The main purpose of this chapter is to explain the prominence of the Orange Institution on Merseyside. In so doing, it is necessary to portray how Orangeism was established in England and how Liverpool became the focal point of its powerbase, before chronicling how Orangeism eventually declined in the second half of the twentieth century. The following chapter analyses the decline of the Orange Order, and assesses to what extent the decline of the Orange Institution on Merseyside contributed to the overall decline of sectarianism. How much did a shift of focus away from religious and constitutional issues by the Merseyside populace impact on the size and strength of the Order and what further effect on intercommunal relations was yielded by the decline of the Institution?

The Development of English Orangeism

In November 1688, in Exeter Cathedral, the ‘first Orange meeting’ took place, in the presence of William, Prince of Orange. It was here that the first ‘Orange Association’ was formed to assist William ‘in defence of the Protestant Religion and the Liberties of England’. The first subscribers to this Orange Association vowed to join the prince in his fight against the Catholic monarch, James II, and swore allegiance to God, William and each other to ‘stick firm to the cause … and never to depart until our religion, laws and liberties are so far secured to us in a free Parliament that they shall be no more in danger of falling into Popery and slavery’.

Orangeism was ‘perpetuated through a loose confederation of Orange societies and clubs’, but in the eighteenth century ‘Orangemen were few’, a small concentration of affiliates in various districts of Ireland where the Protestant Ascendancy held. It was not until the last decade of the eighteenth century, following disturbances in County Armagh, that ‘the Orange Order, as we know it, was formed … after the Battle of the Diamond in 1795’.