By Tim Flynn

As Orangemen, residents, politicians, and police once again face each other at Drumcree, it is worth recalling a largely forgotten scene from June 1914.

Ireland then stood on the brink of civil war. The Ulster Volunteer Force and the Irish Volunteers were arming, drilling, and preparing for what many believed could become an armed constitutional showdown over Home Rule. Yet when members of the rival organisations encountered one another, they exchanged military salutes. Not insults. Not threats. Salutes.

That simple gesture tells us something important about the political culture inhabited by James Craig, John Redmond, Edward Carson, and Eoin MacNeill. These were disciplined political movements led by parliamentarians, lawyers, businessmen, clergy, and civic leaders. They disagreed profoundly about Ireland’s future, but they understood a fundamental truth that modern politics has forgotten: they were both building capacities, infrastructure, and structures that a future Ireland would ultimately need. They recognized that the skills, discipline, and civic dedication of both sides were not threats to be eliminated, but assets required to build a stable society.

Which raises an uncomfortable question.

If rival factions in 1914 could look across the divide and see honourable, capable peers whose talents would be vital to the future, why is it so difficult to find common civic ground at Drumcree more than a century later? Why do we treat the presence of the other tradition as a problem to be solved, rather than a vital component of our collective strength?

The question matters because Drumcree has returned. Northern Ireland has once again witnessed legal battles, protests, blockades, and competing claims of rights and recognition surrounding the Garvaghy Road. Court rulings, Parades Commission decisions, political interventions, and mass demonstrations have thrust the issue back into public debate.

Yet the real issue was never a road.

Drumcree, like the Home Rule crisis before it, is fundamentally about dignity and utility. It is about whether one community can acknowledge that the other possesses the very traits—discipline, tradition, organization, and civic pride—that a shared society desperately needs to function.

That is why I believe that if John Redmond and James Craig were standing on Drumcree Hill today, the standoff would look very different. Not because they would agree on the destination, but because they would recognize that they both needed the other side’s unique skills to build anything that would last.

They would understand the value of a salute.

State Builders, Not Agitators

To understand how Craig and Redmond might have approached Drumcree, we must move beyond the caricatures that have accumulated around both men.

Redmond devoted his political life to achieving Irish self-government through constitutional means. He was a master of parliamentary negotiation, democratic legitimacy, and the patient, incremental construction of political institutions. He brought to the table the essential skills of diplomacy, institutional design, and the art of the sustainable compromise.

Craig, meanwhile, is often remembered solely as the organizer of unionist resistance. Yet he too was, at heart, an institutionalist and a formidable administrator. He understood how to mobilize, how to organize logistics on a massive scale, and crucially, the distinction between leading a movement and governing a state. When he became Northern Ireland’s first Prime Minister, Craig resigned his senior role within the Orange Order. He understood that a government leader could not belong entirely to a faction; he had to deploy his organizational talents to serve the institutions he was entrusted to govern.

This appreciation for the other’s talents was foundational to the era. When the Irish Volunteers were first formed, nationalist leader Eoin MacNeill famously penned “The North Began,” openly praising the UVF’s organizational brilliance, bravery, and administrative discipline. He did not view unionist capability as a deficit, but as a formidable standard of civic mobilization to be emulated.

Neither man was without faults. But both men shared an instinctive respect for law, order, and constitutional process. Most importantly, neither believed a society could be run by street agitation alone. They knew that shouting from the sidelines builds nothing; it takes the complementary skills of the constitutional diplomat and the structured administrator to forge a functioning state.

A Salute of Equals

Because both men respected institutions and capability, the modern Drumcree dispute would not have been allowed to degenerate into a crude contest of competing mobilisations. A legal decision would have formed the basis of discussion rather than the starting point for confrontation.

Yet Redmond and Craig would also have understood that law alone is rarely sufficient. A stable society requires its citizens to retain their self-respect, and it requires a mechanism where the strengths of all factions are put to work.

This was not mere theory; it was a proven dynamic. By 1916, Redmond’s National Volunteers and Craig’s Ulster Volunteers found themselves fighting side-by-side in Europe. On the battlefield, John Redmond’s own son commanded a company right alongside Craig’s Ulster troops. In that horrific crucible, the raw, gritty operational endurance of the Ulstermen and the passionate diplomatic idealism of the southern nationalists operated as complementary machinery. They achieved together what neither could have done in isolation.

Imagine the Orange procession approaching Drumcree Church while representatives of the nationalist community assembled nearby. No triumphalism. No abuse. Instead, there would be a simple but powerful gesture: a salute.

This salute would not be a surrender or an endorsement. It would be a formal recognition of mutual capacity. It would say: We see your discipline, we see your organization, and we recognize that a peaceful future requires your strengths just as much as it requires ours.

Such a gesture acknowledges a reality that remains difficult for many to accept: two competing traditions can both possess legitimacy, and both are necessary. The structured stability of unionism and the civic aspirations of nationalism are not mutually exclusive dynamics. They are the twin pillars upon which a balanced shared civic space must be built. One does not have to disappear for the other to flourish; rather, both must contribute their specific talents.

The Return of Constitutional Politics

Watching the current dispute unfold, one can imagine former Ulster Unionist Party leader Doug Beattie recognising something familiar in this argument. As a former soldier, Beattie has consistently argued that confidence in one’s identity is more powerful than permanent confrontation, and that respect shown to an adversary is the clearest expression of strength. He understands that an opponent’s capabilities are something to be respected, engaged, and channeled constructively, not feared.

We must rediscover Redmond’s original vision of mutual utility. In August 1914, Redmond boldly stood up in the House of Commons and proposed to Westminster that the British military step back entirely, allowing the UVF and the National Volunteers to jointly defend and police Ireland. He explicitly argued that the distinct, formidable strengths of both forces would stabilize the island. He knew that a society needs both its structural guardians and its progressive diplomats to survive.

That lesson is not confined to unionism. Indeed, it may be time for a rediscovery of constitutional nationalism. For much of the last century, the tradition represented by Redmond was overshadowed by more uncompromising narratives. Yet Redmond understood that political progress does not come solely from asserting rights; it comes from constructing robust institutions within which different traditions can actively coexist and work together.

Drumcree exposes the continuing need for that approach. The current standoff is filled with competing claims of rights and history, but it lacks the language of mutual utility. Each community speaks passionately about its own experience, yet fails to see how the skills of the other community could strengthen the whole.

That is precisely what the Volunteers understood in 1914. The exchange of salutes did not eliminate disagreement, but it demonstrated that political opponents recognized one another as disciplined, capable, and honourable participants in a shared space.

The Ireland That Must Be

Perhaps that is the deepest irony of Drumcree. A century ago, when Ireland seemed closer to civil war than peace, leaders on opposing sides still possessed a political language of respect and an appreciation for the other’s stature. Today, after decades of democratic progress, we often treat our political opponents as deficits rather than assets.

Redmond and Craig disagreed fundamentally about Ireland’s future, yet neither sought the destruction of the other tradition. Both understood that political stability depends upon opponents accepting each other’s right to exist—and more importantly, their right to contribute.

Had more of that spirit survived the twentieth century, Ireland’s story might have unfolded differently. The energies devoted to division might have been redirected toward construction, blending the administrative discipline of one tradition with the civic diplomacy of the other.

That possibility belongs to history. Its lesson does not.

The rule of law is strongest not when it crushes one identity, but when it provides a framework broad enough to harness the skills of both. True progress begins when we stop asking how to defeat our opponents, and start recognizing that we cannot build a future without them. Sometimes, that realization begins with a salute between equals.

Tim Flynn is an Interim CFO and commentator on Irish history and identity. His writing for The Wild Geese explores leadership, nationhood, and the untaken paths of Irish history.

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