In Church of Ireland circles, Rev Alan McCann is known as a prominent Orangeman and an opponent of the Good Friday agreement. But last Sunday he had a startling message for his congregation at Holy Trinity Church near Carrickfergus.

“I told them that I was ashamed. I had spent a lot of time considering whether I should remain in the Orange Order. What happened on Saturday was scandalous,” he said.

As the week unfolded, McCann became even more upset and disillusioned as the full story of loyalist violence emerged and the Orange Order’s sympathetic reaction to it. By Tuesday, 115 shots had been fired at the police by loyalists, and 116 vehicles hi-jacked. Television footage showed high-velocity bullets embedded in the sides of PSNI Land Rovers, or smashing their windows, clearly intended to kill the occupants.

Dawson Bailie, the order’s Belfast County grand master, who had called for crowds on the streets, had been on television refusing to condemn anything. Instead he blamed the police and said he would act in exactly the same way if the situation arose again.

McCann is the sort of man the Orange Order can ill- afford to lose. He comes from a police family and traces his Orange roots back at least four generations. When he joined the order at the age of 17, most of the men in the lodge were relatives. Since his sermon he has found himself acting as lightning rod for widespread discontent with the direction Orangeism has taken. “I have been contacted by senior officers from other counties saying it needed to be said.”

A few of the callers have gone public, including Rev Brian Kennaway, the former chairman of the order’s education committee, and William Wray, the grand treasurer for Londonderry. Others are keeping their heads down, uncertain whether to seek internal reform, vote with their feet or wait for it all to blow over.

The problem is that many sceptical Orangemen share the alienation of grassroots Protestants from the peace process, and this mutes their condemnation. As McCann sees it: “There has been no peace dividend for the Protestant people. I understand the frustration, but I think that the Orange Order has been used behind the scenes. It was disappointing to see Orangemen participating in that violence.”

THERE is no doubt that the violence was planned. A buzz was going round loyalist areas all last week. One man from North Belfast recalled: “On the bus into town on Friday, kids were saying that there were going to be policemen killed if the parade did not go through. They were saying they had had enough and they were excited.”

Duncan McCausland, the PSNI deputy chief constable in charge of Belfast, was getting the same information in intelligence reports. He was expecting paramilitary involvement and large-scale rioting, and on the day he came prepared. McCausland had called 1,000 troops and 1,000 police officers onto the streets, backed up with helicopters, spy planes, six water cannon and a field hospital.

The immediate cause of the trouble was the decision of the Parades Commission to reroute the annual Whiterock parade for 70 yards, to avoid nationalist houses on the Springfield Road.

Orangemen had walked the route on July 12 without incident and, whereas in other areas the Orange order refuses to meet residents’ groups, they had been in a form of dialogue with Springfield Road through the North and West Belfast Parades forum. They had met senior republicans and residents groups and had postponed the parade in June to allow for further dialogue.

Tommy Cheevers, an Orangeman who chaired the forum, said: “I’ve been involved in talking for years. I’ve been Mr Reasonable. I have worked with residents and with the police. I’ve done the whole public responsibility thing and what have I got? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

This feeling of getting nothing is fairly widespread on the Shankill, which votes overwhelmingly for the DUP and which is represented at Westminster by Gerry Adams. Nigel Dodds, the DUP MP for North Belfast, said: “People see the government delivering things to the nationalist/republican community and they feel the unionist side is being ignored. Right across the unionist community you get a deep feeling of angst.

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