Drumcree stalemate will be hard to break
PARADING has returned to the political agenda, VICTOR GORDON argues that whatever the politicians try, there is little hope of a resolution to the Drumcree dispute
BACK in the dim and distant past, as a child living at Portadown's Garvaghy Road, a group of men wearing strange Orange-coloured sashes, black hats and immaculate suits used to parade past our front door.
It was the annual Drumcree parade, returning from the July service at the Church of the Ascension.
Later in life, as a reporter with the Portadown Times, I found it almost impossible to believe that the same parade had hit the world headlines, with pictures of fierce violence beaming out from the TV screens.
The parade hasn't been allowed down the road since it was banned in 1998 and thankfully the violence has subsided. Only last Sunday I was at Drumcree hill where a small group of determined Orangemen still walk down to police lines every single week, demanding their "civil rights" and requesting that the Parades Commission lets their parade through.
Police lines nowadays consist of one PSNI officer telling the Brethren that the march is still banned – such a contrast to original protests, when massive barriers, barbed wire, hundreds of soldiers and police personnel were required to keep Orangemen and their supporters hemmed in.
And yet one thing hasn't changed, with the parades issue a major stumbling block in the week-long Hillsborough talks. The Portadown district and the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition (GRRC) still haven't come to the table to discuss a way forward and in my view they never will.
At the start – and up until three years ago – it was the Orangemen who refused all offers of talks. It was the GRRC who clamoured for face-to-face dialogue, insisting there could be no solution until that happened.
But then the Orangemen announced they were willing to face Brendan McKenna and co across the table and press for a solution. The emergence of a new District Master in Darryl Hewitt saw the value in direct talks – and he managed to bring the rank-and-file members along with him.
But Mr McKenna had, meanwhile, experienced his own Damascus-style conversion and suddenly talks were out.
The residents, you see, had what they wanted – a total ban on the parade – and had no notion of negotiating away their hard-won gains.
The bottom line is that the residents won't even accept a single, final parade with the Orangemen agreeing on an alternative route home in future years. The Orangemen won't accept that premise either, as they want the parade restored this year, next year and for posterity.
And there is no chance of the authorities ordering the parade to be forced through as in the past, thus prompting the possibility of a repeat of the wild scenes that pertained in the late 1990s.
And even if there were talks, they would be like that quiet protest march down Drumcree Hill that has continued every Sunday since the violence abated.
They would stop almost before they started, with the two sides being diametrically opposed.
Sadly, Drumcree is a microcosm of what passes for Northern Ireland politics – a reflection of two sides going nowhere.
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Monday 28 May 2012
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