The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.62/No.29           August 10, 1998 
 
 
Rightists Suffer Blow Over Parades In N. Ireland  

BY CELIA PUGH AND ANNE HOWIE
PORTADOWN, Northern Ireland - The nationalist population of the Garvaghy Road area of Portadown witnessed the humiliating defeat of the rightist forces mobilized by the sectarian Orange Order in the week beginning July 12.

Leaders of the Orange Order had attempted a permanent siege of the area to force an intimidatory march down the Garvaghy Road, in defiance of a ban by the British government's Parade's Commission. By July 10 some 25,000 rightists were encamped on a hill at Drumcree Church overlooking the nationalist community, burning bonfires and hurling blast bombs at the security forces. Local Orange Order leaders predicted a mobilization of 100,000 people in Portadown by July 13, the day of Orange marches throughout the north of Ireland, but only a fraction of that number attended.

The nationalist population did not want a repeat of 1996 and 1997 - when the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) police force and British Army beat a path down the Garvaghy Road for the rightists with baton charges and thousands of plastic bullets. This year, residents were organizing to mobilize if the Orange Order was let through.

But the predicted mass siege and assault on the Garvaghy Road failed to materialize. By July 14 the rightist encampment had dwindled to 300. On July 18 an estimated five tents remained and at one point only three rightists were keeping a token protest. Local Orange leaders organized a rally that day to announce a "switch of tactics." The main unionist daily paper the Belfast Telegraph reported that at the rally "the Portadown leaders were disappointed at the turnout." Organizers expected 15,000 people but less than 2,000 showed.

The catalyst for the collapse of the rightist standoff was the murder of three Catholic boys in a loyalist firebomb attack as they slept July 12. Interviewed by GMTV the boys' mother, Chrissie Quinn, was asked if she blamed the Orange Order. She nodded and replied, "It is everybody else that suffers every year because of them. It's the Catholics that suffer.... They [the Orange Order] should not get down that road." Chrissie Quinn is a Catholic. The father of the murdered Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn is Protestant and the boys attended a Protestant school.

This was not the only sectarian firebombing during the 12-day standoff. Eleven Catholic churches were burned and hundreds of homes, schools, churches, and other buildings have been attacked by loyalists, that is those who support or are loyal to continued British rule. Hundreds of Catholic families have been forced from their communities. Some of these loyalist attacks were on RUC officers' homes in retribution for the blocking of the Orange march. Orange Order church ministers who called for the march to end were also threatened.

The majority of the attacks were arbitrary sectarian assaults on Catholic families. The deaths of the Quinn children drew disgust and outrage and lifted the lid on the sectarian nature of the Orange Order and its marches. This outrage applied further pressure to deep fault lines in the sectarian institutions that have historically upheld British colonial rule in Ireland. London has used the Orange Order to foster Protestant supremacy and dispense patronage and privilege to divide and weaken working-class unity against the British rulers.

Rightist Orange Order in crisis
The Orange Order is now in deep crises. Public opinion in ruling-class and nationalist circles point to this crisis as terminal. The unionist Belfast Telegraph headlined its opinion column July 18 "Parade Mayhem could be near end of the Road." The Irish edition of the pro-British, pro- business Sunday Times headlined its feature on the Orange Order crisis "Marching to the death." The Irish Times feature commented, "Most Orangemen live in a time warp, in a world which has long passed...of the British empire conquering the world, of Belfast as a great industrial city and of the Protestant Bible as God's unerring guide to the nation." A special meeting of the ruling grand lodge of the Order takes place August 1 to conduct an inquest into Drumcree in Portadown. Twenty Orange Order chaplains have discussed the option of resigning from the Order if this review is not critical of the stand off. A Belfast chaplain, John Dickinson has already resigned from the Orange Order over its opposition to the Good Friday Agreement and attempts to use Drumcree to undermine the Northern Ireland Assembly.

An editorial on the Orange Order in the nationalist newspaper An Phoblacht/Republican News July 9 commented, "What we are witnessing is the dying wasp-sting of an ideology which has underpinned the northern state from its inception. The six country entity was established as a `Protestant state for a Protestant peoplé and it was through the Orange lodges that this ideology was maintained among the various classes straddled by unionism. The growing confidence of the nationalist community in the six counties in recent years and the political changes heralded by the Good Friday Agreement...has had a huge effect on those who are afraid of change...."

Unbroken nationalist confidence
This unbroken nationalist confidence was reflected in the increased vote for nationalist candidates in the June elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly set up after the Good Friday Agreement. British government attempts to contain the nationalist struggle for change have prompted the shift in response to the Orange stand off at Drumcree.

When London ordered the British troops and RUC to beat a path for the Orange march down Garvaghy in 1996 and 1997, it fueled a greater determination by nationalists to resist and increased their support.

This nationalist confidence and resistance was evident in the Garvaghy Road community. Eilish Creaney is a member of the management committee of the Drumcree Community Centre off the Garvaghy Road. She told Militant reporters how the residents organized together during the standoff. The center was a base for community meetings and organization and a pirate radio station kept everyone informed. "At one point we thought a deal had been done to let the Orange march through. As soon as we got the news we called a meeting. It was eleven at night but the community hall was packed. Those who had to stay at home were informed of our decisions through the radio station." The center was used to receive and distribute food and other essentials, which were brought in solidarity convoys from collections in other parts of Ireland. During the siege residents could not get through to go to work or the town center shops.

Creaney had special praise for "our young people who refused to get provoked by the RUC and the British troops who sealed the area with armed checkpoints and stop and search checks." Within a 10 minute walk up the Garvaghy Road July 19, these reporters observed three fully armed British foot patrols, and a number of convoys of armored personnel carriers with troops atop, guns on show. Creaney said she believed that after the Quinn killings more Protestants would see that the Orange Order had gone too far. "Ordinary decent Protestants will say `I'm not part of this.' " Asked what she thought about the future for the Orange marches down the Garvaghy Road she replied, "That now depends on the British government. Will they stand up to the Orange Order or say `We let one side have their way this year, so next year the march should go through?'" That's what they did with the Ormeau Road this year and that's no good." For the last two years the triumphalist Orange march down the nationalist Lower Ormeau Road community in Belfast has been prevented. This year, the Parades Commission allowed the march to proceed July 13. The Lower Ormeau Concerned Community (LOCC) countermobilized with black flags and black balloons.

A local resident of Lower Ormeau Road, who didn't want to be named, told the Militant that this plan had already been made at a community meeting the week before the Quinn murders. "The black flags were for the people killed by loyalists in this area in the last few decades," he said. The LOCC campaigned against the Parade Commission decision on the Lower Ormeau Orange march and said the community would continue to oppose it. "This was a trade-off for Garvaghy Road." He described how the army and RUC sealed off the Lower Ormeau Road on the two evenings before the Orange march.

Local Sinn Fein councilor Sean Hayes said that during this RUC and army operation young residents were hit with batons as they tried to put up a banner for the protest against the Orange march. Sinn Fein is the party leading the fight for a united Ireland.

Hayes added that the next focus for the disputed Orange parades will be the August 8 Apprentice Boys march in Derry. Unionist and loyalist officials first refused to join a forum for talks on community relations with nationalist residents of the Bogside area of Derry. They have since reversed this decision and will now take part.

The future of the Drumcree Orange march is now the focus of talks organized by the British government. These are proximity talks between the Orange Order and Garvaghy Road residents organized through mediators. The residents' representative, Breandan MacCionnaith, called for a civic forum and face-to-face discussion addressing a range of issues. The civic forum is recommended in the Good Friday Agreement. Meanwhile, a new inquiry began in Derry July 20 into the 1972 British army Bloody Sunday killing of 14 civil rights protesters. British prime minister Blair announced the inquiry after a decades-long campaign by relatives of the dead and injured.

Celia Pugh is a member of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union in London. Anne Howie is a member of the Transport and General Workers Union in Manchester.

 
 
 
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