To the field - The Annual "Orange Walk"

  ON THE DAY FOR "THE BIG WALK" AS IT'S KNOWN IN THE CITY

 Early in the morning shoes will have been polished, regalia and white gloves out and for some the traditional bowler. Banners will have their poles cleaned and the banner carefully unrolled. Many of these lodge emblems can cost £1,000. Bands will ensure everyone's uniform is in order, instruments checked. Lodge masters and marshalls will get their lodges to assemble and from shortly after 8am whole sections of the city will echo to the flutes and drums of the Orangemen as they have done for generations.

 Lodges assemble at their District Lodge HQ, then join other Districts in one of the 4 quarters of Glasgow before meeting up with the City's County Grand Lodge and head for a city park.

 The County Grand Officers then take the platform as the procession makes it's way past them taking up to an hour. Speeches follow and then an official lunch. For many lodges there is a meal booked and for others the chance to meet up socially with others they have not seen for much of the year. Then at 4pm,excited, jubilant crowds wait eagerly as the "12th" parade leaves the field led by city officebearers into the city and Districts break off to march round their own areas before dismissing.

 Again a short time later in the evening many will have social evenings to relax and unwind after the "big day". It is a long tiring day and for the crowds watching of whatever religion, a chance to hear dozens of flute and accordion bands and see brightly sashed marchers walking in the city as they have done for a over a century and a half. For foreign tourists there is puzzlement,  then the cameras are out. to record the biggest parades and crowds seen annually in the city.

The parade is a tremendous spectacle and not just for the thousands in the city centre but right across Glasgow aound the feeder parades. Perhaps those politicians and critics may ask themselves how they justify trying to marginialise such an obvious part of Scotland and the city's (and elsewhere's) community? They and the spiritual community must take cognisance of this. Here longer than some political parties and churches - we are here to stay.

Scotland may have many cultures this shows that the Orange is one of them and still very much so for so many people.

It has it's critics and detractors yet in face of this and many changes in the religious and social fabric in the life of the city, Glasgow Orangeism continues to defy it's critics and blithely marches on into it's third century. It stands for values, principles, law and order and the well tested British pride. And to those that would want to dilute them it echoes the cry sounded by Protestants at the Siege of Londonderry in 1688 - "No Surrender"!