Drumcree parade blocked for first time in 30 years as Portadown residents vow to stop march "permanently"

Hundreds of protesters blocked a road in Portadown, County Armagh, on Sunday, preventing a contentious Orange Order parade from taking place for the first time in three decades. Police vehicles were stationed nearby as orange-clad members and supporters gathered close to Drumcree Parish Church, where the annual march was due to begin before travelling down the Garvaghy Road.

The Drumcree parade was cleared to go ahead following a series of late legal challenges, having been absent for around 30 years. Its return would have ended a long-running stand-off between the Orange Order, which traditionally marches along the Garvaghy Road during the Twelfth celebrations, and residents of the surrounding area who have mounted repeated objections to the route.

The parade is notorious for its history. In the 1990s the Drumcree march and the attempts to secure permission for it sparked some of the most serious disorder in Northern Ireland's history, at a time when confrontation between the loyalist and republican communities was at its most intense. Organisers described Sunday's gathering as a milestone after years of negotiation, and Orange Order members waited inside the Drumcree church hall for the go-ahead to proceed down the Garvaghy Road.

Among those waiting were Portadown District Master Nigel Dawson and supporters who had assembled in and around the church grounds. Some travelled to a point roughly a mile away and remained there, waiting for the road to be cleared.

Northern Ireland's First Minister Michelle O'Neill joined the protesters on the Garvaghy Road. Addressing the crowd earlier in the day, she urged demonstrators to remain on the road until at least midnight, saying: "The reason the parade has not come down this road thus far is because you are here, and we need you to stay the course, we need you to stay here to 12 o'clock tonight at least."

By the end of Sunday, most of those who had been blocking the road had dispersed, although some members of the Orange Order remained in the area. Police officers remained stationed on nearby roads as the stand-off wound down without the parade taking place.

DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the first minister was breaking the law by protesting. He claimed she had "broken her pledge of office" by taking part. Robinson said: "It is shameful that we see on the streets of Portadown, a first minister, a collection of ministers and series of elected representatives who are participating in an unlawful protest, who are blocking the road and who are giving two fingers to the police, the courts and the rule of law." Sinn Féin has been contacted for comment.

The dispute drew the attention of Northern Ireland Secretary Sir Chris Bryant, who had returned early from the Labour Party conference in order to hold talks. He urged both sides to "double down on compromise" and said "nobody should be attending an unlawful protest", while stopping short of ruling on any individual's conduct. He said it was not his job "to decide whether somebody has or hasn't broken the law".

Sir Chris met politicians from the DUP, the Alliance Party, the Ulster Unionist Party and the Social Democratic and Labour Party on Sunday evening in relation to the Drumcree dispute, and confirmed he had held discussions with all the main political parties in a bid to secure a resolution. Sinn Féin said it had agreed to meet, but that the form of the meeting did not suit the secretary of state.

Later on Sunday night, Sir Chris responded to an SDLP call for an international mediator to be involved in the dispute, saying he was "giving consideration to anything that anybody comes up with". He conceded that, despite the discussions, "we haven't got a solution yet".

Speaking outside Hillsborough Castle, the secretary of state said he was determined to keep working and talking with people. "There's a few ideas around about things we might be able to do and I'm happy to explore those and I'll continue those conversations tomorrow," he said.

On the Garvaghy Road, Breandán Mac Cionnaith, a spokesman for the Garvaghy Road Residents' Coalition, addressed protesters as they cleared the area on Sunday night. He said he would meet the chief constable and the Northern Ireland Secretary on Monday. "The last 48 have been a long 48 hours for everybody," he told the crowd.

Mac Cionnaith said the protesters had delivered on their threat to stop the march. "We said they weren't getting down and we stopped them getting down." Having stopped the parade once, he said the next stage was to ensure it was stopped for good. Residents are "not going in to deals", he said, and they "aren't going back" — though he warned the dispute was likely to "drag on for a while".

The immediate question of whether the parade will go ahead is settled, but wider questions are not. Sir Chris Bryant's insistence that nobody should take part in an unlawful protest, alongside Gavin Robinson's claims that ministers and elected representatives breached their oaths of office, leaves unresolved whether the action on the Garvaghy Road was lawful. Police officers were present throughout but no arrests were reported.

Attention now turns to Monday's meeting between the residents' coalition, the chief constable and the Northern Ireland Secretary, as campaigners attempt to convert a one-off obstruction into what they describe as a permanent halt. Sir Chris Bryant, meanwhile, is weighing whether a mediator from outside Northern Ireland could help break a deadlock that his own talks have so far failed to resolve — a test for a newly installed administration dealing with a dispute that defined the Troubles' most violent years but has returned to the headlines after three decades of calm.