The Orange Order is planning to switch its main Belfast rally on the Twelfth of July from the southern outskirts of the city to Ormeau Park, on the Ormeau Road. The move is in protest at a decision to ban the local lodge from marching down the Nationalist lower end of the road. The Lower Ormeau Concerned Community has condemned the Order's announcement and considers it an attempt to create a Drumcree-style stand off in Belfast and to intimidate the nationalist community.
The traditional route of the main Orange parade in the North on the twelfth of July is through Belfast City centre along the Lisburn Road, ending with a rally in the countryside at Edenderry, on the southern outskirts. Now, however, Orange Order leaders in Belfast, angered by the Parades Commission ban on a march through the Nationalist Lower Ormeau Road, are threatening to switch the rally from Edenderry to Ormeau Park, on the Ormeau Road.
This could mean that twenty thousand Orangemen and thousands more supporters and onlookers converging on the park, which lies just several hundred yards from where the Nationalist area begins. Ormeau Park is owned by Belfast City Council and the Order says that, if permission is refused for the rally, they will gather instead on the main road.
An Orange spokesman said that they wanted the demonstration to be peaceful and claimed that they had no intention of crossing the bridge into the Catholic area. Gerard Rice, a spokesman for the Nationalist residents described the plan as ludicrous and madness. He said that it would be insane for the city council to allow it to happen.
