DRUMCREE: AN INTRODUCTION TO PARADE DISPUTES

On the evening of Monday 10 July 1995 I stood on a hill by the stone wall of a church graveyard, and watched two men walk down the hill to talk to some policemen. One was wearing an orange collarette, or sash, the other a crimson one. By Friday 8 September, one of those men, David Trimble MP, had become leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest political party in Northern Ireland. After being elected to that post Mr Trimble was asked if his success in becoming leader was due to the events of July along the road from that church. He answered that it was not. However, in my view, whilst it is true to say that those events alone did not make David Trimble leader, had they not taken place he may well have had to wait a few more years.

What took place that July evening? The graveyard is situated around Drumcree church about a mile outside Portadown in County Armagh. Standing on the hill were thousands of Ulster Protestants, most of them members of an institution known as the Orange Order. Along with us were cameras from major television companies as well as journalists from around the world. Consequently, a global audience saw those two men walk down the hill to talk to the policemen. Many watching would have recognised the man walking with David Trimble as the Reverend Ian Paisley, a man whose reputation as orator, defender of Protestantism and scourge of 'Popery', is second to none. Paisley had just climbed down from a platform where, in characteristic style, he had told the gathered crowd that the future of Ulster might be decided that night. He is not a member of the Orange Order. Rather the crimson collarette he wears represents a separate yet similar organisation known as the Apprentice Boys of Derry.

Along with us all at Drumcree were the policemen of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Dressed in riot gear, hundreds of them stood along the narrow country lane beside dozens of the armoured Land Rovers that have been such a distinctive part of policing in Northern Ireland. The previous afternoon, a number of policemen had accompanied lines of Orangemen on a parade up to the church for a religious service in commemoration of the Battle of the Boyne (a battle fought in Ireland over 300 years ago). However, senior policemen, aware of a counter-demonstration, had decided under legislation specific to Northern Ireland that the Orangemen could not parade back to Portadown via the route the Orangemen had annually walked. The route they wanted to take was the Garvaghy Road a few hundred yards up from the church, which runs through a predominantly Catholic housing estate. The large majority of the residents of that estate did not want the Orangemen to march through their estate and some had been campaigning for the previous ten years to have them stopped.

The Portadown Orangemen stood facing the police determined that they would be allowed to parade down the Garvaghy Road. The police introduced reinforcements when, despite attempts to stop the word spreading, more Orangemen started to arrive from other parts of Northern Ireland to support their brethren. Meanwhile the residents of the Garvaghy Road waited apprehensively, keen to demonstrate their opposition to the parade and well aware of the possible results of a confrontation. There was a stand-off.

On that Monday evening Trimble and Paisley made speeches from a platform in an adjacent field. Paisley received the biggest applause.

We are here tonight because we have to establish the right of the Protestant People to march down the Garvaghy Road and our brethren of the Orange Institution to exercise their right to attend their place of worship and leave that place of worship and return to their homes. That is the issue we are dealing with tonight and it is a very serious issue because it lies at the very heart and foundation of our heritage. It lies at the very heart and foundation of our spiritual life and it lies at the very foundation of the future of our families and of this Province that we love. If we cannot go to our place of worship and we cannot walk back from our place of worship then all that the Reformation brought to us and all that the martyrs died for and all that our forefathers gave their lives for is lost to us forever. So there can be no turning back. (Ian Paisley, 10 July 1995)

Even as Paisley spoke, a hundred yards down the lane there were clashes between the crowd and the lines of police. A running battle developed across the fields as Orangemen and their supporters tried to reach the Garvaghy Road. A school and other buildings on the edge of the estate were attacked. Police fired baton rounds into the groups of men. Although ostensibly used as a crowd control measure the baton rounds are potentially lethal. Paisley attempted to calm the crowd with the news that he and Mr Trimble would negotiate with the police.

Behind the scenes, other negotiations had already begun. Members of the Mediation Network for Northern Ireland had been brought in to aid negotiations between the residents' group and the police since great distrust of the police exists in Catholic communities. At the same time the police talked to Orangemen and unionist politicians who refused to talk to the representative of the residents' group. Much was at stake. A peace process had developed the previous year and had apparently brought an end to the military conflict that had been ongoing in Northern Ireland since 1969. Both the Irish Republican Army (IRA), seeking a united Ireland, and loyalist paramilitary groups, aiming to keep Northern Ireland within the United Kingdom, had announced cease-fires; but, as in the late 1960s, it was beginning to look as if parades and street demonstrations would lead to civil disturbances serious enough to bring about renewed armed conflict.

Finally, on the morning of Tuesday 11 July, a deal was negotiated. The Orangemen from the District of Portadown would walk down the Garvaghy Road without the band they had originally brought with them, who had gone home anyway, and the residents would stand by the side of the road and make their protest. Two lines of about 600 Orangemen walked in a dignified way past silent protesters; but when the parade reached Portadown, Trimble, Paisley and a crowd of supporters were waiting. The two politicians joined the parade and received the adulation of the crowd in triumph. To the dismay of mediators and police, and to the anger of residents of the Garvaghy Road and the wider Catholic community, the Orangemen claimed victory. Drumcree was seen by many loyalists as the Protestant...