RESIDENTS of the Co Antrim village of Dunloy have said they would oppose all future Apprentice Boys parades following violence involving over 1,000 marchers returning from Saturday's Derry parade.
About 30 coach loads of Apprentice Boys blocked the main Coleraine to Antrim road and pelted 500 police officers with stones and bottles during a four hour stand off on Saturday evening.
The police fired about 15 plastic bullets. Twenty three officers and nine civilians were injured in the skirmishes. Two arrests were made.
The stand off started at 6.30 p.m. after Apprentice Boys returning from the Derry parade joined local club members and tried to break through the RUC line about a mile and a half outside the mainly Catholic village.
After attempts to negotiate a compromise failed, some 200 residents, armed with hurley, sticks and plastic tubing, barricaded roads into the village with burning skips and felled trees.
On Saturday morning, the 20 member Dunloy Apprentice Boys club and its accordion band had been prevented from marching through the village to the Orange Hall and the Presbyterian Church for a wreath laying ceremony.
The Apprentice Boys said they had a traditional right to march in the village before and after the Derry parade."
Residents said the invasion was unwelcome in a town with a 95 per cent Catholic population.
The Dunloy Apprentice Boys Club members lived in surrounding areas but said they had strong traditional links with the village which was once mixed.
After police brokered negotiations failed in the morning, the Apprentice Boys settled for a short peaceful parade within 300 yards of the Catholic blockade on the fringe of the village before departing for Derry.
The Dunloy Residents and Parents Association met police officers in the afternoon and agreed to allow local club members to be bussed to their hall for a service on return from Derry.
The local club, however, wanted to march to the hall and refused to be "bussed in like cattle to be jeered at". A past president of the Dunloy Apprentice Boys and former Irish international rugby player, Mr David Tweed, tried to calm the angry protesters.
The police fired plastic bullets at marchers who tried to outflank their line. They eventually drove the crowd back towards the coaches. One bus driver rammed an RUC Land Rover.
The RUC deputy chief constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, arrived by helicopter at around 9 p.m. and the scene was largely cleared by 10.30 p.m.
Mr Flanagan said the disorder was due to the failure of both sides to reach an agreement and the tremendous influence of drink taken by some members of the crowd from Derry. "People must sit down together and talk and must come to an accommodation," he said.
But the chairman of the Dunloy Residents and Parents Association, Mr Paddy O'Kane, said that all future Apprentice Boys marches in the town would be opnused.
He said "So far as residents are concerned there will be no more marches here. We saw today what Dunloy Apprentice Boys stand for. In my opinion they only stand for riots, and trouble and yet all the time they preach peace.
Saturday's disturbances were the worst the village has experienced.
Residents denied claims that they were intimidating the Dunloy Apprentice Boys. The Apprentice Boys said they would discuss the issue of future parades in the village at their next lodge meeting.