Garvaghy Residents' parades concern

Published Wednesday, 27 January 2010

The Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition has expressed its widespread concern as the handling of parades becomes a deal breaker between the DUP and Sinn Fein.

The DUP wants to scrap the Parades Commission which currently oversees marches in flashpoint areas such as the Garvaghy Road in Portadown.

As the Hillsborough talks ended on Wednesday, Peter Robinson repeated the party will not give their go-ahead until there is progress on the "outstanding issue".

Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness, meanwhile, blamed the devolution stalemate on the decision by the DUP to make the abolition of the commission a "pre-condition", saying he will "not be made subject to a unionist veto or an Orange Order pre-condition."

A so-called "Derry Model" has been suggested as a way of breaking the deadlock.

The model, centered on local mediation, was devised by Derry businessmen after the opposition between Bogside's residents and the Apprentice Boys spilled over into violence, damaging the local economy.

The business community intervened in a bid to improve relations between nationalists and the Apprentice Boys in the city.

"By devising a system that allowed for communication, that allowed for confidence building", Derry businessman Garvan O'Doherty told UTV.

"And also, you know, maybe people have to give up certain aspects of territory to gain other aspects of territory."

"It's important we work off a clean sheet whereby all the prejudices of the past are left behind and we work towards the future."

But Garvaghy Road Residents have said the proposal was unsuccessfully put forward by the British government over 10 years ago.

"That proposal was withdrawn by the British Government as unworkable when it was shown that the representation on such a political and civic forum would, in fact, have favoured the pro-Orange Order lobby and placed nationalists in Portadown at a distinct disadvantage", a spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents said.

"The Derry model didn't have to deal with parades that were going directly through the Creggan or the Bogside, unlike here where the parade is going through 100% residential nationalist community," Breandan MacCionnaith told UTV.

The residents insist the Parades Commission has helped improve the situation since the end of the bitter Drumcree dispute which brought Northern Ireland to the brink at the end of the 1990s.

"The rerouting of contentious marches away from the Garvaghy Road and Obins Street by the Parades Commission has meant that our community - and the wider community - has enjoyed successive peaceful summers", residents claimed.

But north Belfast DUP MLA Nelson McCausland is calling for a new and fair system.

"It is quite clear that the Parades Commission has failed", he told UTV.

"What we need now is a new start, a new system, a new structure that will produce a fair system and fair outcomes in regard to parades."

Comments

30 Comments

lorna in limavady wrote (834 days ago):

Jim. I have watched St Patrick's day parades and there are green white and gold shown. Either in the bands or ahead of the band. To the Protestant surly this is as bad as the Union Jack being carried on the twelth. I wish the Nationalists see things from another point of view. We have such tunnel vision here and unless we make more allowances for others we will never have anything but bitterness. Remember bigotary is not contained within one sect.

seamas in belfast wrote (845 days ago):

Fed Up. No doubt there are people who won’t agree with me. I’m a republican by politics but I know that Northern Ireland is geographically part of the British Isles and accept that presently its constitutionally part of the UK. The fact still remains that my Gaelic Irish identity is viewed by most Protestants as having its origins in the South. Their British identity belongs here naturally but my Irish one was brought in. Because I don’t properly belong then I don’t need to be listened to when I complain about parades or the police or discrimination. Why is it that you and I can debate this in the media yet the OO can’t sit down and talk to residents about parades? I don’t want to stop Protestants celebrating their culture. The Battle of the Boyne is my history too. After all Gettysburg belongs to all Americans not just Yankees.

Fed Up in Belfast wrote (845 days ago):

Seamas wrote - the fundamental problem underlying our difficulties is the fact that protestant people here think that NI is inherently British protestant and unionist and that that is the only valid local identity. They see catholic nationalism as a southern phenomenon and think that we don’t properly belong here. - Seamas I am Protestant and I see NI as British only because it is part of the UK. I don't care if you are Catholic, Hindu or Muslim that is a fact. As for Catholic Nationalism the same could be said with regards to them still seeing Protestants as a foreign people who belong on the UK mainland. I was born here and I cannot be held reponsible or the actions of those who came before me. My younger Brother is engaged to a Catholic and my wee Niece is being brought up Catholic. Both go the parades on the 12th and both enjoy them. Indeed my brothers girlfriend cannot see why there is such a problem and she comes from a Republican family. Her father was in the IRA. So there are those out there who would not agree with your comments.

seamas in belfast wrote (846 days ago):

Fed up. I didn’t say that one side was sectarian. The point I was trying to make is that the fundamental problem underlying our difficulties is the fact that protestant people here think that NI is inherently British protestant and unionist and that that is the only valid local identity. They see catholic nationalism as a southern phenomenon and think that we don’t properly belong here. We’re tolerated so long as we’re submissive and do what we’re told. Catholics who won’t are branded as troublemakers and dismissed as republicans. To reinforce the idea that protestant unionism is dominant Orangemen march. And where better to march than through the Catholic areas.

Fed Up in Belfast wrote (846 days ago):

Seamas wrote - A major feature of the troubles here is the sectarian murder by Protestants of ordinary Catholics. Those murders are fuelled by a mindset which sees Catholics as enemies and traitors and deserving of all they get. - Do you think that only Catholics were murdered. The IRA murdered Catholics and Protestants in their so called war against the state. That was the Major factor of the Troubles. Maybe if they hadn't killed ordinary Protestants things would never have got to tit for tat. They even apologised for these deaths. So to say that one side is sectarian is a blatant misrepresentation of how things really are.

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