Hundreds of protesters blocked a road in Portadown, County Armagh on Sunday, preventing a contentious Orange Order march from taking place.
The Drumcree parade, which in the 1990s sparked some of the most serious disorder in Northern Ireland’s history, was due to go ahead for the first time in 30 years following a series of late legal challenges.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill joined the protesters, while members of the Orange Order and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) politicians gathered about a mile away, waiting for the road to clear.
Most of the protesters have since dispersed, but some members of the Orange Order remain.
Breandán Mac Cionnaith, from the Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition (GRRC) which was protesting the march, said: “We said they weren’t getting down and we stopped them getting down.”
Addressing protesters as they cleared the area on Sunday night, he said their goal now was to “make sure we stop them permanently”.
Mac Cionnaith added that they will meet the chief constable and the Northern Ireland secretary on Monday, where he will tell them “we’ve no intention of ever going back”.
He also asked some residents to remain on the streets, saying he thinks the stand-off is going to “drag on for a while”.
Late on Sunday night, the Orange Order’s Portadown deputy district master said he was “disappointed and frustrated” by what he called a lack of a “proper policing plan” to allow the march to go ahead.
He insisted the Order would “complete our 1998 parade, which we set out this morning to do”.
