Parades Commission members under pressure to stand down
Northern Ireland Parades Commission chief Roger Poole and its Protestant members today faced calls for them to stand down after Orangemen were banned from marching in a nationalist area.
Portadown District Master Darryl Hewitt demanded the resignations after around 400 Orangemen were, for the ninth time running, blocked from returning from a church service in Drumcree through the nationalist Garvaghy Road.
He told the marchers: “Once again we are disappointed by the negative determination from that unaccountable body, the Parades Commission.
“This is even more the case when we remember both the public and indeed private utterances of the Secretary of State (for Northern Ireland, 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.”
