THE Court of Appeal heard the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition case on Monday, exactly 58 years to the day since the RUC batoned peaceful civil rights demonstrators off Duke Street in Derry.

That wouldn’t have struck a chord with many unionists, but as the jester says in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “thereby hangs a tale”.

Here’s the thing. Regardless of court verdicts, Parades Commission determinations, or what have you, it’s never going to happen again.

The PSNI may be 70% Protestant but unionists don’t any longer own the police. They will not do their bidding.

Robert Gilmore: Does Drumcree show that we don’t really need a shared society?

Brian Feeney: Never again will police baton protesters off the street

The DUP MP Carla Lockhart (and she’s not the only one) has demanded that the “police do their job”, by which she obviously means tear into the vast crowd on Garvaghy Road with batons and water cannon.

Has she no idea that would be the end of the PSNI as an acceptable police service?

Does she care, or does she not realise the sea change that has taken place in the north?

Drumcree and Orange marches and the police are not in the same place as they were 30 years ago.

The past fortnight has graphically demonstrated the illegitimacy of this place.

As is often the case,........

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