Saunderson got into a scuffle with two members of the Young Conquerors Orange Band who tried to stop her. Robert Logan, defending, told Ayr Sheriff Court: “She was pulled to the ground and held there by both men – who were sitting on her. That is how she managed to bite their legs.”
The court heard she was highly intoxicated at the fun day in Drongan, Ayrshire, on August 3. Saunderson, of New Cumnock, admitted assaulting the two men. She also admitted assaulting her ex-boyfriend and his brother in Cumnock on June 1.
And she admitted driving without insurance, failing to give a breath test and struggling with four police officers after being stopped in New Cumnock on May 22. Mr Logan said: “When she is drunk, she gets involved in these situations and gets the worst of it.” Sheriff Desmond Leslie said Saunderson had 16 previous convictions and jailed her for a total of seven months.
8 comments:
Local question: I thought Ayrshire was in Scotland and Orangemen were Irish. Please explain.
Ayrshire is indeed in Scotland and the Orange Order was founded in Northern Ireland but the links between the two countries, including waves of immigration and re-immigration, go back a very long way.
Unfortunately, Scotland suffers from some of the same sectarian divisions as those in NI, although they've never been anywhere near as violent, and we still have many Orange Lodges and a lesser number of Irish Nationalist organisations.
It's a very big subject (and a touchy one for a minority) with a long and complex history, which can arguably be traced back to the reformation of the Catholic Church in both England and Scotland in the 16th century.
There are Orangemen in the US and all over the world, too.
Many thanks for taking the time to explain that, BoS.
When you have to try and explain it to someone who wasn't brought up surrounded by it you get a true sense of how ridiculous it all is.
Plus, the noisy !"£$%^ go by my place at 8 on a Sunday morning!
Heh, indeed!
Thanks again, you explained it a lot better than I could.
Wow! Thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess the Orange men, being Protestants, feel at home in Scotland?
After the Reformation in Scotland in 1560, Roman Catholicism was effectively made illegal (celebration of Mass was outlawed) and the Church of Scotland became a Calvinist church. It wasn't until the very late 18th century that Catholic mass could be openly and legally celebrated again and in the intervening time the Orange Order had been established. I think I'm right in saying that they took some of their inspiration from John Knox who was at the forefront of the reformation movement in Scotland, as well as other prominent Protestants such as Luther and Calvin. So, I guess the Orange men did (and do) feel at home here, because of that Protestant tradition (mind you, Roman Catholicism was practiced for more than a millennium before the Reformation).
That being said, today's Scotland is, thankfully, a very different place. It's much more of a secular society and for the majority of people religion plays very little, if any, role in their lives. We still have the sectarian bigots on both sides (not accusing all Orange men or all Irish Nationalists of being bigots but some of them are) and it's something we could well do without.
Thanks again BoS!
There's a bit for information about sectarianism in Scotland here, Barbwire ...
http://nilbymouth.org/history/
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