Drumcree protest losing support
A few hundred Orangemen and protesters were all that were left at
Drumcree Church in Portadown on Wednesday morning 15 July. The
call by some senior Orangemen and their chaplains for the order
to end its siege of the residents in the Garvaghy Road seems to
have been heeded by most of the Order's members.
Their call came within hours of the brutal murder of the Quinn
brothers in Ballymoney. Up until then the order had been
gathering nightly in their tens of thousands with other loyalist
protesters to attack the crown forces at the barricade with guns
and blast bombs, and terrorise the people of the nationalist
Garvaghy estate.
This attack of human decency has not afflicted all of the
brethren and a split has developed within the Order. This was
best illustrated on Monday 13 July when the ultra-orange Joel
Patton heckled the Order's Armagh chaplain William Bingham in
Pomeroy. His invective led to scuffles between his supporters and
those of the Rev Bingham.
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