SEISMIC is the word du jour after lawyers for the Orange Order managed to overturn the Parades Commission determination that the Brethren can’t walk down the Garvaghy Road.
In a scene straight from Father Ted’s acceptance speech at the Golden Cleric Awards, Carla Lockhart stepped forward to give thanks for the tremendous victory, while behind her a long line of mostly older gentlemen queued for the mic and their chance to create a clip for social media.
Lead counsel Jamie Bryson – who was neither lead nor counsel – was at the heart of the case and the seismic description is one that he enthusiastically concurred with; but then Jamie is such a uniquely excitable fellow that he would deploy the word to describe any number of deeply banal developments, from a PIP appeal success to the reinstatement of a player suspended for a Steel & Sons Cup tie. The facts of the case – Carla and Jamie’s face-flapping excitement notwithstanding – are equally banal in the flesh. The Parades Commission erred in procedure in denying the Orange Order the right to walk the Garvaghy Road – something that the Commission acknowledged last week, which is why the decision when it came on Tuesday afternoon was as surprising as a hymn at the TUV conference.
So what happens now? Well, Loyal Ulster, as represented by that doughty band of patriots gathered behind the mic with Carla, would like everyone to think that the Brethren will soon be marching up Garvaghy with a three deep line of riot-clad police and soldiers separating them from the seething residents on either side. Nothing said by anyone who took their turn at the mic to hail the victory would have disabused the ordinary Jo from thinking that the ban is overturned and that senior DUP, TUV and UUP figures will any day now be holding hands and dancing a Trimble/ Paisley-style jig.
In fact, the Parades Commission now simply reconvenes to consider yet another application from the men in collarettes. And given that Drumcree has over the years brought us closer to civil war than just about any other subject or incident, it would take an actual seismic turn events for the Commission to perform a u-turn. Because in the years of quietude since the Drumcree issue was put to bed, nothing has changed on the ground. The Garvaghy Road remains wide. It remains one and a half kilometres long. It is still heavily, Taigly residential on both sides. Forcing a bunch of blokes in bowlers and white gloves along its length will still require a policing and military operation of wartime proportions. And given that the Chief Constable has consistently ruled over the past number of summers that the PSNI is unwilling to deal with schoolkids on top of boneys for fear of the reaction it may provoke, it would not only require a Parades Commission reversal of quite jawdropping proportions, it would also require Jon Boutcher to ditch his oft-illustrated conviction that sleeping dogs are best left dozing. One of these things happening is unlikely; both things happening is Elvis celebrating a Euromillions win while riding Shergar territory.
Which is not to underestimate the propensity of the British for ballsing things up. Cuddly Mo Mowlam threw the Catholics of Portadown under the bus in 1997 and the GOC and Ronnie Flanagan enthusiastically worked with her in turning Drumcree and Garvaghy into a pretty convincing scale model of the Somme. But all that mad episode did was to convince all concerned that this could never be allowed to happen again.
The only way that the Orange is getting up the Garvaghy Road is by going bowler-in-hand to the residents and asking nicely – something their post-medieval dogma has prevented them from doing thus far. But were the Orange Order to decide to act as equals for once, it is by no means guaranteed that the Garvaghy residents will respond positively, if at all. Because the calculation may be that opening a new round of negotiations serves no purpose other than to state very clearly that a game on which the final whistle was blown quarter of a century ago is back on.
Long story short, the Orange are not an inch further up the Garvaghy Road than they were on Tuesday morning. A more polished and considerably more legally robust iteration of the quashed ruling will be made. It's a no-brainer precisely because of the same shameful cynicism that led Mo Mowlam to give in to loyalist muscle.
Here are the two possible outcomes:
1. The Parades Commission, after allowing Carla and co a period of time to luxuriate in a rare and questionable victory and calm tf down, make the same ruling in the fullness of time, one which the legal mice will be less able to nibble away at. Result: With no bargaining-chip mob in place at Drumcree, expect loud harrumphing and stern letters to the BelTel.
2. The Parades Commission rules that the Orange Order can walk the Garvaghy Road; the PSNI suddenly discovers an aptitude for difficult policing operations; the British army promises the necessary tactical and engineering support; and the NIO agrees that this is a splendid idea. A week before the march, the job of turning the Garvaghy Road once again into an urban war zone commences. And you don’t have to be Leon Petulengro to read those particular stars.
The wincingly honest truth that the past has taught us is that the sight of the PSNI and the British army drilling and hammering, preparing the Garvaghy Road for the Orange Order, will not be met with harrumphing and stern letters to the Irish News but with strenuous on-the-ground opposition.
That's a contingency over which the Stauncherati will lose not a second's sleep; indeed, for some, it would be a pleasing part of the equation. But for a new Secretary of State with a Kumbaya bent and a risk-averse Chief Constable it's a gulp-inducing nightmare.
The path of least resistance in 1997 was the Garvaghy Road. It isn't any more.
