History of The Orange Institution - Revival

Revival

By the later 19th century, the Order was in decline. However, its fortunes were revived by the spread of Protestant opposition to Irish nationalist mobilisation in the Irish Land League and then around the question of Home Rule. Some Protestants perceived the Land War (sometimes violent agitation for the rights of tenant farmers) to be anti-Protestant, as most of the Landowning class were Protestants. As a result, the Orange Order, in October 1880, sent 50 labourers from counties Cavan and Monaghan to work the lands of Captain Charles Boycott (who was being boycotted by his own tenants) in County Mayo. They also established the Orange Emergency Committee in 1881, to oppose the Land league and to help landlords. These actions gave the Order greater appeal among the Ulster Protestant landed gentry and business community.

The Order's revival was completed by the controversy over Home Rule (or self-government for Ireland), which it virulently opposed on the grounds that Protestants would face discrimination in a Catholic dominated Ireland. Many of the Order's backers were also industrialists and valued the economic common market which the Act of Union guaranteed with Britain. In 1886, the Order was instrumental in the foundation of the Unionist Party, a coalition of former Liberal and Conservative Members of Parliament and an organisation named the Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union, to oppose the first Home Rule Bill. Between them, the Orange Order and the Unionist Party became mass organisations in Ulster, gaining the support of much of the Protestant population there. In 1886, William Ewart Gladstone's Home Rule Bill was before Parliament. The Bill was defeated in June, and serious rioting broke out in Ulster, continuing on into the marching season in July. By September, fifty people were dead, and thousands had been driven from their homes.

In 1894, the Order and the Unionists successfully opposed the Second Home Rule Bill, which was passed in the House of Commons but rejected by the House of Lords. British Prime Minister William Gladstone hinted at this time that special provision might need to be made for Ulster, a proposal that prefigured the subsequent Partition of Ireland.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Order suffered a split, when Thomas Sloane left the organisation to set up the Independent Orange Order. Sloane had been suspended from the main Order after running against a Unionist candidate on a pro-labour platform in an election in 1902. The Independent Orange Order was initially more left wing than its parent organisation. By 1905, it had over 70 Lodges. However, its appeal was hurt by the suggestion of its first grand master, Lindsay Crawford, that unionists might accept Home Rule under certain circumstances. It later became associated with more traditional unionist politics, but remained critical of the close relationship between the Orange Order and the Unionist Party.