David Trimble’s anger at manipulated Drumcree video made to look like a ‘jig’

Hundreds of people online claim to have witnessed the spectacle, with several media outlets and commentators also stating as fact that such an event took place as described.

However, a quick trawl through the archives points to video footage that was manipulated for comedic effect as having become the abiding collective memory of that day’s historic events.

What began as the two unionist leaders holding each other’s arm aloft outside Carleton Street Orange Hall, soon became the now established narrative that they had danced triumphantly along the Garvaghy Road at the head of the previously banned Orange parade.

Press photography from time shows both Trimble and Paisley joining with the local lodge members, on the Castle Street side of Shillington Bridge, for the final leg of the parade to Carleton Street.

In his biography of David Trimble, the News Letter’s Henry McDonald states: “Trimble drove back into the centre of Portadown” from Drumcree to greet the marchers “as they completed their ten-minute walk along the Garvaghy Road.”

Some years after the event, the television images from Carleton Street were re-worked and played at high speed to give the impression of dancing.

Journalist Mervyn Jess in his book on the Orange Order quotes Trimble as saying: “The TV cameras were there and it was portrayed in a certain way and of course the ‘jig’ never happened.

“That jig was as a result of some bloody television man re-cutting and speeding up the footage and I thought it was wholly improper.”

Trimble added: “Certainly the way it was portrayed in the media and particularly the way that idiot in television turned it into a jig, I think some people think it actually was a jig. It certainly had a negative effect.”

Jess also spoke with the former Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition spokesperson, who also recalls watching the televised events taking place in Carleton Street.

The book states: “From a nationalist perspective, worse was to come. When the Orangemen reached Carleton Street Orange Hall, David Trimble and Ian Paisley linked hands and with arms held aloft they paraded ‘triumphantly’ through the tumultuous crowd of cheering Orangemen.

“Breandan MacCionnaith and his supporters on the Garvaghy Road watched the television news pictures in dismay. ‘It was a red flag to a bull,’ says MacCionnaith.”

Speaking to the News Letter earlier this week, former Portadown District secretary and press officer David Jones said he was present when David Trimble and Ian Paisley met the head of the Orange parade as it approached Castle Street near Shillington Bridge.

He said: “Unfortunately [Trimble] was then castigated by the fact that in Carleton Street he walked along with Rev Ian Paisley hand in hand, even thought it is one of those urban myths that the two of them did that down the Garvaghy Road.”

“Anybody who knows the area and looks at the film they can clearly see it was Carleton Street. In fact, neither David Trimble nor Rev Ian Paisley paraded down the Garvaghy Road that day.”

READ: David Trimble: mediator who ‘definitely did not dance on Garvaghy Road’