Portadown had settled down to a relatively calm waiting game as the focus moved to Belfast and other flashpoints. All that ended suddenly early yesterday morning when citizens woke to road blocks at one end of the Garvaghy Road and smaller protests at the other.
The pressure began to build and a Portadown Orangeman said that "the bubble has to burst some time". Throughout the day the Orange Order said its protests would be peaceful, but there was a rolling confrontation as loyalists taunted RUC men caught between the two communities and minor skirmishes continued last night at the Catholic Church near the Dungannon road.
Loyalist supporters played cat and mouse games with the police after they had moved them on. About 100 men who where heading back to Drumcree church suddenly turned and marched back down towards the officers, who had begun to relax.
Residents on the road felt blocked in, afraid to move. One woman who tried to go into town said that the RUC had told her she might not be able to get back in.
But there were apparently sinister movements on the Catholic side too. Up at Ballyoran Park, a notice stuck up on walls the previous night by two teenagers had been taken down by morning. But the message had been clear. It was a notice to residents. "Considering the tense situation, with security (sic) personnel on constant alert, children and adults are advised not to have any dealings with them while they are on duty in the area." One woman reading the notice said "they must have seen something to put that up".
Later the action moved to the centre of Portadown where 500 angry women with their children expressed their views about the parade and the divide. "The Catholics claim they can't come into the town but they're well able to come in to collect their broo [social security]," said one. "They get the same as we do, education, unemployment benefit, everything but they won't let us march down that road. It's our road too." Their complaints about nationalist sectarianism were an exact echo of Catholic feelings of anger about attacks by loyalists. One woman protester said that the 10 Protestant families at the tunnel end of the Garvaghy road, were not able to use the local park.
"One child who was five or six years old was stopped by a gang. He was asked if he was Catholic or Protestant. He didn't know. They asked if he went to band parades. He said he did and they peed all over him," she said.
Catholic accounts of abuse at Protestant hands are equally expressive. One Garvaghy Road resident said he had not been in the town centre after 6 p.m. for 25 years. Another said that Catholics are regularly attacked at night if they go up to the centre of the town to get money from cash dispensers. The Protestants railed about Breandan Mac Cionnaith as the source of all problems. A Catholic responded afterwards by saying that Mr Mac Cionnaith was a democratically elected local councillor, while those up at Drumcree giving orders were not.
Whatever way the most contentious parade in the Orange calendar ends, end it will. An ending of the sharp divisions between the town's citizens seems much less likely.
