Reports obtained from:
(1)
Irish News, (2)
Daily Ireland, (3)
Ulster Television (UTV)
(4)
Guardian, (5)
Irish Republican News
Sunday, 16 July, 2006
Friday, 14 July, 2006
Thursday, 13 July, 2006
Wednesday, 12 July, 2006
Disgusting - Sick 11th night bonfire mocks murdered Ballymena teenager (2)
Friday-Tuesday, 7-11 July, 2006
Sectarian Attacks
By Irish Republican News
A Derry man is fighting for his life following a spate of sectarian attacks surrounding the annual July 12th parades by the Protestant Orange Order.
The most serious incident took place on a barbecue in the Waterside area of Derry on Sunday.
The most seriously injured of three victims, a 29-year-old man, sustained head injuries after being attacked by a loyalist gang. One of his friends sustained a fractured jaw.
There were disturbances in the aftermath of the assault.
Tension throughout the North increased in the run up to 'the Twelfth' marches, with nationalists coming under attack from both PSNI police and sectarian gangs.
Houses in the Beechfield Street and Clandeboye area of Belfast's Short Strand came under stoning attacks from gangs in unionist Cluan Place.
On the Twelfth morning a nine-year-old child was targeted by loyalists who threw a paint bomb at him, splattering him with paint, as he walked along the Whitewell Road. Earlier a 24-year-old nationalist was beaten by a loyalist gang in the same area.
Later, on the Ormeau bridge members of the Orange Order, wearing sashes, held up five finger salutes, to mock the five people murdered by loyalists in Grahams bookies on the Ormeau Road in 1992.
BALLYMENA HATE
Meanwhile, a sick video has been made mocking the brutal sectarian murder of a 15-year-old boy in County Antrim earlier this year. The video shows footage of Michael McIlveen standing with friends and is subtitled with the words "F*ck Micky Bo". The teenager was nicknamed Mickybo.
Michael McIlveen died on May 8, a day after being attacked and beaten by a group of people armed with baseball bats in Ballymena.
One section of the video shows a still picture of the teenager with the subtitled words: "Murder inquiry: please contact someone who gives a Fuck -- Three kicks to the head and I was dead hi ho hi ho -- Fuck Micky Bo."
The words "Who killed Micky Bo" are followed by images associated with the unionist paramilitary UDA.
The video has been distributed around Ballymena via mobile phone. It contains scenes of a floral tribute laid outside the teenager's home in the days after his death.
A man wearing a soccer jersey with the words "Fuck Micky Bo" emblazoned on the back features at the beginning of the video. A song accompanying the footage of the murdered teenager is a stream of sectarian obscenities.
Details of the sick film came to light after it had been sent to a Protestant friend of the dead teenager.
The emergence of the video came just days after loyalists had placed a Tricolour bearing the words "F*ck Mickey Bo" on an 11th night bonfire in Ahoghill, near Ballymena. It has since been revealed that local DUP councillor Roy Gillespie was seen helping to build the Ahoghill fire.
Other loyalist bonfires in Ballymena also carried mocking references to the murdered boy.
Sinn Fein Assembly member for North Antrim Philip McGuigan has described the mobile phone video mocking the murdered Ballymena teenager Michael McIlveen "as offensive, nakedly sectarian and completely unacceptable".
"Since the murder of young Michael there has been a determined effort by sections of the unionist community in Ballymena to demonise Michael and the community he came from," he said. "This has involved slurs on his family and upbringing by DUP Councillor Davy Tweed and over the weekend a flag bearing his name appeared on a bonfire in Ahoghill.
"These are symptoms of the fact that many unionists in Ballymena are deeply sectarian and deeply anti-Catholic. These traits are encouraged and fostered by the political leadership provided by the DUP from the local MP Ian Paisley down. They resist at every turn basic demands for equality and respect from the nationalist community in the town.
"Videos like this do not happen by accident. Like the murder of Michael McIlveen in the first place they happen because of the conditions and environment created by civic leaders in the town. The DUP bear a heavy responsibility for the current situation in Ballymena and continuing denials by that party cut little ice with any nationalist in this area."
In a further provocative display, a fire in Belfast's Shankill Road was topped with black flags bearing the names of the 1981 Hunger Strikers.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said the silence of unionist political leaders in relation to the majority of these incidents spoke volumes.
"In contrast Sinn Fein has proactively condemned attacks on Orange Order property. Such attacks are totally wrong. Sectarianism from whatever quarter is unacceptable and plays into the hands of the bigots."
Parade allowed to take banned route again — SF
By Barry McCaffrey, Irish News
Sinn Féin has claimed a parade in Co Armagh was allowed to take a route banned by the Parades Commission for the second time in two years.
Upper Bann assembly member John O'Dowd claimed the Royal Black Institution march in Lurgan was allowed to "blatantly breach" a commission ruling yesterday (Thursday) morning.
"This is the second time that this has happened and in the past this has been investigated by the [police] ombudsman," he said.
"There was no confusion over the route of the parade by the commission. Parades Commission staff on the ground, along with local representatives including myself, made it clear to the PSNI what route the parade had to take."
Mr O'Dowd accused police of deliberately allowing the ruling to be broken by allowing marchers to use the right side of a junction between Church Place and Edward Street.
However, a police spokeswoman in-sisted there had been "no breach of the determination".
"The Lurgan District Royal Black Preceptory parade was in compliance with the determination of the Parades Commission," she said.
A commission spokesman said any breach would be included in a report by parade monitors which it would receive in coming days.
In June a Police Ombudsman report into the handling of a Royal Black Ins-titution parade in Lurgan on July 13 2004 found a commission ruling had contained such a degree of ambiguity that it could have been misinterpreted.
Nationalists were outraged when the parade was allowed to march along William Street after a loyalist's car had blocked its intended path.
The ombudsman, Nuala O'Loan, found that the PSNI had breached the commission determination but the ruling was unclear and the police officer in charge had acted in good faith.
Mrs O'Loan's assertion that the ruling had been ambiguous was rejected by a number of commissioners.
Mr O'Dowd said yesterday's events were the latest in a series of controversies involving the PSNI in Lurgan.
He claimed police had allowed loyalists to erect illegal flags and bunting in the nationalist end of the town and attacks on Catholic homes on the Antrim Road had been ignored.
Copyright © 2006 Irish News
Founded on and fuelled by bigotry
Viewpoint
By Jude Collins
There are at least three ways of looking at yesterday's Twelfth celebrations.
The first is that espoused by DUP MLA Norah Beare. Norah says: "It's great to see families coming together and spending time with each other in this cause." She figures that with all the antisocial behaviour about these days, nothing could be better than the sight of young and old washing their faces and combing their hair and marching in a disciplined manner to enjoyable music.
Nora is a persuasive woman and her perspective on the Twelfth is one widely promoted. In this Mr Magoo version of the big day, decent Orangemen swell with pride as young William or Norman is inducted into the Order and another link in the father-to-son tradition is forged. Silver-haired gents reverently lift the bowler hat and white gloves that've been wrapped in tissue paper for 12 months and go out to meet old colleagues. Next day newspapers carry snaps of honest faces licking ice creams and red-faced men snoozing on warm hillsides. Could anything be more harmless? Aren't those opposed to such a community festival hopelessly bigoted?
A second view, held by people like those living in Dunloy or along the Garvaghy Road, is that there's no problem with Orangemen celebrating the Twelfth, but they shouldn't attempt to do so by marching into areas where they are obviously not welcome. The thousands of non-contentious marches are a valid expression of Protestant and unionist culture and have every right to occur. The problem lies with a small number of disputed marches, and these could be resolved if marchers would sit down and negotiate with residents' groups.
The third view is that the Orange Order is anti-Catholic to the bone and all Orange marches and demonstrations are a blot on the landscape, regardless of where they occur. Given the organisation's nature, history and record up to contemporary times, the wonder is that anyone committed to tolerance and reconciliation would attempt to defend Orange marches, regardless of where they occur.
Such a view appears unthinkable for Orangemen, be they backwoodsmen or enlightened liberal. In his book The Orange Order - A Tradition Betrayed, the Rev Brian Kennaway argues that the honourable name of the Order has in recent times been dragged in the gutter by ruffians and no-goods, and true Orangemen should rally to restore its moral integrity. Like Norah Beare, Brian Kennaway is a persuasive advocate. When you remember the viciousness of disturbances in Belfast last year or recall the Drumcree dispute at its height, normal Twelfth celebrations can look good-natured and cheerful.
But an organisation that is truly good-natured doesn't have anti-Catholic rules and a record which is consistently shameful. Here's a Protestant historian describing the actions of Orange militia in the weeks leading up to the 1798 rebellion.
"Houses were plundered and burnt, women outraged, and children brutally ill-treated and murdered. They were flogged, picketed and half-hung, to extort confessions as to concealed arms. They were hunted down and sabred. Villages and whole districts were devasted, and the inhabitants turned out of their homes into the ditch."
Thirty-two years later, in 1836, the Edinburgh Review carried a report of its study of evidence regarding the Orange Order laid before the Parliamentary Select Committees the previous year. Not noted for its pro-Catholic sympathies, the magazine concluded. "There can be no doubt that Orangeism has been and continues to be hurtful to the very cause and principles it professes to support. By it annual processions and commemorations of epochs of party triumph, it has exasperated and transmitted ancient feuds, which has led to riots, with loss of property and life."And writing around the same time, here's an Orangeman, Sir Jonah Barrington.
"Could his Majesty King William of Orange learn in the other world that he has been the cause of more broken heads and drunken men since his departure than all his predecessors, he must be the proudest ghost and most conceited skelton that ever entered the gardens of Elysium".What was that about a proud tradition?
And in 1858 Lord Palmerston (yes, that one) had this to say of the Orange Order. "Is it an organisation which belongs to the age in which we live? Is it not rather one that is suited to the Middle Ages - to those periods of society when anarchy has prevailed. I can but repeat that nothing could be more desirable for the real interests of Ireland than the complete abandonment of the association. There is nothing they could do which would more materially contribute to the peace of Ireland and to the obliteration of ancient prejudices."
You get the picture. Since its inception and up to today, the Orange Order has helped sour neighbour against neighbour. The good relations that exist between Catholics and Protestants in many areas suffer real damage each time the Twelfth rolls around.
In the face of the historical facts and present-day realities, the attempts of such as Brian Kennaway to present the Orange Order as an institution embodying traditional Protestant virtues, or of Norah Beare to project it as a kind of rosary for Protestant families, holding them together, are unconvincing to the point of absurdity.
Those who can, get as far away as possible from the Twelfth and the thousands of mini-Twelfths that precede and follow it.
I'm hoping to visit Boston in the coming weeks, so I've been reading a political history called The Boston Irish. Interesting stuff. Among other things it charts the rise of the American Protective Association (APA), an organisation established in Iowa in 1887. The association spread rapidly. Its members pledging never to vote for a Catholic, never to hire one and to oppose Catholic parochial schools at every point.
In 1895, the APA sought permission to march in East Boston's Fourth of July parade. They were turned down when the authorities heard they planned to carry anti-Catholic symbols in the parade. The APA appealed to the governor and the decision was overturned. The march went off peacefully. Afterwards, when taunted by protestors, APA members drew guns and fired into the crowd, killing a Catholic man. They then held an "indignation meeting", claiming the APA marchers had been attacked by "a murderous gang of thugs". Two APA marchers were arrested on suspicion of murder but were both discharged.
Sound familiar? Sure why wouldn't it. In Massachusetts at the time, the APA was made up in large measure of Orangemen from the north of Ireland.
In the early twentieth century, the APA had the good sense to die out. Here we are in the twenty-first century and the Orange Order, founded on and fuelled by bigotry, marches on.
Copyright © 2006 Daily Ireland
DUP is the thorn in the side of the GFA
By Jim Gibney, Irish News
There could be, in the morning, a functioning all-Ireland Ministerial Council planning the future for all the people of this island, a power-sharing executive planning the future for all the people of the six counties, an assembly debating the issues which are affecting people's lives and deciding what to do about them and an east-west structure dealing with issues of relevance to the people of both these islands.
The reason these institutions do not exist is very simple and uncomplicated. The DUP are refusing to share power with republicans and nationalists.
They and they alone are blocking the setting up of the above interlocking and interdependent institutions agreed in the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).
For the last six weeks Sinn Féin, the SDLP and Alliance parties have tried to create the conditions at the Stormont talks which would see these institutions established.
They were blocked at every stage by the intransigence of the DUP. The DUP refused to vote for a first and deputy first minister.
Under the terms of the GFA a special voting mechanism exists to form the executive. This can only come about when there is majority consent among those nationalist and unionist parties elected to the assembly.
This voting procedure is designed to prevent a return to unionist majority rule and to protect minority parties.
The DUP are abusing this protective measure to prevent progress taking place.
The British and Irish governments thus far have supported the DUP's stance. They failed to take any decisive action to confront them.
The two governments instead of leading the negotiations effectively abandoned the talks process and allowed the DUP to set the pace.
The six month timetable set out by the two governments to restore the institutions was bound to act as a green light to the obstructionist DUP. They have a legislative licence to filibuster their way through to the November 24 deadline.
When the Hain assembly was set up six weeks ago Sinn Féin stated its participation would be governed by the assembly's ability to elect a first and deputy first Minister.
That is why Gerry Adams moved within days of the Hain Assembly meeting to nominate Ian Paisley senior and Martin McGuinness as first and deputy first ministers.
He was testing the DUP's commitment to sharing power. Their reaction to Sinn Féin's proposal confirmed the widespread belief that the DUP have no intention of participating in an administration with republicans. The question is will they ever?
The Hain assembly has no relevance to the GFA. It is the brainchild of the British secretary of state and has no powers whatsoever. He decides when the Assembly should meet. He decides the issues the MLAs should debate. He decides what to do with any decision arising from a debate. The assembly is little more than a glorified and expensive talking shop.
At the start of its life the leaders of all the parties said they would not be involved in a charade.
Yet one by one, with the exception of Sinn Féin, that is precisely what the parties involved themselves in over the last six weeks.
They held plenary sessions and debated issues which they knew in advance they were powerless to effect. The assembly gatherings were akin to a sixth form debating society, without the youthful passion, with the end of term debate the most absurd of all.
Last Friday the practically empty chamber, boycotted by Sinn Féin and ignored by many other MLAs, heard the leaders of the SDLP, Alliance and DUP use words like, 'farce', 'phoney' and 'ridiculous' to describe their presence at their own sought after debate. How demeaning is that?
What is going on in the heads of these party leaders that prevents them from seeing what many people see: their participation in a circus with ringmaster Hain sitting smugly in London?
This spectacle is undermining the public's confidence in politics and politicians and should not be repeated come September.
If the DUP continue with their blocking tactics then the two governments should immediately pull the shutters down on the assembly and speedily move on to plan B, formal joint authority of the six counties.
Copyright © 2006 Irish News
Paisley's 'offensive rant' slammed
By Ulster Television (UTV)
Democratic Unionist leader the Reverend Ian Paisley has been accused of harming the prospects of political progress at Stormont after he said Sinn Fein would be in government over loyalists' dead bodies. By:Press Association
Yesterday, in a hard-hitting speech to members of the Independent Orange Order in Portrush, County Antrim, the DUP leader said: "Compromise, accommodation and the least surrender are the roads to final and irreversible disaster.
"There can be no compromise."
The North Antrim MP, who leads Northern Ireland`s largest political party, insisted there could be no accommodation or surrender.
And on the issue of power-sharing with what he called IRA/Sinn Fein, he said: "It will be over our dead bodies.
"Ulster has surely learned that weak, pushover unionism is a halfway house to republicanism."
His comments were criticised by Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and by senior nationalist SDLP negotiator Sean Farren.
Mr Adams said the DUP leader`s remarks were offensive.
"Can anybody really be surprised?" the West Belfast MP asked.
"They are a challenge, not to us, but to the two Governments and a challenge particularly to the British Government.
"What Ian Paisley has in common with us is we have mandates. We respect his and he should respect ours."
With Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern insisting that Northern Ireland`s Assembly members must agree to power-sharing by a deadline of November 24, Mr Farren warned the speech may have damaged any progress being made at Stormont.
"This rant by Paisley - and there is no other name for it - is the politics of the roadblock once again," the North Antrim SDLP Assembly member said.
"Phrases like `over our dead bodies` simply set everyone back, including the elements in the DUP that are plainly keen to see devolved government within some sort of reasonable timetable.
"It is ultimately for the electorate and not Ian Paisley to decide who is fit for government.
"Let us hope that when the Twelfth is behind us once more, when the annual rush of blood to the head has worn off, wiser counsels will prevail once more in the DUP."
Copyright © 2006 Ulster Television
Marching to a different drum
Today' s Orange Order parades will be ignored or avoided by large numbers of people in Northern Ireland for the simple reason that most of them have better things to do with their time, says Henry McDonald
By Henry McDonald, Guardian Unlimited
It is the morning of the holiest day in Ulster loyalism's calendar and the street where I live is almost completely deserted. The normal whoops and cries of children enjoying freedom after months of school are absent. The area around resembles the mythical town in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, where children are locked away and kept out of a sight by a comical tyrannical ruler. But instead of a "child catcher" with his sinister black clothing and whip rounding the kids up it is the imminent threat of slightly ridiculous men in sombre suits wearing bowler hats and orange sashes that have chased not only the children but also most of the grown-ups away.
This street in middle-class southeast Belfast and its temporary desolation symbolises the social and culture shifts in Northern Irish society and demonstrate how these changes have left the Orange Order marching into history.
For a start, the street is now religiously mixed where once it was predominantly Protestant. Young, aspiring middle class Catholic families over the last two decades have settled in the surrounding area.
They chose every summer around the second week of July not to protest like those they have left behind in working class Catholic areas that abut Protestant redoubts against Orange Order parades passing by.
Instead they prefer to drive northwest towards Donegal or south to catch the ferry to France for a fortnight or more in Britanny. Or else they dash to the city's two airports (one now named after local hero George Best) and jump on a budget airline to the Spanish costas or the Greek or Turkish Aegean.
They "demonstrate" their contempt for the temporary takeover of their society and its transformation into an orange-blur by getting out.
Yet there are other families on this street and the streets nearby who include police officers serving the British Crown, academics, retired Protestant missionaries and nurses who come from a unionist background but will play no part today in the festivals held to commemorate King William's victory over James II at the Battle of the Boyle in 1690.
They too have either gone abroad or, in the case of a police officer neighbour, will spend the afternoon at a friend's barbecue in the southern outskirts of the city a world apart from the marching, the accordion playing, the drinking and the inflammatory speeches of the 12th.
They are joining the growing exodus of middle class Protestants engaged in "internal immigration" over the next 48 hours.
What should become obvious rather quickly to anyone observing today's parades across Northern Ireland and in particular Belfast is that they are now essentially a working-class, some might argue "ex-working class", pastime.
What you will witness, more so among the camp followers on the pavements from the Lower Shankill Road right up to the field in Edenderry outside Belfast, where the main procession comes to a halt, is akin to the type of caravan that traipses after the England soccer team or parties in certain less salubrious resorts on Mediterranean islands.
A leading authority on the Orange Order (he writes and speaks as an insider) the Reverend Brian Kennaway has tracked the flight of the unionist middle class away from the institution over the last 15 years.
Kenneway contends that this mass defection is due to the order's retreat into extremism, especially its involvement in the various so-called "Sieges of Drumcree" when Orangemen took on the very security forces they pledge loyalty to every year and where Orange leaders openly flirted with loyalist terrorists using them as muscle in their territorial battle with republicans.
However, Kennaway is only half-right. Yes, the violence directed at the police and British army alienated law-abiding middle class Protestants. And the incendiary speeches from Orange platforms and warnings of an Ulster doomsday drove this same sector of society away from the institution.
The paradox though is that even those who wouldn't dream of donning the bowler hat and the sash-my-father-wore are voting in large numbers than ever before for Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist party, mainly because they believe (rightly or wrongly) that Tony Blair granted too many concessions to Sinn Féin at David Trimble's expense.
So if voting DUP is ok among people who regard marching with the Orange Order as at the very least socially embarrassing, why then are the order's numbers dwindling and its middle class support base dribbling away?
The answer is simple and social: They have better things to do with their time.
Instead of swaggering in sweltering heat to a field where all they can eat is fried food while surrounded by gangs of inebriated teenagers who can barely hear the speeches urging sobriety and temperance as well as loyalty to the Queen, the Protestant absentees will be sunning themselves on a beach somewhere or flipping their organic burgers over the barbecue in between discussions over this week's announced 25% hike in the value of the average house here.
The British government has recently announced it is giving £100,000 to the Orange Order to turn the 12th into a "Notting Hill style" carnival for all.
They are wasting their time and taxpayers' money. Given the growing numbers (Protestant and Catholic) joining Ulster's great escape' each July, if Peter Hain et al want to ensure future peaceful summers, they would be better offering everyone a free plane ticket out to the destination of their choice.
· Henry McDonald is Ireland editor of the Observer.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
Disgusting - Sick 11th night bonfire mocks murdered Ballymena teenager
By Daily Ireland
Nationalist and unionist politicians united last night in condemnation of a sickening display of sectarian hatred at an 11th night bonfire in the Co Antrim village of Ahoghill.
A national flag was placed on the bonfire yesterday with the words 'Fuck Mickey Bo', a reference to murdered Ballymena teenager Michael McIlveen.Fifteen-year-old Michael McIlveen was attacked and beaten by a number of people wielding baseball bats in Ballymena on May 8 this year.
Known to his family and friends as Mickybo the teenager died in hospital the following day. Six teenagers were charged in connection with the young man's death.
Young people in Ballymena were united in grief and over a thousand people attended the funeral of the popular pupil of St Patrick's College in the town. The cortege was followed by dozens of teenagers wearing Celtic and Rangers football jerseys in a show of cross community unity and the murder inspired teachers in Ballymena to set up a scheme to tackle sectarianism
Last night Sinn Féin MLA for North Antrim Philip McGuigan said he was horrified by the display of sectarian hatred.
"I am horrified at this development," he said, "and I am sure that this young man's family will also be horrified.
"I wonder how this was allowed to happen without political representatives or people with standing within the community taking steps to remove this flag."It speaks volumes about the problems that exist in this area."
Former mayor of Ballymena DUP councillor Tommy Nicholl who visited the McIlveen family home after the murder said he was disgusted
"I am disgusted, this is no way to behave and it is no way of showing loyalty to the crown given that at this time of the year we show loyalty to her majesty," he said.
"I condemn this unreservedly as will the majority of unionist people."This is not a time for standing and laughing on young people's graves.
"What we stand for and the unionist people stand for is civil and religious liberty for all and not just for the rights of unionists and protestants."
Copyright © 2006 Daily Ireland
Friday-Tuesday, 7-11 July, 2006
Sectarian Spectacle
By Irish Republican News
Hundreds of '11th night' bonfires were set alight by loyalists across the North last night as tensions mounted ahead of 'the Twelfth', a day when over 600 marches are staged by the Protestant Orange Order to mark a 17th century battle victory over Catholics.
Nationalists appealed for calm amid hopes that the violence witnessed last year at Ardoyne in north Belfast will not be repeated.
Despite Sunday's Drumcree parade passing off without incident, there are fears trouble could spark in Ardoyne and towns like Dunloy, where disputes linger over the handling of the Orange Order parades.
Republicans would do all in their power to ensure that the coming days passed off peacefully, Gerry Adams said last night.
"I would once again appeal to people over the coming days, in spite of provocation and in spite of the continuing insistence of the Orange Order to march in areas where they are clearly not welcome, to remain calm," he said.
"As in previous years republicans will do all in our power to ensure that the coming days pass off peacefully, but this is not the sole responsibility of republicans. The British government and the PSNI have a big responsibility. The Orange Order and unionist political leaders must play their part in ensuring that the violence traditionally associated with the Twelfth parades is averted this year."
The British Army will not be present on the streets of Belfast for the annual Twelfth demonstrations today for the first time since 1970, it has emerged, but will be on standby for any potential conflict.
Former Belfast lord mayor Alex Maskey said: "We have heard much from unionist politicians in recent days about the Twelfth being a celebration of Protestant culture.
"I would challenge them to tell the community in the Short Strand what is cultural about attacks on homes or cultural about the placing of republican heroes and icons on 11th night bonfires for drink and drug-fuelled unionist mobs to dance around."
DRUMCREE QUIET
One of the most low-key Orange Order parades at Drumcree since 1995 passed off without incident in Portadown on Sunday.
There was no British Army presence, while the 180 PSNI involved represented a significant drop on numbers of British forces present in previous years.
A single police helicopter flew overhead as the parade made its way to the church.
As Orangemen made their way to Drumcree Parish Church but were banned from the nationalist Garavghy Road, Breandan Mac Cionnaith, of the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition, said that the march which once sparked loyalist sieges, widespread roadblocks and rioting "should be allowed to rest in peace".
"The Orange Order applied for 2,000 members to parade to Drumcree but only 400 have turned up," he said.
"I think that tells the story."
In a reference to the Ulster Gaelic football final between Armagh and Donegal, Mr Mac Cionnaith said: "Most people have their focus on a different set of people dressed in orange elsewhere today."
Their spokesman, David Jones, insisted that the reduced size of the march was a return to the district parade of old and that they remained determined to secure a return parade through the Garvaghy Road.
Sinn Fein assembly member John O'Dowd was among a small number of nationalists who turned out to witness the Orangemen filing past on the uncontentious route to the church.
Mr O'Dowd said people were witnessing a return to normality.
"Drumcree in the sense of the tension of previous years is over," he said.
"The Orangemen are getting on with their business and the residents are getting on with theirs."
However, Portadown Orange district master Darryl Hewitt demanded the resignations after the parade was stopped for the ninth year running.
"Once again, we are disappointed by the negative determination from that unaccountable body, the Parades Commission," he said in an address on Drumcree Hill.
"This is even more the case when we remember both the public and indeed private utterances of the secretary of state [Peter Hain], who promised us in Portadown and the wider Orange family that this is a new commission with new ideas and a new urgency on parading.
"However, I have in my possession the same old 'no' determination from a 'No Parades Commission'.
"The call must go out today from this platform and indeed from Drumcree Hill for so-called Protestants who are members of the 'No Parades Commission' to back their culture, heritage and traditions or else do the honourable thing and resign from this biased, discriminatory anti-parading body."
DUNLOY ANGER
Meanwhile, the Parades Commission has been slammed after Orangemen are apparently going to be allowed to assemble but not march in the centre of the predominantly nationalist village of Dunloy.
The Parades Commission was described as a "laughing stock" after it issued the bizarre amendment to its original determination barring Orangemen from the contentious route. Instead, it has instructed Orangemen not to hold "a procession" on any part of the notified route.
Nationalists have said they believe this clears the way for a sectarian display with loyalist bands at any given point on the parade route.
"This is making the Parades Commission a laughing stock," said North Antrim Sinn Fein assembly member Philip McGuigan. "This altered determination is little more than capitulation to Ian Paisley.
"We have always said the way to successfully resolve this issue is through dialogue and, instead, Orangemen are rewarded for intransigence.
"What the Parades Commission has done here is say 'this march isn't to take place in Dunloy' but they can form up and play music for up to ten minutes. That's a joke.
A tense stand-off took place in Dunloy last year between nationalist residents and Orangemen during the town's annual July 12 Orange parade.
"The resolution of this issue lies in both dialogue and accommodation at local level," said McGuigan in a statement. "The Orange Order consistently refuses to engage in this process in Dunloy, a position which is replicated across the Six Counties. My hope is that the residents of Dunloy will enjoy a peaceful day this coming Wednesday without their village besieged by bigots in bowler hats."