An Uneasy Peace Holds at Drumcree After a Week of Stand-Off
Every ingredient of a Northern Ireland crisis has been present for a week except one: violence. The stand-off over the Portadown parade has run since Sunday morning through verbal clashes, late-night negotiations, appeals for calm and a major security operation, without descending into disorder. The police operation continues through the weekend, and the residents’ legal challenge is heard on Monday.
There was one more attempt overnight: just after ten o’clock on Friday night Portadown Orangemen tried again to parade down the Garvaghy Road and were stopped by a senior officer at the bottom of Drumcree Hill, as they have been repeatedly this week. Talks at Hillsborough collapsed on Thursday without agreement, the Northern Ireland Secretary saying his door remained open but that the conversations themselves were at an end. The Orange Order’s Portadown district says it is “carefully assessing the position and considering its next steps over the coming days”, and no fresh parade has been notified — which is why this weekend is a policing question rather than a parading one. The Chief Constable has warned that forcing a march down the Garvaghy Road “could be catastrophic”, and the operation has already cost about £3m with nobody hurt. Thirteen councillors have been reported to the standards commissioner over conduct surrounding the dispute, and the DUP expects a criminal investigation into last Sunday’s blockade to begin next week. Sometimes, as the local formulation has it, the definition of success here is that nobody got hurt. Watch Monday’s hearing.