Methodist Church: annual conference: The new president of the Methodist Church in Ireland, the Rev Jim Rea, has pleaded with the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland to allow Portadown Orangemen to get into direct dialogue with the Parades Commission so that they could negotiate on Drumcree.
The annual parade there is to take place on Sunday July 6th and talks are understood to be taking place behind the scenes to see if the issue can be resolved.
Mr Rea, who is a minister in Portadown, said he hoped that if the march down the Garvaghy Road was banned this year, the Orangemen would stage a peaceful protest before returning home. Last year some of the worst violence ever seen at Drumcree occurred when the Orangemen were blocked by police.
He felt the Orangemen would agree there was no purpose to be gained by their parading along the Garvaghy Road while being flanked on both sides by a British army regiment. They would want to do so peacefully and that could only happen when there was goodwill on both sides. He believed that day would come, he said.
He refused to condemn either side, saying that was simply unhelpful, particularly where mediation was concerned. The situation was about "two groups of hurt people hurting each other". What was necessary was that both came to a real common understanding of each other, he said.
He criticised the lack of investment in the town, which he saw as a result of its profile as a very divided community, something he strongly disputed. He said that, apart from July, people from both communities lived together peacefully, did business together, had regular contact, and regarded each other with high esteem.
He objected to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams' description of Portadown as "the Alabama of the North". In contrast to Belfast, where people would not cross various so-called peace lines, in Portadown there were no such lines, Mr Rea said. Among the Orange leadership in the town there was now "a very strong personal desire that the protest would be peaceful", he said.
Mr Rea was born in north Belfast in 1945 and served in east Belfast for over 20 years. He was one of a group of Protestant clergy who took part in private talks with Sinn Féin in the early 1990s. He remembered, frankly, his feelings of "hatred and resentment" towards the men he was going to meet. They met, they talked, and to his surprise he found he actually liked them. "They are human beings just like me, made in the image of God," he said.
