THE Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, said if the Portadown Orangemen had not marched down the Garvaghy Road it would have been the equivalent of accepting that they had been driven out of part of their town.
Noting that Orangemen had been taking that route for the past 190 years, he went on: "You have to ask yourself why is it that in the last three years a determined attempt has been made to attack them, which Portadown Orangemen see as being similar to the determined efforts that have been made to drive Protestants out of the Garvaghy Road area."
Mr Trimble said that area had originally been Protestant and the Protestants had been "driven out of it. For the Orange Order to stop going down there is equivalent to saying 'Yes, we have been driven out.' But their attitude is that they're not doing to be driven out of what is part of their own town."
The UK Unionist Party leader, Mr Robert McCartney, said Garvaghy Road was a "set-piece". "When the Provisional IRA declared the fraudulent ceasefire in August 1994, it was necessary to open a second front to bring about community confrontation. That was directed towards confronting traditional parades.
"Gerry Adams has stated publicly that nationalists were not to think that this anti-parades demonstration happened spontaneously. It was years of work by Sinn Fein activists," he said.
Mr McCartney repeated his earlier criticism of the Orange Order for walking into an IRA trap. "I said it was a tenth-rate general who would allow his opponent to pick the ground upon which a battle was to take place in circumstances where he knew what his, opponent's actions were to be."
He said the Garvaghy Road dispute was about "territory - about marking that part of Northern Ireland as a 'no go' area. This is effectively about setting up a 'de facto' section of the Republic of Ireland in Northern Ireland. The symbols of it - the Tricolours on every lamp-post - are there the length of the Garvaghy Road."
Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party said: "The problem is that we are a divided society. That's evident. We are also foolish enough to begin to class roadways and laneways as pieces of sovereignty and that's a nonsense in this country. And I think on both sides there has been manipulation by people who have not our best interests at heart.
"But we have got over two Drumcrees. We have to get over this one. Next year there will be a Parades Commission which will be backed up by legislation that will change the circumstances of how we deal with these very contentious issues. But they are merely the symptom of a much deeper underlying problem and that is how do we learn to peacefully coexist in this society."
An Alliance spokesman, Mr Philip McGarry, called on Dr Mowlam to spell out the precise reasons for her decision. "If the decision was taken because of a specific threat from loyalist paramilitaries then we must be told of the exact nature of the threat .. . and the reasons why the government felt the need to give into it."
The Deputy Grand Master of the Orange Order, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, contrasted the "dignified manner" in which the Portadown Orangemen had marched down the Garvaghy Road with the "violence of the residents".
"I think the people of Northern Ireland are entitled to ask: 'What is it these residents want?' They have threatened violence and they have used violence as a means of denying people their civil rights.
"In response to that I believe the Orange Order has acted responsibly. They made it clear last Thursday before the Chief Constable's decision was announced that whatever his decision was they would act in a peaceful and lawful manner. They have done, that."