HIGH COURT UPHOLDS BAN ON DRUMCREE ORANGE ORDER PARADE

The High Court ruled on Wednesday that Sir Chris Bryant acted lawfully when he banned the Orange Order’s Drumcree parade from Portadown’s Garvaghy Road. Mr Justice Scoffield dismissed a judicial review brought by a member of the Portadown Orange Lodge against the decision. He also rejected a claim that PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher had wrongly entered political matters by asking Bryant to intervene. Bryant imposed the ban on 9 October after talks with both sides failed to produce an agreement. The judge said the decision fell “within the margin of discretion properly afforded to him”.

The Parades Commission had approved a route along the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road for the first time in almost 30 years. Crowds gathered on the road to oppose the parade’s return. Police assessed that officers could not safely escort the march while the crowds remained. Orangemen stayed on Drumcree Hill for almost two weeks and repeatedly approached the police line to press their case. The route had been a focus of serious disorder and violence in the 1990s.

At a hearing in Belfast last week, the court considered the legal route Bryant used to prohibit the parade. Bryant’s counsel argued that he could have taken “no other decision” than to halt the march. The court also heard PSNI intelligence that dissidents might have mounted gun attacks on officers if police had cleared a path. Scoffield called the circumstances that required Bryant’s decision “highly regrettable”. His ruling also dismissed the challenge to Boutcher’s role in requesting the intervention.