LEADERS' SPEECHES:THE IRA must not be allowed to rewrite history by disguising that it waged a "sectarian" campaign of murder against Protestants, the new Grand Master of the Orange Order, Edward Stevenson, told Orangemen in Co Derry yesterday.
Mr Stevenson spoke in Limavady at one of 18 main Orange Order parades throughout the North in places such as Belfast, Ballymena, Holywood, Comber, Lisnaskea and Randalstown.
Mr Stevenson, who took over as grand master from Robert Saulters seven months ago, said: “Many of the people who were murdered in the Troubles were Orangemen and Orangewomen serving in the Ulster Defence Regiment and other army regiments, and the RUC.
“They paid the ultimate sacrifice because they wore the uniform of this country, although many of them were brutally murdered while going about their normal lives in the community.
“And there were those who died because they were Orangemen and Protestants. They died because the IRA were embarked on a bloody sectarian war. They may try to rewrite history, but we will not allow them to do so.”
He said he was determined to keep the promise he made when elected to “keep the innocent victims of the Troubles high on the agenda of everything that we do”.
Drew Nelson, general secretary of the Orange Order, accused the Parades Commission of being “refugees from reality” in seeking to dictate the type of hymns that could be played at Orange Order parades.
This was a reference to an initial decision in relation to a parade in east Belfast in May that only Abide With Me be played. The commission, whose offices are at Windsor House, ultimately backed down on this ruling over hymns for yesterday’s parade in east Belfast.
“Those who oppose us now hope to destroy our resolve on the anvil of demonisation, bureaucracy and obstructionism,” said Mr Nelson at the Ballycastle, Co Antrim, parade. “Do those who dwell in the ivory tower of Windsor House, apparently divorced from the realities of life in Northern Ireland, really think that we will fade from the pages of history because they dictate which hymns they allow us to play?”
