Hundreds of people have blocked a Protestant Orange Order parade from entering a mainly Catholic neighbourhood in Portadown, Northern Ireland, since Sunday 27 September, in one of the most serious flare-ups of communal tension since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. The stand-off has so far remained peaceful, but there are fears the march could reignite violence.
About thirty Orangemen, wearing bowler hats and orange sashes, are insisting on walking along Garvaghy Road, the main road through the Drumcree area. It is the first time in nearly 30 years that the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organisation, has been allowed to use the route. The way is blocked by Catholic and nationalist residents and supporters. Police stand between the two sides but have not cleared the road, apparently preferring the status quo to an intervention that could inflame the situation.
The crisis was set off by a court ruling that allowed the parade to go ahead on a technicality, finding a flaw in the ban previously imposed by the Parades Commission, the body that regulates contested marches. Fabrice Mourlon, a specialist in British and Irish history at the Sorbonne Nouvelle university, says the decision has revived unresolved antagonisms. Catholics often see Orange marches as provocation because they commemorate the 17th-century victory of William of Orange over Catholic forces.
The standoff evokes painful memories. The Troubles, the conflict between mainly Protestant unionists who want to stay in the UK and mainly Catholic nationalists who favour a united Ireland, killed more than 3,000 people between the late 1960s and 1998. Shortly after the peace deal, three Catholic brothers aged 7, 9 and 10 died in Portadown when their home was set on fire by a unionist group. Although the agreement transformed Northern Ireland, around a hundred so-called peace walls still separate communities in Belfast. Mourlon argues that most people do not want conflict to return and doubts the unrest will spread beyond Portadown, though he stresses such confrontations are unpredictable.
The dispute has also become political. First Minister Michelle O'Neill of the nationalist Sinn Féin joined the protesters, and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which shares power with Sinn Féin under the peace settlement, has accused her of breaking the law. Some unionists have given the British government 48 hours to "uphold the law", meaning to enable the march, warning of serious consequences otherwise. Unionist anxiety has been heightened by remarks from US President Donald Trump, who during a golf trip to Ireland on 12 September spoke in favour of Irish reunification, a comment London had not anticipated.
British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, facing his first Irish crisis, called for calm, saying "significant progress" had been made in Northern Ireland and that he did not want to see things go backwards. Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Bryant has been sent to the area but has not yet brokered a compromise: residents still refuse to let the march pass, and the Orangemen still want to walk.