THE show of aggression at Portadown Town Hall on Thursday night diminished the little hope there had been of a solution to the parades problem in the Armagh town. Both sides seem to be immovable as the July 6th date approaches.
Many feel Drumcree Three is inevitable as attitudes harden. Orangemen insist they will walk Garvaghy Road on their way home from Drumcree Church. Garvaghy residents are planning an open-air peace festival on the same date if no agreement is reached. Many people in Portadown are preparing for battle.
Parades commission chairman Mr Alistair Graham was harshly criticised as he attempted to gain the views of the people of Portadown on the Drumcree march.
Some felt the commission was naive" in calling the meeting. The Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition did not attend as it believed the venue was not neutral after the recent killing by loyalists of Mr Robert Ham ill nearby. As a result, the town hall was packed with loyalists. The Orange Order had advised the commission to scrap the meeting because it might worsen the situation.
Hostility within the hall was so intense that some feared the commission members, who sat behind a desk on the stage, might not be safe leaving the venue. The meeting was so volatile that it was stopped halfway through.
Ms Chris Moffat of the Women's Coalition was escorted from the hall by a security man. She had said Orangemen did not have a right to march wherever they wanted and a chorus of abuse followed. When Ms Moffat, a Protestant, said she lived on Garvaghy Road, a man shouted: "Away and sit with your Fenian friends."
She said she had been very frightened but she felt it important to make her opinions known. "If people are not confronted with different views, they will never take them on." The meeting ended soon after.
Mr Graham sustained a torrent of abuse throughout as the audience thought he did not know the difference between a band parade and an Orange parade. He was asked if he had ever been to a band parade. "How can you make decisions when you know nothing about Northern Ireland?" he was asked.
Mr Graham was warned: "You will have a heck of a responsibility to bear if you ban this parade." The parades commission does not, as yet, have powers to ban parades, which was pointed out to the audience.
An indication of the audience's hard line attitude included the following: "There will be no deals done here. We're parading." "You will not stop us and when you put our backs against the wall you've got trouble." This sort of comment received thunderous applause.
Across the town, the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition held its own meeting. Coalition spokesman Mr Breandan MacCionnaith said it was pure coincidence that their meeting clashed with that in the town hall.
It was called to discuss several pressing issues, in the run-up to Drumcree. While 800 people and more squeezed into the community centre, the atmosphere was less tense, with a mood of solidarity, pledges to look after each other and promises not to listen to rumour but to seek the facts from the coalition.
Top of the agenda was whether the residents wanted the coalition members to talk to the RUC during the contentious week. After a vote, two-thirds of the audience voted against that notion.
Local rumours suggest busloads of nationalists will converge on Portadown to help protect the residents. One young man said: "For every Orangeman that was here last year, there'll be two of us." If there is no agreement, the community also unanimously decided to hold an open-air peace festival on July 6th, the same day the Orangemen want to walk down the road.
Mr MacCionnaith told the audience he had spoken to a Welsh male voice choir which may attend the festival. A number of rock bands had pledged to come.
Coalition secretary Father Eamon Stack said: "If they would not talk to us there are consequences to that decision."