Callous political point-scoring as Hillsborough working group on parades prepares report

national | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Tuesday February 23, 2010 12:34 by orangecitadel - none

Does the SDLP's Dolores Kelly fear something that her constituents do not?

Recent media reports have cited Dolores Kelly, the SDLP Assembly representative for the Upper Bann constituency (and the Garvaghy Road) as having claimed that people were ‘very frightened and anxious that a parade down the Garvaghy Road is a price Sinn Féin is prepared to pay for the devolution of policing and justice’. What does Dolores know?

It would appear that Mrs Kelly is willing to score some political points at the expense of creating even more anxiety amongst those of her constituents who are most affected by Orange sectarianism. However, this kind of political opportunism is not new in the SDLPs response to the parading issue.
For many years the Orange Order and the RUC explained all opposition to triumphal demonstrations of sectarian supremacy in Nationalist areas of N. Ireland as being the work of ‘subversive’ elements and Sinn Féin.
They argued that, before the advent of ‘Sinn Féin/IRA’ residents’ committees, Orange parades gave offense to no-one.
This kind of propaganda was repeated in official Orange publications. For example, in The Order on Parade residents living along parade routes advised not to ‘go out of their way to be offended’. That advice was echoed by David Trimble when he advised residents to draw their blinds as the Orangemen marched through with their thundering war-drums rattling their windowpanes and nerves. Trimble wasn’t the only one to offer such advice. During the Obins Street campaign of the 1980s I heard the SDLPs Seamus Mallon offering the very same advice to a group of residents, one of whom recorded his advice on a video camera. So it comes as no surprise that some SDLP members still prefer to side with Orange responses to the two hundred year old campaign against sectarian domination in Portadown.

If Mrs Kelly was as close to the people as she should be, she would not be issuing such divisive and worrying statements. And if she bothered to read the residents groups’ submission to the working party on parades that was set up under the Hillsborough Agreement, Mrs Kelly would know that they expressed no concerns about Sinn Féin. What they did say was that they:

fully support the North Report’s concept of a ‘Parades Commission’-type body – but we also insist that such a body must be one which is completely independent and free from political interference at all levels, commencing with the appointments process itself; one that is open, fair and transparent in its dealings with everyone; and one which has widespread acceptance of its effectiveness and impartiality.

If Mrs Kelly would care to read that submission and learn something about the price that her constituents have paid for devolution and justice she can do so at http://orangecitadel.blogspot.com/