The Orangemen decided to move the planned Derry city parade to Limavady, rerouted the Armagh city parade away from the nationalist Shambles area, and cancelled the parades through the Co Down town of Newry and the small nationalist enclave of the lower Ormeau Road in Belfast. The local lodges however said they reserved the right to parade these routes in the future.

The Orange lodges who had planned to parade the lower Ormeau were annoyed at the leadership’s decision and did not parade at all on July 12. Other opposition to the Orange Order’s pragmatic decision – influenced by a meeting with the RUC Chief Constable on July 10 who told them they could not “police” the Orange parades, particularly through Derry city – was voiced by Ulster Unionist Party MP for West Tyrone, William Thompson. He is also a deputy Grand Master of the Orange Order. The decision was not welcome with the rank and file, he said, and he would be surprised if the Grand Master, Robert Saulters, held his position.

Republican Sinn Féin President Ruairí Ó Brádaigh gave a guarded welcome to the decision on Thursday, July 10 by the Orange Order not to march through certain nationalist areas on July 12. He said that still unresolved on the eve of July 12 was the question of proposed Orange marches through nationalist towns including Dunloy, Ballycastle, Strabane, Pomeroy, Bellaghy, and other centres.

“There has been a limited pause – not a solution. It is a matter for deep regret that such a decision was not taken in regard to the Garvaghy Road a week ago and spared the people there such a brutal attack on them by British forces together with consequent action in other areas for days afterwards.

“This time the Orange Order did not allow itself to be used to further divide Irish people. The British strategy in its manipulation of events has been exposed as seeking at all costs to restructure and update English rule in Ireland,” he said.

The Orange Order and unionist organisations were not the problem in our country but the by-products of the problem. The British government’s presence in Ireland was the real difficulty, he added.

He said the decision did not effect any fundamental change. The sectarian, intimidatory and triumphalist nature of the Orange Order remained, he concluded.

In the event, there was sustained rioting in Derry on the night of July 12-13 after the Orange bands and marchers from the Waterside and loyalist areas outside the city paraded through the city centre Diamond on the west bank early on the Twelfth in breach of earlier arrangements that only the Orange band from the west bank would march there. Other parades in nationalist areas were blocked or rerouted by local people:

• In Strabane, Co Tyrone on July 12 there was no Orange parade as 200 nationalists prevented an early morning march through the predominantly nationalist town. In the early hours of July 12 the British police (RUC) “ran amok” in the nationalist Ballycolman estate shouting abuse and firing flares along the street at head-height. Guns were held to residents’ heads and they were told to “get off the fucking street”. A witness said the RUC paramilitary police, dressed in boiler suits and balaclavas, jumped from Land Rovers at 2am shouting “Any Fenian bastard will go. Get any Fenian bastard”.

• Also in County Tyrone, there was a two-hour stand-off between Orangemen and nationalist residents in Pomeroy which resulted in the preventing of an Orange parade through the town on the evening of July 12. A morning parade planned for Castlewellan was cancelled by the Orangemen as 150 nationalists gathered to protest.

• In Bellaghy, County Derry, Orangemen were prevented from parading the full length of the village by nationalist protesters.

• In Newtownbutler an agreed compromise announced on July 11 meant that there was no protest on the morning of the Twelfth as the Orangemen paraded through the village while there was no Orange parade later that day when the Orangemen returned from the main Fermanagh parade.

• In Ballycastle, Co Antrim the Ian Paisley-led Independent Orange parade through the town went ahead.

• Four hundred nationalists protested when Orange bands and lodges returned to the town of Keady, south Armagh late on July 12 after taking part in the Armagh city parade. The protest was organised after an unplanned Orange parade through the town earlier in the day, contrary to earlier assurances from “an intermediary” that there would be no parade in the area.

• In Dunloy, Co Antrim 200 nationalists prevented an Orange band parading through the nationalist village. The Orangemen wanted to parade through the village before and after the main Twelfth demonstration in the area. Nationalist opposition in recent years has sparked the picketing over a ten-month period of the Catholic church at Harryville in nearby Ballymena. The Masses at Harryville were cancelled on June 21 and will only recommence on September 6 after the RUC said “they could not guarantee the safety of Mass-goers during the marching season”. Leading Orangemen John Finlay said on July 12 that Orangemen had been marching to Dunloy for 98 years and that they were not now going to ask Republicans for permission.

Two loyalist youths, aged 18 and 14, were shot by armed nationalists at the interface between the loyalist Tigers Bay and nationalist New Lodge early on July 12. The shootings happened after hours of sustained stone-throwing by loyalists from the Tigers Bay into Copper Street in the New Lodge.Hours earlier shots had also been fired into the New Lodge from loyalists in Tigers Bay. One youth was hit in the leg and the other in the arm and abdomen. Neither are seriously ill.

In the Oldpark area of north Belfast at 10.15pm on July 11 three British soldiers and two British police (RUC) were injured when they were fired on by the Provisionals’ military wing. The same organisation had ordered pubs and clubs closed at 7.30pm in west Belfast on Friday and Saturday nights, July 11 and 12.

Writing in the Sunday Business Post on July 13 journalist Tom McGurk commented on the Orange Order’s pragmatic decision: “Last weekend it was armoured cars and plastic bullets to uphold ancient rights of way, but suddenly this weekend such traditional rights to march are apparently not sacrosanct any more.

“Of course it is easier now, with the scalps of the Garvaghy lot hanging on the lodge wall. For the Brethren the 1997 marching season has got off to an impressive home win.”

The nationalists in the Six Counties are “hopping mad” over Garvaghy which showed nothing had changed for them, despite the new government in London. Unionism will not negotiate a new deal in the Stormont talks, “not least because of the example that the British State continues to set it when it threatens that if it doesn’t get its way, the nationalist community had better watch out,” McGurk wrote.

Criticising the Dublin administration he wrote that “Dublin continues to hide behind London’s skirts except when the going gets tough and we have a few agonising soundbites outside Leinster House.”

He concluded: “Is there anyone left in the country who can still argue that nationalist Ireland’s 25-year policy of seeking agreement and accommodation within the present constitutional framework hasn’t simply made a bad situation worse?”
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Trouble flared when loyalist youths from the Lower Old Park area began taunting and throwing stones at nationalist youths. When the nationalist youths retaliated, community leaders managed to persuade them to stop and received assurances from the British colonial police (RUC) that the loyalists would be pushed back to the Lower Old Park area. The British paramilitary police of course did not consider such promises worth keeping and the rioting continued.

Girdwood British army barracks is right in the middle of this sensitive area and security cameras would have witnessed the loyalist onslaught on the nationalist community yet the British colonial police failed to respond for eight hours. The loyalists were free to go on a rampage of destruction.

Two flats were burnt out, windows in other houses and a car was smashed and a local community centre came under a sustained assault from the fuming Orange mob. Catriona Allsop, who had a front window of her home smashed on Thursday morning said she “would not be staying in the house tonight . . . What have we done to deserve this? We haven’t done anything.”

Community activist, Paul Little, who had been instrumental in stopping nationalist retaliation expressed dismay at the loyalist attacks and the failure of the British Crown Forces to respond.

“People haven’t done anything here, there’s been no attacks on that community over there (Lower Old Park), so they’re asking ‘why are we getting this?’ ”

Paul Little claimed that he had been trying to establish dialogue with the loyalist community for the past two years but with no success. Last year Orange attacks on the area continued for over ten hours and many residents have been forced to leave since.
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On Friday, July 11, the home of Kathleen Stewart in the Riverside South estate in Castledawson, County Derry came under attack from a mob of 40 drunken loyalists who had been celebrating an Eleventh Night bonfire in the estate. The mob began by hurling insults at the family, chanting slogans such as ‘Fenians Out’ before flinging missiles at the family home. One of these missiles was Kathleen Stewart’s garden gate.

The 52-year-old mother had lived in the estate for 30 years and suffered a heart attack because of the activities of the fascist mob. She was discharged from the Mid-Ulster Hospital on Tuesday, July 15 finding herself homeless.

Her daughter Mandy Stewart spoke out at the British colonial police’s (RUC) handling of the attack. Two of the people arrested as a result of the incident were Kathleen Stewart’s son and his girlfriend who were charged with breach of the peace. Mandy Stewart said: “I haven’t been charged with anything yet. But yes, I did go down to help my mother. She had a fence thrown through her window. Of course I was going to help her . . . The people who attacked my mother and smashed up her house were regarded by her as neighbours. She has lived there all her life. I just can’t understand how anybody could attack her.”

Mandy Stewart – who has a young baby son Caólán – and her brother live in separate houses in the estate. Now they are all forced to seek new accommodation.

Once again, Provisional compromising with British and Orange tyranny has given advantage to loyalist expansionism.
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Limerick man Joe Lynch said the upsurge in the number of investigation into the income of single women and separated wives is causing great anger and anxiety.

“Some of the tactics being used against defenceless women are beyond belief,” he said.

“Women are being stalked by social welfare officials.

“There is no other word for it. Women are being photographed from undercover vans and cars and men are being tracked to see if they visit females.

“Some women have been subjected to distasteful and untrue allegations concerning men and money. There is considerable anger in many parts of Limerick because of this over-the-top approach of some officials.”
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