No going down this road ever again

DRUMCREE 2026, and the death rattle of the old order. Trapped in their own tribal, elemental histories the Orange Order with their attendant clamjamfry of bigots and racists face a people who have risen and are in no mood to stand down.

Drumcree, for much of the 1990s, was a yearly challenge between supremacy of the Orange over the Green. It fell from public view when the Parades Commission banned it in 1998, until this year.

The Orange Order’s claim to the right to walk down the Garvaghy Road after their annual Drumcree church service soured community relations in the North and caused deep international embarrassment to the British Government and civic Unionism during the 1990s.

Thirty years later, it has returned to centre stage because of the proposed Orange Order walk along Garvaghy Road, due to a decision by the Parades Commission to allow it because of technical issues with the original ban.

The ruling was to allow 35 Orangemen to walk in silence unaccompanied by music or drums.

However, residents and their supporters blocked the road (above) and are not allowing the Orange Order to walk down the mainly Catholic road. Supporters of the Orange Order also gathered ensuring a tense standoff with the police blocking attempts by the Orangemen to complete their walk.

Republicans and Nationalists, conventional and dissident, also turned up to show their support for the residents including Sinn Féin’s northern and southern leadership.

Contention

Drumcree has become synonymous with violence and sectarian division in Portadown and its hinterland. It reached its pinnacle during the 1990s becoming one of the most serious flashpoints of the conflict. Yearly thousands of Orangemen and Loyalists gathered at Drumcree, while residents protested against the walk.

Repeated government decisions to allow the walk along Garvaghy Road, usually after days of Loyalist violence, triggered widespread Nationalist rioting elsewhere. In 1997, the world saw the residents being brutally forced off the road on which they lived to allow the walk through.

The widespread violence and domestic and international opprobrium led to the walk being banned and the Orangemen have not travelled along Garvaghy Road since 1997.

As polemic as ever we saw Ian Paisley, claiming Drumcree as an existential threat: “If we don’t win this battle, all is lost. It is a matter of life or death. It is a matter of Ulster or Irish Republic, it is a matter of freedom or slavery.”

This unhinged rhetoric had consequences.

Deaths

People paid with their lives as Loyalists used violence in an attempt to force the argument.

Michael McGoldrick, taxi driver, and council worker Adrian Lamph, were both shot dead.

Robert Hamill was brutally beaten in the town centre. He did not survive his injuries.

Darren Murray, 12, was knocked down and killed as he was chased near an interface.

Bernadette Martin, 18, was shot dead in the home of her Protestant boyfriend.

RUC officer, Frank O’Reilly, died of injuries caused by a blast bomb during Loyalist rioting.

Protestant Elizabeth O’Neill—married to a Catholic—was killed by a pipe bomb in her own home.

Solicitor Rosemary Nelson—who had represented the Garvaghy Road residents—was killed by car bomb.

All those murders happened in and around Portadown.

Then, in one of the most savage atrocities committed by Loyalists, three young brothers—Jason, Mark and Richard Quinn—died when their home was petrol bombed in 1998 after the walk was banned.

These individuals were more than just victims of a brutal conflict—they were loved ones, friends and community members whose lives mattered deeply.

Their murders effectively ended any chance of a walk for almost 30 years.

Celebrity support

Public personalities have come out in favour of the residents, including: author Irvine Welsh, film-makers Ken Loach and Jim Sheridan, actors Adrian Dunbar, Maxine Peake, Siobhán McSweeney and Susan Sarandon, and musicians Noel Gallagher, Paul Weller, Johnny Marr and Imelda May, and many others.

In addition 20 MPs and members of the House of Lords signed a joint letter urging the Secretary of State, Labour’s Chris Bryant, to cancel the walk.

Human rights

The European Convention of Human Rights protects peaceful assembly, but it does not operate in isolation from the rights of others. It argues that the existence of an alternative route rebuts the argument that the Orange Order’s rights are being suppressed.

Scotland’s shame

The offer of approximately 200 Police Scotland officers to police the walk on Garvaghy Road has sparked significant political backlash in Scotland. The most senior political representative has been Scottish Greens justice spokesperson, Maggie Chapman, who criticised the deployment, describing the Orange Order walk as ‘designed to spread tensions and hatred.’

In addition to the police, there is also history between both places. In 1998, we saw the disgusting spectacle of the ‘Britannia Flute Band Scotland’ playing Loyalist tunes as they passed the house where the three children were so brutally murdered.

Why does it matter?

The area is regarded as the birthplace of Orangeism. The Orange Order was founded in Loughgall in 1795, a few miles from Drumcree. Its first walks were held on July 12, 1796 in Portadown. This particular walk dates back to 1807, when the surrounding area was largely rural.

Portadown has long been mainly Protestant and loyal with about 70 per cent of the population from a Protestant background. Catholics and Irish Nationalists in the town had long experienced discrimination, particularly in employment. Every summer, the town centre sees displays of Loyalist flags and symbols. An arch in the union colours is raised near the Garvaghy Road entrance area to coincide with the marching season.

Orange apologists argue that fractured community relations was the desired outcome for Republicans. They argued that Republicans deliberately set about conducting confrontational protests against Orange walks. Their aim was to create a substitute for bombs and guns which they could use for political advantage during the peace process and subsequent negotiations.

However, ordinary residents have strongly opposed the walk travelling through the area for decades, arguing that they do not consent to it and that it is associated with sectarianism and intimidation. In 2026, the Orange needs to accommodate the Green.

The North of Ireland is very different from three decades ago. There is no longer a Unionist majority; Sinn Féin lead the government. Irish Nationalism is confident and is actively preparing for a border poll on unity with the rest of the island—no longer an impossible dream.

Can the Orange Order see beyond this sense of grievance or will they continue to feed it until it festers into something darker, more malign... violent?

Stephen Colbert is a lecturer at New College Lanarkshire