NI: Siege of the Garvaghy Road
01 May 1999
Since July 1998 the 7,500 people who form the nationalist community of the Garvaghy Road, Portadown, Northern Ireland have been living with a campaign of terror intended to bolster the Orange Order's "right" to hold a sectarian march along their streets. While the Order has adamantly refused to negotiate with residents' representatives over their route from Drumcree Church to Portadown, at least 17 families have been driven from their homes following attacks, and five people have been murdered. With the Good Friday peace process in danger of disintigrating through Unionist intransigence, a London support group (the Friends of the Garvaghy Road Support Group, FGRSG) was formed to liaise with the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition (GRRC) and "mobilise support among human rights groups, churches, ethnic minority groups, political parties, trades unions, women's groups and student bodies in Britain."
Portadown town centre has become a "no-go" area for nationalists, who fear verbal and physical attack, leaving the Garvaghy Road a ghetto, with few amenities, no leisure facilities for children and increasingly difficult access to health and social services. The Orange Order's threat to march on July 4, ignoring the residents wishes and Parades Commission alike, has resulted in the community being encircled by miles of razor wire and hundreds of hostile British troops and RUC officers. The entrances to and from the area are barracaded and community representatives harassed and threatened; helicopters clatter noisily overhead and, beyond the razor wire, loyalists keep an insolent watch on peoples' movements.
In an intensifying strategy of confrontation, the Orange Order have held over 150 marches, demonstrations and rallies close to the Garvaghy Road in the past year. The vast majority violated rulings issued by the Parades Commission, which was established to rule on controversial marches, and many have resulted in violence against residents. Five people have been murdered including Robert Hamill, a young nationalist returning home from an evening out, who was kicked to death by a mob as RUC police officers watched, but did not intervene. Rosemary Nelson, the civil-rights lawyer who represented the GRRC, was murdered by loyalists, with campaigners allege security force collusion (see story below).
To help counter the "news blackout" surrounding the sectarian attacks in Portadown the FGRSG sent a delegation of observers in early July to witness the Drumcree march. It observed at first hand a state of siege, with Garvaghy Road residents virtually held hostage in their own homes. Following 1996 and 1997, when the Royal Ulster Constabulary and British troops used plastic bullets and batons to force the Orange marchers down the Garvaghy Road, tension was palpable this year when the Parades Commission banned the Order from entering the Garvaghy Road. Threats that it would proceed by force gave way to media "spin" on the "peaceful" protest at the Drumcree church, and community suspicions of a government "behind-the-scenes" deal. However, once darkness arrived the violence began.
Media references to "minor skirmishes" in the evening, hid concerted and repeated attempts by loyalists to attack the nationalist community. A small mob grew in size until hundreds threatened to break through into the Garvaghy Road through the nationalist cemetary. As a concerned community gathered to defend their homes, dozens of police vehicles arrived and four helicopters with British troops landed to contain the incursions. At least 15 plastic bullets were fired in the ensuing confrontations. In the early hours of the morning several hundred loyalists attempted to overrun the area leaving balaclavered RUC officers and British Army soldiers in disarray before they rallied and cleared the streets. The attacks continued over the next few evenings.
The delegation's experiences highlighted the parallels between the sectarian violence aimed at<