February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Under the northern Irish sky, the waning days of June also herald the peak of the marching season. This one’s a hardy annual, every bit as predictable in its arrival as the first Swallow, or a stretch in the evenings.
Summer marches by Orange lodges, and other unionist and loyalist groups, do prompt varied responses. It all depends on where they are held.
When the march passes through the Ardoyne in Belfast, the response from local nationalists is as predictable as declining daylight after June 21.
Belfast is not alone in having marches, of course. Most cities around the world have parades and festivals.
The great majority of them, however, are not burdened by the kind of history that besets Belfast.
And most parades, such as the varying ethnic and commemorative ones that take place in New York, are staged year after year along pre-determined main routes to which the greatest number of spectators can be attracted.
So why not a single, pre-determined parade route through Belfast, each marching group picking its day to step out?
It certainly would be preferable to the present situation in which one side seeks to stick it to the other by tramping through already tense neighborhoods, thus making it near certain that there will be violent confrontation.
Given the sheer length of the North’s marching season, the number of marching groups and again, the heavy weight of history, such an idea appears remote.
But it’s not nearly as absurd as what we have been forced to witness thus far.
By all means march, and march again; but in to nothing more than sundown on a summer’s eve, not the kind of historical ignominy that has sullies the warmest season’s birth.