2 September 2016.
Dear Editor,
re: Tullyvallen lodge attack 41 years ago.
Tonight 02.09.2016 I go to my Orange lodge meeting like many others who have their meeting on the 1st Friday of the month. I go knowing I will be spending a few hours in the company of likeminded individuals to which I regard them all as friends. more would likely have died.
41 years ago last night the Lodge members of Tullyvallen Guiding Star Temperance LOL 630 went to their lodge meeting and expected to have a good evening with friends. I’m sure they never once thought this could be the last meeting for some of their members. 5 members never returned home to their families that night. They were slaughtered by IRA terrorists. Their only crime was being a Protestant and owning an Orange Collarette.
The IRA terror squad had the intention of murdering every member in the hall that night, and if it was not for the bravery of a single member (an off duty member of the security services) who managed to fire his service weapon at the terrorist, many more may have been killed. The attackers fled like the cowards they truly are.
As many members of the institution head off to their lodges this month I would ask them to remember all the murdered brethren that were murdered by the hands of IRA terrorists.
We often hear of the IRA terrorism campaign as being referred to as the troubles or lately as a war against the British. These terrorists were not soldiers or freedom fighters they were terrorists committing acts of terrorism in order to rid Northern Ireland of Protestants and Protestantism including the Orange Order and anything British.
As we “keep moving Northern Ireland Forward” (in the words of our politicians) our Protestant faith and our Orange Institution is constantly being attacked but this time by politicians and the media. Our history is being slowly re-written by the same people that murdered so many innocent men, women and children including many Orangemen like those we remember this week on the 41st anniversary of the Tullyvallen Massacre.
Please don’t let our history be re-written. Please don’t allow our children and our children, children to grow up thinking the IRA were anything other than murdering terrorists that tried to ethnically cleans Protestants and Orangism and all things British from Northern Ireland.
We as Individuals and as an Institution need to be Strong to Survive.
Yours,
John Brennan.
(Saintfield).
