THE LONG WINDING ROAD

THE Parades Commission will announce its determination on the Orange Order's contentious Drumcree church parade on Thursday.

The continued refusal of the Portadown Orangemen to engage in dialogue with representatives of the local nationalist community will almost certainly ensure that the parade is once again banned from entering the Garvaghy Road area.

This would make it the fifth year such restrictions have been imposed upon the members of the Portadown District Lodge.

However, with less than seven days to go until the Orange parade gets under way, there has been very little media coverage of what five years ago was Northern Ireland's most intense sectarian territorial dispute which resulted in the pipe-bomb death of Constable Frankie O'Reilly in 1999 - the last RUC officer killed in the Troubles.

Many people now believe the protest itself has all but completely petered out.

The contrast between the events of 1995, the year of the first stand-off, when thousands of people watched David Trimble and Ian Paisley line dance their way along the lower Garvaghy Road, and today are considerable.

Although Portadown's two communities are still deadlocked over the Drumcree issue, the air of menace is absent. There is now a growing belief that next Sunday's Drumcree parade could well be the quietest for several years.

In recent months, Portadown has been spared the recent sectarian violence which has blighted areas of Belfast.

According to Breandan MacCionnaith, spokesperson for the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, Portadown has returned to what passed for normality in the pre-Drumcree era.

Referring to the events of last year, when the Drumcree protests faded out quickly and with a reduced level of violence, he said that local nationalist's hoped that this year's parade would follow a similar pattern.

"Last year, there may have been incidents elsewhere but from a Portadown perspective things were relatively peaceful. We don't see anything to indicate it will be anything other than that this year," Mr MacCionnaith said.

He pointed out that the numbers now attending the Drumcree parade gave a clear indication that the appetite for the protest was dying.

"If you take 1995/96, where you had 20-30,000 people on that hill, and compare it to the two or three thousand that were they last year then I think that speaks for itself," he said.

Mr MacCionnaith compared the current situation at Drumcree to events in Portadown in the mid-1980s when Orangemen were banned from entering the nationalist Obin's Street area.

"When the Orange Order was initially banned from the Obin's Street area in the mid-1980s, you had over 20,000 people assembled in the town centre. There were ongoing demonstrations on a larger scale that what took place at Drumcree but within a few years that had petered out," he said.

The level of the Orange Order's protest at Drumcree and in the Portadown area have dropped dramatically over the past year.

The halting of the 'flying picket' style protests and the absence of any large-scale rallies have seen the number of people attending Drumcree nightly decline rapidly.

The number of other Orange districts coming to Drumcree to support the Portadown Orangemen's protest has also fallen away dramatically.

"Most nights you are lucky to get about 10 people there and, at that, it's the same old faces," an Orange Order source said this week.

"Its very rare to see any of the Portadown district officers out here other than at the weekly Sunday service.

"Decent people who believed in the legitimacy of the Drumcree protest have been sickened by a lack of any positive leadership or foresight.

"They are like the Grand Old Duke of York, all they do is lead them up and down the hill each Sunday morning."

Referring to 1996, when the presence of significant numbers of loyalist paramilitaries at Drumcree coincided with the parade being forced through the Garvaghy Road area, the Orange Order source said: "The British Government knew what it was doing when it had Billy Wright killed.

"He was the only man who could get the parade down the road. Since he was murdered the parade never got down the road.

"There's little leadership left within the Portadown district and what remains has been hoodwinked by the British Government and David Trimble."

The Orange sources confirmed that a number of Orangemen had left the Portadown district within the past year after having become disenchanted with the direction of the Drumcree protest.

The decision by the Portadown Orangemen to attend this year's Co Armagh Twelfth demonstration in Newtownhamilton can be taken as a clear indication that there are no plans for a major stand-off scenario at Drumcree following the annual parade next Sunday.

The majority of Orangemen fully expect events to be a repetition of last summer. Then, after a few nights of what by previous Drumcree standards was low-key protest, the Orangemen and their supporters gradually leave the area around the church to the sole possession of the army and police on duty.

However, despite the apparent indications of a low-key Drumcree parade and a lack of any paramilitary presence at the protest, it appears unlikely that the police and army will be cutting back on security.

Most observers expect a similar massive barrier across the road leading from the parish church towards the Garvaghy Road area.

Lines of barbed wire and picket fencing are expected to be erected in the fields in front of where the Orangemen and their supporters normally gather.

Other barriers are expected to be set up at he potential flashpoint interface areas of Craigwell Avenue and Park Road.

However, it is understood that these measures are primarily designed to create a sterile area, which protects the security forces from attack by petrol or blast bomb.

With a number of traditional bonfires still to be lit in many Portadown loyalist estates in the nights immediately preceding the Drumcree parade, emotions and tensions will undoubtedly rise alongside with the flames and smoke.

It only remains to be seen if those tensions and emotions will die down as quickly as the embers of the loyalist bonfires.

The Co Armagh town prides itself on being the birthplace of the Orange Order. As such, it is unlikely to concede defeat on Drumcree just yet, despite what many believe.

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