THE PSNI are getting awful stick over the advice they supplied that enabled the Parades Commission to give the Orange march down the Garvaghy Road the green light. But it’s very complex and nuanced, as people like to say these days, and this excerpt hopefully gives a more rounded view of the Trevors’ thoughts on getting the Orange down (or is it up?) the Garvaghy… It is the considered opinion of the PSNI that enabling 35 Orangemen to walk the Garvaghy Road would be a piece of cake, given the changed circumstances. Almost 30 years have passed since the last unrest on the road, which means that all of the local young people have no memory of how we battered residents – sorry, removed residents – from the road. So given that most of the military-age men – sorry, young people – didn’t see people getting their heads cracked with a baton or taking a plastic bullet in the kisser, our assessment is they will stay in the house bingeing on TikTok and Insta should we decide to escort the Brethren along the road. As for the older residents, it is our assessment that since they are overwhelmingly devout Roman Catholics they will be too busy with Catholicky things on Sunday to bother coming out and giving us grief. Given the overwhelmingly Protestant nature of our organisation, we’ve been unable to find a practising Catholic to supply us with insights into Romish Sunday habits, but it’s common knowledge that most of their day is spent either saying repeated decades of the Rosary or dusting statues of the Virgin Mary and pictures of the Sacred Heart. It is therefore the PSNI’s assessment that an Orange march down the Garvaghy Road is no longer a problem, given the passage of time and the passing of key individuals from the 90s (most of them killed by the UVF).
