THE Church of Ireland Gazette has said that the political price for Drumcree was that it "helped to take Sinn Fein off the political hook on which their IRA colleagues had impaled them and helped them to look respectable".
An editorial in the current issue of the Gazette, an independent journal broadly representative of Church of Ireland thinking, goes on: "To some unthinking and politically unsophisticated loyalists Drumcree appeared to be a famous victory. It was anything but.
"The scenes at Drumcree and afterwards portrayed a picture of No Surrender Orangemen walking through Catholic territory against the residents' wishes while the RUC batoned the protesters off the streets.
"As a public relations exercise, it was a total disaster for the Orangemen and the unionist leaders involved. Their Apprentice Boys cousins showed much more wit and common sense in their stand off with nationalists in Londonderry some weeks later," the editorial says.
The Gazette posed a number of "hard questions" which it said should be considered by "everyone who wishes to prevent a repeat of the disgraceful scenes at Drumcree".
"Why did the Orange leaders and politicians leave it so late to try to broker a deal, compared, say, to John Hume, who brought both sides together in Derry as quickly as possible? What was the role of the church in yet again providing a venue for a church service, given the dangerous standoff at Drumcree the previous year?
"What will be the attitude of the church authorities if they are asked to make the church at Drumcree available next year? What will the Garvaghy Road residents and those who supposedly represent them be doing to try to prevent such a dangerous standoff again?"