Tensions high as Drumcree draws near

By Chris Thornton

PORTADOWN, Co Armagh — Violence after a minor Orange Order parade last week left 13 RUC officers and several civilians injured and hopes of a resolution to the dispute over the Drumcree parade in tatters.

Loyalists and nationalists engaged in widespread rioting, mostly directed against police, after a march by junior members of the Orange Order was allowed along a short part of the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road on Saturday. RUC officers fired plastic bullets and used batons against the rioters.

The unrest broke out as Orangemen and members of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition were preparing for last ditch talks on Thursday aimed at reaching a settlement before the July 4 Drumcree parade. Sources on both sides had been not hopeful of a resolution even before Saturday’s violence.

The first leg of the parade, involving about 20 children, adult organizers and a loyalist flute band, passed off peacefully on Saturday morning. But trouble broke out when the parade returned to the Lower Garvaghy Road in the evening.

Several hundred loyalists tried to follow the parade into an area where nationalist protesters had gathered, but were held back by police. The loyalists threw bricks and bottles at RUC lines until police charges forced rioters into the town center.

At the same time, nationalists began throwing stones and petrol bombs at police. Officers responded by firing plastic bullets, injuring one young man. Police arrested three people.

British Secretary of State Mo Mowlam said there were more than 20 attacks involving guns and bombs during May. "Both republican and loyalist groupings have been responsible, with the majority allegedly being carried out by loyalists," she said. "These attacks must stop."

However, Mowlam said that her judgment was that, "in the round," paramilitary cease-fires were intact.

Spokesmen for both sides in the dispute attacked RUC handling of the march.

Breandan MacCionnaith of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition said: "Plastic bullets are only supposed to be fired when there is a threat to life or property. There was no such threat here.

"There was no need for the Orange parade to take this route when there is an alternative they could have marched."

Orange Order spokesman said the security forces had been "heavy handed." "There is still a lot of animosity in the town between Protestant people and police," he said.

Both sides were still prepared to enter British government-sponsored proximity talks after the violence. Scottish industrial negotiator Frank Blair will host the negotiations in Belfast on Thursday, shuttling between the sides, who will be in separate rooms.

Orangemen and residents have been locked in a dispute for the last 11 months, after the Northern Ireland Parades Commission banned the Orange Order from marching on the Garvaghy Road.

The long dispute has seen no softening of positions. Residents say they will not cease their opposition to the Drumcree parade without face-to-face negotiations with Orangemen. The Orange Order says it will not have direct talks, because it believes the Residents Coalition is an IRA front.

If anything, the two sides were hardening their stances in advance of talks. The Orangemen say they want two parades this year, to make up for the one missed in 1998, and are threatening to gather tens of thousands of Orangemen in the area throughout July if they are banned again. Residents are beginning to speak of opposing the outward route of the parade to Drumcree church, which does not pass along the Garvaghy Road.

Concerns about this year’s Drumcree parade are being fueled by further indications of instability in loyalist cease-fires. This week the BBC reported that police are linking members of the LVF to the March 15 murder of lawyer Rosemary Nelson. The LVF, which is based in Portadown, denied the report.

And the UDA, the largest loyalist paramilitary group, said its cease-fire would be in jeopardy if any of its members were arrested by detectives investigating the 1989 murder of another lawyer, Pat Finucane.