BY PAUL DAVIES
MANCHESTER, England - A wave of anger swept nationalist communities across Northern Ireland following the decision of the British government to allow the rightist Orange Order to march down the mainly Catholic Garvaghy Road in the Drumcree area of Portadown on July 6. Before dawn that day, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) blockaded the area and dragged nationalist Catholics from the road to allow the march to pass. British soldiers fired rubber bullets at the nationalists.

Since that evening, hundreds have taken to the streets nightly to protest across Northern Ireland in any way they could find. At the Girdwood army base 30 shots were fired at troops. In west Belfast, British troops were confronted with a crowd of 200 throwing stones and petrol bombs. In the days that followed the Portadown march, the RUC and army were blocked from entering many Catholic areas. The cops have taken to wearing military-style, fire-proof riot gear in these confrontations.

As of July 7, more than 100 people had been injured. This includes 46 RUC cops and many residents hit by plastic bullets. One 14-year-old boy who was hit in the head with a plastic bullet is in a coma. In the first two nights of fighting, the cops fired more than 1,500 rounds of this ammunition.

The nationalist outrage was fueled when a document leaked July 8 showed the British secretary for Northern Ireland, Marjorie Mowlam, had reached an agreement with the RUC chief more than two weeks ahead of time to allow the Orange Order to march down the Garvaghy Road. The Orange Order is a rightist organization that supports the continued British rule in Northern Ireland. Until they began dragging protesters away from the road, the authorities had insisted that they had not made a final decision on whether to let the parade pass.

"The Brits thought that we would lie down and take it. No chance. What did they expect when they pen people into their own homes," one of the residents of the Garvaghy Road, identified as Michael, told the Guardian newspaper.

The annual Orange Order marches are triumphalist processions through nationalist areas in the British- occupied six counties of Northern Ireland. They are aimed at preserving the system of domination through which Protestants are treated preferentially to Catholics, the cornerstone of British rule in Ireland.

The government claims it is defending religious freedom when it allows Orange Order marches through Catholic areas. Yet the RUC stopped Catholic residents from attending mass on the day of the march on the pretext that they might organize a street protest against the Orange Order march. Defiant Catholics held mass in the streets.

At last year's march, after a several-day stand-off, the RUC allowed 40 rightist thugs with bricks, bottles and sticks to come into the Garvaghy Road. Local resident John McKeown described how "six houses had their doors broken open and loyalists ran through them, smashing anything in sight and shouting, `Get out ye's Fenian bastards.'" This year, as the Orange Order marched through loyalist areas they were greeted with banners such as, "There are no nationalist communities in Portadown. Only areas temporarily occupied."

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, speaking before the parade, argued that the Garvaghy Road "was originally a Protestant area. The Protestants have been driven out." Trimble did not join the Orange Order march as in previous years, however.

Resident's Associations are preparing to stop Orange Order actions on the weekend of July 12, traditionally the height of the marching season in Belfast's Lower Ormeau Road and in Derry. Anger at the British government's decision not to reroute the march in Portadown was reflected in the decision of Gerard Rice, a leader of the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community association, not to attend a meeting with Mowlam. London has dispatched 400 additional army troops to Northern Ireland, bringing the total number in the occupied territory to 17,500.  
 
 
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