Marching season has left a grim legacy that does not augur well

LITTLE comfort or relief may be taken from the fact that Derry, after a huge build up of tension and trepidation, did not erupt in major conflagration of Saturday.

It has not been a good weekend in terms of community relations. The killing fields of north Belfast have notched up yet another sectarian murder. The Apprentice Boys and the other loyal orders are mutinous and full of unsatiated anger and hatred. And there has been a huge new focusing of pressure and threat against a number of small, mainly Catholic, rural villages like Dunloy and Bellaghy.

Nothing liars been resolved and a number of acute new issues have been created which will fuel ongoing fires of aggression and sectarianism. However, the Apprentice Boys of Derry proved they could talk to a local residents group, including a republican former prisoner, without turning green or being struck by a thunderbolt.

This series of contacts was perhaps the only positive precedent set during the week. Its significance can be overstated - it was a meeting, but not a meeting of minds, and it was ultimately unproductive. Like the political talks now adjourned at Stormont, it will take a much longer test to determine whether it can be built upon to gold effect.

The relief that can be derived from the passing of this weekend is that the marching season is finally to a close. It has left, however, a grim legacy of bitterness and division that does not augur well for the multi party peace talks due to resume in September.

The mood in both communities is more polarised than at any time in recent years and it is difficult to see how that deep chasm of distrust and suspicion can be bridged.

The independent review of parades and marches announced by the British government has clearly been handed a task which is not only central and vital, but also time limited. To enter another marching season without a resolute and clear plan of action on the parades controversy would be irresponsibility on a level exceeding the description of extreme folly.

At the end of previous turbulent marching seasons, of course, politicians have done just that simply swept the issue under the table and hoped that, somehow, it would not reemerge. The very existence of an active review body will at least keep the issue on the agenda during the quieter months of winter and compel politicians to address it before the beginning of next year's parades.

But whatever adjudication formula the review body comes up with is unlikely to heal any community divisions. On the contrary, it is likely, by definition, to cause dissatisfaction on all sides. And if the formula is to have any worth, the political establishment ruling Britain at the time (whether Labour or Tory) will have to demonstrate a firm commitment to implement it. The only real opportunity to heal the communal psychological scars lies with the local politicians, and the forum available to them to begin, that is, the Stormont talks process. The protracted wrangling and political games playing that went one in the first six weeks of that process are not conducive to much faith or future hope for that arena. Undoubtedly, the tardiness and lack of progress there affected the general climate for this year's marching season with disastrous results.

The stark reality is that, just as the political talks have so far failed (to address seriously any of the core political issues in Northern society, so the marching season is ending without any of the basic issues concerning contentious parades or their handling having been clarified or resolved.

A link, however, between the major urban parade events such as July 12th in Belfast and August 10th in Derry, and the associated torment and trouble visited upon small rural centres such as Dunloy, Bellaghy, Derriaghy, Roslea and Newtownbutler has been proven most dramatically.

The stand off at Dunloy on Saturday evening, when hundreds of outside Apprentice Boys groups joined the local group and put the village virtually under siege for four hours, has simply shown how the parades issue can shift and refocus and intensify anywhere and unpredictably.

At Dunloy, the RUC stood up to the besieging Apprentice Boys and eventually drove them away. But the problem will inevitably resurface and concentrate on some other nationalist town or village in a vicious circle that seems endless.

It is apparent that the small nationalist communities will not meekly allow the old arrangements to be restored - whereby any number of Orange parades assumed the right to march through the villages and towns every year. So the potential for a Drumcree type stand off is present at multiple locations.

What happens at any of these small locations can spark more extensive trouble within hours in Derry or Belfast as the news spreads. The argument for a centralised negotiation and settlement deal appears not only more persuasive after this year's marching season, but in fact may be the only way to resolve such a complex and interwoven problem.

The message for the independent review body is an obvious one. It must not set out just to adjudicate impartially and to impose a solution, but it must succeed in drawing the various interests into a network of negotiations on local conditions - perhaps by providing these negotiations with a set of core principles to be observed in working out a compromise.

It is, nonetheless, a depressing reality that, even if the huge task of constructing agreement on parades can be achieved before next summer, the underlying political issues of which the marching problems are just a symptom all still remain to be addressed.