The Garavaghy Road is being blocked by thousands of protesters to prevent the Orange Order march through the area from Drumcree.
Local media reports that the Orange Order is currently in talks with PSNI after being told the march on Garvaghy Road cannot be facilitated. It is understood that the Order is insisting that it has s right to march.
The parade had not proceed down the Garavaghy Road for 28 years. It is seen as divisive and triumphalistic by nationalists who argue they were. Several years of bitter conflict over the route made it one of the worst flashpoints of the Troubles, with a loyalist rampage in 1998 leading to the killing of three children, the Quinn brothers, when their house in Ballymoney was petrol bombed.
The protesters blocking the road this morning were notified by police that they would be liable for arrest for taking part in an unnoticed parade.
The parade was to begin at 8am and to disperse at 9.30am; to be participated in by no more than 35 and that only the Portadown district Orange Order banner will be allowed on display along the part of the route which takes it through the Garvaghy Road.
Justice Michael Humphreys allowed the parade to pass through Garavaghy last night saying the “courts must respect the commission’s judgment and “their decisions will not be lightly interfered with”.
He said: “The picture painted here is of a public body which took evidence from the relevant sources, weighed up the key issues which were in play and arrived at a reasoned decision.
“The jurisdiction to impugn (a) public body’s decision on that basis is necessarily limited to cases where no reasonable decision could arrive at that outcome and in my view, in this case that threshold has not been met.”
He added: “This court cannot substitute its own view or anyone else’s view for that of the commission.”
The Orange Order has unsuccessfully applied for more than a quarter of a century to complete its 1998, It says Garavaghy is part of its traditional route for parade.