The Faithful Tribe: an intimate portrait of the loyal institutions
By Ruth Dudley Edwards, HarperCollins, 448pp. £17.99.
Review by Gary Kent

Half a million people in Northern Ireland - a third of its population - left the province during this year's parades season. This figure, even if it is only ten per cent correct, speaks volumes about the parlous state of community relations in parts of Northern Ireland.
Many progressives would blame this on the Orange Order which Irish republicans accuse of being like the Klu Klux Klan.
The Orange Order has about 100,000 members in Northern Ireland and as far afield as Togo and Ghana. About 10% of its Liverpool members are black and the Order refused to operate a colour bar in Apartheid South Africa.
It is an exclusively Protestant organisation to promote the Protestant faith and, it says, civil and religious liberty for all. Its rituals seem at best insular and archaic: crown and bible and all those bowler hats, sashes and brollies remind one of the 50s.
But no organisation of this size or obvious importance in Northern Ireland's political life can be easily dismissed. If the Orange Order is part of the sectarian problem, it might also become part of the solution.
Ruth Dudley Edwards believes that the loyal institutions have been traduced by a campaign of grotesque misrepresentation - often helped by their stubborn refusal to play the modern public relations game.
She is an outsider willing to "squelch through the mud in the company of religiously-minded men in bowler hats who keep making a fuss about walking down roads." She has taken the time to understand their viewpoints, build bridges and offer constructive criticisms. This Dublin-born Catholic turned atheist also infiltrated a male institution which seems to largely allow its women supporters a very traditional supportive role - making tea and sandwiches.
The book is a mixture of anthropology, eyewitness reportage, politics and history. It starts with a canter through various parades which illustrate how different they can be - from conciliation to confrontation. It details why men join and what they do in the privacy of their Lodges in the north and internationally, their rituals and songs, then examines its religio-historical background whilst warning about how selective memory feeds contemporary emnity. It looks at the Protestant experience in the south after partition - it has all but disappeared.
It then focuses on the "Orange Vatican" of Portadown near where the Order was founded. It is also the base of the fascist LVF group formed by Billy "King Rat" Wright. It has been the main arena of conflict between Protestant marchers and Catholic residents. Discussing Drumcree takes up a third of the book.