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(Editorial, Irelandclick.com)

Like a dog with a bone, the Orange Order continues to press for the Springfield Road march that it was denied on June 25. But with an all-too typical lack of foresight, rather than try to win the day through dialogue and reason, the loyalist North and West Belfast Parades Forum and a local politician have hit out at local residents and at the same time have described talking the matter over as a waste of time.

The Orange Order has applied to march along the Springfield Road on September 10 and, as usual, the Springfield Residents' Association have appealed for them to sit down and talk about it; as usual the Orange Order has said no. Against a background of continued pig-headedness on the part of the Orangemen, and given that nothing has changed since the decision to ban the June 25 parade, common sense dictates that the Parades Commission has no option but to ban the march, but common sense very seldom has the last word on the question of Orange parades and so Springfield residents are for the third time this year subjected to another lengthy period of fearful waiting.

The marching season was always a misnomer, loyal order parades take place somewhere in the North every month of the year. But the significant ratcheting up of tension and community strife that invariably comes about in the July fortnight thankfully is allowed to dissipate for most Catholics. But for the people of the Springfield – and indeed the people of Ardoyne – it must seem like the Twelfth fortnight all year long, and this is something that the Parades Commission must begin to address and, indeed, to take into consideration. The extended period of worry and tension that such march applications inflicts on host communities is a very serious quality of life issue and it's high time that it was dealt with. While Orangemen can say their tuppenceworth (to the media, of course, not the residents) they are then allowed to go home and get on with their lives while ordinary families such as those living in Springfield and Ardoyne are left to suffer the mental stress.

Applications are banged in by loyalists who are only too happy to plunge Catholic families into another period of limbo during which their lives are put on hold. This is unsustainable. An application is not a dry piece of paper to be filed away and considered in due course – an Orange application to march is the signal for another round of in-fighting, fear and apprehension. The Orange Order has now filed applications to march in the past three consecutive months, effectively stealing the summer from those Catholic families in the frontline. Doubtless the British government's answer to this would be to create an Applications Commission, but the simple answer is to restrict the number of applications allowable in order that we might expect some degree of respite from the unceasing pressure. That is the least that host communities deserve.

This latest application comes against a particularly volatile background with loyalist paramilitaries continuing to kill each other with impunity and Catholic homes, churches and schools being targeted. This application will doubtless see tensions rise even higher, which is why the Parades Commission needs to make a ruling, and it needs to make it quickly. We believe that there is only one decision that it can make, and that is to ban the march again. That said, there is a fear locally that since so much has been seen recently to go against unionism – the dismantling of security bases, the disbanding of the RIR and so on – that the temptation will be to even things up by allowing the Springfield Road march to go ahead. But if the Springfield Road is used as a bargaining chip, or if that perception is allowed to grow by inexplicable and contradictory rulings, then the resolution of the problem will be put back, not advanced.

This article appeared first on the Irelandclick.com web site on August 18, 2005.