The previous chapter charted the rise and fall of the Orange Order on Merseyside. This chapter explains why decline occurred. It assesses the possible explanations of population decline, slum clearance, secularism and changes in lifestyle, a reduction in family sizes, the loss of interest among young people, and the split which divided the Orange Order on Merseyside. It will demonstrate, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the key reasons behind the diminution of Orangeism in Liverpool, and challenges the conventional proposition, in the very limited existing literature, that slum clearance was almost exclusively accountable.

Between 1931 and 2008, Liverpool's population fell from 846,100 to 434,900. As such, ‘any study of Liverpool post 1945 has to take account of this dramatic fall’. The 1960s saw ‘an exodus of 100,000 of the conservative minded [from Liverpool] leaving the city, never to return’. Yet, counterintuitively, neither the surveyed membership, nor the current Orange leadership, holds population change to be as important a determinant of decline as other causal factors.

The orthodox perspective on the deterioration of Liverpool sectarianism is that the breaking up of close-knit Protestant communities, as a result of post-war slum clearance, is the foremost factor in the loss of Orange sway. This position is supported by the Grand Lodge of Ireland:

Reginald Chadwick, Master of L.O.L. 184, echoes this point: