"for God & Ulster" |
The Orange Order was founded in the town of Portadown, Ireland, in 1795, an offshoot of a Protestant terrorist group known as the Peep O'Day Boys, named for their practice of attacking Catholics at dawn. The Orange Order professed loyalty to the memory of the English Protestant king William of Orange, but its main activities were "wrecking," a term for the often fatal attacks on Catholics and the wanton destruction of their homes and businesses. This campaign of sectarian violence was so widespread that in 1795 a British Parliamentarian warned of a "general extermination" of Catholics in the Portadown area, and Parliament tried to ban the Protestant vigilantes several times during the nineteenth century. Since then, the Orange Order has acquired a degree of respectability. Today, many leaders in unionist politics and in the RUC are members of the Orange Order.
In the confusion of religion and politics that marks the loyal orders, the Drumcree Church's significance derives from the role it played in the founding ceremonies of the Orange Order. For nearly two centuries, the Orange Order marched home from its pilgrimages to Drumcree by way of Obins Street, at the edge of Portadown's Catholic enclave. In fact, the loyal orders paraded through Obins Street dozens of times each marching season, sometimes several times a day. Murders, beatings, and the "wrecking" of Catholic homes and businesses were routine. Catholics lived in a ghetto with two main streets: Obins Street, narrow and old, and Garvaghy Road, a wider and newer thoroughfare bisecting the eight housing estates where most of the town's 6000 Catholics now live. Catholics remain a vulnerable minority in Portadown's overall population of about 18,000.
The Orange Order first marched down Garvaghy Road in 1986, after Obins Street residents succeeded in moving Orange marches away from their front doors after decades of struggle. It is no small irony that many Catholics moved to Garvaghy Road to escape the regular attacks on Obins Street, only to have the parade rerouted into their haven. Garvaghy Road's first Orange march occurred on Easter Sunday in 1986, when several thousand marchers, led by Democratic Unionist Party extremist and MP Ian Paisley, descended on the community with RUC escort and engaged in an orgy of violence in the "wrecking" tradition. Residents have opposed the marches - and resisted them, often by non-violent means, always in the face of a brutal response by the security forces - ever since.
Nationalist residents who have attempted to mount peaceful protests against Orange Order marches have been beaten and forceably removed. Over two hundred people were injured in unprovoked assaults in 1996 and a similar number again on July 6 1997 on the Garvaghy Road alone. In Portadown, Catholics/Nationalists only feel secure within their own area. Over the years, many have been murdered by pro-British Loyalist death-squads. Jack McCabe, Felix Hughes, Eamon McMahon, Joey Weir, Martin McConville and Robert Hamill are all Catholics who have died horrific deaths at the hands of Loyalists in the area of the main commercial town centre alone. Many other Catholics have been severely assaulted and wounded in the same area while going about their normal everyday activities.
Robert Hamill was murdered by a lynch mob of up to thirty Loyalists while returning from a night out with two female relatives in April 1997. A major controversy still surrounds his brutal death as it was revealed that members of the RUC (police force) were present when the attack took place but refused to intervene to save his life, or later go to render medical attention, despite the cries and pleas of Robert's two cousins.
No-one was ever convicted of the murder of Robert Hamill.