Orange Order parade passes Ardoyne shops

An Orange Order parade has passed a nationalist neighbourhood in north Belfast despite objections from local residents.

This morning's parade past the Ardoyne shops on Crumlin Road was permitted by the Parades Commission, but several restrictions have been applied.

The application for the event at the once volatile parading flashpoint came after a deal between Orange lodges and nationalist residents broke down earlier in the summer.

The parade involving three lodges has been organised to mark Orange Heritage Week. It will begin in the unionist Woodvale area and proceed from the junction of Woodvale Parade and Woodvale Road along the Crumlin Road and will end at Ligoniel Orange Hall.

Some 150 participants, including one band, took part in the parade, which began at 9am.

The Parades Commission has ruled that no music or drumbeats can be played as the parade passes the contentious section of the route.

The Crumlin and Ardoyne Residents Association (Cara) has applied to hold a protest. Another nationalist residents' group - The Greater Ardoyne Residents' Collective (Garc) - has not applied to stage a demonstration.

As part of the 2016 deal between the lodges and Cara, outward parades were able to proceed along the road passing the Ardoyne shops on the morning of July 12 each year, but without return parades to the Orange Hall in the evening.

A total of five morning parades each year were agreed as part of the deal.

Cara claims todays parade is effectively a return parade to the Ligoniel Orange Hall and is outside the terms of the 2016 agreement. However, the lodges insist the parade is not a breach of the 2016 accord.

The Parades Commission, which is the government-appointed adjudication panel for controversial marches, said its ruling to permit the parade was a "carefully considered and finely balanced judgment" and represented a "fair balance between the needs of the community and the rights of the individual".

The area has previously witnessed serious loyalist and republican rioting when tensions linked to parading boiled over on the main date in the loyal order calendar - the Twelfth of July.

A 24/7 loyalist protest camp was set up at the sectarian interface in 2013 when the Parades Commission prevented Orangemen belonging to the three Orange lodges from passing the Ardoyne as they returned from traditional Twelfth commemorations.

Nightly protests were held in the nearby unionist Woodvale/Twaddell area in the years after that, with a protest parade every Saturday.

The policing operation at the site cost in excess of £20 million over three years.

After protracted negotiations, an accord between the three lodges and Cara was reached in 2016.

It saw the Orangemen complete the outstanding return leg of their 2013 parade on a morning in September 2016, after which the loyalist camp at the interface was dismantled and all associated protests ended.

From that point on, the lodges agreed not to apply for any more return parades on the Twelfth until a wider agreement on the issue was reached.

In return, Cara agreed not to protest at the lodges' already permitted outward parade on the morning of the Twelfth.

That deal fell apart in the summer, with Orangemen bemoaning what they characterised as a lack of progress towards achieving a long-term agreement that would enable evening parades on the Twelfth.

Orangemen subsequently applied to the Parades Commission for permission to parade past Ardoyne on the evening of the Twelfth this year. The application was turned down.

At the time Cara accused the lodges of jeopardising the "peace and normality" that had returned to the area since 2016.