Drumcree Parish Church on the outskirts of Portadown in County Armagh is what comes to mind when thinking of Winston Churchill’s comment about the ‘dreary steeples’ of Northern Ireland.
A drab Church of Ireland outpost on a hill, it was catapulted into global consciousness in the 1990s when it provided the backdrop to one of the most vicious battles in Ulster’s kulturkampf.
On one side, bowler-hatted Orangemen of the Portadown District, who, following a service at the church, would then process down the Garvaghy Road – the traditional route, as the late David Trimble put it – back into the centre of Portadown to conclude their parade. On the other, the nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road who did not take too kindly to what they saw as gratuitous Protestant triumphalism taking place on the other side of their curtains.
The disturbances centred around Drumcree until the early 2000s crystallised all the various anxieties of Northern Ireland; unionist and loyalism’s ‘no surrender’ instinct chafing against nationalism’s pushback against what they saw as the most visible representation of the so-called ‘Orange State’.
Once the dark hand of loyalist paramilitaries intent on destabilising the peace process joined in, the Drumcree disorders quickly escalated into one of the most acute security challenges facing the British government during the Troubles. The quaint country lanes which surround Drumcree were soon characterised by the buzz of Army helicopters, barbed wire and thousands of troops separating the two warring factions.
