Two Hundred Years of the Orange Citadel (Part 2)
At the opening of Derryhale Orange Hall, in July 1899, the Reverends Thacker and Austin made what the Portadown News described as being ‘important speeches’. The pair of preachers castigated Portadown Protestants who sold land to, employed, or consorted with ‘Papist rebels’.
On February 28th 1900 the good citizens of Portadown celebrated those ‘political and cultural links with mainland Britain which guarantees a pluralist society which can tolerate ethnic and religious diversity’. They attacked St. Patrick’s Hall, the parochial house, Catholic homes and businesses and the home of James Grew, JP.
Criminal charges against a number of them were dismissed in court when they claimed they had been enraged at the failure of the English to relieve the town of Ladysmith, in South Africa, which was under siege by the Boers.
For the rest of the century, the pattern of Orange attacks and judicial leniency was repeated.
Attacks
In 1932, for example, when Catholics travelled to a Eucharistic Congress in Dublin, their trains were attacked and windows put in. A woman who had received serious eye injuries when the trains were ambushed was told by Judge Green that he had known, ‘many clever draughtsmen with one eye’.
The Orange Order did not parade during the war years. There were a few disturbances in connection with Orange demonstrations in Portadown when they resumed during the 1950s and 60s.
However Orange marches continued to provoke violence in other parts of the North. Although Portadown appeared to be relatively peaceful, Orangemen and Unionist politicians continued to foment sectarian divisions in speeches at annual demonstrations and in Orange halls.
On the 1st of November 1968 Lieutenant Commander Jack Glendenning told the Corcraine Orangemen [ Protestants only admitted ] that Civil Rights campaigners were being schooled in Moscow and warned the defenders of ‘civil and religious liberty’ that Civil Rights, ‘means an end of Protestant supremacy’.
On the 24th of March 1970 around 200 RUC men and 150 British soldiers stood guard over a handful of Civil Rights campaigners in the centre of Portadown. Joe Duffy, who was elected to the council in 1997, was among them. Some of the Civil Rights group were injured by stones thrown from a large crowd of loyalists and two of them were later prosecuted.
B Specials
On July 4th 1971 members of the recently disbanded B-Specials led 1,000 Orangemen on the ‘traditional church parade’ to Drumcree. In the run-up to that ‘demonstration of strength’, hundreds of Catholics fled their homes or sent their children to refugee camps set up by the Irish Government in the South. Later that month, Stormont Prime Minister Brian Faulkner imposed a six-month ban on all parades.
An estimated 10,000 loyalists attended the 11th of March, hard line Vanguard rally in Portadown. Vanguard was formed to protest against the softness of Brian Faulkner, who was himself an Orange man. Among the principal speakers at the Vanguard rally were Rev. Martin Smith, Grand Master of the Orange Order, and the town’s Lord Mayor. David Trimble was Deputy Leader of the Vanguard alliance.
Vanguard called for a two-day strike starting on March 27th and loyalist mobs took control of the town. From Sunday 26th to Wednesday the 29th the whole of the Catholic quarter of Portadown was kept under siege. Night and day the mobs attacked from every angle and sometimes on a number of fronts simultaneously.
Electricity supplies were cut off and the few corner shops in the area soon sold out of food. By Tuesday night the British army had moved into the area and set up sandbag defences at all entrances to the Tunnel.
Loyalists blocked all the main roads into town with hijacked vehicles and the three strands of loyalism went ‘a wrecking’.
Mad Month
Faulkner lifted the ban on demonstrations in time for the ‘mad month’. This meant that the ‘traditional Church Parade’ to Drumcree would bring many of the organisers and perpetrators of the Vanguard violence right into the heart of the area they had laid siege to just a few months before.
A Nationalist ‘Resistance Committee’ that had organised the defence of the Catholic area in March called a public meeting in Obin Street on April 9th 1972.
After the meeting they issued a statement criticising those who were making facile statements about the need to encourage better community relations and called for all Orange demonstrations to be banned from the Nationalist area.
In the early hours of the 12th of July Paul Beattie, a 19 year old Protestant was shot dead when he entered the Churchill Park estate with a number of other loyalists. The ‘Tunnel’ and Garvaghy Road were saturated with ‘security forces’ on the 12th morning and the Orange Order demonstrated without hindrance.
Later that day an off-duty RUC man called Ralph Henry shot and killed a Catholic publican, Jack McCabe, and a Protestant customer called William Cochrane in McCabe’s town centre pub.
On the 13th the Orangemen were once again escorted through Obin Street by the British army and the RUC. Then, four days after providing the Orangemen with a guard of honour in Obin Street the UDA abducted, tortured and killed a 47-year old Catholic man called Felix Hughes.
In 1981 the local H-Block committee staged a protest in Obin Street during the annual demonstrations of Orange strength. The RUC forced the protesters off the road and in the ensuing riots they fired plastic bullets and made a number of arrests.
The RUC drafted hundreds more reinforcements into the area for another demonstration on the 14th when 1,500 Orangemen marched past about 100 protesters who were hemmed into side-streets by a wall of RUC men and armoured cars.
Drumcree
In 1985, the RUC announced that the ‘first Sunday’ Orange march to Drumcree Church on July 7th would be permitted to pass through Obin Street but all others would be re-routed from the enclave.
When local people resisted, they were attacked by the RUC who, a journalist wrote, ‘waded into the protestors, battening them without provocation’. Many of the protesters were injured and one man was knocked unconscious by the baton-wielding defenders of Orange tradition.
When the road was cleared of local people, Harold McCusker MP, Rev. Martin Smith MP, and George Seawright (a notoriously bigoted Belfast City councillor) led 2,000 Orangemen ‘in full military uniform’ to hear the word of the Lord at Drumcree Church. The entire length of the Garvaghy Road was sealed off by hundreds of RUC men with British Army back-up to ensure safe passage for the spiritually fortified Orangemen.
On Easter Sunday 1986 the Apprentice Boys were banned from staging an Easter Monday demonstration on the Garvaghy Road. Around 9 p.m. on Sunday, the Garvaghy area was swamped with RUC men and British soldiers in preparation to enforce the ban.
Later that evening cars with loudspeakers toured loyalist areas calling for Orange supporters to assemble in the town centre to protest at the ban. Just before midnight and without any warning the RUC and British army withdrew from the Garvaghy Road and Ian Paisley led a three-to-four thousand strong mob through the Catholic enclave.
Eyewitnesses said some of the mob carried firearms and some were identified as being members of the UDR and RUC.
With the approach of July 1986 two new organisations announced their support for Orangeism. The ‘Parade Action Committee’ and the ‘Ulster Clubs’ were fronted by Portadown Orangeman Alan Wright, Peter Robinson and Noel Little.
Among their other activities, these leaders organised a parade through Portadown by a shadowy loyalist paramilitary group called the ‘Ulster Resistance Movement’. This group threatened major disruption if the Orange Order were denied access to Obin Street. They followed through on that threat with a protracted campaign of intimidation and terror.
Throughout the month of June vulnerable Catholic homes and Church property were attacked; shots were fired at people on the Garvaghy Road; Catholic owned businesses in Portadown were wrecked, and Saint Patrick’s Hall was burned to the ground after an Ulster Clubs march and rally.
Garvaghy Road
On the 12th, the Orange Order held its first ever demonstration on the Garvaghy Road. Having denied them their ‘traditional’ right to humiliate the residents of Obin Street, the British Government and RUC compensated the Orange Order by allowing them to march down the Garvaghy Road.
No representatives of the Nationalist community were officially consulted about the new arrangement, and a few residents were assaulted on the day of the march.
In 1988 the ‘Drumcree Faith & Justice Group’ planned a march to the town centre to highlight the double standards which were being employed by the RUC in dealing with nationalist and loyalist demonstrations. When requesting permission to hold the June protest march, the ‘Faith & Justice Group’ informed the RUC that only 30 people would participate and they would carry no flags or banners. Their protest was banned.
As David Trimble MP led 1,200 Orangemen with four marching bands down the Garvaghy Road in 1992, his brethren broke ranks to assault local people and a press photographer. The assaults took place in full view and in close proximity to RUC men.
When no attempt was made to arrest or detain the assailants for identification, there was fighting all along the length of the road, at Garvaghy Park, Ballyoran Park, Churchill Park and Woodside.
A 1993 survey of the people living on the Garvaghy Road found that 95% of them were opposed to Orange marches in the area. This led to the formation of the Garvaghy Road Residents Group. It was to act as an umbrella organisation for co-ordinating the efforts of the different groups opposed to the routing of Orange demonstrations through their streets.
Against a background of much violence, they succeeded in stopping Orange marches through Garvaghy Road for twenty-eight years. It took a massive display of people power in October 2026 to tell the Orange Order there would be no return to the days of supremacy. The Orangemen have just been banned from Garvaghy Road. But for how long?
