UP to 500 members of the Ulster Unionist Party will gather at a hotel in Ballymena, Co Antrim, today for their party's annual conference. They will devote much time to the aftermath of the Drumcree stand off and to perceived "interference" by Dublin in the affairs of Northern Ireland.
But the one day conference will be overshadowed by emerging tensions within the party and an increasingly critical examination, both internal and external, of Mr David Trimble's leadership.
As Mr Trimble faces his second conference as leader, members are preoccupied with the implications of the wrangle in the North Belfast constituency over allegations by the sitting UUP MP, Mr Cecil Walker, and over a hard hitting BBC Spotlight programme earlier this week on the leader's performance.
Mr Walker has claimed he is being hounded out of the North Belfast candidacy by right wing elements in the party and said he may stand as an independent unionist candidate in the next election.
The parades issue is highlighted in a number of motions on the agenda, all of them aggressively defending the right to engage in traditional parades anywhere in the North.
Other resolutions assert that the heightened protests against parades "are a part of the continuing terrorism and sectarianism orchestrated by Sinn Fein/IRA", and deplore the actions of the RUC in stopping certain parades.
A motion from a Co Armagh branch calls on the conference to demand "that the present boycotts and blockades should cease immediately".
A key motion on the Anglo Irish Agreement deplores the "continuing interference" by the Republic's government.
There is a call for the British government to extend to the Northern Forum "a meaningful consultative role"