Just after Christmas the Irish Government released state papers from the year 2000. They told how the Queen had expressed her relief to the Irish Ambassador at a Buckingham Palace Garden party that Northern Ireland’s ‘silly marching business’ was quieter than expected.
No doubt the Queen did not intend her comments to become public. The Grand Secretary of the Orange Order responded to the release of the papers by commenting that the Queen thanked the Order ‘for our proclamation of loyalty each year on the 12th July’.
There is something of an irony that the supporters of the Crown in Northern Ireland thought they were expressing their loyalty to the monarch, when she regarded their chosen way of doing so as ‘silly’.
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Over the summer I was on holiday with my family in Switzerland. We enjoyed a number of long hikes in …