Thousands Rally on the Garvaghy Road as Drumcree Enters an Eighth Day
Thousands gathered on the Garvaghy Road on Saturday afternoon in support of the residents opposing the Portadown District Orange Lodge parade, with a smaller loyalist rally in the Edgarstown estate. Police closed the road to traffic once the crowd had built. The PSNI said anyone found blocking it would be treated as taking part in an unnotified and therefore illegal protest, with criminal consequences.
The Parades Commission has cleared the Portadown District to walk its traditional Garvaghy Road route, with restrictions, for the first time in almost thirty years — which is why a dispute that would once have been local is now a test of who governs the road. The stand-off has run since Sunday morning; talks chaired by the Northern Ireland Secretary ended without agreement on Thursday; and the residents’ fresh legal challenge, listed for Friday, has been put back to Monday. Almost 1,300 people from the Protestant community signed a letter this week urging the Orange Order to abandon the parade. Michelle O’Neill, the First Minister, dismissed Sir Chris Bryant’s description of being between a rock and a hard place as “such nonsense”, saying this was simply “the difference between right and wrong” and that the crowd would stand with the residents “for as long as it takes”. Carla Lockhart of the DUP said the impasse was “mob rule” and that the Chief Constable and his officers should “do their job” and facilitate the parade. Emma Little-Pengelly, the deputy First Minister, called Ms O’Neill’s conduct “a complete abdication of leadership” while urging unionists to stay calm. Jon Burrows, the Ulster Unionist leader, called Saturday “a carnival of law-breaking and triumphalism”. Watch Belfast High Court on Monday.