The political compromise reached between Sinn Féin, the DUP, the PSNI and the British may well have been a lose-lose arrangement for all those involved, but it was undoubtedly a victory for the nationalist and republican community of the Garvaghy Road, once again ably led by the socialist stalwart, Breandán Mac Cionnaith. The people of the Garvaghy Road achieved the victory they deserved: the right to live in peace, free from sectarian intimidation
I haven't seen or spoken to Breandán since 2006, when he, Pat Doherty and I sat in Stormont Castle at a meeting with the then British Secretary of State about considerably more mundane matters. We were to part ways amicably soon afterwards, our lives taking different trajectories, and our paths have not crossed since. Judging by the events of recent weeks, he has lost none of his bite, his wit or his negotiating skills.
What happened at Drumcree over the past fortnight transported those of us old enough to remember back to darker times. Marching, counterprotesting, murder and mayhem. The terrible atmosphere of impending confrontation, the uncertainty, the sense that something dreadful might happen and that nobody was quite sure how to prevent it.
An air of doom and gloom descended over the North that is almost impossible to explain to those who did not experience the 1990s.
Those I spoke to, republicans, nationalists, unionists, loyalists and people who identify with none of those traditions, struggled to comprehend what was developing on a road in Portadown. In workplaces, tensions rose. Conversations were once again conducted in whispers. Parents found themselves trying to explain to their children why people were preparing to confront one another over the right to march through a community that did not want them there.
And then there was social media, a platform seemingly designed to give every maniac and extremist an audience, whipping up a frenzy on a scale that thankfully wasn't possible during the Drumcree confrontations of the 1990s.
There was one common denominator in almost every conversation I had over those two weeks. Nobody could adequately explain how we had arrived at a point where both the peace and the Stormont institutions appeared to be teetering on the edge of collapse.
The eventual intervention of the PSNI Chief Constable and the British Secretary of State probably saved both.
My own thoughts remain confused and contradictory. I am immensely relieved that the march did not proceed and that nobody was injured or killed. I am relieved for the people of the Garvaghy Road, who have endured more than enough, and for the wider community, which has no appetite for another descent into sectarianism.
But I am also conflicted and I make no apology for that. I have learned through experience that contradictory positions can coexist.
These are my thoughts, sometimes disjointed and occasionally at odds with one another, about what I think happened, why it happened and what it might tell us about the political settlement agreed in 1998.
I argued recently about the price republicans might have to pay to achieve a new Ireland. In doing so, I deliberately posed an uncomfortable question. Would we, for example, be prepared to concede an Orange march down the Garvaghy Road as part of the price of constitutional change?
It was not a rhetorical question. I genuinely believe that those of us advocating Irish unity must be prepared to confront the difficult compromises that any new constitutional arrangement will inevitably demand.
The answer to that particular question, however, is now a resolute no.
Not because I oppose the right of the Loyal Institutions to exist, to march or to celebrate their traditions. Nor because I believe Orange culture should have no place in the republic to which I aspire. Quite the opposite. Any new Ireland worthy of the name must provide space for British identity, unionist traditions and the cultural expressions of those who may never share my constitutional aspirations.
But there is a fundamental difference between accommodating a cultural tradition and allowing that tradition to be weaponised against another community.
Portadown Orange and elements of the DUP, in my view, deliberately utilised the Drumcree dispute to weaken the peace, which I wholeheartedly support, and threaten the collapse of Stormont, about which I couldn't care tuppence.
I fundamentally disagree with Pádraic Mac Coitir's analysis of Drumcree 2026 as the Orange State once again flexing its muscles. I found that interpretation inherently sectarian, not least because it reduces what ought to be a republican analysis to the very British analysis of an immutable struggle between two divided communities. Whatever the nature of those divisions, they were, are and will continue to be, in the words of the 1916 Proclamation, "carefully fostered by an alien Government."
Irrespective of one's view of the peace process, the progress achieved since 1998 cannot be denied. The Orange State is gone. It died in Garvaghy, Ormeau, Derry and Ardoyne etc. And despite the protestations of people like Carla and Jamie, it is not coming back. The PSNI is not the RUC, and in Jon Boutcher it has a straight-talking Chief Constable who, in my view, has demonstrated a willingness to resist political pressure and insist that policing decisions are made on operational rather than political grounds.
What we witnessed this year was not the Orange State reasserting its authority but recalcitrant elements of loyalism attempting to destabilise a political settlement they have never accepted.
It was the British state and the PSNI that intervened to impose the solution, frustrating the demands of Portadown Orange while simultaneously getting both the DUP and Sinn Féin off the hook. That is hardly the behaviour of the Orange State of old.
That does not make the British state a benign actor. Nor does it absolve it of its historical responsibilities. But it does require us to recognise that the political structures, relationships and balance of power have shifted in the North. To pretend otherwise is not radical analysis. It is political nostalgia masquerading as republicanism.
But that leads me to what I believe is the real lesson of Drumcree 2026. The peace process, as I understand it and refer to it, has ultimately failed.
By the peace process, I do not mean what Sinn Féin or the British government generally refer to when they invoke the term, which is largely synonymous with the ending of the armed conflict and the preservation of the political institutions established in 1998.
Nor do I mean that Stormont is synonymous with peace. The institutions are a political arrangement, a means of managing competing constitutional aspirations within a deeply divided society.
When I speak of peace, I mean something considerably more ambitious, the creation of a genuinely pluralist, a-sectarian society in which political allegiance, religious background and cultural identity no longer determine how people relate to one another, where difference is neither feared nor merely tolerated, but accepted as an ordinary and unremarkable feature of our shared existence.
Yet almost three decades later, we remain a society in which those divisions can be exploited to mobilise with frightening ease. The speed with which Sinn Féin reverted to its 1990s form was particularly disturbing. Almost instinctively, the familiar mobilisation, rhetoric and political choreography re-emerged, as though the party bore no responsibility for, or ownership of, the very institutions that had helped create this mess.
I have my own suspicions that Sinn Féin's mobilisation was motivated by something other than simply defending the rights of the Garvaghy Road community. Drumcree presented non-constitutional republicans with a gilt-edged opportunity to reclaim political ground, an opportunity Sinn Féin could hardly afford to surrender. Those who reject its constitutional strategy appeared, for perhaps the first time in years, to coalesce around a common cause.
In that context, Sinn Féin's mobilisation served a dual purpose, the public appearance of the defence of the Garvaghy Road community, while simultaneously ensuring that any republican response remained firmly within the boundaries of the constitutional political settlement in which Sinn Féin has invested so heavily.
Sinn Féin mobilised to police the peace and defend Stormont.
One figure who, in my view, emerged from Drumcree 2026 with her political credibility considerably enhanced was Claire Hanna. At a time when Sinn Féin was shamelessly invoking the spirit of John Hume to justify its own actions, Hanna demonstrated the qualities I would expect from someone leading constitutional nationalism in the North. Intelligent, articulate and measured, she resisted the temptation to escalate the confrontation for political advantage, choosing instead an approach more consistent with the politics of dialogue and reconciliation that Hume himself championed. For me, Hanna emerged as a leading voice of constitutional nationalism, irrespective of her party's electoral fortunes.
If we are to rebuild and repair the relationships that Breandán Mac Cionnaith humbly spoke of following the British decision to ban the parade, then it is people like Claire Hanna who should be at the centre of that conversation. Genuine reconciliation cannot be achieved by continually retreating into the communal divisions we claim to want to overcome. Nor can it be achieved by simply managing the antagonisms that have divided us for generations. It requires real political leadership that is prepared to move beyond the sectarian trenches.
Perhaps that is what Drumcree 2026 has exposed more clearly than anything else. We have become so accustomed to measuring the success of the peace process by the survival of Stormont that we have neglected to ask whether those institutions have delivered any change.
The people of the Garvaghy Road have secured their right to live in peace. That is something to celebrate without reservation. But the crisis that engulfed them should leave the rest of us considerably less comfortable because for all the political choreography, the peace remains unfinished.
⏩Muiris Ó Súilleabháin was a member of the Republican Movement until he retired in 2006 after 20 years of service. Fiche bhliain ag fás.
