IF you’ve been thinking, “The Drumcree/Garvaghy Road thing is ancient history now – it happened over 25 years ago. It’s done and dusted,” then I say, “Listen to what some unionist politicians are saying, this is far from done and dusted.” The pull of the past is irresistible for such people.
This should never have been a disputed topic – we did that decades back. But it appears the Parades Commission sloppily didn’t make sure that their final determination this year had been properly considered and approved by all six commissioners before issue. Does this Parades Commission faux-pas mean that the Orangemen have been given a green light to march down the Garvaghy Road? No, it doesn’t.
You’d never guess that from the words of DUP top cats Gavin Robinson, Carla Lockhart and Gordon Lyons. They are treating the matter as much more than a technical legal defeat for the Commission: They are using it to challenge the credibility of the entire parading system, and have called for the commissioners' removal or even abolition of the Commission.
Why would they want that? Because for some 27 years, the Commission has been blocking their march. They know that the Parades Commission as presently constituted will not give Orangemen a free pass to march down the road. This has been wreaking havoc with the heads of backward- marching unionist politicians.
The Portadown Orange Lodge seek to present themselves as asking for next to nothing. They argue that the parade would take at most 15 minutes to pass down the Garvaghy Road and that residents should respect their tradition of doing so.
Tradition – now there’s a darlin’ word. It means that something has been done for donkey’s years and therefore it must be allowed to keep on being done.
Well, now. There used to be a tradition of sending children up chimneys to clean them. There used to be a tradition that black people were slaves. And to bring it up to date, if you’ve been coming home pissed every second night for years, breaking the furniture and beating your wife, that’s obviously a domestic tradition you’ve established. But is this a tradition that should be preserved? No, no, and no again. Ditto the Orange Order and the Catholic people of the Garvaghy Road.
The commentator Chris Donnelly has a revealing take on this matter. He points to how unionists and Orangemen keep explaining the march would only take fifteen minutes and the whole thing would be over, after which the aggravation between unionists and nationalists would also be over and all would be well. Donnelly flips that cunning plan. He asks – and so do I – how would it be if members of a republican band were to apply to walk down the Shankill Road?
It’d only be 15 minutes, after all. I rarely bet, but I have £100 burning a hole in my pocket which says that such an idea would be met with considerable derision and contempt.
Face facts: The DUP, thanks to the actions of Jeffrey Donaldson and several other DUP players, is in tatters. In polling it’s a percentage point behind the UUP.
And Jim Allister’s TUV is panting close behind it. The DUP has between now and next May’s elections to get its house in order, so it has figured that since the political war is going rather badly, let’s light a brush fire in the culture war zone and all eyes will turn to that instead.
This whole hoo-ha has been inflated wildly by the local media, notably the BBC. Have you heard any voice asking “Would you be okay with a few members of the Bobby Sands Memorial Band (yes, Virginia, I know it doesn’t exist) marching along the Shankill Road? It’ll only take fifteen minutes .”
My £100 note says it knows the answer to that one.
