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Orange Lodge (Loyal Orange Institution)

This Protestant society was originally formed in Ireland in 1795 to defend the rights and property of Ulstermen. It took its name from William of Orange, whose victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690 imposed Protestant ascendancy in Ireland. Victoria's first Orange Lodge was founded in 1843, following a violent sectarian demonstration in Elizabeth Street over the election of a Protestant candidate to the Legislative Council. Its attempts to assert the superiority of Protestantism met with opposition in the new colony. An attempted procession in 1845 was thwarted by a hostile Irish crowd armed with hurling sticks. Several people were injured in July 1846, when hundreds of Irish Catholics attacked the Pastoral Hotel where Orangemen were ostentatiously celebrating the anniversary of the 'Glorious Twelfth'. Soon afterwards, the Party Processions Act prohibited the display of 'faction or party flags' in Melbourne's streets.

When the Loyal Orange Institution was reorganised in 1864, its anti-Catholic emphasis attracted ultra-Protestants as well as those from Irish backgrounds. Orangemen claimed that Catholics could not be loyal servants to the state because their primary loyalty was to Rome. Catholics claimed Orangemen discriminated against them in the public service and business.

Sectarianism worsened in the economic depression. By the 1890s there were 169 branches in Victoria. Violence flared again in July 1896 and 1897 in Sydney Road, Brunswick, when up to 30 000 green-ribboned Catholics, kept back by mounted police, menaced several hundred Lodge members as they processed to their annual church service.

Between 1884 and 1924 the Victorian Orange Lodge was led by prominent politicians including Simon Fraser, Oswald Snowball and James Munro. The Lodge's monthly meetings had an element of secrecy: members wore regalia and followed a simple ritual. The organisation's political influence was focused on the election of Protestant politicians and mainstream Protestant issues like temperance, Sabbatarianism, and opposition to state aid to sectarian schools. Lodge spokesmen were particularly opposed to any extension of Catholic influence, particularly that of Archbishop Mannix.

Membership began to decline after World War I. The Lodge was never a Friendly Society but it does assist members in need. A small membership now maintains several aged care facilities and aims to support and defend the Protestant religions, a Protestant sovereign and the nation's laws.

Elizabeth Willis

References
Vertigan, Tas, The Orange Order in Victoria: Origins, events, achievements, aspirations and personalities, Loyal Orange Institution of Victoria, Melbourne, 1979. Details

See also

McGrath Lane