Marx-Engels Correspondence 1888
Source: Marx & Engels on the Irish Question, Progress Publishers, Moscow 1971, p. 350-51;
Transcribed: by Einde O'Callaghan.
Have heard nothing of the Irish tricolour to which you refer. Irish flags in Ireland and here are simply green with a golden harp, but without a crown (in the British coat-of-arms the harp wears a crown). In the Fenian days, 1865-67, many were green and orange to show the Orangemen of the North [356] that they would not be destroyed, but accepted as brothers. However, no question of that any more.
356. Orange Lodges or Orangemen (the Orangeist Order), named after William III, Prince of Orange — a terrorist organisation, set up by the landlords and Protestant clergy in Ireland in 1795 to fight against the national liberation movement of the Irish people. The Order united ultra-reactionary English and Irish elements from all layers of society and systematically incited Protestants against the Irish Catholics. The Orangemen had a particularly great influence in Northern Ireland, where the majority of the population were Protestants.