“No talking, no walking” was the position of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition from the outset of the dispute in 1995.

If Portadown District Orange Lodge would not talk to residents, they would not agree to a parade.

The Orangemen would not talk because they believed they needed no consent from residents to walk “the Queen’s highway”. They did engage in shuttle diplomacy in 1995, with mediators moving between both sides until a parade was agreed. But the lack of direct contact led to mutual misunderstanding: residents thought they had a respectful compromise; Orangemen thought they had won. Notorious scenes of jubilation outside Portadown’s Orange Hall destroyed the deal and have left residents wary ever since.

This deadlock has defined Drumcree and the British government’s strategic response: the creation of the Parades Commission in 1998.

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The purpose of the commission, never quite admitted, was to contain Drumcree within a framework applicable to parading overall.

Legally, it is difficult to........

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