Residents on Portadown’s Garvaghy Road have hit out after the Orange Order announced it was bidding for a “limited parade” along the route.
Leaders of the Portadown District of the Orange Order told a press conference in Carleton Street that the proposal for Sunday September 27 was for 60 members with no bands or drums.
If approved it would be the first orange parade along the Garvaghy Road in 28 years after a long-running standoff between the Orange Order and local residents in the 1990s that saw serious rioting across Northern Ireland.
The Orange Order says it is the parade’s traditional route and has been walked since 1807, while residents say the parade is not welcome in the area.
Shortly after the announcement a local resident said they were so angry, they could not trust themself to speak on the record to media.
They said they had been “pushed off the road” in the 1990s, and expressed disbelief that after almost 30 years there was any possibility the parade could return.
Sinn Féin MLA John O’Dowd told the media there is “anger, frustration and also deep, deep concern” in the community.
“Those who lived through the worst excesses of the Drumcree events, memories are fresh,” he said.
Mr O’Dowd said residents are thinking about those who died during disorder associated with the standoff, including the three young Quinn brothers who died after a petrol bomb was thrown into their home in July 1998 by loyalist paramilitaries.
He also mentioned Elizabeth O’Neill, who died after a Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) petrol bomb was thrown into her home in Portadown in 1999.
Mr O’Dowd added: “This parade, and the history of this parade, is steeped in sectarianism, it is steeped in violence and it is steeped in death, and I cannot understand how anyone thinks it is the right thing to do to bring this parade back on to the agenda.”
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