Garvaghy Road: A History
Garvaghy Road, The Orange Order, And Drumcree III, In the past three years, the Orange Order's annual march from Drumcree Church down Garvaghy Road has come to represent the ongoing and volatile dispute over the rights of militant Protestants to march through predominantly Catholic working class neighbourhoods in commemoration of ancient English victories over Ireland - and in celebration of present-day British supremacy.
Portadown has a conspicuous place in the history of Protestant militancy. The Orange Order was founded in the town of Portadown in 1795, an offshoot of a Protestant terrorist group known as the Peep O'Day Boys, named for their practice of attacking Catholics at dawn. The Orange Order professed loyalty to the memory of the English Protestant king William of Orange, but its main activities were "wrecking," a term for the often fatal attacks on Catholics and the wanton destruction of their homes and businesses. This campaign of sectarian violence was so widespread that in 1795 a British Parliamentarian warned of a "general extermination" of Catholics in the Portadown area, and Parliament tried to ban the Protestant vigilantes several times during the nineteenth century. Since then, the Orange Order has acquired a degree of respectability. Today, many leaders in unionist politics and in the RUC are members of the Orange Order.
In the confusion of religion and politics that marks the loyal orders, the Drumcree Church's significance derives from the role it played in the founding ceremonies of the Orange Order. For nearly two centuries, the Orange Order marched home from its pilgrimages to Drumcree by way of Obins Street, at the edge of Portadown's Catholic enclave. In fact, the loyal orders paraded through Obins Street dozens of times each marching season, sometimes several times a day. Murders, beatings, and the "wrecking" of Catholic homes and businesses were routine. Catholics lived in a ghetto with two main streets: Obins Street, narrow and old, and Garvaghy Road, a wider and newer thoroughfare bisecting the eight housing estates where most of the town's 6000 Catholics now live. Catholics remain a vulnerable minority in Portadown's overall population of about 18,000.
After Obins Street residents succeeded in 1985 and 86 in moving orange marches away from their front doors after decades of struggle, the state continued to force marches along Garvaghy Road. It is no small irony that many Catholics moved to Garvaghy Road to escape the regular attacks on Obins Street, only to have the parade rerouted into their haven. On Easter Sunday in 1986, several thousand marchers, led by Democratic Unionist Party extremist and MP Ian Paisley, descended on the Garvaghy Road community with RUC escort at 1:30 am in the morning and engaged in an orgy of violence in the "wrecking" tradition. Residents have opposed the marches - and resisted them, often by non-violent means, always in the face of a brutal response by the security forces - ever since.
Taken from Looking Into The Abyss - Witnesses' Report From Garvaghy Road, Portadown, July 4-6, 1997. PeaceWatch Ireland. The entire report is available for downloading elsewhere on this site
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