Drumcree marching dispute linked to Quinn brothers murder and sectarian killings

The Drumcree parading row in Portadown has resurfaced after a court quashed a ban on the route. The dispute was linked to several sectarian murders, including the 1998 killing of three young brothers.

Quinn brothers murder and decades of unrest: the Drumcree dispute explained

The Drumcree parading dispute — the longest-running of its kind in Northern Ireland — has returned to public attention following a court ruling last month that quashed a Parades Commission ban on the Orange Order's traditional route along the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown, Co Armagh, the Irish Times reports.

A member of the Orange Order's Portadown district lodge took the case. The scathing legal ruling prompted a fresh application for a silent, limited parade at the end of this month.

A tradition dating to 1807

Since 1807, Orange Order members have walked through the Garvaghy Road on the return leg of their annual parade from Drumcree Church, held on the last Sunday before the Twelfth. Shifting demographics in the historically unionist town brought growing tensions during the 1990s, as nationalist residents on the Garvaghy Road condemned the marches as sectarian and triumphalist.

Disorder broke out in 1995 after the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) initially rerouted the parade to keep it off the Garvaghy Road. Despite a large sit-down protest by nationalists, the march was ultimately allowed through. Over the following two summers, loyalist rioting erupted across Northern Ireland when bans were imposed, while U-turns on those bans triggered nationalist riots in turn.

In 1996, Catholic taxi driver Michael McGoldrick was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in Lurgan, Co Armagh, during the height of the Drumcree tensions.

The worst atrocity of the stand-off

At its peak in the late 1990s, more than 2,000 British army troops and police were deployed along the Garvaghy Road, a predominantly nationalist area with a population of around 4,500. Images of violent clashes were broadcast around the world.

When the newly established Parades Commission imposed a formal ban in 1998, thousands of loyalists converged on Drumcree. The army erected an enormous ring of steel to seal off the route. Many nationalist residents described being "barricaded" into their homes by RUC armoured vehicles; there was no chemist available, just one grocery shop, and food convoys were sent from as far away as Derry.

On 12 July 1998 — just three months after the signing of the Belfast Agreement — three Catholic children were murdered in a petrol bomb attack on their home in a predominantly Protestant housing estate in Ballymoney, Co Antrim. Richard, Mark, and Jason Quinn died in the attack, which effectively ended the stand-off.

Then US president Bill Clinton was among those to condemn the killings. The Orange Order's Co Armagh chaplain, Rev William Bingham, called for the Drumcree protest to end. "No road is worth a life, let alone the lives of three little boys," he said.

Twenty-five years of relative peace

The Parades Commission was established by the British government in 1998 partly as a direct result of the Drumcree crisis. The Orange Order has not marched the Garvaghy Road since 1997. Since 1998, Orangemen have marched from Drumcree Church to the start of the rerouted section, where they hand a letter of protest to a police officer. A token protest also takes place every Sunday. Residents along the Garvaghy Road have held their own protests in parallel.

The dispute largely faded from the news agenda over the following decades. For more than 25 years, Portadown has seen relative calm during the marching season.

"Now it's very much a case of, 'we socialise together, we work together and the kids are going to school together'," Paul Carvill of Tír na nÓg GAA club in Portadown told the Irish Times three years ago. "We are involved in a huge amount of cross-community work with the local rugby club."

The court ruling last month has now placed the dispute back at the centre of debate, with Michelle O'Neill warning that unionism is moving toward a "more extreme element" on the Drumcree march question.

Source: Irish Times