Episode 132: Breandán Mac Cionnaith - Garvaghy Road Residents Coalition

This came as a complete shock to our community in Portadown.

Completely out of the blue.

There was no justification for it.

There never will be any justification for it in our eyes, because at the end of the day, our community went through enough in the 1990s.

And I'll make this point again this evening to all of those who

know it, but especially for

the media present.

On a message to the courts behind us, between 1996 and 1999, 21 people lost their lives at the hands of those acting on behalf of the Orange Order at Drumcree.

21 people, 21 deaths, 21 families.

One of the people who's supporting us in this application belongs to one of those families.

In Portadown, when we think of Trump Free, we think of Adrian Alves.

We think of young Darren Murray, 12 years of age.

I can go on right through all the families.

I can name all 21 of the victims.

The Orange Order, the Trade Commission, and the British government might have forgotten them.

I haven't.

Because every one of those deaths, every one of those murders, impacted deeply on our community.

And for some way or other, we felt that we were to blame for starting up for our rights.

that those people had today.

So when we go into this court tomorrow, it's not just about our community now that we're thinking about.

We're going in there on behalf of those 21 families who lost their lives at the hands of loyalists.

And as for the Orange Order, we don't need to rehearse the history.

But when one associates the Orange Order in Drumcree, it's worth to remember that at the first recorded Orange church service at Drumcree, in the immediate aftermath, those leaving the service went down Drumcree Road, and there were two young Catholic men working on a field, and they were beaten to death.

The Drumcree march started with murder, and it ended with murder.

And that's where it should be allowed to end.