Garvaghy Road residents have said a previously rejected offer to allow Orange Order members to march through the area could still be on the table if locals agree.
Details of the proposed deal, which included the participation of Catholic children from the Garvaghy Road, came to light as the Orange Order revealed plans to march through the nationalist area of Portadown later this month.
Last week a determination linked to this year’s Garvaghy Road parade was quashed at the High Court in Belfast after a legal challenge.
During proceedings the parading body conceded a procedural error in how it dealt with an annual application for permission to walk along the route.
Breandán Mac Cionnaith.
PICTURE: COLM LENAGHAN
On Thursday the order revealed plans to notify the Parades Commission of its intention to march down the Garvaghy Road on September 27.
During a press conference in Portadown on Thursday, the Orange Order said 60 members would take part in the proposed Drumcree parade on Sunday, September 27.
Members intend to carry a Union flag and Orange bannerette along the route through the nationalist district.
No bands would take part in that section of the parade.
The Drumcree dispute, which began in 1995, was brought ended with the cruel UVF murder of three Catholic School boys in an arson attack in July 1998.
The Quinn brothers, Richard (10), Mark (9) and Jason Quinn (8), are among 21 people, mostly Catholics, killed by loyalists and the British army at the height of parading tensions between 1996 and 1999.
In 1996 protesting nationalists residents were beaten off the Garvaghy Road by the RUC to facilitate the Drumcree march.
A year later, the Orange Order was again allowed to march along the Garvaghy Road after the area was flooded with police in the early hours of Drumcree Sunday.
Breandán Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Road Residents’ Coalition, has now revealed that the offer of a deal was made during proximity talks, which took place after the murder of the Quinn children almost 30 years ago.
The spokesman said an agreement reached in relation to the 1995 parade was later denied by Orangemen and “more or less threw that back in the community’s face”.
“In ’96 and ’97 we had the marches being forced through,” he said.
“A number of years later you had proximity talks between ourselves and the Orange Order, with mediators coming in.
“A proposal was put to the Orange Order by us at one of those meetings for a limited march along Garvaghy Road by 32 members of the Orange Order accompanied by 32 kids from this community wearing their county colours – representing the 32 counties.”
Mr Mac Cionnaith said the proposal included the condition that “no other marches would take place except with the agreement of the community”.
“The Orange Order rejected that outright,” he said.
“Their response was….’that only a fully paid up member of an Orange lodge can participate in an Orange march’.
“That takes us to where we are today.”
DUP MLA Jonathan Buckley, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson, Portadown District Master Nigel Dawson, Portadown deputy District Master Alastair Power, DUP MP Carla Lockhart and TUV leader Jim Allister (Liam McBurney/PA)
Significantly, Mr Mac Cionnaith added that “we would still be prepared to put forward a similar proposal to the Orange Order…if the community here was in agreement”.
“Unlike the Orange Order’s proposal today our proposal would be that on the grounds of having completed that limited march, with 32 Orangemen and 32 young people, the Orange Order would agree that there would be no future marches along Garvaghy Road without the agreement of the community,” he said.
The community spokesman said the previous proposal will be raised with the Parades Commission.
“Obviously we will be meeting with the Parades Commission in relation to this and we will be reminding the Parades Commission of the proposals that were put previously in relation to this, and how those were rejected,” he said.
“The other thing to bear in mind is that the Orange Order proposal is only for one march. All future marches will be the entire lodge along Garvaghy Road.
“That will not be acceptable to our community in any shape or form.”