Top Orangeman Rev Mervyn Gibson says unionism lacked a strategy for dealing with the flag protests and has also now failed to stop a statue to a 1916 rebel at Belfast City Hall

Writing in the Orange Standard (the institution’s official newsletter) Rev Gibson also said there can be “no equivalence” between the soldiers fighting in World War One and the “traitorous” rebels of 1916.

Rev Gibson is a former RUC counter-terror detective who is now a Presbyterian minister and serves as the order’s Grand Secretary.

His piece, titled “Unionism – a tale of two strategies” begins by looking at the flag protests which erupted at Christmastime 2012 when the SDLP and Sinn Fein succeeded in cutting the number of days the Union flag flew from Belfast City Hall from 365 to 18 (with Alliance abstaining on the issue).

"The majority of Unionists opposed the democratic decision, but were devoid of any clear plan,” Rev Gibson wrote – with most unionists “realising street politics was not going to change the decision”.

He criticised the “unnecessary” prosecution of some of the protestors, and the internecine back-biting within unionism which followed (which he referred to as “highly-destructive finger-pointing of who was most loyal on the scale of Lundy to Super Prod”).

He then turned to the Winifred Carney statute at Belfast City Hall, which was unveiled in March.

She was a Bangor-born trade unionist, born of a mixed Protestant-Catholic marriage, who joined in the doomed 1916 rebellion in which 485 people – mostly civilians – were killed (largely as British forces put down the uprising).

The statue of her at City Hall had been several years in the planning, and shows her carrying a holstered revolver by her side (full details here):

• Statues unveiled in centre of Belfast to 1916 Easter Rising rebel and an anti-slavery activist

• Gun-toting Winifred Carney statue at Belfast City Hall: 'Today it is a 1916 rebel being honoured... will it be a Provo tomorrow?'

There was little reaction from unionist politicians when the statute was unveiled, although Rev Gibson notes that many find unionists “abhorrent” and reject efforts to “equate” it with UK war memorials, like those honouring the dead of WWI (in which 16 million soldiers and civilians were killed, according to the Imperial War Museum).

“There is no equivalence between the traitorous actions of rebels, and those who were fighting for King and Country in a World War,” wrote Rev Gibson.

"In the same way there is no equivocation in the Troubles between terrorists and the security forces.”

He went on to add: “Winifred Carney’s statue and the strategy that saw it erected has much to teach us.

“The statue – which, unlike the Union Flag, will be visible 365 days a year – came about not through protest, but by a strategy.

"The real legacy of the flag and statue for Unionism are the lessons that need to be learned.

"The decisions to restrict the flying of the flag and to erect the statue were both democratically taken – the only way to stop such decisions is through the ballot box.

"It is clear if Unionists in Belfast had turned out and managed their vote through cooperation, neither decision would have been taken.”

Much of the solution, he said, lies with unionists learning to “value their vote and make it count”, and learning to “cooperate where we can electorally; if democracy is the Republican’s current battlefield, then we need the maximum number of Unionists elected”.