Ladies of the Lodge: a History of Scottish Orangewomen, C. 1909-2013
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Ladies of the Lodge: a history of Scottish Orangewomen, c. 1909-2013 Deborah Butcher PhD thesis Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities London Metropolitan University Submission date: June 2014 1 ‘Here’s to the men who will never give in And here’s to the ladies who’ll help them win With God on our side we can ne’er fear or fall We’ll defend the old faith with our backs to the wall’1 1 ‘Gather round’, The Vigilant, 8, no.2 (December 1962), p.2 2 STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY This is to certify that the content of this thesis is fully my own work and that all preparatory assistance, and sources consulted, has been fully acknowledged. I hereby declare that, to the best of my knowledge, this treatise contains no academic content, or previously published materials, unless expressly cited. Any conceptual or textual contribution made to the research by others is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare the arguments presented herein to be entirely my own intellectual property. Signed ……………………………………………............. Date ……………………………………………................ 3 CONTENTS ABSTRACT…………………………………………………………………………………………..5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………………….….6 ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………………………………..7 INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………………………….....9 CHAPTERS 1. THE CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS OF SCOTTISH WOMEN’S ORANGEISM…..………………………………………………………………………..….44 2. RETHINKING RESPECTABILITY: ORANGEWOMEN, INDIVIDUAL AGENCY AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHIFTING IDENTITIES………………………......….66 3. BEADS, BAUBLES AND ‘SECOND CLASS CITIZENS’: THE CONTESTED STATUS OF ORANGEWOMEN……………….………………..…..89 4. EQUAL RITES?: THE GENDERED ICONOGRAPHIES OF ORANGEISM…………………………………………………………………….…..….....113 5. ‘THE HEART OF RITUAL CHARITY’: ORANGEWOMEN, BENEVOLENCE AND ACTIVISM…………………………………………………………………………..131 6. ‘GIRL POWER’?: MEDIATED REPRESENTATIONS OF SCOTTISH ORANGEWOMEN…………………………………………………………………………160 CONCLUSION……………………………………………………………………………………….180 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………………………….193 APPENDICES A. STATISTICS………………………………………………………………………………..208 B. PHOTOGRAPHS…………………………………………………………………………...220 C. STRUCTURAL DIAGRAMS……………………………………………………………....225 D. TIMELINE OF FEMALE ORANGEISM…………………………………………………..229 E. QUESTIONNAIRE………………………………………………………………………....232 F. RITUAL…………………………………………………………………………………..…233 G. LIST OF GRAND MISTRESSES AND MASTERS…………………………………..…...237 4 ABSTRACT This thesis focuses upon the under-researched history of the Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland from 1909-2013. Challenging prevalent assumptions that Orangewomen are overwhelmingly working-class, it demonstrates a small - yet significant - core of female luminaries to be occupationally middle-class. The desire to articulate dual Scottish and British patriotic – rather than diasporic Irish Protestant - identities is also acknowledged as an emergent subjective shift in women’s motivations for joining. The sisters’ apparent complicity with their unequal institutional standing is accounted for chiefly in terms of their desire to promote a unified public image of Orangeism as a ‘family’ institution. Orangewomen however, also actively resisted gendered ‘equal but different’ organisational discourses by using familial networks to sway male voting, appropriation of charitable work to showcase their abilities, subversive contributions to organisational literature and mobilisation of national press to lobby for the reversal of their subordinate status. This thesis represents a rare academic exploration of gendered Orange ritual symbolism, interpreting female rites as both spiritual legitimation of patriarchal subordination and, conversely, as a celebration of sisterly love. Additionally, this study exposes the one- dimensionality of media representations of Orangewomen which obscure, rather than divulge, individual subjectivities. It is argued that Orangewomen adaptively prioritised their class, gender, and ethno-religious identities, according to the differing contexts in which they operated, to support a disparate profile of benevolent causes and political campaigns. Appropriating oral history testimony and archival sources, this work not only updates findings of existing research, but also engages unexplored aspects of female Orangeism to illustrate Orangewomen’s considerable diversity. 5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisory team, past and present, for their continued support and guidance. It has been a privilege to work with my early supervisors - Dr Lucy Bland and Dr Katharina Rowold - and this work would have been poorer without their substantial insights into women’s and gender history. To my most recent supervisors I am indebted for their sustained enthusiasm, patience and belief in my abilities as well as their expertise in shaping and editing my material. I would to thank Dr Jenny Harding, Dr Jonathan Moore and Dr Jim MacPherson for their thoughtful and detailed feedback, personal encouragement and flexibility in continually accommodating my needs as a distance student. I would like to extend my thanks also to Grand Lodge archivist David Bryce for drawing my attention to relevant sources, and investing much time, enthusiasm and interest in this project. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Joan Beggs, Grand Secretary of ALOI and her family, for their warm hospitality extended during my stays in Ulster, for kindly ferrying me to various venues and welcoming me so openly into their home. Special thanks are also extended to Rhona Gibson, Grand Mistress of LOAS, for arranging interviews, securing invitations to various events and for her friendly cooperation in accommodating my research. Additionally I would like to cordially thank all interviewees for candidly sharing their time, memories and opinions. Orangemen Michael Phelan and Ian McFarland are also deserving of mention for their timely and illuminating email correspondence, as are the staff at the Glasgow Women’s Library for assisting in procuring interviewees. I extend my immense gratitude to London Metropolitan University’s Vice Chancellor’s Scholarship: without this generous funding, this thesis might never have materialised. This project is dedicated with immeasurable love and appreciation to my parents. 6 ABBREVIATIONS ALOI Association of Loyal Orangewomen of Ireland BUF British Association of Fascists FLOL Female Loyal Orange Lodge GM Grand Mistress/Master GOLA Grand Orange Lodge of Australia GOLE Grand Orange Lodge of England GOLI Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland GOLS Grand Orange Lodge of Scotland HDGM Honorary Deputy Grand Master ILP Independent Labour Party IWFL Irish Women’s Franchise League LOAS Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland LOL Loyal Orange Lodge LLOL Loyal Ladies’ Orange Lodge NRS National Readership Survey OES Order of the Eastern Star OPP Orange Protestant Party OWF Order of Women Freemasons PA Protestant Action PGM Past Grand Mistress/Master PL Primrose League PLA Protestant Ladies’ Auxiliary RAP Royal Arch Purple RBI Royal Black Institution SLP Scottish Labour Party SWNASL Scottish Women’s National Anti-Suffrage League UUC Ulster Unionist Council UVF Ulster Volunteer Force UWUC Ulster Women’s Unionist Council 7 VL Victoria League WSPU Women’s Social and Political Union WUTRA Women’s Unionist Tariff Reform Association 8 INTRODUCTION This thesis explores the history of the Ladies’ Orange Association of Scotland (LOAS) – the female auxiliary of the Scottish Orange Order - from 1909 to the present. It charts the shifting socio-economic, ethno-religious and attitudinal profile of Orangewomen and analyses women’s historical and current motivations for leaving and joining this socially-conservative organisation. An assessment of the continued resistance of the male Grand Lodge hierarchy to the initiation of female members, and lodgewomen’s continued subordinate organisational status, follows. The gender-specific symbolism of male and female rites is then comparatively discussed, since sexually-distinct ritualism spiritually legitimises and reifies women’s ancillary standing within Orangeism. A consideration of lodgewomen’s prolific charitable fundraising, and political activism, over the course of a century follows: their sustained commitment to benevolence, it is argued, enabled early Orangewomen to broaden and diversify their role within the public sphere, and yet conversely contemporary sisters now find themselves frustratingly pigeon-holed into the charitable realm, precluding possibilities for advance within patriarchal organisational structures. Finally this thesis examines representations of Orangewomen in institutional and national media, with a particular emphasis on the genre of obituary, to argue that sisters were often conceptualised as one-dimensional, gendered stereotypes. Lodgewomen’s agentic use of media to ameliorate unfavourable public perceptions of Orangeism, whilst paradoxically raising awareness of their plight as unequal members within what is commonly conceptualised as a staid, anachronistic and sectarian organisation, also receives attention. This thesis therefore considers Scottish Orangewomen from a range of perspectives and uses both oral testimony and extensive archival sources to unfold their neglected, and little known, history. Given the paucity of academic accounts of female Orangeism in Scotland, it is important to establish initially a broad overview of the key developments in the history of the Scottish Loyal Orange Institution (LOI) prior to the inception of female lodges in 1909. Founded in the north of Ireland in 1795 to promote