Drumcree's script is now all but carved in stone, writes Patsy McGarry, Religious Affairs Correspondent.
In the past "the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone" symbolised the integrity of the Northern quarrel. Now there's Drumcree. An event as much as a place, "Drumcree Nine" takes place next Sunday.
Weekend reports that the parade would go down the Garvaghy Road this year were as risible as they were baseless.Those familiar with the personalities and issues involved know certain basics about Drumcree. The impasse there will never be solved at the 11th hour when both communities are the focus of international attention. Neither wants to be seen to blink first.
Nor will it be solved until the Portadown Orangemen walk down the Garvaghy Road, something they hold to as fast as barnacle to rock. For them it is a right established by tradition since the early 19th century. Nor will they be assuaged by a late summertime walk down the Garvaghy Road.
They will not be persuaded until they can parade their traditional route on the first Sunday in July as before. And, frankly, they are right. Because the Garvaghy area was nothing but fields until the 1960s. Such is the integrity of their position.
Nor for that matter will the Garvaghy residents budge in opposing the march until they are spoken to by the Orangemen. For most of them it is almost immaterial whether the march goes down or not. But it will be with their assent. Not despite it. They too are right. They live there and will not be persuaded until the Orangemen acknowledge their dignity as a community by talking to them. Such is the integrity of their position.
Reports such as those at the weekend are now as much part of the annual Drumcree ritual as walking down the hill and back up again. They set off a flurry of expectation which is then dashed, setting off much greater anger when the Parades Commission says no - or yes - than would have been the case.
It said no on Monday, as expected by those familiar with the issues and personalities involved. So this year the Portadown Orangemen will parade to the bottom of the hill and back again, thugs will throw stones, and the Church of Ireland will wring its hands in anguished embarrassment. All as predictable as rain in an Irish summer.
The only variable is the degree of violence and its duration. Violence has been part of every Drumcree since that first one in 1995. But the event is a shadow of its old self. Last year about 1,000 took part. Still, every Sunday throughout the year Portadown Orangemen attend service at Drumcree church and go to the bottom of the hill to be stopped from going further. Such is the integrity of their conviction.
We can only hope that next Sunday Portadown District leaders will behave better than they did last year. Their words fuelled a riot, then they were gone. In talks prior to that debacle, the Portadown leadership won the confidence of security chiefs. So instead of the usual enormous concrete-filled steel -grey barricade at the foot of the hill, there was a comparatively flimsy seven-foot-high barrier.
When Portadown District secretary Nigel Dawson made the usual protest at being stopped, he said he was pleased it was received by Assistant Chief Constable Stephen White and not an ordinary police inspector as happened in 2001.
This "softening" was agreed as a way of preventing violence, but almost from the beginning it was mocked. While Orangemen attended the church service, supporters at the "virtual" barrier below tested its pliability. Many were drunk. When the march arrived and Assistant Chief Constable White came forward to receive Mr Dawson's protest he was showered with spit, as protesters pulled at the barrier and threatened camera crews.
Into this heady brew Portadown leaders lobbed incendiary words, in speeches at the barrier. Deputy District Master David Burrows compared attitudes on the Garvaghy Road to "the same sort of paranoid fascism that saw Nazis imprisoning Polish Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during the war ... the same sort of paranoid fascism that made the apartheid regime confine the blacks to the shanty towns".
Nigel Dawson was pithy. "We saw off Mo Mowlam. We saw off Peter Mandelson. And we will see off John Reid. Here we stand, we can do no other," he said. District Master Harold Gracey lambasted Brendán MacCionnaith (of the Garvaghy Residents), Bríd Rodgers of the SDLP, and clergy not sympathetic to the Orange Order. All then sang God Save the Queen and it was as if someone called out "... let the rioting begin".
As it did, the Portadown leaders headed back up the hill, public-address system in tow. Not once did they appeal to the rioters - many of them Orangemen and women wearing sashes - to stop, as rocks were hurled at police trapped between rioters and soldiers trying to get the original barricade into place. Some 24 police officers were injured, and nine were hospitalised. Three rubber bullets were fired.
None of the Portadown District's 24 stewards intervened, nor did any of the select vestry at Drumcree church, most of them members of Portadown Lodge. In the graveyard stood a perplexed rector of Drumcree. In his sermon, Rev Pickering had spoken of his belief that through the power of Christ "Drumcree can become a symbol of healing and agreement." Such is the integrity of his faith.
Would that there were less integrity at Drumcree!