'Parades Review Group' May Allow Garvaghy Parade
The appointment of a new group to ‘review contentious parades’ in the occupied Six Counties has put the spotlight back on the issue of contentious Orange parades.
While Orange Order marches have always attracted controversy it was the forcing of such a parade down the nationalist Garvaghy Road, Portadown in the summer of 1995 that propelled the issue into both the national and international arenas. The television images of nationalist residents being first beaten off their own streets and then hemmed into their homes caused outrage across Ireland and the world. This fact that the British government adopted the same tactics in the subsequent years of 1996 and 1997 simply added salt to the wound.
By 1998, however, with the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, the British government had come to realise that there would have to be some limits placed upon the Orange Order’s ‘right to march the Queens highway’. Since then the Orange Order have been prevented from parading down the Garvaghy Road.
However, with the establishment of this new review group, it appears that the Orange Order may again be allowed to march down not only the Garvaghy Road, but also along other controversial routes such as the Lower Ormeau Road. The Parades Review Group, chaired by Paddy Ashdown, former Liberal Democrat Leader and Royal Marines Officer, is charged with seeking ‘compromise.’ However, it would seem that the scope of the group would include drawing up formulae whereby the Orange order could march down predominantly nationalist areas. Other members of the Parades Review Group include three members from both the Nationalist and Unionist communities.
Those who support Orange marches through Nationalist communities speak of the conflicting but equal ‘rights’ of the two communities. Within this hypothesis the ‘right’ of the Orange Order to follow its ‘traditional’ marching routes is equal to the ‘right’ of the residents living along such routes to object.
The reality of sectarian orange parades in nationalist areas is very different. The history of such parades is one of bigotry, sectarianism and intimidation. Indeed the entire history and raison d’etre of the Orange Order is based upon a supremacist philosophy and the desire to see the British occupation of Ireland maintained. It is absolutely unacceptable that such sectarian displays go ahead.
Speaking in relation to the establishment of the new group Éirígí spokesperson Daithi Mac An Mhaistir said ‘The Parades Review Group is tasked with finding ‘compromise’ where no compromise should be sought or given. There is never a right time or place for triumphalist marches. There is never a right time to effectively imprison a community so that a parade of bigotry can pass down their streets. It is never reasonable to ask a community to accept as ‘cultural’ a philosophy which deems one religion, and by extension one community, as superior to another.
This Parade Review Group is only the latest in a long catalogue of attempts by the British Government to portray itself as honest brokers in Ireland. Socialist Republicans are understand that this is far from the truth and that it has long been the objective of the British Government to support state sectarianism in the Six Counties as a means to prolonging their occupation of Ireland. The fact that this new group is chaired by an individual who has previously served in Ireland as a member of the army of occupation says it all.’