ONCE again this year, the Orangemen of Portadown have endeavoured to whip up community tensions by seeking to revive the Drumcree parade dispute.

Readers under the age of 35 are unlikely to have a recollection of the tension and violence that defined this specific contentious parade in the mid to late 1990s in the loyalist citadel of Portadown.

The backdrop to the dispute was the peace and political processes which were opposed by elements within both political unionism and loyalist paramilitarism.

Drumcree came to symbolise a desire by unionism to reassert its power and control throughout the north amidst the promise and hope that change was around the corner.

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Roads were blocked, businesses were shuttered and scores of families intimidated from their homes, whilst interface tensions ratcheted up over successive years from 1995 through to 1998 as unionism sought to reassure itself that, whatever else was happening around them, the Orange writ would continue to run through society.

It was a tried and tested tactic.

Brian Faulkner earned his stripes as a prospective firebrand unionist leader by whipping up a frenzy in support of a similar loyalist parade through the nationalist Longstone Road area in the late 1950s, and history is littered with many similar examples of provocative parades organised for nationalist areas with the clear intent of triggering conflict and........

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