Linda O'Neill said the Orange Order Garvaghy Road dispute is no longer just about one road after 11 days of deadlock in Portadown, County Armagh. The Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition met 11 nationalist residents' groups on Wednesday and said the stand-off could spread to other marches.
O'Neill said, "This is no longer just about the Garvaghy Road." The proposed march involves 35 Orangemen from Drumcree along a route approved by the Parades Commission, and residents said the wider concern is what happens if that arrangement starts to unravel elsewhere.
Wednesday and the Garvaghy Road
The meeting brought together residents from Garvaghy Road with the Bogside Residents Group in Londonderry, the Lower Ormeau Concerned Community, and the Crumlin Road and Ardoyne Residents Association in Belfast. Pádraig Ó Muirigh said it was an "act of solidarity and support" from residents who are dealing with similar disputes across the country.
That support was part of the practical message from the meeting: the Garvaghy Road residents were not presenting the dispute as a single local confrontation, but as one with rules that other residents' groups already have to live with. O'Neill also said, "The Orange Order needs to take responsibility, and so do the Parades Commission for making this issue bigger than the Garvaghy Road, this is no longer just about the Garvaghy Road, this is about all of us."
Nigel Dawson and legal action
The Portadown District Lodge said it is prepared to take further legal action to try to allow the 35 Orangemen to march from Drumcree along the approved route. Nigel Dawson said the Portadown District Lodge would not be bullied or threatened by any residents' group who step outside the law, and added: "there's no threat to our parades. They're legal."
Residents said last month that accommodations around Orange parades could unravel if the Orange Order continued to insist on parading down Garvaghy Road or pressed the same demands in other nationalist or Catholic areas. That is why the deadlock matters beyond Portadown: the next move is not only about one route, but about whether other locally arranged parade agreements hold under the pressure of this dispute.
The immediate question now is whether the Portadown District Lodge follows through on legal action and whether that changes the route dispute at Drumcree. If it does not, the argument residents raised on Wednesday is likely to keep widening beyond Garvaghy Road.
