Parade Season To Climax This Week

So Far, So Good As Marches Pass Off Peacefully

By Colm Heatley

The Orange Order marching season climaxes this week, with huge parades and demonstrations due to take place across the North of Ireland on the 'Twelfth of July'.

However despite a lack of progress in the Stormont Assembly, politicians and community workers are hopeful of a peaceful outcome to the Orange parades, which traditionally raise tensions in the North.

On Sunday Orangemen were prevented from marching down the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, Co. Armagh.

It is the seventh year in a row the Parades Commission, set up to determine if contentious parades should be allowed to proceed, has banned the order from marching down the road.

Unlike previous years there was no violence and the demonstration passed of peacefully.

However on Tuesday the 12th of July a contentious Orange parade has been given the go-ahead to march past the nationalist Ardoyne shops in north Belfast.

Last year the march sparked a day of rioting between nationalist protesters, Orange marchers and the police.

Nationalists are angry that an Orange Order march was allowed to parade through the nationalist Springfield Road last month.

When the same parade was banned from marching through the Springfield Road last September it led to a week of rioting between loyalists, the police and the British Army.

Nationalists accused the Parades Commission of rewarding loyalist violence by allowing the march to go ahead last week.

The annual 'Twelfth Celebrations' will also be accompanied by huge loyalist bonfires in loyalist areas of Belfast and other towns and cities across the North.

Loyalist paramilitaries often stage armed 'shows of strengths' at the bonfires and effigies of Irish nationalists along with the Irish tricolour are burned on top of them.

However a recent accommodation between Orangemen and nationalists in an interface area of north Belfast has led to some hope that violence can be replaced with dialogue.

The agreement allowed Orangemen to march in limited numbers past a nationalist area.

But nationalists accused the Orange Order of adopting a hypocritically and sectarian approach to their dealings with nationalist communities.

The Orange Order in north Belfast takes 'advice' from loyalist paramilitaries but refuses to talk to nationalist residents groups because some representatives are also members of Sinn Fein or are former IRA prisoners.

A summer of tension and violence over the parades issue would have a serious impact on the chances for political progress when the Assembly reconvenes in October.

Sinn Fein is keen to minimise the impact of the marching season, while the DUP is aware that any association with loyalist violence this summer would weaken its position and attract criticism from the British government.

There are also indications that loyalist paramilitary groups, the Ulster Defence Association in particular, is anxious to avoid becoming involved in violence.

A recent fall-out within the group, the largest paramilitary organisation in the north, has so far not ended in violence, which is often the result of internal UDA feuds.

The main reason is the British government pledge to give £30M to loyalist community groups, many of which are run by people with strong UDA associations, if loyalist paramilitaries don't become involved in violence.

However with more than six weeks left of the summer, and of the Orange marching season, it remains to be seen whether violence will be avoided.

If so, it will act as a positive benchmark for the North.