Some 2,000 protesters prevented a parade by the Orange Order from passing through the Catholic quarter of the northern Irish town of Portadown. The stand-off occurred as neither side was willing to give way, while police maintained a buffer between the two groups.
Protesters, including Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald and Northern Ireland's first minister, Michelle O'Neill, from the Irish nationalist party Sinn Féin, gathered on Garvaghy Road. The attempt to pass the parade followed the lifting of a nearly 30-year ban on movement along that disputed route.
The High Court in Belfast dismissed a petition by residents to ban the parade. A committee regulating parades in the area, under British oversight, approved 35 participants, between 8:00 and 9:30, a significantly lower number than usual. The ban on this year's parade had previously been extended, but the High Court overturned the decision in August due to a procedural error.
Leaders in Ireland and the UK called for calm. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham told the BBC: 'Great progress has been made in Northern Ireland and we do not wish to see a return to the past.' Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin shares Burnham's concern, and the decision by the Northern Irish parade board to allow the parade was described by him as 'unacceptable' and 'wrong'.
Attempts by the Protestant Orange Order to march through the area had previously sparked unrest in the region under British rule, until the route was banned in 1998, the same year the Good Friday Agreement ended three decades of violence known as the 'Troubles in Northern Ireland'. The dispute over Drumcree escalated in the mid-1990s when, after the main paramilitary groups had declared a ceasefire, the incident became a symbol of the wider conflict between Catholic nationalists, who consider themselves Irish, and Protestants loyal to Britain.
The Orange Order is an international Protestant fraternity based in Belfast, named after the Protestant King William III, who defeated the deposed Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Members of the Orange Order state that their parades are part of Protestant tradition, and most parades held annually across Northern Ireland do not provoke controversy. Nationalists, however, argue that parades passing through Catholic areas represent an offensive display of triumphalism, and their purpose is to intimidate.
