We cannot keep reopening the wounds of the Drumcree dispute

“I find it depressing that someone born in 1997 can now be an adult and still be watching the same argument being played out”

I was born in 1997, just months before the creation of the Parades Commission. I have therefore spent my entire life in a Northern Ireland where the arguments over parading have been part of the political landscape. But I was born too late to remember the Drumcree stand-offs themselves, when Portadown became one of the most obvious symbols of just how fragile the peace was.

I grew up in West Belfast. Today, I live in a predominantly nationalist village in Co Antrim, just a few hundred yards from an Orange Hall. The Orange Order marches through the village several times a year. I see the banners and the collarettes, hear the drums and watch the parade pass my home. Importantly, nobody has a problem with it.

That experience has probably given me a more nuanced view of the parading debate than some might expect. I don’t believe that an Orange parade passing through a nationalist area is, by definition, an act of provocation, as communities can live alongside each other’s traditions, even when they don’t share them.

But Drumcree is different because the Garvaghy Road is not simply another contested parading route. It carries memories of some of the worst years of the Troubles and of a dispute which caused enormous hurt to the people who lived there.

The names of the people who died in and around that period are not historical footnotes to the residents of Portadown. The murder of the Quinn brothers, Jason, Mark and Richard, after their home was petrol-bombed in 1998 remains particularly difficult to comprehend. Three children died because of the poisonous atmosphere surrounding a dispute over a parade.

The Portadown Orangemen have applied to march along the Garvaghy Road again, this time with 60 people, without bands or music. They have said there will be no violence or disruption, whatever the outcome of the application. That is obviously preferable to what happened in the 1990s. But I cannot help thinking that the decision to pursue this route again is politically tone-deaf. The lodge has applied to walk the road repeatedly for almost 30 years. So why now?

We are months away from an election. People are worried about the state of our public services, the cost of living, housing and the pressures on household finances. Yet once again, we find ourselves being drawn towards a culture war over identity and symbols.

The title of Jamie Bryson’s latest book, Culture War, perhaps tells us something about the political direction in which parts of unionism are moving. I don’t think that is where we should be going.

There is a legitimate argument about cultural rights here. The Orange Order should be able to celebrate its traditions and heritage. But cultural expression does not have to mean insisting on exercising that right in precisely the way, and in precisely the place, which causes the greatest hurt to another community.

That principle should not be particularly controversial. Nor should nationalists be allowed to wash their hands of responsibility. There has been a failure on both sides to properly acknowledge the history of Drumcree and the role that each community played in perpetuating the divisions around it.

If we genuinely want to move beyond the past, residents must be prepared to consider accommodation too.

There is a positive example in Ardoyne, where dialogue has helped produce an arrangement under which the return parade can take place a day later than the main Twelfth celebrations. It isn’t everything the Orange Order wanted, nor is it everything residents might have wanted. But it provides a way through the impasse. Something similar should be attempted at Drumcree.

The Parades Commission has an important role to play, particularly after the recent High Court ruling, which criticised the way its decision was reached. Its processes must be lawful and its decisions credible.

But the Parades Commission cannot resolve the underlying problem. Nor can another legal determination.

What is needed is a new mechanism for dialogue involving the Orange Order, residents and political representatives, with the aim of finding an accommodation which allows both communities to retain their dignity. I worry that the current approach risks doing the opposite.

The Drumcree dispute became a symbol of something much bigger than a parade. It became wrapped up in questions of identity, power, policing, violence and whether one community believed the other was prepared to recognise its rights. Those wounds have not disappeared simply because the barricades have.

There is a danger in reopening them without first asking what we have learned from what happened before. I don’t know whether too much water has passed under the bridge for a settlement to be found. I hope it hasn’t.

Because I find it depressing that someone born in 1997 can now be an adult and still be watching the same argument being played out.

We inherit our history. We don’t get to choose the circumstances into which we are born. But we do have the chance to choose our future. That should mean something more than repeatedly returning to the arguments of the past.

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