The Drumcree Crises were a flashpoint for violence and anger in the years leading up to the Good Friday Agreement - and some still are seeking to use them for political capital 25 years on
DRUMCREE WAS BACK in the news this year, decades after the parading dispute in the North first made headlines.
The crises centred on a demand by the Orange Order to maintain its ‘traditional route’ along a stretch of road from the Episcopalian church of Drumcree and the majority Catholic Garvaghy Road – against the wishes of the residents – on the Sunday before the 12 July. Back then, as a result of the decision made by the Catholic residents of Garvaghy Road to stage a counter-demonstration, the Royal Ulster Constabulary ordered that the parade should be re-routed.
From 7 July to 10 July, the Orange Order led efforts to block many main roads in Northern Ireland. Some Catholic villages became cut off, and began to lack in food supplies. A 35-year-old man, Dermot McShane, was crushed to death during Drumcree-related rioting in Derry. A 2008 inquest found that the British army was to blame.
The Parades Commission made the decision to reroute the parade in Portadown away from the Garvaghy Road in 1998. The following year, the RUC erected a 15-foot steel barricade, put hundreds of feet of barbed wire in place, and filled a ploughed field with water to separate police from protestors. “I want to see a society where our culture is respected, and our identity is respected, and it is no big think to ask that the Garvaghy Road Residents Association enter into some form of mediation.
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