UK bans Protestant march in N Ireland in a Catholic area

Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary on Friday banned a contentious Protestant parade through a mostly Irish nationalist and Catholic district after a nearly two-week standoff.

The Parades Commission, Northern Ireland’s independent body regulating contentious processions, had authorized 35 Orangemen to march silently along the mostly Irish nationalist enclave of Garvaghy Road in Portadown, without bands or supporters from 8am on Sept. 27.

However, thousands blocked the procession, halting the first parade, which had been allowed along the route in almost three decades.

Portadown Orangemen march toward Drumcree Church in Portadown, Northern Ireland, on Sept. 27.

Photo: AFP

The Orangemen have since remained at nearby Drumcree Church, demanding to complete the march, while residents maintained their protest.

“I call for all protests, rallies and demonstrations to be stood down. There is no excuse for a continued ratcheting up of tensions,” the minister, Chris Bryant, said in a statement.

In the interest of public safety, Bryant said circumstances under which the procession was given the go ahead had now “changed considerably.”

“As a result, the procession cannot go ahead as it was determined,” he said, adding that “no one wants a return to the past.”

The procession last went along Garvaghy Road in Portadown, 40km southwest of Belfast, in 1997.

It was barred the following year, soon after a peace accord largely ended three decades of conflict over British rule in Northern Ireland.

Police Service of Northern Ireland Chief Constable Jon Boutcher welcomed the decision.

Boutcher said he wrote to Bryant on Friday asking him to review an earlier decision by the province’s Parades Commission.

Boutcher said he outlined his assessment “that all available, lawful and proportionate options to facilitate completion of the procession had been exhausted.”

Any operation to allow the march to go ahead would have carried an “unacceptable” risk of serious injury and disorder, and would have had “catastrophic long-term consequences,” he said.