FORMER UUP MP John Taylor told an Irish official in 1998 that “the Garvaghy Road won’t exist” if the contentious Drumcree Orange Order march was not allowed to take place.
Taylor, who is now in the House of Lords as Lord Kilclooney, also compared the situation at the time to 1974, when loyalist strikes brought down the Northern Ireland Assembly.
The Dublin and Monaghan bombings, which claimed the lives of 33 people, also took place during the same time period of the loyalist strikes that year.
The comments are contained in previously confidential government documents that have now been released under the National Archives Act.
One such document from the Department of An Taoiseach NI Division in 1998 (2022/83/23) showed the fears for widespread violence as a result of the Drumcree dispute.
The Orange Order’s July march through the mainly nationalist Garvaghy Road in Drumcree, Portadown had become a flashpoint for unrest in the late 1990s amid annual disputes about whether the parade should be allowed to proceed.
At that time, the route was one of the most contested in Northern Ireland, with Portadown Orangemen and nationalist residents of the Garvaghy Road locked in a bitter stand-off.
Police had been attacked the previous three summers in clashes that had involved loyalist and nationalist rioters.
In 1998, the UK government-appointed Parades Commission had banned the Orange parade going down the Garvaghy Road. In protest, the Orangemen had marched to Drumcree church on 5 July and vowed not to leave until the parade was permitted.
There was a huge security presence in the area, with thousands of police and army personnel having erected metal barriers blocking the Orangemen’s access to the Garvaghy Road.
On 9 July 1998, Irish representative Philip McDonagh held an event in his London home that was attended by diplomats, politicians, and senior civil servants.
Taylor, then a UUP MP, was one of those in attendance and made a remark that was so worrying it was ultimately spoken about by Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Prime Minister Tony Blair.
In a memo written to the DFA in Dublin, McDonagh said that “John Taylor was a guest at a party at our home yesterday evening” and that on arrival he said:
if the march doesn’t go through, the Garvaghy Road won’t exist.
McDonagh was so concerned about the implications of the remark that he contacted another person who had heard the conversation to confirm he had heard it correctly.
McDonagh contacted George Cassidy, the Anglican Archdeacon of London, who confirmed he had heard the same and further expressed concern that it could be taken to mean there would be an attempt to burn down the Catholic housing estates of the Garvaghy Road.
Cassidy was said to be “horrified by Taylor’s comments”, adding that they had seemed to have been pre-prepared, meaning that “Taylor intended his warning to me to be reported.”
In a conversation the following day, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern is recorded as informing his British counterparty Tony Blair about Taylor’s grim warning:
You probably got the information Tony that John Taylor has been going around openly predicting that if they don’t get down by Monday that Garvaghy Road will cease to exist to use his words. That’s tremendously unhelpful to you and me, but even more unhelpful to his own leader. So that’s another one we have to watch in this bloody equation.
As the Drumcree stand-off continued, brothers Richard (10), Mark (9) and Jason Quinn (8) were killed in their home in Ballymoney, Co Antrim by a loyalist firebomb attack on the early hours of 12 July.
Though the attack was some 100km from Portadown, the international condemnation and the revulsion following the killing of the Quinn brothers had the effect of easing tensions in Drumcree.
Orangemen and loyalists remained onsite on 12 July but their numbers started to dwindle in the days after that. The Orangemen have not been permitted to parade down Garvaghy Road from 1998 onward.
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