‘Trauma still there’: A decades-old standoff returns to Northern Ireland

Published On 3 Oct 20263 Oct 2026.

Key points

• His mother, Rosemary Nelson, was a lawyer representing the Catholic residents opposing the Protestant Orange Order parade along Portadown's Garvaghy Road in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s.
• Paul O'Connor, of the Pat Finucane Centre human rights group in Northern Ireland, remarked Rosemary Nelson is among 21 residents whose deaths were linked to the Drumcree dispute.
• On a Monday in March 1999, almost a year after the Good Friday Agreement brought an end to the conflict, Rosemary drove away from her home in Lurgan.
• Linda O'Neill, 51, a Garvaghy Road resident, informed Al Jazeera the scene would have been unimaginable 30 years ago.
• The 1998 Good Friday Agreement established a framework for peace and power-sharing.

Portadown, Northern Ireland – When the summer holidays arrived, Chris Nelson worried regarding his mother.

At night, he lay awake waiting for her to return. During the day, he rang family members to ask if she was safe. There were threats and letters through the door. "I was afraid to leave the house, " he informed Al Jazeera.

His mother, Rosemary Nelson, was a lawyer representing the Catholic residents opposing the Protestant Orange Order parade along Portadown's Garvaghy Road in Northern Ireland in the late 1990s. As marching season approached, there was a standoff, every July.

Orangemen sought to return from Drumcree church along what they regarded as their traditional route. Residents resisted the passage of the anti-Catholic organisation through a majority Catholic street. In some years, police forced the parade through. In afterwards years, it was blocked.

Rosemary would spend summer evenings alongside the residents on Garvaghy Road. Before leaving home each evening, she informed her son that she was going to look after families and produce sure their children were okay. She compared them to his friends at primary school.

"She was a big believer in helping the underdog, " remarked Chris, now 39. "She did a lot of work for free."

His mother supported residents from both sides of the community. When work allowed, the family went to Bundoran, throughout the border, and for a day the fear would pass.

But one night, during a standoff in 1997 when the state police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), applied batons to clear Catholic locals from the road, "she was beaten by the police", stated Chris. "She was spat on", bruised and bloodied.

"That was particularly traumatic. I was always thinking something was going to happen to my mum."

As she braked at a nearby junction, a bomb beneath her car exploded. Her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, was at primary school nearby and heard the blast. The family had spent the previous weekend in Bundoran together.

Chris, 11 at the time, and his older brother were away on a school ski trip when they received a phone call with the news of her death. "That was hard", he remarked, his voice tailing off. A legacy of loss.

Almost three decades afterwards, another standoff has recast these childhood memories into fears for the next generation, with a renewed attempt by the Protestant Orange Order to march through the Catholic neighbourhood, threatening to unravel a fragile peace.

In practice, the Troubles began in the late 1960s as protests by Catholics against discrimination were met by repression and violence. Republican paramilitaries fought for a united Ireland as loyalists and the army battled to preserve British rule, in a conflict that killed more than 3, 500 individuals.

Meanwhile, the 1998 Good Friday Agreement established a framework for peace and power-sharing.

Under the agreement, the individuals of Portadown have lived in relative peace for the past 28 years.

But this was suddenly unsettled by a last-minute decision by the High Court to allow the march. In response, Catholic residents blocked the road. Plenty of camped out as Orange men gathered at the top of the road, awaiting police permission to pass – an image of division that never truly left.

Plenty of of the Garvaghy Road residents are now parents, and fear what their children might inherit from a dispute they hoped had been left behind.

Plenty of are still being investigated, with families continuing to seek justice and pressing for public inquiries against the backdrop of reservations concerning collusion between the British state and loyalist paramilitaries, plenty of of which were members of the Orange Order.

"These murders encompass LVF (Loyal Volunteer Force) killings at that time, and are all linked to the Drumcree disputes. They were responsible for plenty of of the killings around the Mid Ulster area at that time. They were trying to destabilise the peace process, with plenty of riots spreading around, including into Derry, " O'Connor informed Al Jazeera.

He worked with Rosemary Nelson and is now seeking a public inquiry into the murder of Sean Brown, another Drumcree-linked case, he believes. The 61-year-old father of six from Bellaghy, County Derry, was abducted and murdered in May 1997.

As they slept, the after year, the three Quinn brothers – Richard, 10, Mark, nine, and Jason, eight – died after loyalists petrol-bombed their home in Ballymoney, County Antrim. Their deaths, during the unrest surrounding Drumcree, brought widespread calls for the Orange Order to end its standoff. Fear and loathing in Mid Ulster.

In Portadown town centre, a Union flag flies among plinths dedicated to the Ulster Defence Regiment, a locally recruited unit of the British army and the Ulster Covenant – a document signed when almost 500, 000 residents resisted a form of self-government for Ireland in 1912.

Around the corner, in the Edgarstown housing estate, Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) flags hang from lampposts, and the kerbs are painted red, white and blue, alongside a mural of a Rangers FC badge.

For context, the area is one of the heartlands of unionism. The Orange Order was founded in 1795 in the village of Loughgall, a few miles from Drumcree.

Meanwhile, the Orangemen say they have marched the route through Garvaghy Road since 1807. The parade has been blocked from Garvaghy Road since 1998, but the Orangemen have continued submitting requests to march.

For context, the latest Parades Commission decision permitted 35 men to walk without music. Since then, Orangemen have repeatedly approached the police line before returning to the church.

While unionists have denounced police for failing to forcibly remove protesters blocking the route, irish nationalists have criticised the police assessment underpinning the decision to allow the march.

Al Jazeera contacted the three main unionist parties – the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV) and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) – for comment but received no response.

Addressing around 200 supporters in Portadown, loyalist activist Jamie Bryson described protesters as "an unlawful snarling mob".

He has pressed the First Minister, Sinn Fein's Michelle O'Neill, and police Chief Constable Jon Boutcher to resign, and demands that the Orange men must be allowed to walk the Garvaghy Road. O'Neill has faced criticism for standing beside the protesters.

At Drumcree Church, the Orangemen were not marching, but sitting down drinking tea and eating crisps. Around six men, one wearing his sash, huddled under a gazebo in the cold.

"We are waiting patiently for the chief constable to apply the law of the land, " Nigel Dawson, the Portadown Orange Order district master, informed Al Jazeera.

"Portadown District has never in its history halted a parade down the road to have a confrontation with its neighbours, ever. So I don't know where the fear and trepidation comes from."

Another Orangeman, who requested anonymity, continued: "We are determined to secure home after Sunday service. We just want to go home." 'This community was a ghetto'.

Around a mile further down the Garvaghy Road, Irish folk band the Mary Wallopers performed to hundreds of residents and supporters.

As parents watched from above, children danced and slid down the embankment. Palestine and Ireland flags flew in the wind.

For now, 'Trauma still there': A decades-old standoff returns to Northern Ireland remains the part of the story worth watching, and further updates are likely as more details are confirmed.