OLDEST IRISH AMERICAN NEWSPAPER IN USA, ESTABLISHED IN 1928
Category: Archive

Drumbeat to Drumcree

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

By Anne Cadwallader

PORTADOWN — As hundreds of mourners followed the cortege of murdered grandmother, Elizabeth O’Neill, the Orange Order was planning to pull out of shuttle diplomacy talks to resolve the impending Drumcree crisis.

Several U.S. politicians and observers are to visit Portadown in the days leading up to this year’s scheduled Drumcree Orange march down the nationalist Garvaghy Road. They include Rep. Ben Gillman of New York, chair of the house International Relations Committee, and businessman Bill Flynn. It’s understood Gillman has been warned that his safety cannot be guaranteed if he makes the trip.

Tensions in the North have been heightened by the murder of a drug dealer in Newry on Sunday, with unionists accusing republicans of being responsible. Paul "Bull" Downey was shot in the head after being abducted from the parking lot of a hotel where he had just had dinner with his wife.

His partially clothed body was found on a roadside in South Armagh. He was known to the RUC as a major drug dealer who had contacts within loyalist groups and the Dublin drug underworld.

The RUC chief constable, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, said members of all groups on cease-fire had been involved in violent acts, but he left it to the politicians to say whether they had knowingly broken their cease-fires, or whether individuals within paramilitary groups had taken unsanctioned action.

Sign up to The Irish Echo Newsletter

He said he had told Mo Mowlam, Britain’s Northern secretary, that he did not accept at face value the LVF’s recent statement that it had not been involved in the previous weekend’s murder of Elizabeth O’Neill.

Sinn Fein’s Bairbre de Brun accused Flanagan of "providing political cover" for loyalists. She said he lacked all credibility after misleading the public in January 1998 about the involvement of the UDA in killings then.

De Brun said it was a well-known fact in political and media circles that both the LVF and UDA cease-fires are over. The RUC assessment reinforces a sense of grievance within the nationalist community at the recent loyalist pipe bomb onslaught and his lack of response.

In developments on the growing crisis over the Drumcree march, the Garvaghy Road residents’ spokesman, Breandan MacCionnaith, says he fears a forced Orange march down the Garvaghy Road is one option being considered by "elements" at Stormont as preferable to dealing with loyalist outrage if it’s rerouted.

On Saturday, thousands of Orangemen gathered in Portadown for rallies and marches, including one on the Corcrain Road, close to the boarded-up house of the O’Neill, who was killed in a bomb attack on her home for apparently having married a Catholic.

Portadown Orange spokesman David Jones called on several hundred loyalists at Corcrain to support the so-called "Long March" from Derry to Portadown beginning on June 24. Speaking just a few hundred yards from the O’Neill home, he said was not asking for further violence and pipe-bomb attacks were "not needed." He called on Orangemen to "hit the British government where it hurts, in the pocket," referring to the large RUC and British Army presence around the marches.

Loyalists later rioted at a number of points around the nationalist enclave, including on Park Road at the bottom of the nationalist Garvaghy Road and along the route the Protestant Orange Order wants to take on their march next month.

Several injuries were reported, including 11 RUC men, as loyalists once again sought to force their way past barricades and riot police. At Drumcree Church, Portadown District Master Harold Gracey told his audience the government would have to rethink its strategy regarding the proximity talks set up to try and resolve the dispute.

Residents spokesman MacCionnaith said the Orange parades did nothing to help the atmosphere between the Protestants and Catholic communities in Portadown.

"The atmosphere is very tense," he said. "I would appeal for calm."

Presbyterians disagree

Sharp differences of opinion over Drumcree also surfaced at the annual Presbyterian general assembly in Belfast last week. The assembly was debating a resolution calling on the Orange Order to speak to residents groups face to face.

The Rev. William Bingham, grand chaplain of the Orange Order in County Armagh, said that after several rounds of proximity talks, the Order and residents on the Garvaghy Road were further apart than ever. He said many resident groups had political masters in Sinn Fein who wanted to heighten community tensions.

He could not in good conscience, he said, enter into dialogue with a residents group he believes has paramilitary links and said this year’s Drumcree crisis could be the most difficult and dangerous yet.

The Rev. Ken Newell, involved in shuttle diplomacy on the Ormeau Road, said it was misrepresenting the issue to say objections had only arisen after residents groups were formed.

On occasion over at least the past 12 years, he said, he had personally witnessed abusive marches, paramilitary regalia and sectarian gestures made to nationalists.

There were also calls for the Orange Order to cancel its so-called "Long March."

A former moderator of the Presbyterian church, Dr. John Dunlop, appealed to the Orange Order not to proceed with its plans, saying it would only serve to heighten tensions in the run-up to Drumcree Sunday.

In the approach to the Drumcree standoff, the Northern Ireland Police Authority has warned it doesn’t have enough money in its budget to handle a repeat of policing last year’s violence at Drumcree. The RUC says the total cost of policing the 1998 standoff was over £10 million.

The authority chairman, Pat Armstrong, said he had already told the British government that if there is a repeat, the Authority and the RUC will do all they could to maintain law and order and protect life and property.

June 16-22, 1999

Other Articles You Might Like

Sign up to our Daily Newsletter

Click to access the login or register cheese