The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has strongly supported the Garvaghy Road residents, and has urged the Portadown Orangemen to enter into dialogue with them. He said there could be "no backing down in the face of pressure and threats from the massed ranks of Orangeism".
At a press conference in west Belfast yesterday, Mr Adams said Sinn Fein supported the right of loyal orders to march. Of the more than 3,000 such marches every year, nationalists found fewer than 1 per cent "intolerable. In these cases, Sinn Fein supports the residents in the host communities. No march should enter any areas where they are not wanted. This is not an issue of conflicting rights, it is an issue of equality, an issue of civil rights."
The Sinn Fein leader said his party was for "a voluntary accommodation of all contentious parades. The Orangemen refuse to talk. They refuse to accept the rights of nationalists to be consulted or for them to choose their own representatives.
"In other words they refuse to come to terms with the reality that if there is to be truly a new era then no group has the right to dominate another. I accept that this is a very difficult concept for unionism and all of Orangeism to embrace at this time."
While acknowledging that the Orange Order had "many decent people in it", Mr Adams said it was a "sectarian, anti-Catholic organisation" which had "chosen the marches issue as the battlefield on which it intends to rally all those elements who are against equality and change".
He noted that the hardline Orange leader Mr Joel Patton had said, "they have given us an issue around which unionists can rally". He was surprised that Mr Patton had "spelt it out in such clear terms, in other words, it's part of the battle within unionism".
While again acknowledging Mr Trimble's difficulties, Mr Adams said the Ulster Unionist leader's position as First Minister "compels him to take a non-partisan position on these matters and a pro-active role in seeking their resolution. He cannot refuse to talk." He refused to be drawn on whether he was specifically calling on Mr Trimble to talk to the Garvaghy Road residents.
"Only last week the representatives of all the political parties in this state, including many Orange leaders, were present in the inaugural meeting of the shadow Assembly. Unionists, including Orange members, sit in local government with representatives of all the other parties and do business with them. The same thing must happen now if a voluntary accommodation is to be found to the current crisis.
"The current difficult phase must be managed calmly and with an eye to the future. We must come down on the right side of history and the right side of history is the side of change. We cannot expect those who fear change to come on board until they know that they cannot stop it."