Attitudes still negative on Garvaghy Road

Hands up all who believe that the Garvaghy Road residents' coalition has had any serious intentions of facilitating an Orange walk along this part of Portadown?

No-one was really surprised when the Parades Commission ruled in favour of Brendan McKenna's residents association in its determination in this year's application by Portadown District LOL No 1 to walk along Garvaghy Road back into Portadown after divine worship on Sunday, July 7. One again, as on 200 other previous occasions, determinations by the Commission had gone against the Orangemen and in favour of the republicans.

Only those who prefer to be blinkered or to hide their head in the sand can ignore the fact that as far as the sinister forces behind the blocking of the Garvaghy Road to the Orangemen are concerned, years of plotting and planning, and ethnic cleansing have produced the end result they wanted - an end to Orange parades of any kind in a traditionally Protestant part of the town.

It is exactly 30 years since the republican plot went into action with the murder of young Protestant Paul Seattle at Churchill Park on July 12, 1972. This foul deed for which no-one was ever apprehended or charged, was followed by the steady intimidation of hundreds of Protestant families from the housing estates of upper Garvaghy Road.

These people had committed no misdemeanor to deserve this vile expulsion from the district their forefathers had lived in for generations. Their only 'crime' was to be Protestant and loyalist, and for the republicans planning to extend their territory and to exclude Orange parades, that was sufficient reason.

It has all worked out perfectly for the enemies of Protestantism and Orangeism, and thanks to the ability of republicans to portray themselves in the media as the oppressed, the message coming through in recent years has been one which tended to blacken the Orangemen and to present the nationalist residents of Garvaghy Road as the innocent victims of sectarian bigotry.

Well groomed and trained by their republican masters, the spokespeople for the Garvaghy Road residents were able to persuade large sections of the press horde which descended on Drumcree each year that they were the victims, and certainly not the villains.

Too many journalists have swallowed this line. and so the headlines each of the past five years have portrayed the bowler-hatted Orangemen returning from church as modern day fascists.

Fortunately a few observers, including Ruth Dudley-Edwards, have been able to expose the real truth behind the Garvaghy Road business, and to show that far from being the oppressor, it has been the Orangemen who have been on the receiving end of a well planned and executed conspiracy.

Of course, there have been elements on the loyalist side who have allowed themselves to be sucked into the annual Drumcree turmoil and who have disgraced themselves and blotted the loyalist cause, doing neither themselves of the Orangemen any favours.

Sinister

But it cannot be denied that the real sinister force behind the well manufactured Drumcree-Garvaghy Road affair has been militant republicanism which cannot abide, far less tolerate Protestantism, Unionism or Orangeism.

The Orange Order was not prepared for what was unleashed on it in the early years of the Drumcree plot, and due to its inability to cope, and the tendency of many of its supporters to react in an undisciplined fashion, it played into the hands of Sinn Fem-IRA.

But lessons have been learned, and this year, as in recent years, the Orangemen and most of their supporters have behaved in exemplary fashion.

But is the day when a church parade can walk peacefully along the road back into town, along which their Orange forefathers have walked since 1806 any closer? If past determinations by the Parades Commission is anything to go by, then the answer would appear to be in the negative.

But the Orange Order has to continue to put its case for a parade in a reasoned and constructive fashion, in the hope and belief that justice will prevail in the end. The Order cannot allow itself to be sucked into any violence or confrontation with the Crown forces.

But neither can it walk away from a situation which was not of its making. The only stipulation must be that its case is always put in a coherent, constructive and peaceful manner. The cause must no be sullied by irresponsible and totally futile violence which only plays into the hands of those who wish to see the destruction of the Orange Order and of Northern Ireland and its place within the United Kingdom.

Taken with kind permission from the Orange Standard October 2002

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