Are we seeing an end to the 'Good Friday Agreement'?

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.dailymail....Northern-Ireland.html

With trouble flaring up once again in Northern Ireland, is it now time to ban these ridiculous 'Orange Men Parades' ?

What action would be taken by the English authorities if the BNP were to march each year through predominate Muslim areas, and the same type of violence prevailed?

[sandyRoe]

The extremists on both sides, Sinn Fein and the Paisleyite DUP, are in office now. They aren't going to let a few rioters upset the gravy train.
Most Orange Parades go peacefully about their business. It's the few that want to walk through Catholic areas where trouble flares.

[modeller]

It takes intelligence and maturity to treat a parade or a festival as a colourful tradition rather than provocation. If both sides learnt to laugh at or with each others traditions the problems would die away. After all they have learnt to accept all the murals depicting violence as a part of history , why not the parades. ?

[sandyRoe]

Modeller,
Republican murals are in their own areas, as are the Loyalist ones. That way they cause no problems.
We're still a tribal, territorial, people. Trouble flares when one group wants to enter the other's territory.

[Zeuhl]

As far as I can tell, the violence is caused by a relatively small number of male youths.

As long as we have one or two hundred of them spoiling for a bit of aggro on a summer's night this will happen anywhere they can find an excuse.
.

[anotheoldgit]

sandyRoe

/// We're still a tribal, territorial, people. Trouble flares when one group wants to enter the other's territory.///

Wouldn't have expected this reasoning coming from you sandy.

One could use this reasoning, when one is called racist for being an opponent to mass immigration.

How long do we have to wait for the trouble to begin?
.

[rov1200]

Yes, its very inflammatory.

[modeller]

I note what you say sandy . What occurs to me if these parades could be billed as a tourist attraction as are the murals, then maybe the thought of tourist money coming in might persuade some that it's a way forward . As it is riots have the opposite effect.

[boxtops]

As ever, any trouble is caused by the few, not the masses. Orange marches were a feature in Scotland as well as in Northern Ireland, when I lived up there.

[Duncer]

As an Ulster Protestant who now leans towards atheism and has never been in the Orange Order, I have a fairly neutral take on the parades, but sometimes find myself defending them because of the bigotry of some opponents to them, a strange juxtaposition indeed, and one that puzzles me at times.

As a small child I remember trouble free parades where my Catholic neighbours joined in to a certain extent, and as a teenager I remember them being terribly exciting as they were an opportunity to have a few drinks and usually end up meeting someone of the opposite sex, but I am also aware that they were viewed entirely differently by others, and they are more than entitled to have that view.

As time progressed they involved terrible trouble, (both sides usually equally culpable), but what gets me is the annual trouble at Ardoyne. The parade doesn't actually pass Ardoyne itself, it goes up the Crumlin Road, what was a staunchly Unionist area when I was a brat. Changing demography means that the area facing Ardoyne and this part of the Crumlin Road are now mostly Catholic, but this part of the parade is often portrayed as a coat trailing triupmhialist exercise when, in reality, this is only a very small part of the main parade returning home. Ardoyne is behind a row of shops and out of sight of this parade. Furthermore, the majority of those who are offended by it travel large distances to be so. Not speculation on my part, merely a geographical knowledge of Belfast and the publication of the charge sheets when the "offended" have been to court.

I have no idea what the answer is, but the TV does not look at it with a great degree of circumspection.