For nearly three decades this dispute sat quiet. The Parades Commission kept the same restriction year after year. People on both sides got on with it. The annual stand-off became a ritual, not a riot.
Then the Commission’s process is exposed in court, Portadown District puts in a limited application — 60 men, no band, 27 September — and suddenly Sinn Féin is everywhere.
Michelle O’Neill on the road talking about “anxious residents” and “dark days.”
Republican councillors declaring any parade “off the table.”
The party wrapping itself around people they barely mentioned for a generation.
That’s not solidarity. That’s relevance.
They haven’t spent 28 years standing with Garvaghy Road families through the quiet years. The minute the old wound is useful again, they’re back out of the woodwork treating it like 1998.
Let’s be honest about who is opening said old wounds.
The Orange Order is going through the legal process. Loyalist groups have said there will be no street violence. The people talking up confrontation, ruling out talks, and treating a court outcome as a sectarian insult are nationalist politicians who need a grievance more than they need a settlement.
If Sinn Féin had stood with Garvaghy Road residents every year for 28 years, we’d have heard it.
We didn’t.
They turned up when the cameras did.
28 years of relative peace on this issue didn’t happen by accident. Don’t let sinn fein politicians burn it for a few headlines.
No Surrender!
