestant civil and religious liberties, whilst critics accuse the Order of being sectarian, triumphalist, and supremacist.
context_section_description: The Orange Order had a central place in the new state of Northern Ireland. From 1921 to 1969, every Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was an Orangeman and member of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP); all but three Cabinet Ministers were Orangemen; all but one unionist Senators were Orangemen; and 87 of the 95 MPs who did not become Cabinet Ministers were Orangemen. James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, maintained always that Ulster was in effect Protestant and the symbol of its ruling forces was the Orange Order. In 1932, Prime Minister Craig maintained that "ours is a Protestant government and I am an Orangeman". This was in response to a speech the year before by Eamonn de Valera in the Irish Free State claiming that Ireland was a "Catholic nation" in a debate about protests against Protestant woman Letitia Dunbar-Harrison being appointed as County Librarian in County Mayo. Two years later he stated: "I have always said that I am an Orangeman first and a politician and a member of this parliament afterwards ... All I boast is that we have a Protestant Parliament and a Protestant State".
  At its peak in 1965, the Order's membership was around 70,000, which meant that roughly 1 in 5 adult Ulster Protestant males were members. Since 1965, it has lost a third of its membership, especially in Belfast and Derry. The Order's political influence suffered greatly after the unionist-controlled government of Northern Ireland was abolished in 1973.
  In 2012, it was stated that estimated membership of the Orange Order was around 34,000.
  After the outbreak of "the Troubles" in 1969, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland encouraged Orangemen to join the Northern Ireland security forces, especially the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and the British Army's Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). The response from Orangemen was strong. Over 300 Orangemen were killed during the conflict, the vast majority of them members of the security forces. Some Orangemen also joined loyalist paramilitary groups. During the conflict, the Order had a fractious relationship with loyalist paramilitary groups, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Independent Orange Order and the Free Presbyterian Church. The Order urged its members not to join these organisations, and it is only recently that some of these intra-unionist breaches have been healed.
caption: Orangeman James Craig, the first Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.
exif: {"Image XResolution": "1200", "Image YResolution": "1200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "GIMP 2.10.18", "Image DateTime": "2020:04:30 17:05:27", "Image ExifOffset": "136", "Thumbnail ImageWidth": "204", "Thumbnail ImageLength": "256", "Thumbnail BitsPerSample": "[8, 8, 8]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail PhotometricInterpretation": "6", "Thumbnail SamplesPerPixel": "3", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "262", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7716", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB"}