‘Orange Order can wait weeks,’ claims DUP leader
Lisa O’Carroll
Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democrat Unionist Party, the biggest pro-U.K. party in Northern Ireland, has been holding a press conference.
He insists the Orange Order who had gathered at Drumcree Church at 8am for the controversial parade can wait hours, days, and months to march down Garvaghy Road.
“If it takes another 28 hours, if it takes another 28 days they will show the same steadfast determination and patience and a willingness to uphold the law that’s been there for the last 28 years,” Robinson told reporters in Belfast.
He also again criticised First Minister Michelle O’Neill, saying she was giving a “two finger salute” to the law.
“The people at home know how difficult this is. They have someone who calls herself the First Minister for all breaking the law, prepared to give a two finger salute to the rule of law and order in this country.”
Key events
No one wants to “dismantle” Good Friday Agreement, NI Secretary says
Maintaining the resilience of the political system in Northern Ireland is of key importance and no one wants to” dismantle” the Good Friday Agreement, according to Sir Chris Bryant.
The Northern Ireland Secretary told reporters in Belfast: “Nobody wants to go back to 28 years.
“I don’t think there is a single person involved in politics in Northern Ireland that really wants to go back 28, 30 years and relitigate everything and dismantle the Good Friday Agreement.
“I’m very determined that we will do everything to maintain that but we need to make sure that we have resilience in the political system here.”
He added: “I think it’s all the more important that we have a Parades Commission that is fully functioning. Of course, these issues were litigated in court at length yesterday afternoon and through into the night.”
Religious leaders from the Catholic Church and the Church of Ireland have issued a joint statement calling “for the urgent creation of a constructive, inclusive and reconciling initiative” to find a way through the current crisis.
Archbishop Eamon Martin, Catholic Archbishop of Armagh, and Archbishop John McDowell, Church of Ireland Archbishop of Armagh, said: “We share the conviction that the greatest commandment, and the greatest witness anyone can give to the Gospel in our world today, is in love of God and love of neighbour.
“As our community faces the crisis in Drumcree today, in which so many sincere views, painful histories and important issues are at stake, we cannot think of any time in the last thirty years when this simple message needs to be more urgently heard.
“As Church leaders, we are profoundly aware of our own failings and inadequacies. Imperfect as we may be, we feel deeply the concerns of the people of Drumcree and the wider community that we serve.
“We are willing to do all that we are asked to guide the feet of all, in the name, and after the example of Jesus, on the way of peace, and the building up of a better future for all. We call for the urgent creation of a constructive, inclusive and reconciling initiative to patiently find a way through this current crisis. Too much is at stake.”
Lisa O’Carroll
PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher has said he, and political leaders, are “trying to find a space” that can “resolve” the current standoff over the controversial decision over the Drumcree parade.
“That is what we need to do. I need to underscore the amount of sensible voices that have been calling for calm, which I think have been listened to by all parties,” he told reporters at an impromptu press conference in Belfast.
He said the last 24 hours had been “very challenging” and his priority was to keep everyone safe.
He said policing success would be to avert violence and ensure that “not one hair on one head gets harmed”.
“It is an ongoing police operation. I can promise you, it will only ever be proportionate,” he said.
Although he said he would not be “getting into it”, his officers had been “evidence gathering” … “from the very start”.
“So whatever’s been happening by whatever party we’ve been gathering the evidence of what they’ve been doing. So we’ll deal with that at the right time.”
NI Secretary calls for everyone to “double down on compromise”
Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant has said everyone needs to “double down on compromise”.
Speaking to reporters in Belfast, Bryant said: “The whole idea of us coming here is to be able to try and be able to talk specifically face to face to some of the political leaders and some of the community leaders to see if we can get to a settled position.
“The truth is everybody has to double down on compromise – that’s what life’s all about – double down on compromise.”
Bryant, who travelled from the Labour Party conference in Liverpool to Belfast to address the tensions, said he has spoken to Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
NI Secretary appeals for “a degree of calm”
The Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant has appealed for calm.
Speaking to reporters in Belfast, he said: “It is absolutely important that everybody cooperates with the police, that everybody takes a moment to maintain a degree of calm, to respect people who have a different opinion from yourselves and to be able to try and achieve some kind of resolution of what is obviously a very difficult situation today.”
Bryant said he had come from the Labour Party conference in Liverpool “specifically” to have meetings with other political and community leaders “if necessary”.
He said: “If there is a way of finding a way through this, we want to be able to put ourselves at the service of others to be able to achieve that.”
NI Secretary says elected politicians should not have joined protest
The DUP’s leaders have been attacking Sinn Féin politicians for joining the protesters in Portadown blocking the route of the Orangemen march.
Now Chris Bryant, the UK government’s secretary for Northern Island, has also issued a caution when asked about First Minister Michelle O’Neill, and Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald being present.
“I don’t think any elected politician should be supporting an unlawful protest,” he told Sky News.
Drumcree has always been ‘more than a march’
As many locals have pointed out in Drumcree today – the decision to allow the Orangemen march again has opened up old wounds, upending what many thought was a settled matter after 28 years.
The Guardian has this report from 1999, the first year after the Parades Commission banned the march from going through the primarily Catholic part of town. Back then the pain and anger over the previous summer’s deadly violence was still raw.
Guardian reporter Stuart Miller wrote at the time from Drumcree:
“If there is one thing upon which both sides agree, it is that Drumcree is about more than a group of men marching down a mile of road.
To the Orangemen, by defending their right to parade along the route they have taken since 1807, they are also making a stand against what they claim is the systematic erosion of Protestant civil and religious rights by Catholic nationalists.
To the nationalist residents, by opposing the Orange parade through their area, they are also making a stand against the inequalities they claim Catholics suffer at every level of society in Northern Ireland. With all this to play for, neither side is willing to back down.”
Some of the key figures in the dispute also still feature. Brendean Mac Cionnaith has been out on Garvaghy Road today leading the counter-protest blocking the route.
He told our reporter 27 years ago:
“The people of this area have made clear to Sinn Fein and the SDLP [Social, Democratic and Labour Party] that the march must not be allowed to happen as part of the political deal. The people here are not pawns in a chess game.
“If the political agreement at Stormont means trampling over the rights of the community on the Garvaghy Road then it also means trampling over the rights of nationalists across the north of Ireland.”
‘Drumcree is different’
Lisa O’Carroll
Peter Shirlow, director of the Institute of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, told the Guardian that the issue was not that the Parades Commission decision was “right or wrong”, it is that it is lawful.
Shirlow, an expert on loyalism, said while controversial parade decisions had been resolved with involvement of the community in places like Derry and Ardoyne, “Drumcree was different”.
“The Orange Order should go home. This is not healthy,” he said, adding loyalists should respect and acknowledge what happened in 1998 when three young boys, Richard, Mark and Jason aged 11, 10 and 9 were killed in a wave of violence following clashes over a parade going down Garvaghy Road.
But the bigger picture, he said, pointed to “electioneering” and “culture wars” ahead of elections for Stormont next May.
“Sinn Féin and the DUP are down in the polls. If you look at social media, people are attacking from their own sides,” he said.
Aerial footage shows some of the scale of the counter-protest, which has so far stopped the Orangemen marchers from embarking on their planned parade.
Tensions play into Stormont divisions
Lisa O’Carroll
My colleague Lisa O’Carroll has this analysis on the fears of potential clashes between demonstrators, and how this could undermine the already fragile power-sharing arrangement in Northern Ireland’s government.
The immediate focus of PSNI chief constable Jon Boutcher is to avert violence.
As Northern Ireland secretary Chris Bryant heads to Belfast, there is speculation on how the PSNI can successfully enable the Orange Order march, which was declared legal in the small hours of the morning, without physically removing protestors at Garvaghy Road.
Both the DUP and Sinn Féin are digging in, in a stark reminder of darker days of sectarian provocation.
Bryant himself told the BBC this morning: “I wish we weren’t in this position. I wish we we weren’t looking at relitigating things.”
There will now be nervousness about how all this feeds into continued power-sharing in Northern Ireland.
Some local politicians believe that Stormont’s future is already rocky and may not survive beyond the elections next May, such is the dissatisfaction with lack of delivery of change and, in particular, the budget.
But there will also be questions about the Parades Commission decision, and whether enough evidence had been submitted to the high court which quashed the 28 year old ban on the parade going down Garvaghy Road.
Bryant, in the job since the summer, is also under pressure to find powers to diffuse the situation – said he can only call the parade off with the permission of the PSNI chief constable.
Pictures from Garvaghy Road show there appear to be even more protesters blocking the road now. Large numbers gathered throughout the night after the 2am court decision.
There are more police arriving now too, some in full riot gear.
Earlier, police negotiators tried to talk to protest leaders, including Breandán Mac Cionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Association, to get them to move away.
He had earlier addressed protesters saying “we will not let it [the march] happen again”.
“If they have to use force against us, well then let them use it.”
‘Orange Order can wait weeks,’ claims DUP leader
Lisa O’Carroll
Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democrat Unionist Party, the biggest pro-U.K. party in Northern Ireland, has been holding a press conference.
He insists the Orange Order who had gathered at Drumcree Church at 8am for the controversial parade can wait hours, days, and months to march down Garvaghy Road.
“If it takes another 28 hours, if it takes another 28 days they will show the same steadfast determination and patience and a willingness to uphold the law that’s been there for the last 28 years,” Robinson told reporters in Belfast.
He also again criticised First Minister Michelle O’Neill, saying she was giving a “two finger salute” to the law.
“The people at home know how difficult this is. They have someone who calls herself the First Minister for all breaking the law, prepared to give a two finger salute to the rule of law and order in this country.”
DUP renews criticism of first minister over protests
Lisa O’Carroll
The DUP has again criticised the first minister, Michelle O’Neill, for backing the protests against the Garvaghy Road parade route and showing up at the blockade this morning
“We have a very serious situation where a first minister, who claims she’s first minister for everyone, is acting unlawfully, and it’s time that she steps back and that she takes those who she’s leading on to the road unlawfully off the road, and allows law and order to be upheld,” said DUP MP Carla Lockhart.
She described it as “unreal” to see Sinn Féin’s O’Neill, who vowed to be first minister for all communities on election, at the Garvaghy Road. “It is unreal that we have a first minister behaving the way she is behaving.”
The tensions between Sinn Féin and the DUP come amid growing criticism of Stormont and its inability to push through legislation.
Shane Harrison
Ireland’s taoiseach, Mícheál Martin, has said he is very concerned about the situation on the Garvaghy Road and appealed for “calm on all sides”.
Speaking in County Clare, he described the decision by the Parades Commission to allow the Orange Order to march on the road as “incomprehensible and wrong”.
He called for resolve not to go back to the divisions of the past.
“For 28 years we didn’t have a parade here and most people anticipated that to remain the same,” he added.
Ireland’s social protection minister Dara Calleary said on RTE television that the taoiseach has spoken to Andy Burnham about the controversy and Ireland’s foreign minister, Helen McEntee, had spoken to the Northern Ireland secretary, Chris Bryant.
How Commission came to its decision
The Parades Commission is facing intense scrutiny and pressure now over its decision – upheld in courts after a flurry of last-minute challenges too – to greenlight the Orangemen march.
Of course, that parade is still yet to commence, after thousands of nationist and republicans gathered overnight on Garvaghy Road to block it.
But on Friday, the Commission, while noting the violent history of the march in the 1990s, ultimately decided to let the Orange Order march through Garvaghy Road – by imposing restrictions which it thought would address those concerns.
The Commission said it had consulted police who reported that they had “no information indicating that the parade will result in public disorder or damage to property”.
It noted that the Orangemen had followed it’s more than 1,300 rulings barring the protest going down the road for more than 20 years “and no disorder or violence has occured.”
The marchers had asked for 60 people to attend; the Commission restricted numbers to 35, and said it had to be done in silence, with no bands or sidewalk supporters.
Originally, the marchers had also asked to parade during the middle of the day; the Commission moved the march’s timing to the morning to “reduce the level of disruption”.
Commission: “Drumcree parade has a legacy of violence and disorder’
When Northern Ireland’s Parades Commission – the independent authority- ruled on Friday that the Drumcree Church march could go through the Catholic part of town for the first time since 1998, it was a landmark overturn of a ban that has been in place for almost three decades.
It’s worth reading the Commission’s full decision which outlines both sides’ arguments and notes just how contentious this parade is.
“The annual Drumcree Church parade is one of, if not the most contentious parade in Northern Ireland. In the past the parade has resulted in some of the most serious and sustained disorder in the history of Northern Ireland including loss of life and serious injury.”
The Commission notes that while it was clear from their research that “community relations in Portadown are greatly improved”, the Drumcree Church parade proceeding down Garvaghy Road remained “polarising”.
“It is the most well known parading dispute with a legacy of violence and disorder, with effects that last until today.”
“As is the case with other parading disputes in Northern Ireland, what is to one side a dignified manifestation of their cherished cultural heritage is to the other a crude display of triumphalism.”
I’ll note the reasons for the Commission decision to give the go-ahead for the march in the next post.
