‘What’s the Orange Order, do they support Armagh?’ my 11-year-old asked me as friends and I discussed in disbelieving whispers the breaking announcement that the Parades Commission had granted permission to march the Garvaghy Road for the first time in 28 years.
‘No’ I replied, ‘no they don’t support the Armagh team, it’s not that type of orange’.
There followed a weekend of trying to explain, in carefully sanitised sentences, to a 9, 11 and 13-year-old, what the word ‘Drumcree’ meant to anyone old enough to remember the terrible dispute of the late 90s.
Even now the thesaurus doesn’t have words awful enough to describe the fear and injustice people felt about the murders of Richard, Mark and Jason Quinn. Three innocent wee fellas, not much younger than my own brothers and sharing the same surname – just because they happened to live on a protestant estate while my brothers were ‘safe’ in south Armagh.
As I left to go to Portadown early on the Sunday morning my daughter started crying, ‘please don’t go mammy, it’s going to be dangerous’. I tried to reassure her but to be honest all I could feel was the pull of the Garvaghy Road and the knowledge that this was a point in history when you were either there, or you weren’t.
I threw a load of spare clothes and shoes in a bag and headed on.
***
Over the days that followed I spent a lot of time on the Garvaghy Road, not nearly as much as others, but definitely long enough to get the feel of it.
The whole fortnight was a collision of fear, foreboding, defiance, hope, craic, communalism, sandwiches and tea at 4am, exhaustion and bravery. A constant jumble of concurrent, conflicting emotions.
But I got to go home, whether it was late at night or in the hours before dawn, I always left and went back to my home, my safe place, where there has never been and never will be the threat of an Orange march. The contradiction of relief to be leaving and guilt for being glad to leave accompanied me on the homeward journeys as I drove with the windows down to keep my eyes open.
***
I was sitting with the kids on Friday evening in the sports hall at St Joseph’s school in Crossmaglen at their amazing Wizard of Oz production as the phone started vibrating with the news that the march had been banned by the Secretary of State.
To steal Dorothy’s immortal words I didn’t think we were in Kansas any more, and amid euphoria and relief of that moment, was the realisation that the past and the future had met head on, battled for a fortnight and parted ways once more.
***
Ultimately the Orange Order simply didn’t have enough popular support for their march to justify the police accompanying it through the Garvaghy Road.
Their recourse to the courts had granted them permission to march and the police were mandated to get that march down the road, yet the realities of the times we now live in dictated that it would not happen.
Never has the Orange Order been so weak.
I was there on the Sunday morning when fear dripped off sodden demonstrators along with the rain drops.
There was a distinct possibility that the PSNI could try to force the march down, we simply didn’t know, and every few hours reports would circulate of riot squads lining up, or water cannon being deployed from some army base or another.
But it didn’t happen.
The PSNI is not the RUC.
In 1998 that force’s membership was about 90% protestant, the current figure for the PSNI protestant membership sits at 67%.
And in the north religious affiliation is an increasingly unreliable barometer of political persuasion.
I have some friends, people whose background would be broadly ‘protestant’, who are questioning the merits of maintaining the north’s union with Britain. Some are unsure what the best future arrangement might be. Some believe that ending partition and British control of the north would be best.
Some of them came to the Garvaghy Road in an instinctive show of solidarity, they weren’t asked, they just went. They experienced for themselves what the situation was on the ground.
They reached out to others in their network and in three days produced a letter signed by 1,500 others urging the Irish and British governments to intervene to protect peace.
I know that among those signatories were members of the Orange Order.
***
In the north last year there were a total of 3,813 parades notified to the Parades Commission. Of these 2,507 were deemed protestant, unionist or loyalist.
The vast majority of these parades were completely unrestricted and just 137 were deemed ‘sensitive’ and had restrictions imposed. This figure includes 51 notified weekly parades in Portadown, so in real terms just 87 parades out of 2,457 were restricted in any way.
This tells us a couple of things.
Firstly that the loyal orders on average hold about seven marches a day in the north, the vast majority of which are at least tolerated by the community they are marching through.
Secondly, that there is a genuine marching tradition among those from protestant backgrounds.
Therefore, the argument that there is an attempt to eradicate this marching tradition does not hold water.
But there is and should be an attempt to eradicate marches in contentious areas. I believe this position would be supported by the majority of members of the marching orders.
They did not go to Edgarstown to support Portadown District LOL 1, as it was led by Jamie Bryson up and down the road at Drumcree Church.
I am sure there are many sensible and good people in the Orange Order. I was raised in a catholic household so I can understand the familial and community ties that bind communities of people together even though they may not agree with everything their organisation does.
I don’t think the Orange Order is a force for good, but I don’t think the catholic church is either, yet I don’t denigrate the membership of either community.
Ordinary protestants, be they members of the loyal orders or not, can’t be held collectively responsible for the actions of the Portadown lodge.
***
This was never about 35 men walking a half hour section of road. This was about dominance, subjugation and flexing an historical muscle that has wasted and withered.
The Portadown lodge has never accepted that it doesn’t have a right to march down the Garvaghy Road. Their weekly applications to march for the last three decades illustrate this.
They know about the people who were murdered as a result of this dispute in the late 90s.
They know that forcing a march down that road could lead to a riot and that riot could ignite other parts of the north.
And they don’t care.
But the difference is that now they don’t command the popular support or respect within their own community that drove the dispute in the 90s.
People have gotten used to peace, to not having to think too much about the things that divide, they like it.
It’s not perfect, the Assembly is far from perfect and power sharing is challenging, but it’s the only show in town right now.
Michelle O’Neill is a First Minister for all, she demonstrated that by standing up for people who were going to be trampled on and by protecting the peace with all she had.
***
As the tents are dismantled and the chairs folded up and life begins to return to normal for the 4,000 people living in the Garvaghy Road area, the challenge is not to let this incident force us back into a ‘them and us’ mentality.
As Brendán Mac Cionnaith said this is an opportunity for reconciliation in Portadown.
Beyond Portadown, it’s a reminder that although the past isn’t too far away, it’s over. And the vast majority of people from all backgrounds and walks of life prefer to look to the future.
Originally from South Armagh, Emma Quinn McArdle now lives in County Louth with her three children. She has been an activist since her early 20s.