THE question that needs to be asked of Portadown District is a simple one: Why Jamie?
Jamie Bryson has walked into so many lampposts in his relatively short and hilariously colourful career that the Department of Infrastructure would probably have billed him for repairs by now were it not headed up by the DUP. Everyone has their favourite Jamie moment and the quotes and the clips are rolled out with savage predictability by his online detractors every time he declaims squeakily in the public square. To be fair to him, he seems relatively unfazed by the negative attention. If I took a battering like that every time I opened my mouth I’d have abandoned Twitter years ago.
Perhaps it’s that indefatigability that led Portadown Orangemen to appoint him as their legal adviser, because it certainly isn’t his qualifications or his experience. Quite simply, Jamie has the same right to be heard in a court of law that I have; which is to say, none.
Earlier this year he earned the right to put LLB after his name by obtaining an online law degree, but before he can call himself a lawyer he still has more hoops to jump through than a collie in the performance ring at Crufts.
In their attempt to reclaim its non-existent right to walk home from a church service, the Portadown Brethren are keen to assure us that the current heave is motivated by good faith and even better neighbourliness. Knowing the history of the parade, that would be hard for Garvaghy residents to believe even if the Orangemen had appointed an actual lawyer from Portadown with a sliver of local credibility. But they didn’t. They picked an over-excited, under-qualified rage-farmer from 45 miles away who’s best known for his hardline politics, his shaky command of the English language and his (admittedly heroic) failure to get the flag back up over City Hall. Your average Garvaghy denizen on switching on the teatime news last month to see that it was My Cousin Vinny behind that successful Parades Commission challenge didn’t purse their lips thoughtfully and think, “Hmmm, here’s a bloke we may be able to do business with.” They rubbed their eyes and blinked hard – and not because of the camera flashes bouncing off Jamie’s newly-shaved napper. They did a second-take because they found it as hard to believe as I did that the Portadown Brethren could expect anyone to take their Kumbaya claims seriously when they’ve agreed to be led by a bloke who’s currently making a crust by defending the right of loyalists to burn whatever they like on boneys.
In his trying-too-hard three-piece suits and pulling his Fisher-Price lawyer’s wheelie-bag behind him, Jamie tried to make the right noises. The Drumcree issue, he solemnly intoned, is “a straightforward legal question,” but after a few too many blue Smarties and a can or two of Monster he was back in his safety zone. On Twitter he hailed the Drumcree High Court ruling as a victory equal in importance to that of Loyal Ulster blocking Casement, the A5 and the Irish language. Suddenly, Drumcree wasn’t a straightforward legal question after all, but part of an at once nebulous and all-encompassing Culture War, which by a mighty coincidence is the name of a new book he had self-published that same week. And in response to columnist and commentator Chris Donnelly defending the people of Garvaghy, Jamie Photoshopped an image of the primary school head into a H-Block dirty protest cell.
If the office-holders of Portadown district were concerned by the commitment of their legal adviser to their good-neighbour project, they didn’t show it. Not surprising, really, because the Brethren’s own commitment to cooling tension on the Garvaghy Road and getting the Kafflick residents on-side had been best illustrated by their decision to award Jamie a ‘Siege of Drumcree’ medal on the High Court steps.
Not that Jamie’s legendary combativeness was out of place at the Carleton Street Orange Hall presser on Thursday past. He was flanked again by Jim Allister, Carla Lockhart and Jonathan Buckley, respectively the Mayor, Chief Executive and Town Clerk of Staunchville. If you were to draw up a list of neighbours the people of Garvaghy would least like to have a chinwag and a cup of tea with, this lot would be Nos. 1, 2, 3 and 4.
Jim (1) is from North Antrim, which last time I looked was not adjacent to Portadown; Carla (2) is from the general area but isn’t allowed to walk with the Orange because she’s a woman; Jonny (3) is, I think, the only local Orangeman, although since he was drawing union jacks in primary school crayon last time the Orange walked the Garvaghy his skin in the game is rather thin; and Jamie (4) lives with his Ma in North Down when he’s not hiding in attics. What the four have in common with the North Armagh Brethren is that when it comes to matters fleg and flute one of them would be classified ‘Not an Inch’ while the other three, having missed the Imperial school era, would be ‘Not a Centimetre’. The public face of the resurrected and rotten Drumcree corpse is not one that the local residents view as a smiling one.
And that’s entirely the choice of Portadown district. Granted, the senior Brethren are unburdened with the gift of the gab and they were always going to outsource the PR, but it doesn’t take a pro in the business of persuasion to understand that the Famous Four are in situ not because they are likely to win the ear of Garvaghy Road residents; they are there because their words and their presence are guaranteed to heat the blood of Loyal Ulster. I have no doubt that a Portadown district office-holder’s chest would swell to bursting if he was allowed to walk past the Portadown Catholics holding his sword in his white-gloved hand, but this is not solely about Portadown district any more than the appearance of hooded men at Scarva was aimed solely at Gaza protesters.
There’s a reason the Brethren went shopping for their legal representation in the Lidl middle aisle: It’s not quality they’re after, it’s value, and in his enduring attraction to click-thirsty journalists Jamie brings value in spades. But as everybody’s oul’ Ma used to tell them, You buy cheap you buy twice.
Start passing the bucket again for the legal fund, Brethren.
