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Rev. Ian Paisley: It is not right for the Minister to say that it is untrue. That is what happened. They got to the church on the first occasion and were told that they could not get back. That is a matter of fact.
8.45 pm
Mr. McGrady: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the facts were that the parade went to the church and could have gone back by the same way that it arrived without hindrance from the police or anyone else? As I understand it, it was going back by a different route that caused the problem and the counter-demonstration.
Rev. Ian Paisley: The arrangement made with the police was that the parade was to go one way and come back by another. That was the original agreement that the police made. The police cannot get away from that. I sat in a meeting with the police and they admitted that that was right. Let us get the facts right without having an argument.
Mr. William Ross: The hon. Gentleman knows that the police notification document, form 11/1, specifies the route and the return. As he says, the return route shown was different from the route to the church.
Rev. Ian Paisley: Portadown is not a nationalist town. Let us get that straight. It is one of the most Protestant towns in Northern Ireland, the very heart of County Armagh Protestantism. The road is a main road. In the past 20 or 25 years, houses have been built. They have not been built on the roadside. Not one lies on the actual road. They are in estates on either side. That does not produce what people in Northern Ireland like to call a particular coloured area.
The coloured areas came in when troops first came to Northern Ireland. The troops were given maps with green and orange areas. The Ravenhill road, where I have laboured in Church work for 52 years, is not a Roman Catholic road. From the bottom right up to Rosetta, it is a Protestant road. I was walking up that road when a police officer accosted me and said, "I don't think you should be walking here, Mr. Paisley." I said, "Why?" He said, "You are in a Roman Catholic area." I said, "No. 1, what would it matter if I was? What business is it of yours? Secondly, who told you that?" He showed me his map. The right-hand side of the road was coloured dark green. He said, "This is a republican area." I said, "Go away home. You don't know what you're talking about." On both sides it is a Protestant road. Even if it had been a Roman Catholic road, surely a minister, whether a priest in the Roman Church or a Protestant, is entitled to walk there and look after people who reside there. I find that attitude disconcerting.
The houses are back from the road. There was never any attempt by Orangemen in Portadown to walk through those estates, nor would they do that. That lie was spread
all around the world. I do not know how many programmes I appeared on in the United States of America, but the first question I was always asked was whether Orangemen had walked through Roman Catholic housing estates. I was in America when a man said to me, "Of course, the Roman Catholics don't have any houses in Northern Ireland." I said, "That's interesting. They are now running a rent and rates strike, so if they don't have any houses, how can they successfully do that?" That strike was organised by the SDLP.
The Northern Ireland people, especially the Protestants, have been slandered. There is now a vicious campaign. The so-called loyalist terrorists are called Protestants--the Protestant Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force--but those people have no religion: they are the haters and revilers of religion. We never hear anyone referring to the Roman Catholic Provisional IRA. In fact, I tabled a question in the House using that expression and I was called into the office and told, "You don't use that language here." I said, "Here's one tabled by Gerry Fitt referring to the Protestant UVF. What about that?" and they said, "We'll get that off the Order Paper." A campaign is being waged to blacken the decent Protestant people of Northern Ireland. It is a scandal.
The people who walked down from Drumcree were not against their Roman Catholic neighbours. They were coming from a place of worship and were entitled to come down that road. The Bill is all about Drumcree. It is an attempt by the Government to find a way of stopping the parade. Government researchers should read the history of the Procession Acts that have littered the statute book. Where did they get us? Nowhere.
People may not want others walking down a particular road, and they may not like what those people are doing, but they just have to let them walk down that road. Hibernian processions go through almost 100 per cent. Protestant areas in my constituency and nobody says anything. Orange parades go through Rasharkin, which has a majority Roman Catholic population, and nothing is said. That is the only way that parades can be accomplished in peace.
I used to spend my holidays in a place called Killowen in the constituency of the hon. Member for South Down. Killowen was strongly Roman Catholic, although there were some Protestant families. On 12 July, the Roman Catholic boys and the Protestant boys went together to see the Orangemen. On 15 August, we all went to Warrenpoint to see the Hibernians. On 12 July, the Hibernian neighbour did the farm chores and sent his Orange friend off to walk in the parade, and his friend did the same on 15 August. That is the way it was, and that is the way it needs to be. That is the only answer.
People think that they will stop an event that has been going on for hundreds of years, but it cannot be done. The sad thing is that this problem now affects church services. Mention was made of Harryville. The House should know that Harryville sits in a 99 per cent. Protestant area, yet the chapel was built there and nobody said anything about it until we had the agitation in Dunloy. Orangemen were not allowed to go to the Presbyterian church. The Presbyterian church was attacked. All the windows were broken, the graveyard was dug up and, one by one, people were driven out of the church by intimidation.
The Protestants in Harryville then decided to organise a protest there. I do not agree with banned protests; I think that protests should take place within the law, and I do not think that anyone should have to listen to curses and bad language from anyone. I believe that people should be allowed to go in peace to their place of worship. I have made my position clear in my constituency, and everyone there knows it. The point is that, outside Ballymena, in a place called Dunloy, Orangemen were not even permitted to hold a religious service in their own Orange hall because the Orange hall was occupied by IRA men. They sat on the roof and wrote the slogan "You will never use this hall again". The hall is now an IRA-Sinn Fein advice centre.
Fortunately, following a good deal of consideration, we succeeded in holding a religious service in the hall with no trouble a few weeks ago. The police were at long last prepared to do for the people of Dunloy--the Protestants--what they had done for the people of Harryville, the Roman Catholics: they were prepared to say, "You are entitled to hold your religious service, and we will look after you." That is a duty that the police must perform across the board and it is why this is and always will be a public order issue. Even the Minister said--referring to some of the remarks that I, and others, had made--that public order issues were involved in the debate about protests. The House will eventually have to look again at the Public Order (Northern Ireland) Order 1987, because it has within it the seeds of what is now happening.
There was a man on the Armagh road who said, "No Orangeman will ever walk down this road again." On one side of the Armagh road, from the direction of the King's bridge, is what is known as the holy land, because all the streets have names like Jerusalem street and Jericho street. It is predominantly a Protestant area. When I went to Belfast some 49 years ago, I lived in Cooke street, which is at the bottom of the Armagh road. The Orangemen walked up and down the road, using it as a main thoroughfare. They cannot do so today, because the IRA has said--Gerard Rice has said--that they are not allowed to set foot on the Armagh road. That will gain momentum, and nothing but anarchy will result. The new clause makes reasonable proposals to deal with some of what results from unruly elements taking over in parades and in protests against parades.
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