The Orange Order in the 20th Century: A Comparative Analysis of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Newfoundland and Ontario

The Orange Order in the 20th Century: A Comparative Analysis of Northern Ireland, Scotland, Newfoundland and Ontario[1]

Dr. Eric P. Kaufmann, Dept. of Politics, University of Southampton,

Southampton, U.K.

The Orange Order, or Loyal Orange Institution (as it is officially known) is a voluntary association that has played a pivotal organisational role for British-Protestant dominant ethnic groups in Canada, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and, to a lesser extent, northwest England. It continues to make headlines in Northern Ireland due to conflicts arising from the July Twelfth marching season. Indeed, the symbolism of the Orange Order is so interwoven into the fabric of Irish history that the Irish Republic's tricolour proclaims its goal of reuniting Orange and Green. In Canada, the Orange Order once occupied a similar position as it does today in Northern Ireland. Today, however, it is but a shadow of its former self. This discrepancy between two modern societies offers us an important variation within one social movement. Accordingly, the Orange Order serves as a lens through which we can focus on processes of dominant ethnicity and voluntary association as they interact with the forces of late modernity.

The Order has never been the subject of primary social scientific investigation, though Ruth Dudley Edwards' The Faithful Tribe (1999) provides the first journalistic account for Northern Ireland and Cecil Houston & William Smyth's The Sash Canada Wore (1980) is an important historical-geographical work. However, the latter book concentrates on the nineteenth century rise of the Orange Order, and only speculates about the reasons why the Canadian Order declined in the twentieth century. Other historical work on the Canadian Orange Order does not address the question of twentieth century social change (Senior 1972; Pennefather 1984).Some high-quality historical research has also taken place in Britain and Ireland, but here again, the post-1939 period remains neglected (Gray 1972; MacFarland 1990; Walker 1992, 1995; MacRaild 1998).

This paper will address twentieth century Orangeism in comparative perspective. This primarily entails consideration of the pattern of Orange membership in Northern Ireland, Ontario, Newfoundland and central Scotland. Indeed, one of the more pragmatic questions posed by the striking demise of Ontario's Orange Order is whether its sharp decline in the twentieth century can yield any insight into the future of the Ulster Orange Order. This would be of signal importance for the long-term direction of the peace process, since the Orange element provides one of the bulwarks of Unionist resistance to the Good Friday Agreement. Our approach, which attempts to explain the impact of modernising processes, also requires an engagement with theories of social change, ethnic change and social capital. Accordingly, this paper promises to broaden our understanding of how dominant ethnic groups are affected by techno-economic and cultural variants of modernisation.

Comparative Loyalism: Canada and Northern Ireland

It is not the intent of this work to account for the birth of Orangeism. However, few would contest the notion that inter-ethnic conflict and rival versions of the past played a role in the origins of this organisation. An interesting exercise in comparative study is to examine the cultural similarities between the (historically) strongest Orange locales: English Canada and Northern Ireland. Both were settler societies whose dominant group members identified themselves not with any particular British ethnie (ie. Irish, Scottish, English), but as composite, ethnic Britons. In both societies, competition with a Catholic ethnic opponent (French-Canadian, Irish-Catholic) helped to reinforce the Protestant accent of the Loyalist group. Likewise, competition with a Republican foe - the Americans for Canada and Catholic Nationalists in Ireland - fortified the Imperial bond. Furthermore, the connection between the Ulster-Protestants and Anglo-Canadians (or 'British Americans') extended to demography: fully 25 percent of Canada's British population was Irish Protestant in 1867, rendering Irish Protestants the most over-represented British category.(Richard 1991: 44, 48, 83; Burnet 1972: 102-4; Buckner 1998: 11)

Both Loyalist groups also faced similar ontological and political problems. Namely, the task of maintaining a credibly 'British' identity in the face of neglect from the mother country and each group's lack of identifiably 'British' culture. Indeed, the English-Canadian struggle to be un-American parallels the Ulster-Protestant struggle against Irishness. Given the similarity between Anglo-Canadians and Ulster-Protestants, it is not surprising that the Orange Order emerged as the leading social movement within both groups from the mid-nineteenth century onward. Finally, the collapse of the British Empire after the 1950's was a blow which both groups have struggled to come to terms with: Anglo-Canadians have variously embraced multiculturalism and anti-establishment populism, while Ulster-Protestants have increasingly attempted to establish a more 'home-grown' sense of ethnic identity. (Dunn & Morgan 1994; Adamson [1982] 1991; Kaufmann 1997: 130; Craith 2001)

The Rise of the Orange Order in Canada

The Orange Order developed as a fraternal society for the Protestant population in Ireland after 1795. It rose in response to the impending threat of Irish independence posed by the revolutionary coalition between the liberal-Protestant United Irishmen and the Catholic Defender movement. In the following three decades, Irish immigration and its attendant sectarian divisions established Orangeism in the western lowlands of Scotland and the north-west of England. Thus Orangeism existed within a Unionist ethnic and political environment in Northern Ireland, Scotland (particularly in the western part of the central belt) and areas adjacent to Liverpool in north-west England. (Gallagher 1987; MacFarland 1990; McCrone 1992; MacRaild 1998) Nonetheless, since the organisation served instrumental and fraternal functions, one should not assume that the spread of the movement merely reflected the aforementioned cultural-political conditions.

The processes which spawned the rise of the Orange Order in the British Isles operated with equal, or greater, vigour, in Canada. Few contemporary English-speaking Canadians realise that as many as one in three adult Protestant males in Ontario passed through the ranks of the Orange Order between 1870 and 1920 while the influential Ladies' Orange Benevolent Association (LOBA) proved that the principles of the Order were not gender-specific. The Canadian Order was not an Irish organisation, but instead brought together several ethnic components of English Canada's Protestant majority. (Houston & Smyth 1980: 84, 95-6, 104) Founded in Ontario in the early years of the nineteenth century as an association for Irish Protestant immigrants, by the 1860s, the Orange Order had become firmly 'native' in outlook.

Its power was centred in Ontario and New Brunswick, but the Order maintained a strong network of lodges in all provinces[2]. The large-scale immigration of Irish Protestants in 1820-65 gave the organisation its initial impetus in Ontario and New Brunswick. In Newfoundland, however, the Order took root amongst a native-born population of West Country English derivation. First introduced by Prince Edward Islanders and Nova Scotians travelling by ship to the western Port-au-Port peninsula in the early 1860's, Orangeism quickly began to thrive within the active Protestant-Catholic matrix of this British maritime colony. (Senior 1960)

Later, in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, both the Canadian and Newfoundland Orders benefited from an imperialist political climate. This was manifested through a Britannic nationalist exuberance for both Empire and the 'civilizing' mission of the Protestant crusade. Britannic nationalism was bolstered by both a romantic Loyalist Revival in the post-Confederation period as well as a series of conflicts in which Orangemen featured prominently as bastions of British Loyalty. These included the Rebellions of 1837-8, the Crimean War (1854-6), the Riel Rebellions (1869-70, 1885), the Manitoba Schools Question (1890), the Boer War (1899-1902) and the First World War (1914-18). (Rasporich 1968: 140-56; Senior 1972: 62, 71, 96; Berger 1969)

Canadian imperialist fervour far exceeded that of the British metropole - where imperialism divided liberals (allied to the cause of Irish home rule) and Tories. For instance, the Royal Tour of Canada in 1901 drew crowds that regularly exceeded the local population. 'Everywhere the crowds were huge and enthusiastic,' writes Philip Buckner. 'In Toronto, between 200,000 and 250,000 people lined the streets.' (Buckner 1998: 12) Meanwhile, Orange expansion in the nineteenth century was so great that the Order had become larger in Canada than in Ireland by 1900. (See figure 1) When we consider that the population of English-speaking Canada was just 3.8 million at this time, we must conclude that English Canada was as Orange a society as Ireland. (Buckner 1998: 14) Furthermore, the concentration of membership in Ontario, New Brunswick and Newfoundland compared favourably, as we shall see, with Orange density in the nine counties of Ulster.

The Order's mainstream nature and political influence as a bastion of popular Toryism is attested to by the many politicians who passed through its ranks, from Sir John A. Macdonald and Oliver Mowat in the mid-nineteenth century to prime minister John Diefenbaker, Newfoundland premier Joey Smallwood and Toronto mayor Leslie Saunders in the mid-twentieth. (Senior 1972) In Ontario, the Order was influential both at Queen's Park and on Toronto city council, enforcing sabbatarian ordinances and temperance laws that influenced the character of 'Toronto the Good' until the Second World War. Indeed, the City of Toronto ('the Belfast of Canada') only acquired its first non-Orange councillor in the 1930s. In Newfoundland, meanwhile, many credit the Order with tipping the 1948 vote in favour of Confederation. (Fitzgerald 1998: 3; Jamieson 1991: 103)

The Decline of the Orange Order in Canada

By the third decade of the new century, Order membership growth in Toronto was failing to keep pace with the city's skyrocketing population. (Houston & Smyth 1980: 154-7, 162-80) And from the 1950s, the organisation began to lose political influence, a change symbolised by the fact that John Diefenbaker proved to be Canada's last Orange prime minister. Its male membership in 1984 stood at just over 14,000 in 616 lodges, a significant drop from the more than 58,000 members and 4000 lodges which made up Canadian Orangeism in 1955. (GOLOWret 1985; ICGW 1955) Thereafter, particularly in its Ontario heartland, a slow but steady decline set in. Today, the organisation is dwindling and is viewed as an interesting survival from another age. (Houston & Smyth 1980: 162-3)

By contrast, owing to stable or rising membership during 1920-65, the Order's presence in Northern Ireland neatly parallels its former influence in Ontario. Thus the Order maintains an influential presence in both civic and provincial politics, with many Belfast city councillors (including mayor Stoker), and nearly all Ulster Unionist Party MPs counting themselves as members. In addition, its 200-year history, 45,000-strong Ulster membership, and its position on the Ulster Unionist Council ensure that the Orange Institution is a significant political and social player in Northern Ireland. This is highlighted annually during its more than 4,000 July Twelfth parades - including the highly controversial Garvaghy Road route at Portadown. Such a profile provides a definite contrast with Ontario, where the Order's July Twelfth parades arouse little excitement, while few of those under fifty are familiar with the organisation.

Therefore, the Order's elderly Canadian alumni hold the key to a puzzle of

(post?) modernisation: what caused the decline of the Orange Order, a structural backbone of Anglo-Canadian dominant ethnicity? Secularisation would appear to be a promising explanation, and it is among the factors listed by Cecil Houston and William Smyth in their speculations about the reasons for the Order's demise. (Houston & Smyth 1980: 170-71) Yet this can serve at best as a partial answer, since Orange decline preceded the decline in Canadian Protestant religiosity by some twenty to forty years. Value change, in a liberal-egalitarian direction, offers a competing explanation behind the decline, as does a more general decline in the prestige of British Loyalism. To some extent, this has been borne out by recent survey research concerning the decline of Loyalism in Canada. (Schwartz 1967: 74-6, 106-123; Cheal 1980)

On the other hand, techno-economic rationality, immigration (or some other variable) might turn out to be critical - and all are offered as competing hypotheses by Houston and Smyth in their concluding chapter. In many ways, therefore, the puzzle of Orange decline in Canada touches upon the very questions which lie at the heart of debates in empirical political and social theory.

Theoretical Context

Social and Political Theories

This research intersects with three major theoretical discourses: social/empirical political theory, social capital/social movements theory, and ethnicity/nationalism theory. The analysis attempts to explain why a 150-year old organisation at the centre of one society can enter into sudden decline, while remaining stable in other places. It also tries to determine, more generally, which forces drive the growth and decline of a large-scale social movement over place and time. The Orange Order has been much more stable over the past two centuries than more radical organisations like the Scottish Protestant League, American Protective Association or (Canadian) Equal Rights Association.

Furthermore, the Orange Order's existence as a traditional fraternity exactly parallels that of the modern period, thereby providing an interesting window into the interplay of tradition and modernisation. A stable organisation like the Orange Order likewise provides a good yardstick for assessing the transition from industrial modernity to post-industrial or 'high' modernity (Giddens 1991). If Orange membership and political influence rose with modernisation but declined with the advent of post-industrial modernity, this suggests that there may be something qualitatively different about this 'post-modern' phase.

Another implication of this project for social theory concerns the cause of fluctuations in Orange membership and power. Here, one axis of debate centres around whether the engine of social change is the techno-economic 'base' of society (the position held by orthodox Marxists and many rational choice theorists) or its cultural-symbolic 'superstructure,' the explanation favoured by many in the Durkheim-Weber tradition (Inglehart 1990). For these theorists, changes in norms and worldview are the leading driver of change. To these 'economistic' and 'culturalist' theories, one must add the more recent empirical political theories which ascribe independent causal power to institutional processes (i.e. March & Olsen 1984). Finally, empirical political theorists also highlight the causal impact of events like the First World War or Watergate scandal in recasting established worldviews or reframing economic and political structures.[3]

Social Capital and Social Movements Theory

Debates in social theory have their correlates in social movements theory, particularly in the work of Robert Putnam. Putnam's recent research, using American data, attempts to explain the decline in social capital, or voluntary association, in the United States. Fraternal societies (like the Orange Order or Freemasons), Putnam notes, are amongst the hardest hit by recent developments. Putnam traces a membership profile for thirty-two American chapter-based associations which charts a trend of steadily rising membership through 1900-1957, a plateau during 1958-68, and a period of steady decline post-1969. (Putnam 2000: 54, 438-45)

In the first half of the century, only the depression interrupted a steady growth in voluntary organisations, as Americans became ever more involved in associational life. However, Putnam posits that half the general post-sixties decline in organisational vitality is attributable to the replacement of a 'civic' generation of joiners born before 1940 with more privatised cohorts born after that date. Thus a generation reared during a time of depression, war and optimism proved more willing to join associations than its post-modern progeny. Television, changing gender roles and suburban sprawl - with their attendant privatising effects - contribute a further 25-40 percent towards Putnam's explanation of decline. (Putnam 2000: 284)

Other Departures in the Theory of Fraternal Organisation

A number of challenges to Putnam's thesis have emerged in the literature since he published his ground-breaking article in 1995. One of the more important with respect to fraternalism is David Beito's recent analysis of life insurance fraternities in the U.S. Beito's exhaustive analysis of the social welfare provisions of numerous fraternal orders suggests that decline set in far earlier than the 1960's. For life insurance fraternal orders - a category which encompasses most of the larger Orders - such as the Moose, Eagles and Masons, the sustained trend of post-Civil War membership growth began to slow by the 1920's. Beito suggests that rival entertainment sources such as radio, the automobile and the movies were one source of the slowdown. Changing cultural values which derided core fraternal idioms like thrift, mutual aid and character-building, were also responsible. Finally, predatory state legislation, which favoured state and commercial insurers, drove fraternities from the social welfare field. (Beito 2000: 204-5)

Meanwhile, immigrant-dependent associations lost membership as the restrictive 1924 National Origins Quota Act took effect. According to John Higham, the new shared American working-class culture of the thirties acted as an assimilating solvent. 'All the institutions of ethnic culture weakened,' Higham remarks. 'Lodges declined, ethnic ceremonies and theatres faded…and in their churches and newspapers a younger generation of priests and editors began to encourage a greater use of English.' (Higham 1999: 53, emphasis added)

Whereas Putnam views the sixties as the plateau before the decline, Beito considers the twenties as the membership hiatus which heralded a subsequent avalanche of decline. As evidence, Beito notes that the ranks of the six largest orders stressing sick and funeral benefits fell from 7.2 million in 1930 to 5.9 million in 1935 and - despite the end of the depression - continued to tumble to 4.7 million in 1940. Meanwhile, life insurance orders saw their total membership slide from 10.1 to just 7.8 million Americans during the same period. (Beito 2000: 222-23) Even the mighty Masons peaked at their staggering 12.1 percent of native-born white American adults in 1930. (Dumenil 1984: 225)

The case of the largest association in Canada, the Independent Order of Oddfellows (IOOF), is instructive: J.C. Herbert Emery's analysis of lodge registers in British Columbia and Ontario shows that the IOOF grew rapidly until the 1920's, but during this decade, initiations slumped from 11 to 3 percent. In contrast to Beito, Emery discounts fraternal insolvency, government legislation and both union and commercial insurance as contributing factors. Instead, rising income among younger men, Emery suggests, allowed them to insure themselves without having to join a fraternity. Together with recreational competition, this spelled the beginning of the end for large fraternities like the Masons, IOOF or the Orange Order. The trend is particularly noticeable in the cities, where insurance and recreational competition was keenest and IOOF membership rates lowest. (Emery 1999: 40, 44)

Though differing widely in their interpretations of decline, most analysts of fraternal organisation point to a combination of cultural factors (i.e. changing attitudes or recreational tastes, generational change), economic influences (i.e. rising income, new technologies like the car or television, new recreational outlets), institutional forces (i.e. growth of welfare state, fraternal scandal) and events (i.e. world wars). However, as with Houston and Smyth in the case of Canadian Orangeism, few analysts have made a concerted attempt to weigh the relative importance of various factors.

Ethnicity and Nationalism Theory

Some of the most important work on fraternalism stresses the importance of changing conceptions of gender, class and race in accounting for the rise and fall of fraternal lodges. (Carnes 1989; Clawson 1989) Though admittedly a culturalist statement, it is nevertheless a truism that one of the hallmarks of ritualistic fraternalism in the first half of the twentieth century has been its ethnic homogeneity. As agents of 'bonding' social capital, fraternal organisations - whether immigrant/ethnic, black or WASP maintained a remarkably homogeneous membership base.[4] In the United States, as in Canada, IOOF members were largely - if not exclusively - drawn from the declining Anglo-Protestant majority. (Dumenil 1984: 115-47; Emery 1999: 31)

Meanwhile both the IOOF and Freemasons endorsed the defensive ethno-nationalism which gripped WASP America between 1890 and 1925. The rise and fall of the largely northern-based, multi-million member 'second' Ku Klux Klan between 1915 and 1928 - a more moderate and mainstream organisation than either its predecessor or successor - should give us pause when dismissing shorter-term explanations of fraternal change. The same must be said for other 'nativist' ethno-national movements like the Immigration Restriction League, million-plus member American Protective Association or the Native American Party - which won several state elections and threatened to win at the federal level in the 1850's. (Kaufmann 2002; Higham 1955 [1986])

The Orange Order, too, was at the forefront of immigration restriction and defensive nationalism, this time on the Canadian prairies in the 1920s, a stance which continued unabated into the 1970s.[5] (Houston & Smyth 1980) Indeed, it is unsurprising that Protestant fraternities should manifest dominant ethnic tendencies given that these sentiments were all but universal among the Protestant middle and lower strata. Moreover, at every level, Protestants maintained higher rates of associational activity than Catholics, so fraternalism provided an obvious outlet for defensive middle and working-class ethnic sentiment. (Anderson 1970: 118-19)

At a more middle-range level of analysis, ethnicity/nationalism theorists are concerned with the question of whether ethnicity, dominant or otherwise, tends to decline in high modernity. This scholarly discourse cuts to the question of whether ethnicity is a transitory phenomenon, thrown up by improved communication systems between smaller clan units, that will disappear with the extension of those communication systems beyond the confines of the ethnie. 'Evolutionists contend that ethnic groups will be superseded in the future, while 'revivalists' see ethnic groups as more persistent.

One school of thought, modernisation theory, holds that ethnic decline forms part of the general trend away from kinship-based forms of 'traditional' social organisation. (Durkheim 1893; Parsons 1951; Deutsch 1953; Kerr 1960; Hechter 1975: 22-9). To some degree, Steve Bruce, a leading authority on comparative Protestant politics, subscribes to this viewpoint, claiming that Protestant hegemony in Britain and North America has declined due to the combined impact of secularisation, Protestant schism and structural differentiation (Bruce 1998). Might these forces have led to Orange decline in the latter half of the twentieth century? Our analysis will shed important light on this question.

Since the 1970s, modernisation theory has been eclipsed as the main paradigm in ethnicity and nationalism theory by more conflict-based approaches (Smith 1981; Horowitz 1985). These advance the notion that ethnic groups either resist decline or increase their social importance in post-industrial modernity. This is prompted by improved methods of communication, which facilitate greater group consciousness. This occurs because ethnic media and education networks become both more intensive and more extensive, all within an atmosphere of increased awareness of other groups. This paradigm would construe Orange decline as either temporary, or as an aspect of the 'translation' of Protestant tradition from the Orange Order to new social constellations like sports teams or Unionist marching bands (Bell 1990; Bairner 1997). Here again, the analysis will try to assess the relative merits of these two main approaches.

Research Methodology

The quantitative portion of this research is based on an examination of Orange Order membership figures for all years available since 1900, broken down geographically (nationally, and by province, county, and district). The quantitative analysis is complemented by a qualitative dimension, including interviews with Orangemen and women, lodge reports, lodge newsletters and city newspapers. The goal being to grasp some of the more complex influences on Orange membership as well as to provide a subjective perspective on the dynamics of Orange political power.

It is important to recognise that Orange Order data has generally not been available to academic researchers and that the data presented here have never previously been published. Due to privacy agreements with several Grand Lodges, certain membership figures will be omitted from the analysis. It should also be stressed that this research is still at an early stage, with a significant body of both Orange and census data still awaiting collection, digitisation, and - where boundaries change or are incongruent - GIS interpolation. Consequently, missing data restricts the scope of our present model. Even so, current data has already furnished a wealth of important material, some of which will be presented here.

Current Findings

Since I have already published material from my qualitative research[6], I will concentrate on quantitative trends in Orange membership in relation to variables from the census, historical events and, in the case of Northern Ireland, political fatalities.

International Overview

Figure two presents a time-series portrait of membership trends in Newfoundland, Ontario, Scotland and the three Northern Ireland counties for which we have data. The first point to notice is that membership density, i.e. the proportion of the Orange target population (male British Protestant population over the age of eighteen) that is in membership, fluctuates greatly over both time and place. Secondly, it is clear that membership density in Scotland is relatively weak, despite popular perceptions. This is not merely an artefact of Scottish Orangeism's concentration on the West Coast since even in the most heavily Orange zone comprising Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire and Renfrewshire, membership densities for this period do not exceed two percent. Only in a few selected areas, like Glasgow's Govan ward or Rutherglen district, to the southeast of the city, do densities approach those of Ontario.

The upshot is that Canada was a far more Orange place than anywhere else outside of Northern Ireland. Moreover, while Ontario's membership density was similar to Belfast's until World War I, Newfoundland's far outstripped that of the three eastern Ulster counties for which we have good time-series data. In fact, only Co. Fermanagh and parts of Co. Tyrone and Co. Armagh can approach Newfoundland's peak 1920's density of more than one-third of adult male Protestants in membership. (See fig. 2)

Source: Grand Lodge and County returns and reports.

A second feature of Orange membership trends is the pattern of twentieth century decline. In Canada, this dates to the 1920's. However, in Northern Ireland and Scotland, absolute declines set in much later. Northern Ireland membership only began to trend downward in the mid-sixties, while Scotland did not see a downturn until the mid-eighties. Furthermore, local variation is significant: Belfast resisted decline until the early seventies, then dropped sharply while Antrim and Down crested in the early fifties, and slipped gradually downward thereafter. In the rest of Northern Ireland - particularly mid-Ulster - decline was, and is, far less noticeable. At the macro level, decline occurred first and most severely in Ontario, followed by Newfoundland, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Source: Grand Lodge and County returns and reports. Note that these figures are raw membership figures, unlike those in figure 2, which are adjusted for male, adult, British-Protestant population.

Explaining Membership Fluctuation

'Native born Canadians,' declared Canadian Grand Master Gordon Keyes, 'and indeed new Canadians from the British Isles…find difficulty in devoting time to lodge affairs. Perhaps the ever increasing attitude of materialism, or selfish attainment contributes to neglect of our heritage….' (Keyes IGCW1964: 30) Commentary such as this, along with interviews I have conducted with both elite and rank-and-file members, helps to define the parameters of the problem.

Indeed, combining feedback from respondents, Orange documents and secondary historical literature, the list of possibilities for explaining recent decline includes the following: 1) cultural: decline of Anglo-Protestant ethnic hegemony, rise of non-British immigration, decline of religiosity, ecumenism/decline of sectarianism, changing gender roles, rise of Canadian/Scottish nationalism, declining support for Monarchy/Britishness, and rise of liberal-egalitarianism; 2) social: decline of social capital/connectedness, rise of alternative forms of recreation and conviviality, declining appeal of ritualistic activities; 3) economic: rise in shift work, suburbanisation and geographic mobility, increase in income, spread of television/radio/automobile/telephone, depression, unemployment, industrial decline, slum clearance; 4) institutional: increases in lodge dues, organisational apathy, organisational schism, growth of government functions; 5) event-driven: World Wars, Depression, political violence, diplomacy and constitutionalism (i.e. Good Friday Agreement, Royal Bilingualism and Biculturalism Commission), and cross-community political events (such as new Northern Ireland Police Force or papal visit to John Knox's statue) .

The richness of these theories is evident: they could not have been generated by quantitative techniques. However, in order to winnow down the large number of possible drivers of Orangeism's rise and decline in the twentieth century, I believe that it is imperative that we next to turn to statistical strategies. We cannot address all of the above possibilities just yet, but the analyses to follow will go some of the way toward underlining the most promising hypotheses.

Ontario

Our first port of call on the route to understanding twentieth century Orangeism's trajectory is Ontario. There is a fairly good set of annual data for many socio-economic indicators in the province, especially for the post-1945 period. Moreover, some indicators reach back into the early decades of the century. Figure 1 shows the results of multiple regression analysis across all 52 available years for 1910-1961. Here adult male Orange density (y) is regressed on the following available data: 1) Proportion of the provincial population that is British-origin and Protestant [gbprot] - this provides an indirect measure of the Catholic population as well; 2) Passenger auto permits per capita [auto]; 3) Proportion of eligible pupils attending K-12 education [propsch]; 4) Proportion of eligible pupils attending K-12 education ten years ago [propschlag10]; 5) World War I [WWI]; 6) Great Depression [Depr]; 7) World War II [WWII]. Variables for lags of 1, 5, 10 and 20 years for war and depression have been included as well. Finally, I have created a variable for the interaction between war and education [impact of wars*proportion in school], along with associated 10 year lags.

SPSS stepwise model total and partial correlations (R-squared) are reproduced below from most important variable to least (all variables are significant in this paper unless otherwise noted):

Independent Variable		Partial Correlation	Standard Error	Significance (Sig)
Propschlag10	Proportion of eligible pupils attending K-12 education ten years ago	-.979	.000	.000
Auto	Passenger auto permits per capita	-.889	.008	.000
WWI	World War I	.449	.001	.000
WWIlag1	World War I - one year aftermath	.430	.000	.010
Deprlag10	Depression - ten year aftermath	-.289	.001	.032
WWIIlag10	World War II - ten year aftermath	.148	.000	.000
Model Total:		.994	.00183

This model for 1911-61 predicts Ontario Orange density almost perfectly (.994), and it is clearly the case that education levels of ten years ago play the most important role in this predictive power, with passenger auto permits running a close second. Both of these modernisation variables have a strongly negative effect on Orange density. Conversely, the World Wars tend to have a stimulating effect - whether this takes place immediately, as in the case of World War I (+.449), or some years thereafter (WWIlag1, WWIIlag10). Finally, the Great Depression is shown to have a weak effect on membership, and this only after ten years.

Removing post-1945 trends from the analysis (N=36) reduces the impact of the ten-year education lag to -.735 and elevates the effect of WWI lag 1 to .836 and depression lag 10 to .567. The British-Protestant proportion of the population takes on importance at .706 while World War I itself correlates with Orange density at .646. Post-1940 analysis (N=23) yields an increase in the proportion of the variation explained by education lag10 to -.812, and the British-Protestant proportion of the population takes on a very high partial correlation of .980. This is interesting, for it demonstrates that, if anything, the Catholic population in Ontario was rising at a time when Orange fervour was in decline - rather than the (expected) reverse relationship. Later, we shall see that this conclusion needs to be qualified by region.

The Role of Structural Forces

Rather than take these results at face value, it is important that we consider the role played by socio-economic data collected only after 1928. Unfortunately, this will reduce our number of cases from 52 to 32 and therefore exclude years up to 1928 when Orange densities rose and then began to fall. The impact of World War I is thereby largely occluded. However, this exercise will increase the number of independent variables in our model considerably. SPSS model total and partial correlations (R-squared) are reproduced below from most important variable to least (all variables significant):

Independent Variable		Partial Correlation	Standard Error	Significance (Sig)
Propschlag10	Proportion of eligible pupils attending K-12 education ten years ago	-.980	.000	.000
GBProt	Proportion of the population of British ethnicity and Protestant faith	.949	.006	.000
Depr	The Great Depression, 1929-33	.679	.000	.000
WW2lag10	World War II - ten year aftermath	.646	.000	.000
War_Inc	Effects of War, interacting with Income per capita	-.537	.442	.006
WW1lag10	World War I - Ten year aftermath	-.514	.000	.009
Warlag10_ed lag10	Interaction of 10-year lags of wars and proportion in K-12 education	.484	.000	.014
War_Ed	Interaction of wars and proportion in K-12 education	.396	.000	.05
Model Total:		.998		.00047

Once again, education of ten years ago (-.980) proves the most important factor in a model that now includes additional variables for per capita social security payments, old age pensions, mothers' allowances, personal income, retail sales, chain store sales, labour wages and salaries, manufacturing wages and an industrial composite employment index.[7] The most important point to notice here is the striking absence of economic variables in our explanation. Only the interaction of war and income plays a role, and a rather meek (-.537) one at that.

In the previous analysis of the 1910-61 period, we noted that as we approached the more recent period, the proportion of British-Protestants begins to attain significance. Thus it is that we find that for the post-1928 period, this factor becomes very (.949) important. The positive direction of the relationship suggests that the decline in WASP demographic preponderance may have signalled a more general decline of dominant-group ethnicity. This might account for the lack of Orange response to the growth of the non-British, non-Catholic population in this period. It may also suggest that more liberal attitudes among British-Protestant Ontarians helped to lower barriers to Catholic immigration. Evidently, more research is needed to substantiate this hypothesis.

In terms of events, the Great Depression is most important, and it coincides with an improvement of Orange density, at a partial correlation of .679. This is difficult to interpret, but it is probably the case that lodges' practice of making allowance for unemployed members during the depression temporarily reduced the rate of suspensions for non-payment of dues and thus masked the trend of sharp membership decline which characterized the 1920-1939 period.

World War I's ten-year lag effects can be discounted for this post-1928 period due to limited data points, despite the fact that its ten year lag reaches the first few years of this model at a partial correlation of -.514. World War II also shows little effect, but its ten-year aftermath correlates well (.646) with a revival of Orange membership - something noticeable in other provinces as well. Perhaps this phenomenon is related to Robert Putnam's observation that associational life in general picked up strongly in the decade after the second world war. Despite the low number of cases (N=32), it seems that education and dominant-group ethnicity are our best predictor of Orange density while economic and event-driven variables contribute little to our explanation.

The median individual in K-12 education ten years ago is of prime age (21-22) for lodge initiation, and it may be the case that the education system began to act as a socialising agent for values that were antithetical to Orangeism as early as the turn of the century. Given the officially pro-British imperative in Canada around this time, it is doubtful that Canadian nationalism or anti-monarchical sentiment played a role. (Schwartz 1967) Instead, the most likely focus of counter-Orangeism would be religious toleration for Catholicism and, less convincingly, ethnic tolerance of French Canada. Indeed, historical research in the United States and Britain has demonstrated that Protestant sectarianism fell out of favour among the educated middle class and cultural elites by the turn of the century and had begun to pass from school textbooks around this time as well. It would be surprising if English-speaking Canada did not participate in this trend. (Fitzgerald 1979; Ingram 1988; Waller 1988; Bruce 1998: 119)

The high partial correlation for British-Protestant ethnicity and Orange density can be slotted into this explanation, since an ethnically assertive British-Protestant population would be expected to demonstrate strong antipathy to non-British, Catholic population growth. Here we would expect a negative, rather than positive, correlation between the British-Protestant share of the population and Orange density. Yet our findings suggest the opposite: as the Catholic population increased through French-Canadian migration, European immigration and a higher Catholic birthrate, Orangeism actually weakened among British Protestants.

It is certainly possible that the growing Catholic presence may have forced Protestants to be more accommodating. Indeed, this was somewhat evident in the United States, where the second Ku Klux Klan flourished in Protestant-majority sections of Protestant states like Oregon and Indiana, but fared more poorly in mixed regions of more diverse states like Illinois. (Moore 1991) On the other hand, this is a counterintuitive result that our cross-sectional and comparative analyses will cast doubt upon. More than likely, the high correlation has partly been produced because a third factor related to modernisation (be this liberalism or economic growth) prompted a decline in both Orange density and the British-Protestant proportion of the population.

Ontario: Cross-Sectional Analysis

The preceding analysis is consistent with a cultural explanation, but might a different story be told if we examine data cross-sectionally as well as in time series? A limited dataset of census information has been digitised at county level for 1911, 21 and 41. This includes data for counties in Ontario West for 1911, 21, and 41, but - owing to missing Orange records, excludes the third of the province under the Grand Lodge of Ontario East for the years 1921 and 41.[8] 88 cases were generated, though the number of independent variables is a great deal more restrictive than in the time series analysis. Variables include 1) Proportion of the provincial population that is of British origin, 2) Proportion of the population that belongs to a British denomination of Protestantism (i.e. may include German-origin Anglicans but not Scottish-origin Lutherans), 3) Percentage rural, 4) Irish Protestants as a proportion of British-Protestant population, 5) Scottish Protestants as a proportion of British-Protestant population. Variables were also added for major non-British ethnic groups as well as Catholics, Lutherans and Mennonites.

Evidently there is only one variable (urban-rural) that taps an economic factor, so this is as yet an incomplete exercise. Results of our time-series cross-sectional analysis appear below:

Independent Variable		Partial Correlation	Standard Error	Significance (Sig)
ProtIre	Proportion of British-Protestant Population that is of Irish origin	.355	.001	.018
Rural	Proportion rural	.334	.002	.010
Dutch	Proportion Dutch origin	-.294	.007	.000
Lutheran	Proportion Lutheran	-.241	.027	.000
Baptist	Proportion Baptist	-.239	.029	.000
Model Total		.555	.01073	.000

This is a weaker model than we saw in the purely time-series analysis, though this can partly be explained by the large number of cases contained therein, as well as the lower degree of linearity in cross-sectional models. Notice that at the cross-sectional level, there is no variable that predicts the trajectory of Orange density as powerfully as education (lag10) or British Protestant population does in the time series case. Nevertheless, it is interesting that across our 88 cases, the best predictor is Irish Protestant ethnicity. Conversely, Scottish Protestants as a proportion of the British population are not a significant predictor of Orange density. The overall importance of Irish Protestant ethnicity as late as 1941 suggests that there remained an element of 'immigrant association' within the Orange Order despite the fact that the organisation clearly transcended its Irish-Protestant roots. (Houston & Smyth 1980; Senior 1972) Future work with nominal census data and lodge roll books should expose the degree to which the Irish were over-represented within Ontario Orangeism.

The proporti