DRUMCREE THREATENS AGAIN

The Orange Order threatened once again on April 30 to create trouble if they were not let parade down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown against the wishes of the nationalist community.

David Jones, Portadown Orange spokesperson, said there was unlikely to be a repeat of the 1999 low-key protest at the ban on Orange feet on the Garvaghy Road.

He added "come the ninth of July we are still on the Drumcree hillside it is going to be the responsibility of the [British] government as to what might happen after that".

Garvaghy Road Resident Coalition spokesman Breandán Mac Cionnaith described the comments as "a very implicit threat" from the Orange Order.

On the same day the Orangemen forced their way through RUC lines at the Drumcree church in the direction of the Garvaghy Road. British soldiers had to be quickly deployed to stop an invasion of the nationalist area.

The Orange Order has not walked down the Garvaghy Road since July 1997 when the then British supremo Mo Mowlam forced the march through with a huge deployment of British Crown Forces who battered the nationalist community off their own streets.

It is apparent that the Orange Order's show of force on Drumcree on April 30 is part of a gearing up for a large mobilisation of Orangemen to converge on Drumcree in the run-up to July 9.

The newly-appointed chair of the British parades commission told MPs at Westminster on May 3 that he is "not optimistic that the problem over the Drumcree march can be resolved this year". After just ten weeks in his new post Tony Holland told the Select Committee on 'Northern Ireland' that it would be futile to suggest he could solve the problem, yet it was "vital that Drumcree be resolved".

The renewed threats from the Orange Order to the people of the Garvaghy Road came shortly before the decision by the Dublin and Wicklow Orangemen to call off their planned parade down Dublin's Dawson Street.

Their decision was made following the U-turn by the Dublin Mayor, Labour's Mary Freehill on joining the parade after her initial invitation to them to march. Then the Church of Ireland refused them permission to use St Anne's Church in Dawson Street after the parade. Finally Dublin Corporation sought over £6,000 for the rent of the Round Room in the Mansion House. Ordinary citizens of the street also spoke out also against the bigotry of the Orange Order.

In addition, Republican Sinn Féin had made it clear publicly that it would hold a dignified and orderly picket of protest at the proposed parade because it viewed the Orange Order as a vital part of the oppressive British Estab-lishment and power structure in the Six Counties.

The deadly nature of that colonial power-structure for its perceived enemies was underlined by the arrest of two people in Portadown on May 3 in connection with the murder of human rights defender Rosemary Nelson in March 1999.

An RIR British soldier has already been sentenced on charges connected with the killing and it was widely believed that loyalist death squads and the British Crown Forces colluded in the killing of Rosemary Nelson.

Meanwhile, the British government continues to back-slide on its commitments under the Belfast Agreement with the Patten Report being put on the long finger to appease the unionists. The well-timed leaking of plans by the British to retain the RUC's badge, reinforced nationalist and Republican views that the unionist veto is alive and kicking. The Provisionals' response was to call for the full implementation of the Patten Report, the first time they have so clearly endorsed the planned renamed British police force in occupied Ireland.

Constitutional nationalists in the SDLP, Dublin and the Provisionals have had the political ground taken from under them by Britain's unilateral suspension of the Stormont executive. Republicans can point out that Britain has no written constitution and can therefore renege on international treaties such as the Stormont Agreement by a simple majority in Westminster.

Calls to resurrect Stormont in this context should be rejected out of hand. Andrew Boyd, an independent commentator and author from Belfast wrote in the May issue of 'The Month' magazine that the agreement had "fatal defects" and was "divisive and unworkable".

The Easter Statement from the Leadership of the Republican Movement stated that a stark choice must be made between revolutionary Republicanism and constitutional nationalism. The increased turnout at Easter ceremonies this year indicates that more and more people are recognising the truth of those words and acting accordingly.

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