The Orange Order has signalled that trouble may break out this summer if the Drumcree march is re-routed again. More than 200 Orangemen marched with placards to the RUC lines on Drumcree Hill shortly after 12am this morning. They were prevented from entering the Garvaghy Road, where most of Portadown's minority Catholic population live, by the RUC cordon. A spokesman for the Orange Order in Portadown said the demonstration was to highlight that there were issues that still needed to be resolved.
The Order's spokesman, David Jones, warned that there was unlikely to be a repeat of last year's relatively low-key response to a ban from a Catholic district during the annual parade to Drumcree, near the town. Mr Jones said that today's protest passed without trouble but said there is increasing anger among Portadown loyalists, who last walked the Garvaghy Road in 1997.
A spokesman for the Garvaghy Road residents said that there is a threat of violence coming through the Orange Order and have called on the Government to ensure that violence does not prevail.
The parade was first prohibited from the Garvaghy Road in 1995. This lead to loyalist stand-offs at Drumcree, accompanied by sectarian attacks and clashes with the RUC across Northern Ireland. Over the past two years the Orangemen and members of the nationalist Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition have attended a number of Government-sponsored proxy talks aimed at resolving the long-running dispute. But Mr Jones said that he does not think it will be possible for the Order ensure that the Drumcree parade passes quietly this year.
Elsewhere, a march by Orangemen, which was re-routed by the Parades Commission away from the mainly nationalist Lower Ormeau Road, passed off without incident in south Belfast this afternoon. About a dozen members and one band dispersed after the RUC barred them from marching across the Ormeau Bridge.
