Sinn Féin Leaders Block Orange Order Parade on Garvaghy Road

Sinn Féin leaders united on Garvaghy Road in Portadown on Sunday to oppose an Orange Order parade, blocking the march from proceeding down the disputed street. First Minister of Northern Ireland Michelle O'Neill and party leader Mary Lou McDonald joined protesters at the site, where the parade had been scheduled to take place for the first time in 30 years.

The Parades Commission granted permission for the march on the largely nationalist street, a decision that drew strong opposition from the Catholic community. Thousands of protesters, some wearing balaclavas, gathered to prevent the marchers from advancing. Fireworks were set off nearby about five minutes before the 8 a.m. start time, and a loudspeaker announcement warned participants in an unlicensed counter-parade that they could face arrest.

Speaking at the scene, McDonald said no Orange march had taken place down Garvaghy Road that morning. She said people had gathered in large numbers out of anger and devastation, and because they were determined that the trauma endured by the community would not be revisited. "There will be no way back, only steps forward," she said.

O'Neill said Catholics have a right to live free from what she described as re-traumatisation. She said she had spent the night speaking with intergenerational families who felt collectively and individually traumatised, and questioned why the Parades Commission had decided to allow the march after 28 years of efforts to block it.

British Prime Minister Andy Burnham called for calm on all sides after the parade was given the go-ahead by the High Court in Belfast in a late-night sitting. He said there had been big gains made in Northern Ireland and that things should not go backwards.

Gavin Robinson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, the largest pro-UK party in Northern Ireland, criticised Sinn Féin leaders for inflaming the situation.

Garvaghy Road was a notorious flashpoint before the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 largely ended the Troubles, a conflict that left 3,600 people dead, some 50,000 wounded and thousands bereaved. In the years before the agreement, violent clashes occurred on the road over several summers, requiring major security operations. The peace deal sought to balance competing identities in Northern Ireland, which remained in the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland won independence a century ago. Irish nationalists in the north, most of them Catholic, seek union with the Republic of Ireland, while largely Protestant unionists want to remain part of the UK.