The Northern Ireland Parades Commission has decided to allow the Orange Order in Portadown to hold a parade along the Garvaghy Road for the first time since 1997.
The parade is to begin at 8am on Sunday morning 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.
It remains to be seen whether the conditions are adhered to by the broader unionist and loyalist community. Many of them are unhappy with the restrictions and when they are unhappy bad things often happen.
The local Catholic residents have already announced that they intend to protest on Sunday.
Following the decision, Linda O’Neill of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition told the media that “Our plan is that the parade will not go down the road”.
The roots of the conflict over the parade in modern times date to the determination of the Protestant community in Portadown to remind the Taigs on the periphery of the town what their place is.
It has specific historical connotations because the Orange Order was founded in 1795 just a few miles away at Loughgall. That followed a bloody encounter between the Protestant Peep O’Day Boys and the Catholic Defenders at The Diamond.
Members of the Order were prominently involved in the Terror that was launched between 1796 and 1798 which led to tens of thousands of deaths, mostly on the Irish Catholic side which was then pushed into an ill-timed and poorly led rising in 1798 that was put down by the British army and local Protestant settler militias and yeomanry.
The largely Protestant leadership of the United Irishmen had shown great naivety in overlooking the ethnic roots of the conflict and many of them and their followers in the north east quickly made their peace with Dublin Castle and in not a few cases changed sides.
WHAT IT MEANS NOW
That is what Orangeism represents and that is what they celebrate. Not just the 1790s but the numerous occasions since when Portadown Catholics and Catholics elsewhere in the north were terrorised and murdered for the “right to walk the King’s highway.”
When they were first refused, in 1998, the three little Quinn brothers died when their house in Ballymoney was petrol bombed by loyalists in the early hours of July 12.
The stand-off at Drumcree in 1997 was central to the announcement of the second IRA ceasefire. Adams had had to overcome serious internal resistance from within the IRA but the Army Council had pre-empted any discussion at an IRA Convention which would almost certainly have rejected the proposal given the new compromises that were involved.
The renewed ceasefire was only announced on July 19, because the IRA leadership had been forced to mobilise Volunteers in expectation of a serious confrontation at Drumcree and elsewhere in the north. That not only involved planned defensive actions but direct attacks on the army and police.
ZERO SUM GAME DEFIES GOOD FRIDAY AGREEMENT
Reactions among constitutional politicians have been predictable. The DUP and the Ulster Unionists are generally happy although they would probably prefer the sort of in your face hootenanny of the olden days.
Constitutional nationalists, from the Irish government – who have described the decision as a “retrograde step” – to Sinn Féin and the SDLP are annoyed.
All of them appear to be placing their hopes in a promised High Court action to stop the parade. The appeal will be held on Saturday morning.
The unexpected crisis perhaps ought to remind us that Churchill’s “dreary steeples” continue to threaten to defy the illusory clouds of ‘peace.’
Matt Treacy’s book A Walk on Part in a War which deals with the background to the Good Friday Agreement and the disbanding of the IRA is available on Amazon https://shorturlat/Evv5d