I’ve apparently committed the cardinal sin this week. I questioned the story the world is being told about Garvaghy Road.
For that: sectarian, bigot, hateful, fascist, Nazi, murderer, uneducated and threats.
Meanwhile: “OUR ROAD.” “NO ORANGE FEET.” “CATHOLIC AREA.”
So before throwing another insult or shouting another slogan, pick up a history book instead of a propaganda leaflet.
Because if you’re going to claim ownership of a road, erase an entire community from its past and call anyone who challenges you a bigot, sectarian, fascist or whatever other names you drag up, you’d better be damn sure history backs you up.
It doesn’t.
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The Portadown District Orange parade to Drumcree dates back more than 200 years. Garvaghy Road was largely countryside fields and rose-growing land.
The route existed before the estates did.
The Orange Order didn’t invent a route through an established Catholic housing estate. The housing came later.
During the 1950s and 60s new housing was built around Garvaghy Road, with Catholic families from areas including Obins Street and the Tunnel rehoused there.
Then came the Troubles and increasing segregation. Catholics were displaced. Protestants were displaced.
Here’s the part missing from “OUR AREA”. “OUR ROAD”.
PROTESTANTS LIVED THERE TOO. Within living memory.
Paul Beattie, a Protestant 19 year old murdered in 1972 off Churchill Park on Garvaghy Road, shot dead by Irish republican terrorists.
Roy Rutherford, a Protestant 33 year old murdered in 1973 by an IRA booby-trap bomb on Moy Road.
Edward Clayton, a Protestant 27 year old murdered in 1975 by a booby-trap bomb attached to his car planted by Irish republican terrorists near his Portadown home.
Robert McNally, a Protestant 20 year old murdered in 1979 by an INLA booby-trap bomb attached to his car.
John Truckle, a Protestant 61 year old murdered in 1983 by an IRA booby-trap bomb attached to his car outside his Woodside Hill home.
Five names worth remembering when “murderers” is being thrown around.
Then Wendy Reid (Protestant). She lived in Garvaghy Park for 14 years before saying she was intimidated out around 1980. She moved to Woodside Green.
Sixteen years later she left again after the RUC warned of a threat to burn her house down.
As we arrive into 1981 I have to introduce the present day spokesperson and face for Garvaghy Road residents, Breandán Mac Cionnaith known then as Brendan McKenna.
In 1981 he was involved in a Provisional IRA operation to bomb the Royal British Legion hall in Portadown. A Churchill Park family was held hostage, their car taken and used in the bombing.
McKenna was convicted and imprisoned for offences connected with the operation. That’s recorded in the official Rosemary Nelson Inquiry.
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Garvaghy Road was still described as having Catholic and Protestant housing. Not exclusively nationalist.
Catholic and Protestant.
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There were still 103 Protestant families living at the bottom of Garvaghy Road.
One Protestant woman described smashed windows, kicked doors and children unable to play safely in the park. She described a six-year-old Protestant boy being surrounded by Catholic teenagers, questioned about his religion and then urinated on.
Her response: “I’m not going to be driven out.”
Ivor Young, who helped establish Portadown’s Concerned Protestants Committee, said many Protestants already had been driven out through nationalist intimidation and their experiences were being ignored.
A Catholic resident in the same report disputed that, saying Protestants weren’t being driven out; when they left, they were simply replaced by Catholics. What does driven out and intimidation look like to you?
Both accounts were being made in 1997.
That same year David Trimble told the House of Commons that, following Brendan McKenna’s election, a nationalist election cortege repeatedly travelled through the Protestant Garvaghy Road/Park Road area at around 2am.
According to Trimble, residents were threatened: “YOU WILL BE BURNT OUT BEFORE JULY.”
Shortly after these threats from McKenna’s election cortège, attacks on homes followed.
For accuracy: that is Trimble’s allegation recorded in Hansard. It does not prove who personally made the threat other than McKenna’s cortège.
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A Protestant woman told the Irish Times she had lived for years in Churchill Park on Garvaghy Road but her family “had to leave because of attacks by Catholics.”
She wasn’t named. That doesn’t erase her or her story.
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Protestant families in King Street and Whitten Close, immediately off Garvaghy Road, reported repeated sectarian attacks.
One reported incident involved allegations of 30 to 40 nationalist youths throwing stones and bottles at Protestant homes. Residents said they believed they were being driven out.
And that’s the part of this history that matters now.
Somewhere between a road where Catholics and Protestants lived, more than 100 Protestant families were still living in 1997, and the Garvaghy Road of today, something changed.
Today the nationalist stretch is overwhelmingly Catholic. In parts, Protestants are reduced to a tiny minority if at all, sometimes only a handful in the local census area.
No, that doesn’t prove every Protestant who left was intimidated out. But don’t insult people’s intelligence by pretending the rest of the history therefore disappears. Again I ask what does intimidation and being driven out look like to you.
We have Protestant residents saying they were intimidated. Families saying attacks forced them out. Others saying they believed they were being driven out. Irish Republican killings in and around this community. A Churchill Park family held hostage during a PIRA operation. And 103 Protestant families still there in 1997.
Then look at the language today:
“OUR AREA.” OUR ROAD.” “NO ORANGE FEET.”
That’s the bit I refuse to swallow.
When exactly did a shared public road become the property of one community?
When did the people who lived there before cease to count? When did changing demographics become ownership? And when did excluding the identity of the community that once lived there become acceptable language from people simultaneously lecturing everyone else about sectarianism?
Because the road didn’t move. The population did.
The history didn’t disappear. The Protestant population largely did.
Whatever arguments people want to have about why, the historical record above means nobody gets to pretend they were never there. And don’t turn this into whataboutery, if you insist on distorting history for propaganda then you must answer for Garvaghy Road, if you resort to whataboutery, you’ve proven yourself to have no answer.
That is what makes “OUR ROAD” so revealing. That is what makes “NO ORANGE FEET” so ugly. And that is what makes what we’re watching in 2026 impossible to separate from what came before.
Sinn Féin, the SDLP and PBP called on people from across Ireland to come to Garvaghy Road. People answered.
The PSNI subsequently described the obstruction as an “unnotified and therefore illegal protest” and warned that evidence gathering could result in criminal justice consequences.
Their words. Their assessment. Not mine. Saying the word peaceful before protest does not suddenly make it lawful.
Men with documented IRA histories have been prominent around the dispute all week. Paraded proudly and revered by all those in attendance while simultaneously telling people residents were living in fear. They aren’t scared to stand with IRA terrorists though, and just to entertain the bussed in crowds, bands sang pro-IRA songs while the crowd joined in.
Yet thirty-five Orangemen peacefully walking along that public road in silence are presented as intolerable.
“NO ORANGE FEET” - but pro-IRA songs.
If Orange identity is so offensive that 35 men cannot peacefully walk along a public road in silence, explain how pro-IRA songs on that road fit with opposition to sectarianism.
And if it’s historically “OUR AREA.” “OUR ROAD”, explain the Protestants who lived there.
You can’t edit them out because they wreck the slogan. You can’t erase republican violence either.
Which brings us straight back to the words being spat at everyone else:
Sectarian. Bigot. Hateful. Murderer. Fascist. Nazi.
I’m not repeating the history. It’s above.
If you’re having difficulty with those words after reading it, go back and read it again.
So from this point on, ignorance is no excuse.
If, knowing that history, you still erase the Protestants who lived there, shout “OUR ROAD” and “NO ORANGE FEET”, then stand listening to songs glorifying the IRA while calling everyone else sectarian, hateful and bigoted, you’ve answered the question yourself.
You don’t hate sectarianism. You thrive in it.