Tomás Ó Flatharta

Lord Edward Carson was a disgusting 🤮 racist imperialist reactionary. Born in Dublin in the 19th Century, he earned brownie points in the palaces of British Imperialism by hounding Oscar Wilde into prison and, after that, a premature death ☠️ resulting from an infamous homophobic trial in 1895. Carson’s statue dominates the Stormont parliament today, and every July the 12th this monster 👿 is celebrated at Orange Order parades in the north of Ireland. Oscar Wilde had Carson’s measure.

WILDE [responding to Carson’s reading of a letter from him to Lord Alfred Douglas]:…..I think it is a beautiful letter. It is a poem. I was not writing an ordinary letter. You might as well cross-examine me to whether King Lear or a sonnet of Shakespeare was proper.
CARSON:Apart from art, Mr. Wilde?
WILDE: I cannot answer apart from art.
CARSON: Suppose a man who was not an artist had written this letter, would you say it was a proper letter?
WILDE: A man who was not an artist could not have written that letter.
CARSON: Why?
WILDE: Because nobody but an artist could write it. He certainly could not write the language unless he were a man of letters.
CARSON: I can suggest, for the sake of your reputation, that there is nothing very wonderful in this “red rose-leaf lips of yours.”
WILDE: A great deal depends on the way it is read.
CARSON: “Your slim gilt soul walks between passion and poetry. ” Is that a beautiful phrase?
WILDE: Not as you read it, Mr. Carson. You read it very badly.

Orange Order Homophobia has not gone away. In 2023 several Orange bonfires burn images of people these reactionaries hate. Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar (who is gay) got the Orange Order burning treatment this year, along with Sinn Féin vice-President Michelle O’Neill. In 2022 Orangemen cheered the burning of an election poster depicting People Before Profit public representative from West Belfast, Gerry Carroll. Is this really surprising when a statue of Edward Carson dominates the Stormont Parliament Building in Belfast? The “official version” is that we must “respect” all cultural traditions, including the imperial hate of the late reactionary born in Dublin.

The Orange Order is not welcome in civilised parts of Ireland – such as the Garvaghy Road in Portadown. Oscar Wilde has some advice :

Mr Worthing advises Orange Order marchers to get lost to stay away from civilised people.