Speaker: Mervyn Busteed
This event will examine how an organisation originating in late eighteenth-century Ireland became a significant and controversial element in Liverpool history. It will outline the Order’s place within an early nineteenth-century Liverpool context of apocalyptic evangelical Protestantism, a labour market dominated by irregular dock work, a growing influx of immigrant Catholic Irish, marked residential segregation and sporadic civil conflict. It will explore how the Order survived official disapproval, dissolution and schism to become deeply rooted within Protestant working-class communities. The attractions of lodge life, the appeal of ritual, colourful regalia and 12th July processions, the intense social bonding within lodges, all provided mutual support and kept alive their world view. The intense royalism and patriotism of the Order and its troubled relationship with the Church of England will be examined plus its role in sustaining the working class Tory vote which contributed to a century long Conservative hegemony in city politics.
Our speaker Mervyn Busteed was born in Belfast in 1944, graduating from Queen’s University, he spent most of his career as a lecturer in Geography at Manchester University, retiring in 2006 and moving to Liverpool in 2012. Married, he lives in the Mossley Hill area. His research interests have been focussed on the creation and crafting of Irish national identities, life in late eighteenth century Ulster, Irish migration and settlement in north-west England focussing particularly on the Manchester region, the Liverpool Orange Order and currently on the Liverpool Protestant Party.
